Sorry Pat Robertson, but that’s not a Christlike response

“Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about. [Haitians] were under the heel of the French… and they got together and swore a pact to the Devil. They said, ‘we will serve you if you’ll get us free from the French.’ True story. And so the Devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal.’ But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other.” — Pat Robertson

A spokesman for Pat Robertson’s ministry has since issued a statement attempting to backpedal this shocking statement, but the reality is that the statement implied the Haitians went through the recent earthquake because they deserved it. The comment, unfortunately, displays the same spirit that the late Jerry Falwell exhibited in 2001 when he blamed 9/11 on “the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way.”

Is there any merit in their statements? First of all, let me say that I understand where they are coming from. I wholeheartedly disagree with them, but I understand where they’re coming from. They’re coming from a particular theological view, based largely upon a specific interpretation of the Old Testament, that sees God as a God who avenges sinful nations. They expect judgment from Him whenever they see people living in ways that they believe to be against the morals of the Bible.

There are a few problems with their logic, however.

1. “ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” and “the wages of sin is death.” Those words are from the Bible (Romans 3:22-24 and 6:22-23) and what they tell us is that, from God’s perspective, we ALL deserve God’s judgment. Where we get off deciding for God that certain groups of people are more deserving of it than we are, I do not know, but such an attitude is definitely not biblical.



2. “It is not God’s will that any should perish.” This verse from the Bible shows God’s heart for people. In the Old Testament, we see His judgment exerted upon nations that have turned against Him. We can’t deny that. However, even in the Old Testament, we see that God was already working out a plan wherein people could be saved from the judgment they deserved. And that plan was made available to EVERYONE, regardless of what nation they were born in!
3. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” Although, according to the Bible, we are ALL deserving of judgment, Jesus took the judgment for our sinfulness in our place. He paid the price for all the junk in our lives, and then He rose again. Now He’s alive, and He says to EVERYONE who will believe in Him that He will forgive them and give them the gift of eternal life. Those who focus more on blame and threats of judgment than upon grace seem to have forgotten that we now live in the age of the New Testament, on the other side of the cross!

Rather than trying to cast blame when bad things happen, we need to realize that we live in a broken world and that we need to demonstrate God’s LOVE in every situation. The best thing we can do as followers of Christ is to pray for Haiti and seek out ways we can demonstrate His love in practical ways by helping the people who are hurting. This is the best thing we can do for ANYONE who is suffering. That’s part of what following Christ is all about.

Prostitutes and the Kingdom

Jesus once told a bunch of church-goers that prostitutes would enter the Kingdom of God before they did. I bet they didn’t like that much! Of course, Jesus wasn’t a people-pleaser. He was more concerned with truth.

Let’s look at the story where he said that…

“What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’

“‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.

“Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go.

“Which of the two did what his father wanted?” 
 “The first,” they answered.

Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him. — Matthew 21:28-32

The people Jesus was talking to in this chapter were his culture’s version of the faithful church-goer. In fact, according to verse 23, they weren’t just the church “goers,” they were the “chief-priests and elders,” the leaders of the religious people.

But he was telling them they were getting it all wrong. They were very religious in their dedication to the Temple and to religious observances, but they weren’t serious about a true relationship with God.

In the context of this discussion in the Bible, Jesus is talking about those who had been baptized under John the Baptist. Baptism was seen as a sign of obedience to God, to leaving the old life behind and submitting to Him. A lot of tax-collectors and prostitutes had taken this step, whilst these religious “leaders” had seen it as below them and refused to participate. They were good at doing the religious things that their community thought of as “religious,” but they were lacking the qualities Jesus really valued: submission and obedience to HIM.

I wonder how many of us who are church “goers,” would fit into the same category as these Jewish priests and elders? We go to church and do all the “Christian” things, but do we submit to God when he tells us to live our lives in obedience to Him? After all, that’s what he’s asking of us. Obedience to HIM.

Some think that this simply means living as decent people and going to church, but the people Jesus was talking to would almost certainly have fit into that category.

What was different about the prostitutes and tax-collectors?

