I am currently reading a book by Tim Keller, not one of his famous ones like “The Reason for God” or the “Meaning of Marriage”. Where “The Reason for God” was wrote in the after math of 9/11 and answers questions/objections from the rise of the New Atheists; Keller’s lesser known work: “Making Sense of God” seeks to speak to a world roughly 20 years after 9/11’s aftermath where the rise of the “nones” have grown. People are more curious and less hostile to religion but struggle to really understand how a belief in God could fit into this world today. He seeks to answer a different set of questions and objections than his previous work dealt with.
In this work, Keller challenges the idea of moral relativism. Moral Relativism is this idea that there is not an objective moral standard governing the behaviors of humanity that we could look to for guidance in our day to day interactions with others humans. Rather, each person has the capacity to seek to do good on their own. To their own accord. Based on their own standards they have come too.
The problem Keller points out though is that, when we live in a society that seeks to define good, or justice, or equality on each individuals own standards then eventually this will turn in on itself because at some point(probably quicker than later) one person’s moral standards will come into conflict with another person’s moral standards. And in a world of moral relativism there is no real gauge we could set to determine what is bad or what is good. Moral relativism creates for itself a lawless wasteland full of cowboys making up their own rules, dictating who deserves justice and who does not.
This begs the question for us today: where does good come from?
The Samaritan
As you’re doing your daily Bible reading, you come across a passage in Luke 9 that seems a little odd.
As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus purposefully set out for Jerusalem. And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; but the people there did not welcome them, because he was heading for Jerusalem. When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” But Jesus turned and rebuked them. Then he and his disciples went to another village.(Luke 9:51-56 NIV)
Have you ever tried to minister to people and they said “no thanks”?
This is a rather hilarious description of what took place as Jesus and his students are making their way toward Jerusalem. On their journey they plan to cross through Samaria. This is highly discouraged for Jesus and his Jewish compatriots because Samaria is the place you should not go.
Especially for a Jew.
And especially for a Jew heading to Jerusalem.
Samartians and Jew’s hated one another. They were both ruled by the Roman Government but these two factions of people could not stand one another. Between them existed a long list of lies and stories detailing the origins of their hatred.
Craig Keener in his commentary on this passage details in the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible the background for these two opposing parties:
Samartians believed in the one God of Israel and claimed to be the true heirs of his promises. Samaritans rejected the history of Israel after Joshua, and changed the Ten Commandments to include the requirement to worship on Mount Gerizim. Judens had destroyed the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim; Samaritans likewise hated Jerusalem’s temple and often heckled Galilean pilgrims who passage through Samaria on their way to the festival, sometimes even causing bloodshed.
The beef goes deep.
And so for Jesus and the rest of his Jewish buddies heading toward Jerusalem, their fate would have been sealed if they stepped foot through Samaria. There would be no welcoming party. And note: it’s not Jesus who is bringing in the hatred. Jesus is the most loving human to have ever existed which means in this instance, he would be the victim.
In our modern world today, if he stepped foot through Samaria, as loving as he is, he would be justified to swing when someone swings at him. He would be justified to retaliate.
Think about being a father or a mother to your child who you have raised to be good to the world around them. And then that world as they enter into it, begins to strike them all because of who they are, not even by choice. Your response likely would be “don’t let them push you over.” “Don’t be a doormat.” “If they hit you, hit them back.” “You’ve got to learn to stand up for yourself.”
It’s important to focus in on the context of the passages we read because just a little bit after this passage we land in Luke 10 where Jesus is being questioned by experts of the law (the Torah). They are asking “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”(Luke 10:25 NIV)
Jesus then goes the route of turning the question back on them and their expertise in the Law by asking “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?”(Luke 10:26 NIV)
To which this expert recites the core beliefs that are the foundation for his Jewish faith and the Law that being: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”(Luke 10:27 NIV)
After this, Jesus then applauds the expert and encourages him to go about loving God and loving his neighbor.
What’s funny is that the expert gets a little tripped over this neighbor line though. Who could his neighbor possibly be? Is it my literal neighbor across the street? Is it the lady I bump into at the grocery store? Is it the person in the far away land that I will never actually have to see or deal with?
“Who is my neighbor?”(Luke 10:29 NIV)
Jesus’ response details a story of a man going from Jerusalem to Jericho. Jericho was a rather wealthy place a little lower in elevation than Jerusalem and on this passage way leading to the land of the rich, there would be robbers there waiting to strike.
