The city newspaper provided a carefully researched article on one girl’s journey into rebellion, sex and drug addiction, into adult life and a program of recovery. The facts revealed sordidness, shame, drugs, pimps, violation and prostitution. We must wait to find out how she will emerge for her future life. We need to remember that she has life, the gift of God, and lives it in either a favorable or unfavorable context. Life finds who and what we are. What do we make of it? Scripture informs us that the best context in which to form it is in righteousness. The meaning of it is to serve others to their benefit. God interprets that as devotion to him in that it honors his creation. Because he has everything, there is nothing we can give him. By worshipping him we invite him to share with us something of that which he is in his person, with close relationship to humankind. We seek his likeness, so to provide some similarity in that we are maturing as his children. To be his children by creation is not enough. That relationship ends with death. We decide whether or not we choose him as our: Father who art in heaven. By living in his faith we assure ourselves that we are meeting the criteria for entering God’s family both by creation (earth) and by adoption (heaven).
That we do on earth relates to his creative gesture. That we do relating to the kingdom of God identifies his adoption of his children out of nature to the kingdom of God. It is accented in our obedience to his instructions, a biblically oriented life that registers on our consciences. Righteousness (seeking and acting rightly) is identified from the holiness of God. What appears in our language abstractions is made real in the thought and conduct patterns of our lives. The concepts relate to faith registered in our minds (souls), and proven in our conduct. The concepts are not really difficult to understand. They are difficult for many to embrace (believe) and do (practice) in life. The certificate of citizenship is provided in the redemptive acts of Jesus Christ which provides the adoption agreed upon between both the adopted and the adopter. Theology embraces all this with large sophistication, which if not taken in faith, can be made into a jungle of ideas and conducts that may create strange philosophies. How can one have blessing in a full, comfortable, gratifying experience of family and professional life, while another also witnesses blessing when there has been little of life’s expectations for personal and social life? To the unbeliever this is contradiction – where one cannot be true if the other is true. To the Christian this is paradox – where seeming opposites are both true. Why does God, deeply opposed to warfare, send Israel to war? Why does God committing to singular family integrity permit some of his children to have multiple wives; or advancing freedom permit some to hold slaves; or loving children permit them to suffer and die; or feeling deeply the tragedies of humanity permits both heaven and hell? The contexts can be extended. The parallelisms appear in Jesus who though a person in the God-head will, on earth, be tempted, hungry, tired, in need to pray, separated from some issues about his life and self. Why would Jesus permit a Judas with his disciples, when he knew in advance the ultimate belief and conduct of the man? Why the contraries?
Our faith demands a tolerance/acceptance that we may not understand. Jesus accepted mankind, without approval, and in that acceptance tolerated Judas. As repeated from time to time in these Pages, acceptance does not mean approval. Jesus made clear that the system meant that the grain and the weeds grew together in human society. The ultimate denouement would separate the two identifying what is acceptable. Although we do not know all the mind of God, it seems safe to say that in his infinite knowledge he will make fair evaluations to which all created persons will say, Amen. God will provide to all persons the resources to bear, for good or ill, that designed for all. No one can say with assurance that God can’t find a way to redeem that which he damns. Evading God because we cannot reconcile many factors fitting the context of earth becomes evasion we cannot afford in permitting nature to determine eventualities. This is like a parent permitting the child to determine the context of a mature family. Parents nurture children, wisely withholding some information. So does God. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020