Obedient Listening

In English, the concepts of “listening” and “obedience” are expressed by different words. But in Romanian, “listening” and “obedience” are expressed using the same word. The same is true in Latin where the word oboedire means “to listen or obey”. In an issue of “The Cry”, a quarterly magazine published by the mission organization Word Made Flesh, April Folkertsma, a missionary to Romania, reflecting upon the close connection between listening and obeying says that listening requires active involvement. Hearing, on the other hand, is much more passive. It doesn’t require involvement. I recall an incident during my student days that illustrates the difference between hearing and listening. A friend and I were talking when a mutual acquaintance came up and asked “How are you?” My friend explained he was in the middle of a horrible week. His wife and kids had had the flu for several days, requiring that he stay home, he was therefore swamped with his studies and had just failed a midterm exam. Whereupon our acquaintance said “That’s nice” and walked away. While he had heard the words, he had failed to listen and respond appropriately. To move from merely hearing to listening requires an active response that demonstrates that we have understood what we have heard and that it has changed our lives.

Listening to God requires a choice – either obedience or disobedience. It is never neutral or uninvolved. But in our modern parlance we have divorced listening from obedience. Modern listening has therefore also become passive. It doesn’t require our active involvement. Perhaps this is what is meant when the prophet Isaiah says “You will be ever hearing, but never understanding, you will be ever seeing, but never perceiving.” (Isa 6:9). Hearing and seeing are both passive. They don’t require a response. The words basically go in one ear and out the other. The alternative, understanding and perceiving, requires action. Like listening, they require a response of obedience. As Isaiah says, it is only by the action associated with obedience that the goal is reached – to turn and be healed (v. 10). St Paul, in writing to the churches, has this in mind. Most of the verbs he uses are imperatives; commands expected to be obeyed. He writes with the expectation that when his letters are read to the churches they will respond with obedience.

But in our modern world obedience has become passé. We don’t like to be told what to do. We don’t want to obey rules. We want to be the masters of our own lives. In our hustle bustle world we also don’t take the time necessary to reflect upon and understand the words which we do hear or see in print. We don’t ruminate upon them, turning them over in our minds, evaluating them. Therefore, we don’t really listen. But obedience demonstrates that we have truly listened. The words we have heard have penetrated into the depths of our soul, requiring a response which we freely make out of love for our Father in Heaven. Obedience demonstrates that we really have listened, for what we have heard changes us. Perhaps this is why the Bible places obedience upon such a high plane. In God’s eyes, obedience is more important than worship. Worship can be perfunctory. Active obedience, based on love shows our responsiveness to the word of God. As opposed to merely hearing, it shows a responsiveness to the prompting of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Upon reflection, are you a true listener or merely a hearer of the word?

Human Worth

Behind the narcissistic attitudes exhibited by many people in today’s society, behind the “death with dignity” slogan fostered by the euthanasia movement, behind much of existential philosophy which believes everything is relative, allowing persons to do what they want, is the desire for the beholder of these viewpoints to be God. To this list we can add the problem of pride, not hate, which for many Christians is the antithesis of love. Each of these has the problem of turning ourselves into our own deity, with the false idea that we are not only the most important person in the universe, but are also totally in control of our lives and destiny.

The main character in the novel The Stranger by Albert Camus is the quintessential existentialist. Throughout the book he continues to hold that life has no meaning. His brief encounters with other people have no lasting value. His life is very individualistic. Nothing matters. It makes no difference whether one lives or dies, marries or stays single. There are no absolutes, everything is relative. As a result, life, and one’s very existence, is futile. Mankind is inconsequential. He has no worth nor dignity. He is a stranger, even to himself.

The outgrowth of this existential philosophy has dire consequences for today’s world, and easily leads one to be a proponent of euthanasia. If individual humans have no dignity; we are not much more than a blob of protoplasm. If life has no meaning, it cannot be considered to be sacred. As a consequence, the only remaining dignity that a person can have, as its proponents argue, is to die with “dignity”. Society, as a whole, has bought into the viewpoint that non productive individuals have no value, thus no dignity. This attitude primarily impacts the most fragile in society – the unborn, the infant, the elderly and those with special needs. If life itself has no meaning, they become expendable, as we have seen in the mandated end of life counseling in the new national health care laws and in Roe versus Wade.

In assisted suicide, we see attempts to play God. We strive to be in control of our own destiny, choosing for ourselves the moment of death. Ironically, the loss of real dignity that our modern worldview has foistered upon us only makes the void more noticeable as we vainly strive to seek to find some final dignity in the moment of death, a dignity that has eluded us in our existential existence.

