13. Separating Light from Darkness

Son of man, cause Jerusalem to know her abominations, and say, “Thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem: ‘Your origin and your birth are from the land of Canaan; your father an Amorite and your mother a Hittite.’”

- Ezekiel 16:2-3

God saw the light that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.

- Genesis 1:4

The oldest trick in the world is for evil somehow to mix itself with good - Satan offering knowledge and wisdom in the garden, the Nazis defending European civilization from Bolshevism, American white supremacists standing up against Communism, Jew haters decorating their hatred with pretended love for Jesus, and of course the scribes and Pharisees “robbing widows’ houses and for a pretense making long prayers.” On Day 1 in Genesis 1, God sees that the light is good, and separates the light from the darkness.

We need to do that too. Here again, hatred hurts itself. If we hate our enemies, we grow intent on showing how everything about them is evil, and so we actually strengthen the evil working in them against us. There is no limit to how stupid we become, how much harm we do to ourselves.

Consider how many Americans delight to say that Islam is what makes people want to blow them up, agreeing in this with Osama bin Laden, and doing everything they can to prove him right. Consider how many Arabs explain that Israel behaves as it does because it is Jewish and that they have to fight the Jews - exactly the nonsense that Zionists and the state of Israel want everyone to believe, in the hope that Jew-hating in the world will drive Jews to Israel. Consider how Muslims and others offended by “Christians” accuse America of being an imperial crusader because America is a Christian nation, which is exactly what American crusaders want everyone to believe. Opponents of Christian Zionism strive hard to prove we shouldn’t really believe the Bible, thereby assuring the Christian Zionists that only apostates reject Christian Zionism, which must therefore be true Christianity. Yes indeed, by reckless hatred of our enemies we reinforce the evil that they do. Is this good for us?

To overcome evil, we must deprive it of the truth that it hides behind. To learn how our enemies are wrong, we must see the light in them, learning how they are right and what is truly admirable about them. Of course this path threatens us. We might have to learn some unpleasant news about ourselves, but we all agree that this is good for other people. Why not for us too?

Finally, we anxiously deny the bad news about ourselves because we are sure in their hearts that if it is true, we are certainly condemned. The prophets and Jesus fearlessly showed people just how bad it was with them, not because they hated and condemned them, but because they knew that no matter how bad it was, there was hope. We need to see what is right and worth saving so that we can convey that hope of redemption to any enemy - and believe it for ourselves. No matter how bad we may be from our first moment, from before our beginning God called us into being. In Him, not in our earliest iniquities, we live and move and have our being. David confessed, “In sin my mother conceived me,” but that didn’t define who he was.

Let’s look at some specific examples:

Crusader Christianity and the Gospel of Jesus

Jesus said to his disciples, “You are the light of the world.” He said again, “If you continue in my word, you will be my disciples indeed, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” Having gained such freedom in this way, we are charged to “make disciples of all nations . . . teaching them to observe all that Jesus has commanded us.” Learning, practicing, and teaching what Jesus lived and taught – especially the relationship with his Father that makes it possible to follow him - this is the good news of Jesus, by which we can be good news to the world. Whatever its name, if our religion is something else, it is darkness.

The Crusaders, violent men full of zeal for Jesus and full of disobedience to his word, marched off 900 years ago to fight the Muslims and to slaughter all the Jews and Muslims they found in Jerusalem. Calling Jesus “Lord, Lord,” they rejoiced to deal out death in his name, delighting in the sword which Jesus clearly tells us is death to those who live by it, and the mark of the spirit of antichrist (Revelation 13:10). In this matter Christians today are remarkably shameless, even calling their own evangelistic events “Crusades.” What would we think today if Germans named their summer camps “Treblinka?”

