Friday, January 23, 2015

Jesus The Liberal

Does that title make you cringe?  There was a time when it would have made me vomit.  I've since learned some things about God.  The most important of which is that He existed before man began creating political labels.  Read this definition of the word "liberal" and see how many of those fit the Jesus written about in the gospels.

So, recently God has been talking to me about how those who love Him have completely missed His point and allowed themselves to become entangled in the affairs of this world.  They've been baited into a debate that is crafted to distract us from the real issue by playing up the horror and tragedy of consequences in the natural.  The only people who have the capacity to create real and lasting change have been taken captive by politics.  It's a sinister strategy that attempts to keep us so carnally minded that we are spiritually ineffective.  Constant exposure to horror, loss, tragedy, and carnage, elicits a fear or hate response from us and we make war against human beings in the name of God.  The message coming from the world is so shocking that it traps us into a cycle of reacting.  But you did not so learn Christ.  The Kingdom is responsive, never reactive.  So how do we break the cycle?  Perhaps we need to look at the root of the ills of our society instead of just the symptoms.  Maybe then the solution will be clear.

Abortion

This is a huge huge huge wedge issue for many Christians.  Of course God hates the death of the innocent. But that's another topic for another day.  Suffice it to say that God is completely against the taking of life--period.  And He tells me that everyone knows in their heart that life begins at conception.  It's only open for debate in the court of public opinion.  People have the ability to get together and agree to a lie that allows them to justify almost anything.  Get a person alone and the truth of what they believe is more likely to come out.

I was shocked to find out that God didn't want to correct the people who were OK with "a woman's right to choose".  He made it very clear to me that knowing right from wrong is not the issue.  You can know all the right there is to know and still be unable to live it (see Romans 7 for more).  No, He wanted to correct those who are supposed to be able to hear His voice.  On them is the responsibility for knowledge of mercy and grace.  To know the mercy of God and not give it to those who do not know it grieves Him.  Does this sound odd?  Who did Jesus rebuke, the ignorant or the learned?  Who did He call the "den of vipers"?  Remember that to know what is right and not do it is sin.

He said some really provocative things to me.  He said that He is pro-choice.  I was like, "Uh...  God, that can't be You talking.".  He said, "If I wasn't pro-choice, would women have even the ability to choose?  Son, your choice is the one thing I have always denied Myself."  Does that mean abortion should be legal?  Of course not.  It means abortion has exactly zero to do with a woman's right to choose.  Even before it was legal a woman could choose to abort her child.  So, what's the point, then?  The point is that He is willing to suffer and die to protect our ability to choose Him.  He is willing to endure the loss of the innocent to honor His own word.  He will not restrict our will.

Does this mean He wants abortion to continue?  Of course not.  Don't be a tool.  He told me that the christian strategy for abolishing abortion was way off the mark.  It's not kingdom-minded.  The kingdom is never reactionary and is always responsive.  Even more, the kingdom is previous.  The kingdom sees what lies ahead and responds before it happens.  How many times in the bible did God tell someone what was going to happen before it happened?  That's how He operates.  God is proactive about everything.  He says things like, "Do this SO THAT this will happen".  He's planning ahead.  So how does this relate to abortion?  I'm glad you asked.  The way to stop abortion is not to make it illegal but to make it unnecessary.  

Does that mean God is pro-contraception?  Nope.  Unwanted pregnancy is the leading cause of abortion.  But it goes deeper than that.  What is the leading cause of pregnancy?  Sex.  What's the leading cause of sex?  Here's where we get into a tricky situation.  Sex between consensual adults isn't the only cause of unwanted pregnancies.  There's also rape, incest, and disease to contend with.  All of them, including promiscuity, can be summed up by one word:  unhealthy.  Whether it be the unhealthy mind of a man who commits rape, the unhealthy self-esteem of a couple who create an unwanted child, an unhealthy genetic code that creates a malformed fetus, it's all just a lack of health.  Unhealthy hearts and minds come together and create "unwanted" children.  God have mercy on us.  Unwanted people.

Let me ask you this:  what if we found some way to legally and physically mandate that no woman ever aborts her unwanted child ever again?  What then?  Have we really solved the problem or just fed our religious pride by making the world bend to our will?  Is there any method by which we can eliminate unwanted people except to murder them?  What if we found a way to raise the value of the average person in the eyes of everyone so that nobody ends up being unwanted?  What if we lived our lives in such a way that the formula HUMAN = WANTED is the universal norm?

You'd think that God in all His wisdom would have told us how to do such a thing...  Like, what if He gave us a command that was a one-size-fits-all solution to all problems BEFORE they start?

John 15:12
"This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you."

But how does loving someone keep them from getting an abortion?  Please remember that we're talking about stopping abortion before it becomes a possible choice.  We are talking about creating a culture in which things like abortion are as abhorrent to the public as cannibalism.  We are talking about helping our species become so incredibly healthy that we would never engage in or suffer from things that create unwanted people.

So how does love eliminate rape, disease, incest, and sexual promiscuity?