The advocates of abortion have succumbed to the false view of dignity that our society holds. If dignity and worth are tied to what we do, infants and the unborn have no value, for they are not productive individuals. Instead they are a drain on society because they require so much of our attention. As such, they are a burden, thus expendable. To solve this difficulty, ancient societies practiced infant abandonment and exposure. Our society practices abortion.

Our loss of dignity contributes to the narcissism so prevalent in our society. The narcissist, as a lover of self, thinks only of himself and his pleasure. Without the significance that comes from having dignity in the eyes of God and of each other, our own selfish pleasure becomes the highest goal of life.

Our true dignity comes from having been created in the image of God. From the moment of conception till the moment of death we are persons with great dignity. As his children, he affirms our worth. What is the source of your worth? Is it bound up in yourself or your relationship with God?

Separatists, Culturalists and Restorers

Gabe Lyons, in The Next Christians describes three types of Christians, the Separatist, the Cultural and the Restorer. Each type can be further subcategorized. Among the Separatists are the Insiders. Most of Insiders time revolves around Christian activities. They only send their children to Christian schools, only listen to Christian music. read Christian books, etc. Their lives revolve around the safety of church. While their motive to live holy lives separated from the degradation seen in the culture around them is pure, they have great difficulty in engaging the culture in which they live without being judgmental. There are also the Cultural Warriors who consider that America and Christianity are deeply intertwined. To their credit, they are passionately concerned about our moral decline as a nation. They seek out politicians who support their positions on abortion, gay rights, etc. But they also have difficulty engaging a society which no longer believes in the value of the Judeo Christian heritage upon which our country was founded. Finally, among the Separatists, are the Evangelizers who believe that the only Christian activity of any value is getting people saved and will go to any means to see that accomplished. They reach out with the best of motives, but many times their technique turns off those they are trying to reach.

Among the Cultural are the Blenders. They attempt to blend so well with society that it becomes very hard to even identify them as Christians. They want to be like everyone else, attempting to be relevant and seeker friendly as a way of reaching their community. There are also the Philanthropists whose focus is upon social concerns and good works. In their zeal they often miss what the essence of the gospel is about – restoring people’s lives to a relationship with God through the grace that Jesus offers.

The Restorers have a different mission than the other two groups. Lyons states that their mission is to “infuse the world with beauty, grace, justice and love.” While acknowledging that our broken world will not be completely healed until Christ’s return, they seek to be a part of Christ’s healing ministry by attempting to assist in healing the broken spiritual and physical lives of the people around them. Instead of separating from or blending in, they engage the culture in which they live. Instead of being offended by what goes on around them they are provoked to become involved in making change. Instead of judging, they love the broken ones around them because they realize that they are just as broken and that it is only the grace of God that has rescued them. They use their talents, gifts and passions to make a difference in their world, affecting their jobs, their neighborhoods, their schools, their community, promoting the common good. As Lyons observes, “They are motivated to bring the love of Christ into every broken system they encounter.”

This is how Christianity grew by 40 percent per decade over its first three centuries. The early Christians were restorers. To the multitudes of homeless and impoverished in the large cities of the Greco-Roman world it gave hope. To the newcomers who migrated from the rural to the urban areas it offered community. To the many widows and orphans it brought family. In place of ethnic strife it yielded total acceptance. During famine, catastrophes and times of plague it brought compassion and care.

As we examine our lives, which of these three categories do we most identify with? Are we Separatists, Culturalists or Restorers? Which do we want to be?

The Tyranny of Victimization

It has been cogently argued by Wilfred McClay in the May 2001 issue of “First Things” that the prestige accorded to victims in our society, and the rise of the phenomenon of victimization are closely linked

“to the extraordinary weight of guilt in our time, the pervasive need to find innocence through moral absolution, to discharge one’s moral burden, and to the fact that the conventional means of finding that absolution – or even of keeping the range of one’s responsibility for one’s sins within some kind of reasonable boundaries – are no longer generally available.”

He concludes that “it is not a coincidence that the rise of the cult of victimization in our culture corresponds fairly exactly with the decline of Christian orthodoxy.”

Those old enough to have lived through the tumultuous change inaugurated in the 1960s can easily testify to the rise of victimization during our lifetimes, for in our youth, victims were mostly those caught up in the machinations of the Nazi and Japanese war machines during World War II. But as we passed through the Viet Nam and Cold War eras into the post modern age it seems that victimization has grown exponentially. Now everyone is describes as a victim of one sort or another – whether it is of pollution, discrimination of all kinds, being impoverished, profiled, having eaten too many fat and salt laden burgers at McDonalds or just having a bad hair day. Some even consider the earth itself to be a victim oppressed by humans.

