Eternity in the hearts of men.

This is long, but I’m not apologizing for that this time. Please stick with it because I would love your help.

I have been reading through several Old Testament books over the past week or so, the short ones near the end, starting around Joel. For the most part, they offer similar messages about God’s frustration with Israel, who rejects him in favor of their own pleasure or idols (I’ll get to that very briefly in a bit). In these books there is a massive amount of violent imagery, nations conquering nations, God conquering nations (many times with the sword), etc. Much of this is presented in reference to a “day of the Lord” (variations could be the day of the Lord’s wrath, the great day of the Lord, or simply the day of Judgment). Now, it is about this “day” that I have been thinking about a lot lately. Which day does it refer to? Does it mean simply and solely the Rapture, the Judgment? The Finale Ultimo? Or could it mean other days? Before I elaborate, let me give you some background into my thoughts on this Godly violence, as briefly as I know how. (As you read, keep in mind that when I say violence, I am typically implying a fatal violence, or killing.)

A few weeks ago I started talking with Dack about his blog entry about redemptive violence – how societies often justify violence or war by explaining how it leads to a greater good. Societies today often respond to violence against them with violence against their offenders because that will ultimately prevent future violence. (After several millennia, the world still has violence, and this apparently isn’t a good enough indicator that this policy of redemptive violence probably doesn’t work.) Well, Dack also mentioned some things about why Christians should carefully consider military service because it may require them to kill, and Jesus tells us to love our enemies and turn the other cheek. And how can we love people by killing them? I agree with this from the perspective of an individual Christian, but because my father serves in the military and I have grown up around it, I have a slightly different outlook on this particular subject than Dack does, so in response to his statement, “I would die for Jesus, but I wouldn’t kill for him,” I pointed out that service members join the armed forces to die for a cause, and not to kill for it, even though killing sometimes is involved, but the bigger issue is really how states use their militaries. Clearly, as America is officially a secular state, we cannot disassemble our military (particularly not on religious grounds), for it does provide protective services for us, whether we believe in Jesus or not. So my opinion is that if our government uses our military as a predominantly defensive force, whose only outwardly directed actions were based in aid efforts of a largely non-violent manner (it is simply irrational to tell a soldier that if he is shot it, he should turn the other cheek, which I why I say largely non-violent), and if we did not put our troops in a position where they would have to be aggressors applying needless violence, then perhaps we would have less trouble grappling with this subject as Christians. And this is unfortunately the best point I could come to in terms of how a state should act in light of Jesus’ teachings.

Most of that discussion took place before I started reading through the end of the Old Testament. Now, these books all have essentially the same message: Israel rejected God, God threatened them with punishment/God punished them, Israel repented, God blessed them again. (I apologize for that very simplistic summary of pretty much the entire tail end of the Old Testament.) Now, God did use violent forces here, and he allowed Israel to use violence against their oppressors when they were again in God’s favor. But through all of this, God emphasizes the first person, constantly explaining that he is the one running the show, he is the one dishing out the punishment, and that man is only an instrument of his wrath (and even this is rare).

But whenever God threatens punishment, he does so in extremes, and in the context of what is called “the day of the Lord.” Here is an example of this day (God is speaking in quotation marks):

“The great day of the Lord is near – near and coming quickly. Listen! The cry on the day of the Lord will be bitter, the shouting of the warrior there. That day will be a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish, a day of trouble and ruin, a day or darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness, a day of trumpet and battle cry against the fortified cities and against the corner towers. I will bring distress on the people and they will walk like blind men, because they have sinned against the Lord. Their blood will be poured out like dust and their entrails like filth. Neither their silver nor their gold will be able to save them on the day of the Lord’s wrath. In the fire of his jealousy the whole world will be consumed, for he will make a sudden end of all who live in the earth.”

Gather together, gather together, O shameful nation, before the appointed time arrives and that day sweeps on like chaff, before the fierce anger of the Lord comes upon you, before the day of the Lord’s wrath comes upon you. Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land, you who do what he commands. Seek righteousness, seek humility, perhaps you will be sheltered on the day of the Lord’s anger. (Zephaniah 1:14-2:3)

Pretty intense, right? And even if they do seek righteousness, there is still only a chance that perhaps they will be sheltered. But Zephaniah in particular really got me thinking about this stuff, trying to join all of my idea bubbles into a single thought. The most obvious thing this day could be is the day of Judgment, the Rapture, the Second Coming, etc. Except, well, that day hasn’t come yet. Plus, it’s a little weird for God to be talking about the final judgment around the time of the second coming, when there hadn’t even been a first coming yet. Then I started thinking about all the people who have already died – what is the “day of the Lord” for them? Have they already experienced it? (The idea that perhaps they had not is the first thing which has ever made me take the notion of purgatory and its existence seriously.) So my mind is going crazy with a bunch of winged keys flying around inside it, and I can’t find the one that’s gonna help me open the lock.