What causes a man to rape a woman (or vice versa)?  Behavioral scientists say that rape is caused by a desire to control, conquer, or have power over another.  For whatever reason, the perpetrator feels an overwhelming desire to exert dominance over another in a sexual way.  It's more about power than it is about sex.  Behavioral science also tells us that perpetrators are not created in a vacuum (with the exception of neurological abnormalities).  Perpetrators are a harvest that was sown as victims.  A male who was raped or molested has a much higher chance of doing the same to others.  Why?  To regain some sense of wholeness, purpose, identity.  A victim will either become a perpetual victim, a perpetrator, or free.  So what determines where a person ends up on that spectrum?  All things reproduce after their own kind.  You sow trauma and trauma will grow and then it will sow again.  But there is one seed that will outgrow, outperform, outyield, and outlast all others:  Love.  Someone who has been freed from the cycle of rape will always relate some story about how love set them free.  Tenderness, mercy, forgiveness, transparency, trust, patience, kindness are all the things that short-circuit the vicious cycle.  Consider Jesus and the woman caught in adultery.  Does this mean we should just pat rapists on the back and tell them Jesus loves them and then let them go off and rape again?  No.  It means there is a limited window of time when these men are in jail that we can teach them about their true identity.  We can help them face what they've done with patience and kindness, man-to-man, so that they believe and are set free.  Are you going to prisons to stop abortion?

Incest is more difficult to see in the natural, but the prescription is the same:  love them into truth.  Yes, any perpetrator must pay the cost of what they've done, but that shouldn't stop us from loving them into truth.  Tender care should be given to the victims so they understand that the selfish act of their perpetrator does not define them.  A long-term relationship based on trust and acceptance has to be established with such a person so that they can see their own value through your actions towards them.  Be sure it's not about putting "another victim saved" notch on your belt.  I'm talking about creating life-long relationships here.  I'm talking about adoption.

What does love have to do with disease?  Everything.  If you are like me, you believe in the authority God gave each of His children, through Jesus, to heal the sick.  Disease must always go.  It's not the will of God and each of us has to contend for the faith to eradicate it.  But how many of us are willing to make it our personal mission to heal a diseased child in the womb?  How many of us are willing to do it knowing that nobody will ever know?  Are you willing to search your heart to even see if you have the capacity to make the diseases of the unborn more important to you than your own children?  Can you believe Him to change your heart if you weigh it and find it lacking?  What would it look like if we all had the same reputation as John G. Lake?  But that's not the hard part for us.  The hard part of us as a church is to admit that we do not yet see the frequency of miracles it would take to replace the doctors who treat children in the womb.  Can we confess that we need to grow in faith for the sake of the unborn and be responsible and accountable for that?  Can we simply say, "I believe, please help my unbelief" and then get our hands on some broken babies?

Finally, how does love stop sexual promiscuity?  This one has gotten so so so far away from us.  As Christians we've shouted the letter of the law from the rooftops and indulged in judgement of anyone who would dare ignore our self-righteous warnings.  Parents kicking children out of the house instead of teaching them the honor and beauty of fighting to retain virginity so it can be given as a gift to their spouse one day.  We speak death over those who have and promote sex and then we reap a harvest of death in our entire culture.  Those with the most spiritual power are causing the most spiritual damage and then have the gall to chalk it all up to "the last days".

No, the cause of sex outside of God's design is simple:  lack of love.  There are many natural answers for having sex.  We all feel like it or have been through a time in our lives when we did.  But why do so many give in?  Why, with all the potential consequences, do so many risk even their own lives for a momentary feeling?  Well, scientists would say "self-esteem" but God says, "who do you think you are?"  It comes down to identity.  We make all of our choices based on who we think we are--our perception of our personal value.  Tell me, how will the people out there with a wrong identity ever find out who they are if we don't show them?  How can we tell them if they disdain our reputation?  Why in the world would they ever believe anything we say about who they are in God's great plan if we don't love them first?

If we are going to carry His name, we should probably imitate Him like dear children.  He had every right to be indignant with us but sacrificed Himself instead.  He went even to the point of death to show how much He values us.  And He understood that love breeds love.  He Himself fell to the ground and died, then He sprung up and bore much fruit.  He came to us gently and lowly of heart.  He was goodness personified.  It was His peculiar goodness in the face of abhorrent evil that gave Him so much credibility with the lost.  The goodness of God drew all men to Him.  We have to do the same.  We have to set aside this horrible habit of treating His lost children as the enemy and love them as if they were our very own.  We must adopt them into our family, whether they change their ways or not, so that they can feel the trust and security that so far has been denied them.  Maybe then they will see our love and believe that God truly sent Jesus to save us all.

Any good military strategist would tell you that it's a bad idea to fight an enemy on his home turf.  If you have the choice, always fight the enemy on YOUR terms and not HIS.  So let's stay out of the political arena.  The political is rooted in the world and the whole world lies in the sway of.....who?  So don't enter his arena.  Don't argue with men.  Stop the battle before it starts by loving it to death.  We've done this with suicide, drugs, alcohol, abuse, poverty and many others.  Christians have shown a clear ability to break the cycle of death with a preemptive strike of loving self-sacrifice.  Why not do it again here, with abortion?  Why not dedicate yourself to revealing the love of God to such a degree that people will value their identity over their need to feel good?