Many who are not victims themselves claim excessive identification with victims, castigating the Western world, the United States, even humans in general as oppressors of the world’s victims. Some who espouse various social concerns do so in order to identify with victims. A few have so identified with the cult of victimization so as to create spurious autobiographies of their own personal victimhood, accounts which have later been proved to be false.

The cult of victimization is tyrannical because it enslaves those who grasp on to it. To understand why, we must look at the root causes of victimization as well as its effects upon society at large, and individuals in particular.

With the loss of the Judeo-Christian worldview’s emphasis upon sin and absolution, the post modern world has a problem with which it is not prepared to deal.
Where there is moral responsibility, there is inevitably moral guilt. We are faced with all kinds of guilt and have no solution. Without a God who forgives us, absolves us and declares us righteous, we are left with a vague emptiness that longs to be filled. This is precisely where the cult of victimization finds its converts, by claiming to fill this void. By identifying ourselves as a victim, by identifying ourselves with victims, or even with their causes, we can salve our consciences. Since victims are not responsible for their victimhood, they are not morally responsible. Someone else is always the oppressor or aggressor. They are responsibly guilty, thus the victim is freed from responsibility for his actions and can claim innocence.

But the cult of victimization never satisfies. The void is always there, leading to more and more desperate attempts to absolve oneself from guilt. The worship of victimization becomes more pronounced until it consumes the person in perpetual slavery. Freedom only comes when we recognize that, while occasionally we are victims, more often it is our own moral choices that have affected our status. Only by coming to God, admitting our failures, seeking his forgiveness and receiving his absolution will we be truly free.

Modern Day Jesus

How would Jesus have fared if he had been born in today’s world? Psychologists would likely have diagnosed him as having multiple disorders and complexes. They would have placed him in on-going counseling sessions. They likely would have recommended that he be institutionalized as a danger to society and himself. The most severe diagnosis would have been Oppositional Defiant Disorder. He exhibited a constant defiance to authority figures, frequently condemning and defying the rulers and religious leaders of the country. He refused to cooperate with them, and at times was even hostile towards them. They would have concluded that he had an anti authority bias Occasionally he exhibited signs of having Intermittent Explosive Disorder because he sometimes flew off the handle, such as when he whipped legitimate businessmen in the temple courts. He had problems with anger, as was shown in the account of his healing of the man with the withered hand. The psychologists would have recommended that he attend anger management classes to learn how to control his temper. Along with these problems, he had identity problems, seen in his attitude towards his own nuclear family. He denied them, questioning whom his mother and brothers were. His connection with reality would have been severely questioned when he called people around him his mother and brothers. He had poor social skills, calling King Herod “that sly fox” and repeatedly calling the Pharisees and scribes “hypocrites, open sepulchers and vipers”. He was politically incorrect and intolerant towards others.

They would have said that Jesus suffered from a Delusion of Grandeur. He kept vacillating between thinking of himself as man and as God. Several times during his lifetime he referred to himself as God or God’s son. He often spoke of God as his father. In this, they would have found him delusional, unable to comprehend reality, as when he told the high priest that he was the Son of the Most High. At the same time he also had a messianic complex, believing that his mission was to save people from their sins. He equated himself with the popular messianic title “Son of Man”, saying that he had come to seek and save the lost.

Like many of those with psychological disorders today, he was homeless, claiming that he had no place to even lay his head. He wandered from town to town, taking advantage of those who were willing to support him. He associated with the riff raff of society, a variety of outcasts such as prostitutes, lepers, tax collectors and the like. His friends were the type of people that reputable society shunned. He led a band of fisherman, tax collectors and zealots who followed his every word. On top of all this, Jesus was a charismatic figure, always drawing a large crowd willing to listen to his rants against the authority figures and his self delusional identity with God. He was a polarizing figure. This would have reinforced their conclusion that he was dangerous, to others as well as himself and must be dealt with. Towards the end of his life he was known to have a death wish, desiring to die a most horrible death.

If Jesus had come today, how would we have responded? Would we have found him troubling? Would we have institutionalized him, locking him up as dangerous to himself and others, and then thrown away the key? Fortunately he came at the proper time in history, so they merely nailed him to a cross and executed him. How would we have treated him?

God's Super Bowl

Another Super Bowl has come and gone, with millions of people watching the contest. Those outside the stadium endured four hours in the cold, watching large TV screens; those inside spent that time sitting on hard bleacher seats, craning unsuccessfully to see the participants on the field below them, their ears straining to catch the garbled words coming from the loudspeakers. Those at home or at parties spent the time in front of their TV sets, watching the game and attempting to discover which where the most creative ads. We make sure that our schedules don’t conflict with the game.