Christians have clearly not repented of the crusader spirit. They’ve just adjusted, in the way that Communists grow more concerned about freedom of speech and civil liberties when they lose power. The crusader spirit is not simply marching off to war with a cross on your shield. It’s about resorting in any way to violence in order to defend the kingdom of God. Opportunity determines how we express it, but its essence is constant. If we lack state power, we only Bible-bash people, bully one another in church, and throw tantrums when unbelievers insult us, so as to train people to walk softly around us. But give crusader Christians instruments of death and a government that will do their bidding, as when Herod arrested the apostles to please the rulers of the Jews, and the people of Fallujah can tell you what happens.

How did it come to this? Christians have bowed down to Satan in exchange for receiving the kingdoms of this world - just what Jesus refused to do in the wilderness. Having seen the kingdoms of this world and their glory - what they might do to us, and what they might do for us if we make a deal - we have for at least 1700 years chosen this friendship with the world. We have bowed down to Satan - stealing, killing, destroying, lying, sucking up to the rich and betraying the poor. In exchange for this prostitution we have received the protection and help of this world - imperial sponsorship, praise and perks, armies and riches, celebrity.

This is exactly the deal that Paul turned down in Philippi when a spirit of divination in a slave girl offered to help (Acts 16:16-24). Paul chose to set the girl free even though it meant prison and a flogging for him, instead of Satan’s favor. When, against Paul’s example, we choose to let the world proclaim about us, “These are the servants of the most high God,” in exchange for shutting our eyes to those it murders and enslaves, we’re apostates, not disciples of Jesus. And disciples of Jesus are the only Christians the apostles knew anything about (Acts 11:26).

How do we recognize this apostasy in ourselves? Restating Micah 6:8, Paul wrote: “We are the true circumcision, who worship God in the Spirit, glory in Christ Jesus, and put no confidence in the flesh” (Philippians 3:3). When we use America’s Christian heritage to demand that people listen to us, our confidence is in the flesh. When we rely on our traditions or religious authority to daunt people, our confidence is in the flesh. When we use the Bible to pummel people into listening to us and shut people up, we’re putting our confidence in the flesh. When we rely on money, worldly cleverness, cruise missiles, and tanks, our confidence is in the flesh.

This violence has been so blended with Christianity for so long that everyone accepts it as normal. Christians have made elaborate excuses for it, and other people have detested it, but no one seems to question that this is Christianity. We need to do here as God did on Day 1. We need to see the light - the words that Jesus and the apostles taught. And we need to separate it from the rest, even if that garbage has been there for 1700 years or more. The entire religion of violence which conflicts with the gospel of Jesus is friendship with the world and enmity with God. No matter how long it’s been there, how useful it looks, and how many Christians believe in it, no matter how many heroes and “saints” from Cyril of Alexandria to Billy Graham have preached and practiced it, God did not plant it, and He will eventually root it out (Matthew 15:13-14). If we’re Christians and do not want to be rooted out with it, we need to search our hearts and our ways for this leaven of wickedness the way we search when we smell that a cat has done its business in the car.

Crusader Christianity has rejected the Jesus that the apostles knew, and has substituted for him another Jesus that Satan has taught. This has been disastrous for Christians and for everyone else. We need to learn and practice the difference, and call this falling away from Christ just what it is - apostasy, and communion with Satan. No matter how completely, and how long ago, we went astray, the real Jesus that God raised from the dead is our life and our truth. He alone is the one to whom God said, “This is My Son, My chosen one; listen to him!”

Zionism and Judaism

Christians, especially those most enthusiastic about the state of Israel, commonly identify Judaism with legalism. The people that Paul argued with in Galatia they call “Judaizers,” as though Judaism is some kind of pollution. Paul was just as Jewish as his opponents. He wasn’t opposing their Judaism. As Jews have always done, Paul was arguing what it was to be a Jew, showing that the essence of Judaism is not the Law, but to know and walk with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who gave the Law (Galatians 3:15-25, Deuteronomy 18:15-18). You need not agree with Paul. My point is only that Christians need to remember that Paul had no idea that there is anything wrong with being Jewish - and neither did Jesus, being Jewish himself. The only question for Paul was what it really means to be Jewish, to walk with God as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did, and actually to do as Moses taught. The title of one of Abraham Heschel’s books says it all - Judaism: God in Search of Man.

