A GOD
WHO RULES BY CHOICES
Deuteronomy 30:15-20, Luke 16:13
November 25, 2007
Second Baptist Church
Dr. Stephen D. Jones, preaching
How could God have allowed
it to happen? How could God have allowed the World Trade Center to be destroyed
by terrorists? How could God have allowed innocent people in Spain and England
to die on commuter trains by bombs planted by extremists? Why would a Tsunami
strike in the neediest countries of the world, Indonesia, Sumatra, Somalia, Sri
Lanka, and India? Why would Bangladesh again be consumed by natural disaster and
threatened by wide-spread hunger?
How could God have allowed it to happen? Soon after the tsunami in the Indian
Ocean, a fundamentalist pastor suggested that it struck the beach playgrounds of
the rich in Thailand because of the illicit sex trade there. Of course, that
failed to explain how thousands in remote fishing villages were plumaged,
presumably places where the sex trade wasn’t flourishing.
How could God allow such devastation to strike undeserving people? In
particular, those in the Third World who already have so little? It’s another
way of asking, “Why isn’t life fair?”
We might look back upon the Indian Ocean tsunami to see how the religions of the
region responded with differing interpretations. Among the Hindus hardest hit
were poor fishing communities whose inhabitants are controlled by local deities.
“The ocean itself is a terrible god who eats people and boats, but also provides
fish as food” (p. 37, Jan. 10, 2005, Newsweek). One Hindu scholar has
said, “Hindus use the deities to…explain happenings like the tsunami as
destructive acts of God” (Richard Davis).
For the Buddhists along the coastline of Thailand and Sri Lanka, “there are many
weather gods to blame and propitiate with assorted prayers and offerings. One
Buddhist scholar said, “Buddhists will look to the idea of karma and ask what
they did, individually and collectively, that a tragedy like this
happened.” Their main concern will be to generate good merit that can be
transferred to the deceased as a positive force in their next lifetime.
For Muslims, “All that happens is Allah’s doing, and nature itself—wind, rain,
storms—constitute signs of God’s mercy and compassion. Even the destructive
tsunami, therefore, must have some hidden, positive purpose” (ibid.).
Though Christians were a minority in the tsunami areas, and suffering is deeply
imbedded in the Christian world view, “the death of so many innocent children
alone was an excruciating test of the Christian belief that their God is a God
of love” (p. 37, article by Kenneth L. Woodward and Sudip Mazumdar).
If you count every good that comes to you as God’s blessings, do you not also
have to blame God for every curse that comes your way? If God is All-Powerful,
then how can evil exist, and how can God allow a natural disaster to strike
innocent victims?
The only area of Myanmar that experienced devastation was the river delta where
two tribal groups live, the Burmese and the Karen. All the 90 deaths in the
country were among the Burmese, not the Karen. The reason? In Karen folk
culture, there is a belief that anytime you experience an earthquake, you move
to higher ground. The Karen moved to higher ground when they felt the
earthquake. Their Burmese neighbors ignored the earthquake, and suffered the
tragedy.
Cyclone Sidr devastated large portions of Southern Bangladesh with winds up to
150 mph and a 16 foot tidal wave. There are now over 3500 reported dead, though
that number is still expected to grow. Over a million people are now homeless,
thousands of villages were destroyed, and the agricultural fields stand in
flooded ruin.
No survivor of a disaster of this magnitude can long avoid asking the Job-like
questions, Why us, why here? Why now?”
One part of the equation can be answered with confidence: God chooses the side
of those who suffer. After natural disasters, we know that God is alongside
those who suffer. It is the opposite of the gods of the western world, gods who
stand with the beautiful, the rich, the famous, the successful, gods who bestow
blessings upon the so-called deserving. This is not the Judeo-Christian
understanding of God. God always stands with the victims, the forgotten, the
left behind.
When I led a mission group to Myanmar two years ago, I remember stopping by the
roadside to watch women who worked in a commune on a rubber plantation. Much
like maple syrup is extracted from trees, rubber is extracted from trees. These
were beautiful women and girls, and yet their abject poverty was so severe,
their hunger so obvious, their work, so physically toiling, their self-esteem,
so low, that I remember thinking, “Where are you, O God? What did these women do
to deserve such a meager existence? And what did I do to deserve my life of
abundance? Am I blessed? Are they cursed?”
If God is the Creator of the universe, why was the universe created where such
things as systemic poverty, floods and earthquakes exist? Why does God allow
devastation? Why does God allow evil?
To find an answer, we have to tell a story. It’s about an entire generation of
children who had been born in exile. A generation of refugees, wandering,
migrating children, who now have become middle-aged adults, living as
nomads. They were escaping slavery. They had broken away and were seeking a land
they could call home.
Their leader who had led them from slavery to freedom was growing old. For a
generation, he had led his people with wisdom. But the wandering around on foot
had worn him down. And it was clear, that he was to be a leader of seekers, but
not finders, a leader of the reaching, but not of those who had reached their
Promised Land.
He warned his people about idolatry, about re-making God in their own
image. Martin Buber, the great Jewish mystic, said, “…we continually make the
eternal THOU into an IT, into some thing—making God into a thing…because we
desire to possess God… But God, the eternal presence, cannot be held. Woe to
the person so possessed that he thinks he possesses God!” (p. 112, 116, I and
Thou)
Now, back to our story. The old leader is dying. It is his last speech to his
people. He will not go with them into their Promised Land. He will die a nomad,
die on the road, die en route. And he says to his people, “See here: I have
placed before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life, so that you
and your descendants may live…” (30:19f)
Does this God rule over the universe? Or is God so weak as to look pathetically
on when evil reigns or disaster strikes?