I thought more about Jesus, and what his life and death meant, and I put it in terms of what he brought the world that it had not had previously, and what came to me was that with Jesus we are offered eternal salvation, and without him we are condemned to eternal damnation. This sense of the eternal, the afterlife, judgment after death despite your life, rather than in death because of your life, is really amazing to me. I find it so wonderful to search my heart and know that I believe that God’s Kingdom is waiting for me, not because I think about it but because I can simply feel it; it is true that God has set eternity on our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11). But I’m not sure that inner-knowledge was always naturally part of the human condition – at some point there was a human mindset of living for God’s blessing on your life, and then there was a mindset of living for God’s blessing on your death. And when was the day that this change occurred? Well, I think there are kind of three of them, all interconnected, and which one to put the most weight on, I am not sure.

First, there is the day Christ died for our sins. This is when the change actually happened, when the offer of salvation became present.

Second, the day when we realize that we have that offer and choose to accept – the day of our own conversion is surely the day of the Lord in our individual lives, right?

Third, the day of our death, when we as Christians are accepted into the God’s Kingdom, or we as shameless sinners are cast out of God’s presence forever. For those who do not live to see the final judgment, isn’t this judgment what takes its place?

This was all ringing strongly in heart. So where I’m kind of at in my thinking at the moment is here: Because we have an offer of salvation that the people of the Old Testament did not, we no longer need to look at our life on earth in terms of God’s blessings or curses, but instead look at our afterlife in those terms. (Note: I do not mean to diminish the importance of our deeds or God's blessings in this life.) Therefore, violence is no longer - or should no longer be - an issue. God does not need to take out his anger in violence, or at least not physical violence among men, for there is a great punishment awaiting those who reject him, whereas in the Old Testament, God’s people were a smaller population, and they were physically threatened from all sides, and God had to protect them in ways necessary for the times.

But faith after Jesus is no longer about states, it is about people, individuals, disciples, kings, peasants, brothers, fathers, sisters, mothers, lovers, soldiers, men, women, children. It’s about sinners. And the shift in the focus of faith to be about people is what Jesus was all about - it was also part of the change he made. Love one another.

I know I haven’t been wonderfully clear in why or how I perceive a shift in violence between the Old and New Testaments, not as clear as I meant to be, anyway, but probably about as clear as I expected I would be. But let me be clear about this: I do not believe there was ever a day in which God was comfortable with humans exerting violence upon other humans. I believe there were times when he accepted it as a necessary function for the survival of his people in the world he created, but from the day Cain slew Abel, I believe God has hated murder. I think that this leads to at least part of the reason he sent us Jesus. This was the beginning of his effort to change the world he created so that violence on our part no longer would be necessary for survival in it. Jesus taught us about love and encouraged us to show it, so that the 6th Commandment would be merely a redundancy in our hearts and minds. If violence was ever an acceptable tool for the use of mankind, it ceased to be so, and I doubt very much that God would choose any more to use mankind as an instrument in his own forms of holy judgment, whatever those may be.

Please to not misunderstand me to be a total pacifist, as I am referring mostly to killing in this writing. There are, I believe, understandable examples of ‘”tough love.” For instance, if I discovered that a friend of mine enjoys recreationally smoking crack on the weekends, I would very likely punch him or her in the face if it would help him or her better see his or her stupidity. Please, also, do not take me to be against the military, its existence, its members, or its functions, as I am the complete opposite. I feel that when it is used responsibly and appropriately, good things come of it and the use of needless and impractical violence or killing would be diminished greatly. Sadly, I am not sure we have seen this done on a large scale since WWII (that is, the part of WWII before that whole nuclear bombing thing). I completely comprehend why many feel the desire or calling to join the armed services, Christians included, but I cannot help but find it unfortunate that they are subject to being used irresponsibly and inappropriately, and therefore become tools for needless violence, rather than against it, and it is this danger that I think that Christians must take into account in their consideration of military service. That for them, in some circumstances, sin would not be the result of a choice, but of following an order, and that their job itself requires the asking of God’s forgiveness. (I do not wish to put words in his mouth, but I believe this is essentially the point Dack was trying to make in his original statement about Christians joining the military. Is that fair, Dack?)

Mostly, I think we need to ask ourselves an important question. Do we truly believe that God has the authority over the world? Because if we do, we should also realize that he does not need our help in running it. We are only the caretakers, and our job therefore is to do what he tells us, to take care of the earth and its people, not destroy them.

Now, this has all come out with a far more liberal and overall political slant to it than I had intended, and I fear that readers may read incorrectly between the lines and end up making untrue inferences or assumptions about me and/or my other beliefs and/or opinions on matters. I encourage those of you who have gotten this far to please contact me with responses, questions, requests for clarification, comments, concerns, etc. I would seriously love and appreciate any and all input (especially from scripture!). I am working through all of this in my head still, and when I say something like, “I believe…,” please understand that that belief may change quickly and easily depending on the argument against it. If I ever sound as though I am trying to provide you with an answer to a question, I ask you to read that “answer” only as a new question. Pretty much all I’m trying to do here is ask questions, get feedback, start discussion, and maybe figure some stuff out down the road.

A lot of this is based in an argument between my head and my heart, between my views on the state and my views on the individual, between my views on America and my views on the rest of the world, between my views on Christians and my views on other religions. There are several layers going on here. It’s like an onion. Or a cake. Or a parfait. But mostly I think it’s like an onion, if for no other reason than the rotten smell.