Here are some fundamentals of Judaism:

"Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul, and with all your strength, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself"

"What does the Lord require of you, O man, but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God."

In line with this, God swears by Moses that he will have war against Amalek from generation to generation, and charges Israel to blot the memory of Amalek from under heaven.  Amalek's offense was to fall upon the weak and the stragglers.

Note that it is not Amalek but the memory of Amalek that is to be blotted out from under heaven.  So long as people, especially Jews, are acting like Amalek, his behavior is being brought to remembrance - far from being blotted out.  Thus instead of blotting out the memory of Amalek from under heaven, the cruel and unjust keep that memory in mind day by day, both with God and man, so that as Jeremiah said of Jerusalem, "As a well keeps its water fresh, so she keeps fresh her wickedness."

The light of the Jews - their God, and Moses and the prophets who proclaimed His truth - must be separated from the darkness - the violence, cruelty, deceit, fear, and greed that the state of Israel today proclaims to the world as Judaism. Zionism has defiled and blasphemed Judaism exactly as crusader Christianity has defiled and blasphemed the gospel of Jesus.

Should this surprise us? David Ben Gurion, speaking on December 7^th, 1938, made the priority of Zionism clear in refusing the British offer to bring German Jewish children to safety in Britain:

"If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children, but also the history of the People of Israel."[1]

Here Ben Gurion expresses the essence of Zionism. The Zionist ideology says that the Jewish State, the work of man’s hands, is the refuge of the Jewish people, an idol to which Zionism was willing to burn half the Jewish children in Germany. This is not Judaism but just one more utopian modern ideology like Nazism or Communism - totally contrary to Judaism, which affirms that not a state of man’s making but God Himself is the refuge of the Jewish people (Psalm 90:1-2). The cruelty of Zionism to others originates in its stated willingness to offer Jewish children as a holocaust to its shining ideal - the Jewish State. In this its resemblance to crusader Christianity is striking, whose cruelty to others clearly originates in the self-willed self-abasement to which it summons its followers, just as Paul wrote (Colossians 2:18, 1 Corinthians 13:3).

Surely, any Jew understands that crusader Christianity has no right to exploit and corrupt the name of the Jewish rabbi Jesus to justify its mass murders, its robberies, and its pogroms. Why then should Zionism be permitted to shelter in the same way under the name of Judaism, whose beauty it exploits and destroys?

America, People and Empire

Jesus said to listen to what the Pharisees say, but not to do as they do. The tragedy of America and of its Christians, but also their great opportunity, is that in many ways they know the truth, which is exactly why they must work so hard to hide their eyes from what they actually do. Americans know that it is vile to rob and slaughter the weak, to oppress, to think that others are born wearing saddles and bridles and that Americans are born with boots and spurs to ride them. At least since Thomas Jefferson wrote Notes on the State of Virginia, Americans have been anguished about their actual behavior. Where guilt exists and must be evaded and denied, conscience is not quite dead, and hope remains. Americans are oppressive and violent, but not altogether ruthless.

Psalm 47 rightly states that the shields of the earth belong to God, and this certainly holds for the ideological shields under which all men must live. They may not be ultimately true, but there is great truth in them. Otherwise, even the lies they teach would be powerless. American political thought is full of valuable truth, just as the sons of Lamech the son of Cain were blessed with technical skill above everyone else in the earth, which God’s people were intended to receive and use (Genesis 4:20-22).

Just as American crusader Christianity is apostasy from the gospel of Jesus, American empire is a fundamental betrayal of American political thought. The Declaration of Independence states that all men are created equal. American empire has always held that others out there may be slaughtered and tortured, their elections corrupted, and their governments overthrown for the sake of American business or other American national interests - while it’s unthinkable that Americans should ever be treated that way. American empire says that Iraqis are terrorists because they receive American occupiers no differently from how Americans would receive Chinese occupiers if they broke into American homes in the middle of the night, dragged away and tortured thousands of innocent people, forcibly opened America’s economy to Chinese companies, and appointed a Chinese intelligence asset to be America’s President.