For the man in Jesus’ story he is struck by a band of robbers who takes his clothes, beats him to a pulp, and leaves him gasping for breathe laying like a dead man in the street.
What happens next is a series of events that would be striking to hear. Because this, what we could assume is a Jewish man, who has been beaten, is then passed by a Priest. A religious leader you would think would have compassion on not only one his own fellow Jews but just on a person in general. We like to assume our religious leaders represent the best of us. That they are the most generous and compassionate. They hold up the standards up for us to be more generous and compassionate.
But the priest passes. And then comes a Levite. Another member of the religious order. The Levite too, passes by.
The last and final person who walks by this beaten, naked, ashamed man is a Samaritan. An enemy to the Jews. A man who you as a Jew would have been warned about. Yet, this Samaritan stops on his travel. He bandages the poor man’s wounds, giving him the best care he has to offer. He then saddles this man onto his donkey and pays for his stay at a nearby inn. He cares for the man who should be his enemy through sacrificial love.
Likewise for this Jewish victim, it would be scary, I’m sure you can imagine. As you lay there half dead in the street, cold, naked, stripped of everything you own. Blood pouring over your eyes and then you see one of them. One of those people you’ve been warned about. One of those people you’ve been told by your parents, and grandparents, your religious community that they are the ones to watch out for. “They only seek bloodshed.” “It’s in their bones.” “They can’t help it, it’s just who they are.”
New York City
The week that I am writing this, New York City just voted in their new Mayor. Zohran Mamdani, a muslim man, not originally from the United States and instead from Uganda. He is a self described democratic-socialist and he has stirred up quite the buzz. Not just in the city he’s been voted in but around the country as everyone looks in awe, or curiosity or disgust at what is taking place.
I’m sure this goes further back than what happened on 9/11 but we have had a serious issue since then for sure.
I’m sure I do not have to remind you of what took place on the day 9/11 happened, but for a quick summary on September 11, 2001 our country faced a series of attacks from a group called Al-Queda.
Al-Queda(The Base) was an organization founded by Osama Bin-Laden to continue the Jihad(holy war) against invaders like the Soviets who had been run off previously before the organization was founded.
Through this example of terrorism our country experienced on 9/11 which was for many I would assume their first interaction with a muslim or someone who held “Islamist” beliefs. Very quickly if you held to the beliefs of Islam you would be side-eyed at the least as the narrative went that you were somehow responsible for the worst versions or expressions of your faith family.
Suddenly in a wide sweep, anyone who was Muslim or even looked it, was a person deserving of suspicion.
Why? Because after seeing what happened on 9/11 we can see the trajectory of those radical beliefs “those people” hold.
So fast forward a little over 20 years later and a foreigner/muslim is now the mayor of maybe the most important city in the United States. New York City is the precursor for a lot of the world of what America is or could be. And yet here, we have one of those “persons of suspicion” running the show.
Enemy-Love
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:6-8. ESV)
The shock value of the cross in Christianity is that a good God, the creator, sustainer, the epicenter of all good laid his life down not just for his friends John and Peter; but for his enemies. Even on the cross itself as the murderers of Jesus have already beaten him, stripped him naked, strung him up on a cross to hang, bleeding out, naked for the sole purpose of bringing him shame and gambling over his only possessions(the shirt on his back) Jesus had this powerful line that cuts through all the noise as He intercedes to the Father in his last moments.
“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”(Luke 23:34 NIV)
Jesus saw something in people. And specifically something in even his enemies that caused him to offer them a love that they did not deserve.
I love that last line “for they do not know what they are doing”. This line seems to give Jesus’ enemies the benefit of the doubt. It seems to justify the worst of their behavior by saying “they do not know better.”
Our culture today has an internal fight over justification of one’s own behavior.
From the left, we hear rhetoric about past traumas, and systemic issues that cause people to do bad things. Every sin a person does can be traced back to a moment or series of moments in their lives that explain away why they perpetuate evil.
From the right, we hear rhetoric talking about personal responsibility. It does not matter as much why you did what you did, as it matters that you did it. And you should be held responsible for it. You should be held accountable for your own actions.
I believe both can be true in our world of extremes and I believe Jesus did too.
The cross calls us all to take on our personal responsibility of confessing the evil that we have committed our lives too and to take the steps to turn away(repent) from those evils we have committed. The doctrine of sanctification though I believe also calls us to do our due diligence of examining the evil in our lives with a microscope, notice the patterns, identify the starting points, and ruthlessly go down the pathway to as John Owen famously said: “be killing sin or sin will be killing you.”