Monsignor Charles Pope in a blog entry traces an interesting disconnection between attendance at the super bowl and attendance at church, noting how dissimilar they are. Super Bowl attendees prepare well in advance for the game, often wear special clothing for the occasion, (or in some cold weather stadiums go bare-chested during sub freezing temperatures), arrive early, cheer loudly and get wrapped up in the game. Especially during collegiate game, they will joyfully and robustly sing their favorite team’s fight song. They love the game and enthusiastically participate in the festivities. If at all possible they will find a tailgate party to attend several hours before the game starts. If watching it at home, they will usually turn on the pre-game show to help them prepare for the fray. They know their favorite team and player’s statistics. There is no problem if the game goes into overtime, a fact seen in the Buffalo Wild Wings commercials. Overtime gives them more time to enjoy the game. They easily spend considerable sums of money on tickets or party supplies, and think nothing of it. Once the game starts they focus on every play, often talking about certain plays for the next several days, rehearsing them in their minds. One thing is certain: they are passionate about the game. They never find it boring.

It is fortunate that we have a similar view of church. We prepare for Sunday mornings by reading the Scriptures for the day and praying for the service. As Sunday arrives, we put on our Sunday best, make certain that we arrive well in advance of the service, expectant of being in church for several hours. We joyfully greet each other, and anticipate worshiping our Lord together. We earnestly desire that there be a pre-service event that we can attend. We are oblivious to the fact that the sanctuary may be too hot or cold or the pews uncomfortable. We are just as happy whether the sound system is working or not. We hope that the preacher is long winded so we can spend more time worshiping God with our fellow worshipers. We never find the service boring. We don’t think twice about placing an extra amount of money in the offering plate as it passes by. We fully participate in the service, singing joyfully, following every aspect of the service. As the service continues, spontaneous praise issues forth from our lips as we observe what God is doing in the world. Sunday afternoons are likely to find us in discussion of the sermon we heard earlier in the day. We eagerly look forward to the next Sunday’s service. We have the same excitement towards God as we do towards the game. If Sunday scheduling conflicts arise, we make sure that church has the top priority for we certainly don’t want to miss it.

How fortunate we are that our attitude towards the Super Bowl and church are so similar. Or are they?

God's Love Story

Carolyn Arends, in an article on the film Evan Almighty notes that some Christians objected to the concept expressed in the film that the story of Noah’s Ark is a love story. She goes on in her article to reflect on this important question: “Is there any story about God that isn't a love story?” Upon reflection, she concludes that even the parts of the Bible that speak of God’s wrath and anger are really part of a love story.

Many Christians have grown up with two viewpoints about God that appear on the surface to be contradictory. God is a God of love. But God is also a holy wrathful God who hates sin. How do we keep these two viewpoints in tension? As Carolyn probed this question, she realized that she had always viewed God in a good cop bad cop routine, with the Holy Spirit acting as a sympathetic parole officer. While expressing that God was a God of love she concluded that there were limits to his love.

How does the concept of a vengeful God fit into a love story? As Carolyn wrestled with this, she found the following analogy helpful. If her young daughter started to dash out into the street into heavy traffic, grabbing her daughter, yanking her back from harm’s way and yelling “No!” would not be a sign of harsh anger, but of fierce love. She would even punish her daughter if it led to her future safety. She concludes that it is the same with God. His punishing us for sin is a sign of his fierce love, for he knows that the consequence of sin leads to ultimate destruction, an end he does not desire for us. .

We see this dynamic at work throughout the period of the Judges and in the writings of the Old Testament prophets. Each time God brings disaster upon or punishes his people it is for a purpose – to bring them back into a loving relationship with him. Nowhere is this message more clearly seen than in the book of Hosea. For most of the book Hosea talks about how God will punish Israel. But in the final chapter he reminds them that if they will repent, God will bless them and love them freely. The entire point of chastisement is so they will return to God and be in relationship with him. This is also the point of loving one’s enemies in order to heap coals of fire on their heads. St Augustine interprets Romans 12:20 to imply that one’s enemies, provoked by our kindness, will have their malice towards us burned away in repentance.

Christian parents discipline their children because they love them and desire them to live morally upright lives that are dedicated to God. Punishment stems from this love, with the goal that their children will understand that there are consequences to their actions and will live better lives as a result. In much the same way God disciplines us when we go astray, not because he is vindictive, but because he deeply loves us and wants what is best for us. At times he punishes us as a way to draw us back to a relationship with himself.

How often do we find ourselves, like Carolyn, trying to maintain a dual image of God? How often do we flit back and forth, between images of God as a God of love and as a wrathful God? How much do you really view the entire Bible as a love story?