James Madison in Federalist #10 stated that no man can judge rightly in his own cause, agreeing in this with Paul the apostle and the Proverbs, and the American constitutional system is based on this truth. American empire says that America’s view of itself is always correct because we all say so - and nations that don’t agree must be enticed, seduced, or beaten until they do.

The American constitution says that only Congress may raise armies and declare war, and that public expenditures are to be published, forbidding the President to raise his own private armed forces and wage wars of his own liking. American empire expects us to “support the President” in whatever he does and that he may wage secret wars and “covert operations” with no accountability to anyone, using secret funds.

Americans know that we should support the weak and break the teeth of the strong (Psalm 72). American empire consistently supports the rich and the strong as Rome used to do with its little Herods everywhere, training death squads to murder nuns and trade union leaders so that generals and their rich friends can give their national wealth away to American business.

In all of this lying and betrayal of America’s founding documents and tradition, American empire fulfills America’s nature since we got off the boat, but this very lying and betrayal shows empire to be treason against what America really is. America’s essence, like everyone else’s, is not in our origins but in God Himself, because whoever we are, “It is He who has made us and not we ourselves” (Psalm 100:3). “Sin is a disgrace to any people” (Proverbs 14:34), including America, because even if we were conceived in sin, it still violates our nature, what our Maker intended for us. Jerusalem’s origin was in the land of Canaan, her father an Amorite and her mother a Hittite, but that did not have to determine who she was - if she would fully face the bad news (1 John 1:9, Ezekiel 16).

Worldly Ostracism and Godly Excommunication

The world puts you out in order to squeeze you into its mold, to make you “feel the heat if you don’t see the light,” to hem you into its consensus. It’s not about truth; it’s about force. “They wish to shut you out, in order that you may seek them” (Galatians 4:17). “What are you trying to overpower me with, a doctrine or a gun?” as Bob Dylan once asked.

Tell the truth in church and they will freeze you out. Vote the truth at the United Nations, and they will take you aside and tell you that that’s the most expensive vote you ever cast. Make a movie they don’t like and they will boycott you. Don’t fly the American flag on September 12, 2001, and they won’t shop in your store. Don’t worship the beast, receiving his mark and the number of his name, and he will forbid you to buy or sell.

When the world excommunicates - religious people too – it’s not about truth. It’s about subduing someone under worldly power. It’s confidence in the sword and captivity (Revelation 13:10). Virtue is in the respectable, praised, pretty, and rich, who deserve the best seats in church. Evil is in the poor, despised, and ugly, who deserve to be stood in the corner (James 2:1-7). “Wealth adds many friends, but the poor man is separated from his friend” (Proverbs 19:4). The world separates you not because you’re wrong, but because you’re unfashionable and they have the crowd behind them.

But surely there is a right time and place to shun people. Look at Donald Rumsfeld smiling and shaking hands with Saddam Hussein, or Augusto Pinochet the torturer of Roman Catholics receiving the Eucharist in a Roman Catholic church. It makes you want to cry out with Paul, “Remove the wicked man from among yourselves!” (1 Corinthians 5:13) But how do we do that without being the Pharisee in the temple who prays with himself, “I thank you, God, that I’m better than that guy?”

Jesus said, “He who hates father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” And finally, “He who does not take his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.” We need to begin by breaking fellowship with anything in ourselves which opposes the truth. We may be as helpless against it as we are against any power of this world. Indeed that is certain. But we can still say, “This emperor has no clothes!” We can snitch on ourselves to God and admit the truth. Having looked at the log in our eye in this way, we can likewise break fellowship with those nearest to us where their fellowship is with the Lie. And then we can face steadily our other attachments in this world, such as to our churches and our favorite empire. That done, our eyes will see accurately who our real friends and enemies are. There’s death in all this, just as Jesus said. But life is found nowhere else.