Perhaps there is no God. Or perhaps God is absent, or impotent, or uncaring.
No, from Moses’ words to the children of Israel, wandering for 40 years in the
Sinai desert, we follow a God who rules, not by edict.
I do not believe that whether a natural disaster strikes or doesn’t strike is a
direct act of God. It is the way nature works, naturally.
In terms of evil, God offers us the gift of freedom and gifts us with
independent minds. God created us with the ability to make decisions, to face
crossroads, to shape our own lives, even in contradiction to God’s Loving
Purposes. God gives us the path of right, the path of truth, but allows us to
follow any errant path of our choosing. This is the point of the Garden of
Eden. “This is My Way,” God said, “but if you want to face the consequences, you
can choose your own way.” We ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and
Evil. Nothing has ever again been the same. That’s the point of the story.
Every choice of our lives has consequences. You learn by wisdom that sacrificial
choices often yield greater blessing and that what seem the easiest choices
often inflict the most pain.
Our God doesn’t rule by edict, but by choices. It was evil and misguided people
who directed those airplanes into the World Trade Center. They chose evil.
God doesn’t by direct will cause natural disasters. But God is found in the
crossroads, framing our choices, engaging us as we make our decisions and face
the consequences, the blessings or curses. God is in our compassionate responses
to the victims, God is in our decisions to respond, God is in our prayers on
behalf of the suffering and grieving.
In a courtroom one day, the choices made by the lawyers and judge came into
sharp focus. It was a small town in Texas when the prosecuting attorney called
his first witness, a grandmotherly woman. He approached her and asked, “Mrs.
Johnson, do you know me?”
She responded, “Why, yes I do know you, Mr. Williams. I’ve known you since you
were a little boy, and frankly, you’ve been a big disappointment to me. You tell
lies, you cheat on your wife, and you gossip all over this town about people
behind their backs. Yes, I know you.”
The lawyer was stunned. Not knowing what else to do, he pointed across the room
and said, “Mrs. Johnson, do you know the defense attorney?”
She again replied, “Why, yes, I do. I’ve known Mr. Bradley since he was a
youngster too. He’s lazy, he’s bigoted, and he has a drinking problem. Yes, I
know him.”
The defense attorney wilted in his seat.
At this point the judge brought the court room to silence and called both
counselors to the bench, and in a quiet, but determined voice said, “If either
of you idiots asks her if she knows me, you’ll be jailed for contempt of court!”
We live by our choices. Standing in the crossroads, it often feels like God is
absent. In those moments, we’d like God to ride in on a magnificent stallion,
scoop us up and save us from our choices. Most of us don’t like to decide. We
don’t like to choose. We don’t want to stand in the crossroads. And so the
Psalmist cried out, “Why do you hide yourself, God, in times of trouble? Why
are you so aloof in my moment of trial?”
The day after catastrophe, after the disaster, God is always present, framing
the choices, placing before us the crossroads, and allowing us the freedom to
make our own choices. God rules by choices! The Psalmist was amazed by this,
“What is this, that you have given mortals the freedom to decide? Who are we,
little less than gods, crowned with the ability to discern, to choose, to
fashion a life, based on good or evil?” (Psalm 8:4-5, paraphrased)
Jesus understood that God rules by choices. “No servant can serve two masters,”
he said, “for either he will hate the first and love the second, or be devoted
to the first and think nothing of the second. You cannot serve God and Greed.”
(Luke 16:13) And again, Jesus said, “He that is not with me is against me.”
(Matthew 12:30)
After
Moses, Joshua led the people victoriously into their Promised Land. And when
Joshua became a very old man, also greatly admired for his spiritual wisdom, he
called the people together at Shechem, and said, “If you be unwilling to serve
the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your mothers and
fathers served in the region beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites in
whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord”
(Joshua 24:15).
Choices! God rules by choices!
A young college graduate was interviewing with the Bank President for his first
position. The president was known as a man of few words. The young man
asked,“Tell me, sir, how did you become so successful?”
The Bank president responded, “Two words.”
“And what are they, sir?”
“Right decisions.”
The young man continued, “And how did you make right decisions?”
“One word: experience.”
And the young man asked, “And how did you get experience?”
The bank president responded, “Two words.”
“And what are they?”
“Wrong decisions.”
God rules by choices. Each one of us here today face certain choices. You
first have the choice as to which god you will follow, what kind of god you will
worship. You have the choice as to the kind of life you are going to live. Some
here today are standing at a Big Crossroads, and others stand, or perhaps are
stuck, in the same old place, with the same tired choices.
Every day of our lives involves choices. Decisions. Crossroads. And we build our
lives, one day at a time, one choice at a time. God is in the choices! What will
we decide? What will we do? Harvey Cox, the Baptist theologian, became famous in
the 1960’s by saying, “Not to decide, is to decide.” And usually, not to decide,
is to follow the path of least resistance, the path requiring and offering the
least.
One tenet of faith I want to affirm today: God is Framing our Choices. And God
is in our choices. Choices can be sacred moments to stand at the crossroads and
allow God to frame reality, to frame our choices, and then comes the moment for
us to decide.
“See here,” God says, “I have placed before you, life and death, blessings and
curses. Choose life!” Amen.
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