SoulFood (11) Anatomy of a Temptation

      My Rotary friend, Mark, brought something to my attention that solved a long-standing mental quandary. Mark told me that archeologists have now uncovered King David’s palace in Jerusalem. A visit there wasn’t on the itinerary for the tour I led in October 2013. While everyone else slept at the hotel, before sun up, I jogged to what’s known as the City of David. It’s outside the walls around Jerusalem that Muslim ruler Saladin ordered built. It sits on a narrow ridge running south from the Temple Mount in the predominantly Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan in East Jerusalem.

       A sleepy guard, near the end of his shift, let me in. That morning I finally came to see what really happened the night that King David slept with the beautiful wife of one of his top generals and set in motion a cruel line of events that tore his own household apart. You can read the story in 2 Samuel 11. The chapter ends with: “the thing David had done displeased the Lord.”

      I was in my early teens when I first heard the story. A king who wasn’t where he should have been gets some air by a walk up on the roof of his palace. He sees a beautiful woman bathing. The Bible says he asked who she was. The reply was that she was the wife of one of his closest military men, Bathsheba of Uriah the Hittite. Huh? How could he NOT know? He’d seen her many times. There would have been court functions where Uriah and Bathsheba would have been present.

      Back and forth the debate went in my head for 40 years. He was up on the balcony. He glances down to one of the houses and on that roof top is this lovely nude lady. Did she do it on purpose, knowing that he wasn’t away with the army like he should have been? Did he just pretend that he didn’t know her?  Who could blame a red-blooded man with great power under those circumstances? The curves of her body and the lateness of the hour; I mean…

      Many a sermon reduced it all to just two people in the wrong place at the wrong time lost their moral compass and did a reckless thing, a bit like two tired business colleagues at the end of a long trip away find themselves in the hotel bar and…

       The morning walk at the palace dispelled all that. Uriah’s house would have been down in the valley. I mentioned the king’s palace was up on a ridge. Bathsheba would have been but a tiny figure down there on the roof top. I think David believed it was her and only asked to be doubly sure. This was no unexpected enticement of the flesh. It dawned on me that David had been giving Bathsheba the furtive glance for quite some time by then.

       All these years of pastoring has taught me much about how temptation breeds sinful deeds. Almost always it starts inside the imagination. Men look at women, maybe one gal in particular, with a lustful glace. The glance breeds a day dream after a few hours. The daydream very subtly becomes an ambition over a week or two. Next comes the desire to be in her company more than the normal course of events allow. Lingering at the water cooler. A “chance” meeting in town. It’s all about wanting her to notice him on her radar. Smiles. Compliments. Little favors. Excuses for a phone call. This is all part of the game.

        But this kind of temptation is two way. She starts to like it that this man, married or not, powerful or not, rich or not, though the former of each of these sure helps, is reaching out to her. She repays him with a happy glance. She lets her hand linger on his arm just a bit longer than needed in an innocent conversation. She omits to mention that a flirtatious remark of his, is inappropriate, should she already be married. At last she agrees to “have coffee.” The train has now left the station!  One or both may still be in denial, but whenever either party has someone else with whom this new “friendship” would be awkward to disclose all the details – the ride towards sin is under way.

         They laugh. They play. Fingers touch then entwine. A wink. A special shared joke or song. It’s all so happy until the hammer falls and the sin happens. The Bible says sin brings forth death. It never goes any other way. The next weeks are a heart struggle against truth. In the end lives are ruined. Regrets pile up. Tears flow. The next weeks are a heart struggle against truth. In the end lives are ruined. Regrets pile up. Tears flow. Confession and repentance are now the only hope. There will be consequences but at least the guilt can be faced and erased.

          King David – run from the balcony! Get back to where you should be. Temptation is the glistening skin of the brightly colored serpent gliding towards the hand of the enthralled child. Its “run” or “ruin.” There are NO other choices!