If we will not receive and speak the truth from God to one another, God will send others to do so for us. Isaiah wrote (Isaiah 8:6-7):

Inasmuch as these people have rejected the gently flowing waters of Shiloah, and rejoice in Rezin and the son of Remaliah, now therefore, behold, the Lord is about to bring on them the strong and abundant waters of the River, even the king of Assyria and his glory.

On January 17, 2005, guerrillas in Mosul kidnapped the Syrian Catholic Archbishop, and the Vatican denounced this as a “terrorist act,” as indeed it was.[2] The Archbishop was later released unharmed. But where was the Vatican’s mouth when the US Marines deported the entire population of Fallujah in freezing winter weather – nearly 300,000 people - seizing or destroying every medical facility, and killing by the Red Crescent’s estimate 6,000 civilians? Terrorizing and deporting an entire city and killing uncounted unarmed people in order to intimidate a whole nation is not terrorism? And who did they release unharmed?

The Iraqi guerrillas clearly sent the Vatican a message. Since truth and compassion for the helpless were trumped by the Vatican’s deference to worldly power, rejoicing in Bush and in American Roman Catholics who wanted to follow America wherever it goes, the Iraqi guerrillas spoke to the Vatican in the language that the Vatican has shown Iraqis it understands best. These are not nice people, and theirs was indeed a terrorist act. Nineveh - a few miles from modern Mosul, by the way - was not nice either (see the book of Nahum). But Nineveh was who God sent in Isaiah’s day when His people didn’t want to hear the language of God.

It is better to follow the Lamb than to take his name in vain by calling him “Lord, Lord” while deferring to the mighty in their injustice, cruelty, and arrogance (Micah 6:8). Sure that gets us in trouble with the world, but if we think that’s worse than getting in trouble with God, let’s stop calling ourselves Christians.

If we are Christians, then it is written, “Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them” (Ephesian 5:11). This applies not only when all the big names in the church agree, or when these unfruitful works of darkness are committed by homosexuals, Muslims, and other people that the Christian crowd despises. Paul attached no such conditions to his statement. It applies most urgently when the churches and their leaders are in love with evil and when those who cannot endure it feel like the only ones left, like Elijah, which is why the Bible summons us to follow Elijah’s example. This seems obvious now as we look back to 1740 when John Woolman had to argue with his fellow Quakers about their slaves. It’s always clear who the good guys were in the past, even as we follow the bad guys in the present, just as it was with the Pharisees (Matthew 23:29-36). But what do we do with good and evil today, the evil day, in which “truth is ever on the scaffold, and wrong is ever on the throne?”

Paul the apostle puts it well (2 Timothy 3:2-5):

Men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; and avoid such men as these.

That each of these characterizes American Christians of every stripe today is obvious to everyone. When we’re not defending ourselves to outsiders, we ourselves complain that these attributes describe us, as we may see from the topics addressed in any Christian bookstore. Consider these one by one.

That men love themselves and their own church groups, and even their own worldly nation, is clear in how amazed we are when someone actually lives otherwise.

Need we speak of the love of money?

Of boastfulness?

Of arrogance among one another and against outsiders?

Is it unusual for American Christians to revile Muslims, the French - indeed anyone that we do not know or understand?

What parents do we not disobey? Do we even pay attention to the words of Jesus? Do we not openly disdain Moses and the prophets, never mind the entire Christian tradition of the past 2000 years? Do we even listen to the words of George Washington?

Are we grateful to the non-Christians around us who patiently endure our insolence and our preposterous claims that American history entitles us to be boss here? Are we grateful to others in the rest of the world who tolerate our missionaries in view of the corruption of their worldly churches, the defenders of oppression?

How often is real holiness - being set apart to God and to the truth from this world’s passions and lies - found among us?

Do we love the other, like the Samaritan who stopped to take care of his Jewish enemy, or do we want to drop bombs on him in order to protect ourselves?

Do we seek peace with Muslims and others who disagree with us, or do we hunt for reasons for enmity - being irreconcilable?

Are we not malicious gossips, swift to repeat any rumor about Muslims or the many others we fear in the world, swift to believe such lies as Iraq’s weapons and non-existent relationship to 9/11, and slow to let go of such malicious gossip?