A few things really:

1. They realized they were messed up.

   The people Jesus was talking to were self-righteous. They thought they could get by on their own and that they were “good enough.” The people Jesus came for, however, were those who were ready to realize that we’re all messed up. That’s what the Bible really means when it says, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” We’ve all messed up, none of us is perfect, and we all need grace.

   People who truly realize that don’t feel the need to judge others anymore. They just live in an amazing appreciation for the fact that God has accepted them and forgiven them, even with all their flaws and failures.

2. They realized he was their only hope.

   The people Jesus was talking to actually still thought they could do it on their own. They weren’t going to submit themselves to anything that would suggest they didn’t “have it all together.” They weren’t ready to depend on God because they thought they could make it on their own.

   The prostitutes and tax-collectors knew that they couldn’t make it on their own. He was their only hope. Yet, in the end, I think that’s true for all of us. But too many of us go to church and go through the motions, whilst still believing we can “do it on our own.”

3. They wanted to please God.

   Many religious people are more concerned with pleasing each other than they are with pleasing God. Can you imagine the humiliation these men would have experienced if they’d gone to be baptized by John the Baptist, who was not your typical “church type”?

   But the prostitutes and tax-collectors didn’t care what the world thought. Or at least, if they did, they were more concerned about getting right with God than with getting laughed at by their friends. They knew they needed God, so they went to him.

The people Jesus was talking to would have been known in their day as the cream of the crop in the religious world, but Jesus was essentially telling them, “The prostitutes are better off than you are.” Why? Because they allowed themselves to realize they needed him, that their lives needed to change, that he was their only hope…and they wanted to please God more than to hold onto their own world as it was.

It’s so like Jesus to raise up the prostitute and humble the proud. Sadly, some of us who call ourselves his followers would more likely praise the proud and shun the prostitute. These chief priests and elders would probably have never let them in the Temple. But that was their biggest problem. Their hearts were closed to receiving grace because they were unwilling to give it. May God deliver us from being like that!

Your Kingdom come?

When Jesus’ disciples — the men who traveled together with him for three years to learn under his tutelage — asked him to teach them how to pray, he gave them a very interesting prayer model. It’s one that has been prayed by many throughout the centuries, though I fear that many pray the words without really grasping what they mean.

He said to them, “When you pray, say: ‘Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation.’” — Luke 11: 2-4

It’s a very interesting prayer, a very earthy prayer in fact. I’m particularly interested in these words:

“Your Kingdom come…”

Jesus didn’t tell them to pray, “Take me up to heaven someday” but “your kingdom come.”

What did he mean?

It might help us to think about this question: What is the “Gospel”? The word “gospel” is one that is used often by Christians, and it means literally “good news.” But what is the good news that Jesus came to bring?

Some think the good news is simply that, if we will believe in Him, we can go to heaven someday. However, in his ministry, Jesus preached “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is near.” (Matthew 4:17, emphasis mine) He didn’t talk about his kingdom being something that was only far away in the heavens, and his news wasn’t simply that “you can go to the kingdom someday.” He actually talked about something that was near, and when he taught his followers to pray, he didn’t tell them to pray, “Take us up to your kingdom someday.” Rather, he taught them to pray, “Your kingdom come.”

In order to better understand these words, “your kingdom come,” it can help to know something about the world in which Jesus first said them. He was entering into the age-old story of the Jewish people. They had once had their own nation, but then had gone into exile in a foreign land. For years, they dreamed of going back into their land, the land of Israel.

Although living in the land again, they were still in a form of exile. They were living under foreign rule and had for several centuries. They were hoping for freedom and believed, as the Old Testament had shown them, that freedom would come through the Messiah that was to be sent by God. The word Messiah, from the Jewish Scriptures that Christians call the Old Testament, means “anointed one.” They were waiting for the anointed one, the Messiah, to come from heaven and to bring his kingdom.

So what did these words, “Kingdom of Heaven,” mean? They did not refer to a place. Rather, they referred to God’s rule coming to earth; His justice and peace on earth. The Jewish people were waiting for a king.

As to how they interpreted this “rule of God” coming to earth, it depended on who you talked to. While waiting for the coming of God’s kingdom, there were basically three different groups of Jews who each chose a different way to use their time and live their lives until the King came.