We all inherited sin from Adam, there is very much so a reason why we commit the evils that we do, but we must take responsibility for them.
The beautiful nature of the cross though is that we have an example of a good man wiping away the evils committed by another. By his own enemies.
And the reason why this good man died the death he did was because of two things.
- Love-
- “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.”(1 John 3:16 ESV) Jesus’ love for his enemies was displayed on the very murder weapon used to kill him. Jesus loved his enemies in a way that if we are being honest pisses us off in our bones. Because when someone strikes us, our knee-jerk, culturally justified reaction is to strike back. Jesus reaction was to take the hit for the sake of love. To take a beating to display love to His enemies.
- Image-
- The underlying reason behind Jesus love I believe has to do with how he saw people in general. Regardless of who you are, where you come from; Jesus saw people the very way he created them.“Let us make man(kind) in our image, after our likeness”(Genesis 1:26 ESV). All people were made as mirrors of who our God is.
The Way We Do Politics
After my last blog post, a comment I received through a mediator was that this person was shocked that I wrote a blog post about politics because they thought I had said previously “I don’t do politics.”
I want to be clear, I do not vote. That’s a personal decision that I am sure you have an opinion of and you’re welcome to have it just as I am welcome to have my list of reasons why I refuse to vote. I am not political in the sense of I play the game of politics. I am not a Republican or a Democrat. I do not only listen to Fox News or CNN. I do not care much about partisan politics.
I do know a good bit about what is going on politically though. The reason why is because that is the world we live in. I know politics like I know there is a tree at the end of my street. I see it routinely, I notice when the leaves are dying and when they are coming back.
Just like I know when the way our culture has trained us to do politics is rooted in some broken lenses of how to view the world and operate within it.
Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan is a story that haunts me. Because its a story that applies to any and everyone.
And the quicker we are to acknowledge that Jesus is talking to us in that story the quicker we can be to adjust ourselves and repent of buying into the way the world operates and move closer to the way of Jesus.
Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan should cause you to step back and if you are horrified of the new Mayor in New York City because of his ethnicity, religious affiliation or political stances, to step back and say “would he be the person Jesus uses as the example in the story?”
If Jesus were to tell you that same story today, instead of a Samaritan(because you likely do not have enmity towards Samaritans), would he use Zohran?
Would he use a Muslim?
Would he use a Democratic-Socialist?
Our culture today teaches us that the world is split up in to two parts. Good and evil. (Sacred vs. Secular for us Christians from the 90’s) And in this split, the people who land in the Secular or the evil are incapable of providing any good to the world.
The problem with this world view is that it denies the reality that our Bible’s paint a picture of.
More times than not, the “heroes” in our Bible are people who pass down evil to another generation. They are capable of tremendous good but also tremendous evil. Just like Muslims are capable of tremendous good and tremendous evil.
And here’s the kicker:
Just like we as Christians are capable of tremendous good and tremendous evil.
It was Jonathan Edwards who helped spark the First Great Awakening in America through his preaching. It was also Jonathan Edwards who owned slaves and was held accountable for that by his own son.
It was John Wesley who founded what we know of today as the Methodist movement. It was also Wesley who neglected his wife and kids for his work.
Jeremy Courtney in his book ‘Love Anyway’ details the story of him and his white conservative Christian family leaving the States after 9/11 and going to share the Gospel with the very people who looked like they were responsible for 9/11. Throughout the book you see Jeremy’s passion shift and change. His views on the world being confronted by the reality sitting right in front of him. And through it all God does a huge work of reversing the curse in Jeremy’s own life. About halfway through the book Jeremy says:
There is always another world, a deeper and more beautiful world, right in front of us, but we have to have eyes to see it. It’s not always “the world” that needs to be made right. As often as not, it’s me, the viewer.”
As people following the way of Jesus in the United States we need to confront why we view the world the way we do, and take personal responsibility in changing that.
Viewing a Muslim man who wants to make the city he loves more affordable for lower income people is not a man who is incapable of doing good.
It is actually our belief as Christians in the doctrine of the “imago-dei” that says all good, regardless of who it comes through, comes ultimately from God, the person who created them. And I believe for many of us, we put the doctrine of depravity over and above the doctrine of the imago-dei.
Sin is real. We are all capable of it because the fall and what we have inherited from Adam.
Good is also real. We are all capable of doing good deeds because of what happened before the fall. That being that a good God, created us in His image. A reflection of good.
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