Do we exercise the self-control needed to act as the Bible says instead of impulsively conforming to the fears and hatreds of others around us?

Are we not brutal when we tolerate torture and mass murder in our names and pray for the success and safety of the perpetrators?

Do we love what is good - to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God - or do we excuse or deny every injustice of ourselves and our favorite empire, love every act of cruelty which we think will protect us from our enemies, and shelter behind American bombs and tanks?

Are we not treacherous - allying ourselves with men who openly plunder their fellow citizens and the world, in the hope of their friendship and political favors?

Are we not reckless - impulsively following whoever tells us what we want to hear and rashly shutting our ears to anyone that contradicts our present opinions?

Is it not conceited to count ourselves worthy to discipline the world while being so clearly unable to discipline ourselves?

The word of God is “for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” Is that why people go to church, or to be stroked and entertained? If our churches have to entertain us instead of training us in godliness, aren’t we lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God?

When we rely on marketing tricks, guilt trips, and religious machinery to make things happen - in case God doesn’t actually show up - are we not holding to a form of godliness, although we have denied its power?

What does Paul prescribe for such as these? “Avoid such people!” So when “unbelievers” avoid such “Christians” as these, are they really opposing Christ? Are they not doing exactly what the apostle Paul commands?

But we need to count the cost. To avoid such people, after warning them as Jesus and Paul prescribe, is not to avoid the marginal, those that the world despises. It means to part company with the winners and to take our places with the losers - the hungry and thirsty, the strangers, the naked and the sick, and the prisoners (Matthew 25:35-36). To “avoid such people” is to avoid the crowd, the money, the votes, the celebrated pastors of big churches - the riches and pleasures of this world, and those who control them. We don’t have the crowd behind us; we only have God with us through yielding to the truth instead of to the lie that is in fashion. And we soon will find ourselves roughly handled as Jesus was before us and always will be.

To come to Jesus is to go to him outside the camp (Hebrews 13:12-14) - not proudly as the world does when it walks away from those it despises, but bearing his reproach. Outside, with those that the world disdains, is where Christ the King rules, seated at the right hand of God. David’s kingdom was formed in the cave of Adullam, not in Saul’s court (1 Samuel 22). Jesus gained his kingdom hanging stark naked on a cross while the world laughed at him. Until we are ready with Jesus to abandon the kingdoms of this world and be flushed down its toilet with him, we are this world’s prisoners, powerless to confront its evil ways or even to abandon them ourselves. Where the world has disposed of God is where we can expect to find Him, His power, and His authority. Let’s learn to follow Him there.

Worldly Despair and Godly Sorrow

It’s not fashionable to look on the dark side. People want to dwell on the positive. They don’t want to talk about bad news. This is especially true of the United States, which has always believed in optimism and risk-taking, and despised caution, gloom, or even sober recognition of reality. Making light of difficulties has generally worked so far, just as it did for Hitler until he reached Moscow at the end of 1941.

There is something right about this can-do spirit. Ecclesiastes rightly points out that “he who watches the wind will not sow, and he who watches the clouds will not reap.” Once we know what to do, we can’t allow obstacles to distract us from it. But it doesn’t follow that we should ignore problems just because they get in the way of our big ideas. This seems obvious in those who achieve such self-delusion with illegal drugs. Why is it any better when they achieve it instead with wishful thinking, denial, finger-pointing, or religious doctrines that tickle their ears?

Paul wrote that worldly sorrow brings death, but worldly optimism and refusing to hear bad news bring death too. Indeed all such self-willed cheerfulness proceeds from despair, in much the same way that bombast and conceit so often come from insecurity and self-contempt.

Isaiah writes of Jerusalem under siege by the Assyrians sent by Sennacherib (Isaiah 22:8-13):

In that day you depended on the weapons of the house of the forest, and you saw that the breaches in the city of David were many; and you collected the waters of the lower pool. Then you counted the houses of Jerusalem, and you tore down houses to fortify the wall. And you made a reservoir between the two walls for the waters of the old pool. But you did not depend on Him who made it, nor did you consider Him who planned it long ago.

