Tuesday, October 26, 2021

I solemnly urge you in the presence of God and Christ Jesus, who will someday judge the living and the dead when he comes to set up his Kingdom:  Preach the word of God.  Be prepared, whether the time is favorable or not. Patiently correct, rebuke, and encourage your people with good teaching.  For a time is coming when people will no longer listen to sound and wholesome teaching. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear.  2 Timothy 4:1-3

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote:  In sticking to its calling – that is, preaching the risen Jesus Christ – the church deals a deadly blow to the spirit of annihilatiion.[1] Bonhoeffer lived[2] through Germany’s disasterous days of World War 1, and was only 39 when executed by Adolph Hitler’s Nazi government shortly before the end of World War 2.  This serious thinking pastor understood the spirit of annihilation.  Hitler, an egotistical maniac, was Hell-bent on his final solution to create for Germany (and, in his mind, all humanity) a perfect Aryan people, both by engineered breeding of physical greatness, and particularly by exterminating those who did not fit his plan (Jews, the infirmed, and dark-skinned races).  Military leaders who both feared and followed Hitler firmly entrenched a pathway to Hell for Bonhoeffer’s generation.  Hitler’s master plan towards a perfect race in a perfect place was the perfect medium for the spirit of annihilation – bombs and gas chambers as the natural selection of man becoming God.

Bonhoeffer dared to speak-out against Hitler’s diabolical plan.  His protests were ignored, and the preacher turned to the underground resistance, even joining a plot to assassinate the dictator.  Shortly before the end of the war, and the end of Hitler, Dietrich Bonhoeffer suffered a short climb of the gallows steps.  Hanged by the spirit of annihilation, his words ring, truer for today, as they have for all the generations of persecuted peoples. 

The church’s job isn’t fighting the spirit of annihilation with intrigue, plots, and bombs; instead we are to hold-up for all to see this Lord Jesus Christ who is all in all.  That is always the next sermon.  And in a world such as ours, hedonistic, self-centered, strong-headed, and Hell-bent for self-annihilation, preaching the crucified, resurrected, and coming-again Christ cannot be anything less than first priority.

For You Today

Whether you are a preacher or not, if you are a believer in Christ, you are bidden to take up a cross – to come and die with the Lord. 

Is there anything else on your To-Do List that comes higher than that?

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!   

[1] Title and Other Images:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©    

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[1] Ethics, General Editor, Wayne Whitson Floyd Jr., Minneapolis, MN:  Fortress Press, 2001 (132)

[2] 1906-1945

 

Bonhoeffer and the Peacock

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Wednesday, September 19, 2018

After the Lord has used the king of Assyria to accomplish his purposes on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, he will turn against the king of Assyria and punish him—for he is proud and arrogant.  He boasts, “By my own powerful arm I have done this.  With my own shrewd wisdom I planned it.  I have broken down the defenses of nations and carried off their treasures.  I have knocked down their kings like a bull.  I have robbed their nests of riches and gathered up kingdoms as a farmer gathers eggs.  No one can even flap a wing against me or utter a peep of protest.”  But can the ax boast greater power than the person who uses it?  Is the saw greater than the person who saws?  Can a rod strike unless a hand moves it?  Can a wooden cane walk by itself?  Therefore, the Lord, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, will send a plague among Assyria’s proud troops, and a flaming fire will consume its glory.  Isaiah 10:12-16(NLT)

Assyria’s world domination was a blip on history’s radar; the king just a footnote.  Sennacherib, king of Assyria had been like a peacock, strutting his accomplishments around like an arrogant gasbag!  That didn’t last long; God brought Sennacherib’s so-called power to nothing; actually, less-than-nothing, as God showed him what real power looked like.

In the mid-20^th century Adolph Hitler tried using Sennacherib’s playbook, but he fared no better than the Assyrian terrorist.  Germany’s self-aggrandizing dictator bragged that his leadership was going to bring Germany to power over the entire universe.  When all was said and done, the would-be ruler of the world committed suicide rather than being captured to face the trials (and probably execution) that were sure to come.  One thing he did NOT escape was standing before God with the blood of millions on his hands.

In the end it was the humility of a preacher named Bonhoeffer that played a pivotal role in bringing down the despot. 