1. The first group are the ones we might call separatists. Their approach toward how they would wait for the coming of God’s kingdom was as follows: Separate yourself from the wicked world and just wait for God to do whatever He’s gonna do.
2. The second group are the ones we might call the compromisers. They would be represented by the example of King Herod in the Bible. He took this point of view to heart: Build yourself fortresses and palaces, get along with your political bosses as well as you can, do as well out of it as you can and just hope that God will bless it somehow anyway.
3. Then there was the third group, who were called the “zealots.” This was their approach toward waiting for the kingdom: Take the kingdom by force, fight a holy war and bring in the kingdom on earth by military means.

Now Jesus was a true revolutionary. He came to turn all their expectations upside down. His option was a fourth approach — one that totally fit with the predictions of the Old Testament, but which they’d all missed until he came. He WAS the expected KING, but his KINGDOM was different than anything they’d ever imagined.

Jesus didn’t do things the way people expected him to. From the world’s point of view, in many ways the Kingdom of God is an upside-down kingdom. When God’s rule comes into a group of people, it takes a form that no other government or political movement on earth would even consider.

In Luke 4, Jesus stood up in front of a Jewish synagogue and explained the values of his kingdom and his interpretation of the words, “good news,” with the following:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, 
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” — Luke 4:18-19

When Jesus told his people to pray, “Your Kingdom come,” he was calling for a massive revolution. However, it was a revolution of a different kind. Rather than a call to upward mobility and a fight for free-market economy, it was a call to downward mobility. A call to “humble yourself in the sight of the Lord,” (James 4:10) and to “be the servant of all.” (Mark 9:35) It was a call to speak out for those who did not have a voice in the world, to set the captives free, to release the oppressed. It was a call to the kind of revolution that only comes through love, sacrifice and service.

When we pray, “Your kingdom come,” we’re praying that God’s way of thinking would become our way of thinking, and that his concerns would rule in our lives. We’re praying that we would become less selfish and more selfless. We’re not praying that our political party would win the next election, but we are praying that God would help us to stand up for issues of justice in the world and to seek ways to reach out to the poor, the sick and the hurting.

Whenever we reach out in these ways, God’s rule starts to take hold in our world. We get glimpses of his kingdom NOW, knowing that one day his Kingdom will arrive completely.

“But,” someone might say to me, “doesn’t the good news mean we will have eternal life?”

Yes, of course it does! Jesus said:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” — John 3:16

The Greek word translated as “eternal,” however, does not just refer to something that starts at some day in the future after you die. That word, aionios, refers to something that has no end and will never cease. It refers to something that starts now and continues into eternity.

In other words, in biblical thinking, eternal life begins immediately when we trust Jesus. He comes into our life and then desires us to submit to him as King now and forever. Submitting to him as king, of course, does not just mean going to church and doing religious things. It means submitting our very lives into his hands and seeking to live in such a way that his kingdom principles are lived out in us.

And so we pray, “Your kingdom come.”

I wonder, when a young starving boy prays this in an African slum, what kind of image he has in mind. “Your kingdom come.” Or the woman who is being sold into slavery in order for her children to eat, or the little girl dying of AIDS.

When we consider that 25,000 children die every day of hunger, poverty, easily preventable diseases and illnesses, and other related causes, what does it mean to pray, “Your kingdom come”?

That’s the equivalent of 1 child dying every 3.5 seconds.

And let’s consider the rest of this model prayer Jesus gave us. He said things like:

“Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Some people act like being a Christian is just about getting by on earth until the “real life” begins in heaven. But Jesus told us to pray that His will be done on earth.

About 1.1 billion people in the world don’t have adequate access to water, something you and I might take for granted, and 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation.

Many millions of people around the world don’t have access to healthcare.

Between 1 and 1.5 million people die of malaria every year, a disease that could easily be cured for less than the price of a Happy Meal at McDonald’s.

“Your Kingdom come.”

I wonder what it means for little Peter, a young man I know in the Mathare slums in Nairobi, when he prays, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

As I said, it’s really a very earthy prayer. It’s about praying for God’s rule to come into the everyday situations of life, where people are suffering. And, if we read it in the context of the rest of the Bible, it’s clearly about praying with the knowledge that God wants those of us who can to help play a part in answering that suffering.