Therefore in that day the Lord the God of hosts called you to weeping, to wailing, to shaving the head, and to wearing sackcloth. Instead there is gaiety and gladness, killing of cattle and slaughtering of sheep, eating of meat and drinking of wine: “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we may die.”

In the same way after September 11, 2001, when even certain preachers like Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel recognized that God was calling Americans to consider their ways and humble themselves, their President was blaming everyone else and calling on Americans to go shopping. And with almost no exceptions, supposed Christian leaders had no complaint – Isaiah’s warning be damned!

Worldly despair and worldly optimism both presume that there is no God, at least for any practical purpose, and therefore no reward in the world for justice, mercy, and humility. That this thinking works out so badly should tell us that maybe that’s a bad presumption, the same way that we learned when little that our arms are not wings.

Godly sorrow is letting ourselves admit that we’re in real trouble. It means allowing ourselves to admit that things really are as bad as they are. In fact, it proceeds from the basic belief that God is there for anybody who humbles himself. However bad it may be, if we find out what it is and face up to it, He will make it right somehow. “As sorrowful yet always rejoicing” is how Paul put it (2 Corinthians 6:10), which certainly works better than “cheerful and confident yet full of denial and gnawed by doubt,” which is the way of worldly optimism so often taught in churches.

1 John 1:5-10 tells the difference:

This is the message which we heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we are lying and are not practicing the truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and the truth is not in us.

This sets before us life and death, two ways to feel good about ourselves. We can say that we have fellowship with God and have no sin, giving ourselves good news and living in a world of make believe, or we can learn and admit the sad truth, in which case God will give us both reality and good news. There’s no better way to real confidence than for God “to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” If that happens we don’t have to convince ourselves or anyone else. Nobody has to try hard to believe that 2+2=4, because it’s no effort to believe what we know is true.

Real gold and fool’s gold look a lot alike until you scratch them on something. Fool’s gold gives itself away with a black streak. Has God really forgiven us and cleansed us from all unrighteousness, or are we still justifying ourselves? When we’re scratched on someone who accuses us, do we leave a black streak?

Whether it’s about ourselves or the world around us, the price of knowing and serving the truth is sorrow. Mary the mother of Jesus learned that the price included a sword piercing her soul. Jesus said that whoever hears the word of God is his mother. Know then that like Mary our souls will get pierced.

In Revelation 11, God raises up two witnesses with power to shut heaven and to strike the earth with plagues. But they are clothed in sackcloth; they are covered with sorrow. Only the broken-hearted can be trusted with such power. If we refuse to mourn we cannot be trusted, because to cheer ourselves up we will always eventually deal out death. Jesus said, “Blessed are those that mourn.” And it’s true. If we humble ourselves we will be lifted up. As the proverb says, “Pride before stumbling and a haughty spirit before a fall,” (Proverbs 16:18) and again, “Before destruction the heart of man is haughty, but humility before honor” (Proverbs 18:12).

Worldly despair kills, making us passive, conceited, and bombastic - inciting us to “Eat, drink, and be merry, because tomorrow we die.” Godly sorrow is the path to honor, because we’re facing hard truth, the way alcoholics come to their senses in Alcoholics Anonymous. Those that face hard truth can hear good news, because their ears are not stuffed already with pleasant illusions (Psalm 112:7). That’s why Solomon could say, “The wicked flees where no one pursues, but the just are as confident as a lion” (Proverbs 28:1).

Chapter 14

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[1] Yoav Gelber, Zionist Policy and the Fate of European Jewry (1939-42), Yad Vashem Studies, vol.XII, p. 199, quoted in Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators (1983), Chapter 13.

[2] Jeffery Gettleman, “Gunmen Kidnap the Catholic Archbishop of Mosul as Pre-election Violence Flares in Iraq “ The New York Times (Jan. 18, 2005).