SoulFood (10) Too old to be trustworthy

      As the bus stopped at Israel’s Parliament building I was eager to cross the street to a nearby museum. I came to see a document that had intrigued me for many years. I hardly noticed the throngs of tourists headed to The Knesset, because I was there to see the Dead Sea Scrolls. This museum’s roof looks like the circular clay pots in which the scrolls were found. The roof, in a fountain pool, is painted white. Nearby stands a stark dark-colored wall. A sign explained the symbolism. The Essenes, a small ultra conservative Jewish sect at the time of Jesus, considered themselves “sons of the Light.”  They saw the world as a great battle between the light of God’s holiness and the darkness of sin and human wickedness.

      I had visited the remains of an Essene settlement. It was in Southern Israel at Qumran. The day was hot and the desert rocks shimmered. They had a very austere life. As I wandered among the ruins I pondered the gift these long gone devotees had given to the 20^th Century. My mind went to AD 70. The news then was bad – very bad. Roman General Titus, who later became emperor, was devastating the land in reprisals for the Jewish Rebellion that broke out a few years before. Everything Jewish was slaughtered or burned.

      The Essenes hid their library of hand-copied scriptures in clay pots. The pots were placed in caves in the hills. The hope was that after the trouble ended they’d all return and the settlement would be repopulated. Rome’s swords flashed, the buildings were destroyed, the old were butchered, the leaders were crucified and the young were dragged away in chains. No one returned. The pots were layered in dust for 1900 years.

      I wasn’t raised in a Christian home. My early days as a believer were filled with questions. One of my struggles was to believe that the Bible was authentic. Even if the original documents were written by God’s own hand - the Bible claims that inspired human penmanship was the mechanism- I couldn’t believe that copy after copy could be made during hundreds of years without errors creeping in.

      My pastor mentioned that 2 decades before, a goat herder had flung some pebbles into a desert cave in Israel, heard some pottery breaking and upon investigating made a discovery that shocked the world. The manuscripts were nearly lost by bits being sold cheaply to tourists, but another long story illustrates the zeal by which they were regathered.

      Even in training for the Christian Ministry I audited lectures that presupposed that the book we now hold as The Bible, can, at best contain only fragments of the original documents. A Doctor of Divinity went to great lengths to “prove” to us that its text was untrustworthy. One of his lectures contained the case of the 3 Isaiahs. The book in our Bible by that name was supposed by some scholars to have been three small books and these were lumped together.

      All of this is background to why I was so keen to see a particular scroll on display at the museum. One of the pots contained the entire book of Isaiah. The staff regards the find as sacred and when a Jewish woman to my right tried to sneak a photograph she was escorted out by a very stern security guard. I didn’t need a camera for I was misty-eyed as I recorded every inch of that glass-covered scroll in my mind.

      I was looking at a miracle. Mind you perhaps the miracle was in the modern Bible back in my hotel room. Not a word was different. The Bible verse came to mind: “The grass withers and the flowers fall but the word of our God shall stand forever” Isaiah 40:8

        

SoulFood (9) The Present Persecution of Christians

      How serious is a video made by the leader of Nigeria’s Boko Haram? The man himself is no joke. U.S. government called him a global terrorist. They put a price of $7-million on his head. In the last six months Boko Haram has killed 2 053 people. So who are these thugs? Their name implies: “People who are committed to the prophet’s (Mohammed’s) teachings.” But even more bluntly it can be translated: “western education is fake.”

      So when this leader, Abu Shekau says, on video, to Christians: “we don’t care about that religion of yours,” he means a lot more than apathy. Nigeria is Africa’s most populous state. The northern half is Muslim-influenced and the north of the North is fanatically anti-Christian. When they hear him chant, at the end of the recording: “Christians, you are in trouble, Christians you are in trouble,” Nigerians take Shekau seriously.

      Go with me now to Mosul. The cowardly Iraqi army threw down their weapons and fled. In roared what we now call “Islamic State.” In just one weekend all Christians got this ultimatum: 1) Stay and convert to Islam; 2) Pay Islamic tax (which is too much for most families to pay); 3) Leave Mosul taking nothing but their clothes. Christians who stayed would be executed. And they were!

         Consider these mournful words: "Too many of us thought that forced conversions and expulsions of entire religious communities were part of a distant, medieval past. There was little that we could do to stop this horrible episode.” Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, head of Interfaith Affairs at the Wiesenthal Center.