Notwithstanding the tendency of some preachers to abuse or use politics in the pulpit, a preacher’s call from God includes looking-after the people over which politics rule.  When the politics are coming crossways against the Scripture, and leading the people astray, preachers are supposed to speak up.  In the late 1930’s some German pastors were speaking out, congratulating Germany on having Hitler as their Messiah:

"The time is fulfilled for the German people of Hitler. It is because of Hitler that Christ, God the helper and redeemer, has become effective among us. … Hitler is the way of the Spirit and the will of God for the German people to enter the Church of Christ." So spoke German pastor Hermann Gruner. Another pastor put it more succinctly: "Christ has come to us through Adolph Hitler."[2]

History told the story that a madman of no conscience, a sociopath at best, and a schizophrenic psychopath, or perhaps demon-possessed tool of Satan at worst, was not the Messiah.  Neither was Sennacherib.  Nor is any American president who acts with the same absence of moral compass.

Now, please save the cards, letters, emails, tweets and the like; I make no judgment on the policies of the current administration other than my own personal observation and opinion. 

But what I have tried to say is in direct response to those who have said explicitly, or implicitly that we don’t elect a pastor to the White House; we elect a President.  My response is that you cannot separate morality, conscience and ethical behavior from what a leader must be who leads a nation committed to ethical and moral behavior with good conscience.  To do so makes it permissible for the fox to rule the hen house.

I can say emphatically that this preacher is not without sin; I have apologized to God and my fellow humans more times than I care to remember for my trespasses.  We currently have a leader who has stated publicly he feels no such need to apologize…ever. 

Knowing a little about human nature, that makes me tremble.  And here’s why:

“God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”  James 4:6(NLT)

If the leader of this nation will never humble himself before human beings, much less God, how can we expect a different result from that of Sennacherib or Hitler?

For You Today

Join me in praying for our leaders; they can use it, whether they know it or not.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[1] Title Image: Photo Courtesy of Pixabay.com

[2] Christian History, Issue 32, 1991, Christianity Today

When Evil Speaks

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Wednesday, June 15, 2016

What sorrow for those who say that evil is good and good is evil, that dark is light and light is dark, that bitter is sweet and sweet is bitter.  Isaiah 5:20^(NLT)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor during World War II, knew well the face of evil.  Living through a period when the unchecked power of Adolph Hitler saw the extermination of 6 million Jews, as well as the mercilessly callous treatment of all human life, including “medical” experiments on unsuspecting victims, war crimes, and the abuse of power beyond description, Bonhoeffer understood – it was not an option to be silent!  He spoke up when others did not, knowing that silence in the face of evil is, itself, evil.  Bonhoeffer spoke – but he also acted, joining (on at least one occasion) with others in an assassination plot to kill Hitler.  Eventually Hitler returned the favor, imprisoning and eventually executing Dietrich Bonhoeffer by hanging.

This past Sunday we awoke to yet another mass casualty event.  Wow, it is almost clinical and clean, neatly-organized, to use that phrase.  It’s somehow a little easier on the gut to categorize these terrorist killings as “events” – it makes it a tad more bearable to not say slaughter out loud.

But it’s still slaughter!

Ideology-aside, the act of spraying bullets into a crowd, executing indiscriminately and with intent is not just war; it’s not jihad; it’s not defending your beliefs and/or family – it is slaughter; it’s evil of the highest magnitude.

Beyond basic civics and history in high school I never took a political science course, so I know I’m not the right person to speak authoritatively on how governing bodies in our world ought to respond to this international wave of guerilla murder and terror.  I only know that hatred, spawned by evil intentions, has been going on since Cain lifted a rock behind Abel’s back.

And the blood still cries out to God from the ground.

And it makes me sick to think of the pain 50 families and the human community is struggling with today.

I still cannot wrap my head around the permission inside Omar Mateen’s head to repeatedly pull the trigger, snuffing out the God-given lives of those souls early Sunday morning. 

I don’t expect to understand it anytime soon.

I can only lift my eyes to heaven and repeat:

Lord, in your mercy;

Christ, in your mercy;

Hear our prayer, O God; humble our hearts…and help us to speak against this madness, lest we become silently evil.

For You Today

I have no neat one-line nugget of counsel for living the Christian life today.  I only offer my prayer for you that Christ will give you mercy to live courageously, speak courageously and, with courage, resist the presence and intention of evil in every form.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road today…have a blessed day!

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[1] Title Image: By Foto de Cristian Bortes ; edição de Eugenio Hansen, OFS [CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons