Most Christians are hoping to be raised from the dead, as opposed to being a live witness to the second coming of Christ. Non-Christians might be like: "that's silly" but trust me...there are some drawbacks to being around at that particular time. Trust me. In any case, I thought it would be great to write a few blogs on resurrection, which is basically the foundational hope of Christianity. Why do I say it's foundational?
If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More
than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we
have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. - 1 Corinthians 15:13-15
I really love this scripture because it's super convicting. Am I the only one who thinks it's strange that the worse thing is not:
- That the gospel (for which Paul was whipped, beaten, stoned and shipwrecked for preaching) was useless
- Your faith is useless
Really? To me, the uselessness of the gospel and my faith actually would have been the worst thing. Not to Paul. The absolute worst thing would have been his misrepresentation of God. The worst thing would be attributing to God something that He didn't actually do. Or sometimes the worst thing is assigning a false "why" to something He actually has done.
We (myself included) tell these sorts of lies on God all the time.
For example:
- Lying about the position of God's heart - We do this by thinking "God must hate me" when a series of tragic events come to pass in our lives. We can sometimes get so caught up in our suffering that we start accusing God of all sorts of malintent.** Even though scripture blatantly tells us otherwise (Jeremiah 29:11, John 3:16, Romans 5:8, and the list goes on and on).
- Lying about God's motivation - To put it simply, by believing that our actions are the driving force behind God's choices about our lives. In short, bad things happen to bad people; good things happen to good people. Only. So when something good happens, thinking: "Because of my faithfulness, or because of my goodness, God has blessed me with XYZ." And likewise: "If you were serving the Lord fully, this stuff wouldn't be happening to you. This is a wake-up call from God."
When I hear stuff like that my eyes shrink into tiny slits of incredulity. Why does God have to wake me up with a lightning bolt? I'm pretty positive I could be gently shaken awake... AND, I'm pretty positive all the people who are "#blessed" are not as pure as the driven snow. More importantly, when we think this way, we rob God of His sovereignty (conceptually of course). When you think like this, YOU are sovereign. You're the captain of this ship and you can turn God at will based on your decision to do "good" or "evil." While it would be amazing to have that level of control...we just don't.
Jesus said as much while strolling down the street with His disciples:
As He passed by, He saw a man blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him. - John 9:1-3
I love that the disciples find there are only two possibilities: either this man sinned, or his parents sinned. There was an assumption built into their approach to God. They didn't ask: "Why was this man born blind?" because they already "knew" the answer to that. They already believed a lie.
Harmless mistake?
Not in Paul's opinion. And not in God's either:
...the Lord
said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “My wrath is kindled against you and
against your two friends, because you have not spoken of Me what is
right... - Job 42:7
The biggest karma peddlers in scripture are without controversy Job's three friends Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. God was angry with them for assuming and speaking falsely about both His heart towards Job and His motivations regarding Job's trial/test.
Are we the Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar in our own test? Are we the three friends condemning ourselves (and accusing God) in our own trial? Are we being that kind of friend to our friends?
Have we believed the lie? And if so, who are we telling it to?!
* This is not a part of the series. I was derailed by this random thought while studying.
** malintent isn't a word?! It's slang for "malicious intent"...I'll keep using it anyway.
Good post. It relates a lot to the "Prosperity Gospel" right? I think there is a certain amount of truth to it though (if you look at Deuteronomy, some of the Psalms, even the gospels - there is support for the idea that a person should follow God and then expect to obtain good things as a direct result of it). But on the other hand you have Job. How do you reconcile them? I think the John 9:1-3 quote you used is a good example of the idea. The man's blindness (and being cured from it) helped him to believe. I think we should expect real blessings from our faithful attempts to follow God, but only need to remember that those blessings may not necessarily "material" blessings or the specific things that we had in mind. Perhaps God might turn a faithful rich person into poor person so that the person can become less attached to the wealth and more dependent on God. That would be a blessing. Or perhaps God might allow an extremely wealthy/greedy person to obtain even more wealth as a form of punishment (like at the beginning of Romans). Just some thoughts . . .
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