        Yes Rabbi, you and I could do little, but while our President fiddled with executive orders over birth control pills, the US military sat on its hands as Syria burned. Bombing a few trucks threatening a mountain isn’t going to cut it, any more than Bill Clinton’s cruise missiles did in preventing 9/11. If you are going to strike – hit training camps and supply routes. Hit very hard. Do it yesterday already!

        But I must also add that the USA isn’t the world’s policeman. In 50 countries where persecution happens, at least one event every 3 months, 27 of them are lands where its weekly or even daily in the last 14 days. More Christians have died for their faith in the 21^st Century than in all the others put together. Can the US take on 50 countries? The Jewish holocaust is becoming small pickings by comparison.

       North Korea, armed with its police state forces and neighborhood spies, kills its Christians quietly and efficiently. It rivals the Muslim threat in numbers jailed and tortured.

       So the Western mind cries out for a solution. There isn’t one! Not in this present evil world. Jesus knew that from the beginning. He startled his hearers saying: “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”  Jesus predicted: “A servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also.” At least the situation is not yet at: “Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me.” He was right about the other. It’s only a matter of time!

     Love generously. Live boldly. Witness clearly. Die bravely. There will be enough grace for each of those.

SoulFood (8) On being good inside.

      In French history class I met two ideas: “Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains” as well as the concept of the “Noble Savage.” The latter came from John Dryden's play: The Conquest of Granada (1672) As the idea gained traction in Europe, the earl of Shaftesbury wrote: Inquiry Concerning Virtue (1699), suggesting that our moral sense is inborn and based on feelings, rather than taught by religion. It was a short walk to believing any tribe not yet debased by civilization as being innately noble.

      Thus the first idea derived power by suggesting that the real problem of the ordinary person was not internal.  Rather the poor or the victimized were chained by wrong society systems. Remove the “chains” and all people will revert to their internal state of goodness.  Thus the liberal concept of “right” government was born. The left-leaning thinker presupposes that the ordinary citizen’s heart is mostly pure and unselfish. No need to spend time reforming the individual. It’s the country’s laws that are wrong.

      These folks shudder at the Bible’s view of inbred sin. The liberal mind can’t believe that toddlers are innately spiteful, selfish and cruel. To them a book like William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies” has the wrong world view. So let’s experiment. Fill a room with 5 three year olds and 12 toys. Place an adult in charge who believes ardently that, left to themselves, the kids will spend 3 hours in happy, contented play. When the first fight over a toy happens charge the adult to just smile and observe. The hope is that very soon the children’s inborn, peaceful, unselfishness will resolve the conflict. Yeah right!

      Bible readers are not surprised at the conflict. The text says that foolishness is in the child’s heart and that correction is required. Our Book says a child must be trained in righteous ways. In the opening pages of the Bible tell that brother on brother murder was one of the first events of civilization’s history.

      How then does one explain that most of us feel ourselves to be basically good on the inside, with just a few nasty “external” traits?  The Bible speaks to that as well.  It calls the epicenter of our conscious being “desperately wicked,” but also “deceitful above all things.”  Here’s the bitter pill: thinking yourself to be essentially noble and good may be the biggest lie you ever swallowed. Nevertheless we are also still capable of unselfish actions at times.

      An old song asks if there is no thorough cure from the “thralldom of indwelling sin.”  Thankfully there is a remedy. It starts with the rueful agreeing that the Bible, rather than your feelings, is the accurate mirror of the soul. That includes the willingness to take the concept of sin seriously. Sin is conscious rebellion against the known will of God. You discover His will by a diligent study of the scriptures.  

      After that you soon realize that the next steps to internal goodness are the confession of your sins and the request for God’s forgiveness. It’s as practical as just owning your guilt and praying a simple prayer for pardon. No fancy words. No poetic utterance. No mantras. Just speak it as simply as you can.

      Not much further to go. The next phase is also a prayer. Having believed that God, Who promised to forgive, has done so, you may ask Him to come into your life. Think of it as opening your front door and handing Him the house keys. Now give Him permission to clean any rooms you were not aware needed doing.