Even the words, “Forgive as we forgive those who have sinned against us,” take on an especially powerful tone if we think of them in the terms of their original context.

The original audience lived under Roman rule, in an atmosphere of oppression. They longed for deliverance…

Just like in the Mathare slums, where Peter lives. The people live in “houses” made of the flimsiest, dirtiest of materials. The first time I visited Mathare, I noticed a stream of dirty water running down the uneven, dirt road. I was told that it was both the drinking water and the toilet for the residents. Rubbish lined the roads and filled the corners between the homes.

The pastor of a local church told us that diseases like malaria, diptheria, AIDS, etc. were just as common to them as the common cold is to Americans, if not moreso.

And I was told that the local government charges the people to live there. Their leaders live nearby in mansions partially paid for by their rent.

“Forgive those who have sinned against us…”

What about this part of the prayer?

“Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil…”

I think about the many children I’ve met who steal bread, and the girls who have been sold into prostitution; spurred on by sheer desperation.

“Yours is the kingdom and the power and glory forever. Amen.”

The Bible assures us that one day every wrong will be made right, God’s Kingdom will come fully, all evil will be judged, the oppressed will be set free…

But the Bible also makes it clear that God’s Kingdom is meant to break into the world NOW through those of us who claim to follow him.

What are you and I doing to see to it that bits of God’s rule breaks into a world where so much pain and injustice still reign? I wonder if, after thinking through their meaning, we’ll think a little differently about these words when we pray, “Your Kingdom come.”

Does God use doctors?

Recently, I heard someone say the following words:

“I don’t need any doctors. I go to my family physician, Jesus Christ.”

Unfortunately, there are some Christians who actually stand by this credo with a passion. They believe that going to the doctor is a sin and a sign of a lack of faith. I’ve had discussions with people who make this claim, and it frankly makes me very sad.

As we talked about in my last post, God does sometimes choose to heal miraculously. However, I am equally convinced that God often chooses to heal through the agency of people He has gifted with the special knowledge and abilities of the medical profession.

I pointed out in one debate that Luke, who wrote the Gospel of Luke, was a physician. One man tried to argue that Luke was a physician, but that he stopped practicing as a doctor once he became a Christian. The implied suggestion was that he repented of the sin of being a doctor once he came to know Christ.

Besides the obvious insult contained in that argument toward all the dedicated Christian doctors out there, this argument simply doesn’t hold water. For one thing, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that Luke ever changed his profession after becoming a follower of Christ. In fact, the only biblical evidence indicates the exact opposite. Toward the end of his letter to the Colossians, the Apostle Paul says the following:

Our dear friend, Luke, the doctor, and Demas send greetings. — Colossians 4:14

There is nothing in the Bible to suggest that the early Christians were against doctors. In fact, the only verses in the Bible that talk about doctors are actually quite positive.

Jesus himself used doctors as an example, and when he did so he did it in a positive way. In Matthew 9:12, he said:

It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.

Some readers, by lifting this comment out of context, might argue that Jesus is referring to himself as the doctor and that, therefore, this comment strengthens the argument that he, and he alone, is the doctor we need. A look at the context, however, refutes such an argument. Let’s look at the whole passage:

While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and “sinners” came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?”

On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” — Matthew 9: 10-13

The Pharisees were unhappy because Jesus was spending time with people they considered to be sinners. In their legalistic understanding of their faith, they believed that there were certain “kinds” of people they were not to associate with. Jesus was associating with those very people, and so they were offended.

When the Pharisees challenged Jesus about hanging out with “sinners,” he compared himself with a doctor. He said that healthy people don’t need a doctor, but sick people do. Then he said that he had come to sinners, not to the righteous.

In other words, he was proclaiming himself to be like a doctor of the soul, one who had come not for those who already had their lives together but for those who did not. He was not, however, using the illustration literally to talk about himself and his relationship to physical health. There are other places where we see him healing people physically, but in this case he was talking about his greater mission to those who were considered “sinners.”

Therefore, he used doctors as a positive example. Just as sick people need a doctor, sinners need a saviour.

This statement, which we’ve just read in Matthew, is also repeated in Mark and Luke. If Jesus acknowledged that sick people need a doctor, how can his followers deny the role of the medical profession in God’s plan?