Thursday, October 29, 2009

Why Is God Silent? Reflection on Ps. 50

"These things you have done and I kept silent; you thought I was altogether like you. But I will rebuke you and accuse you to your face." -- Ps. 50:21

People often wonder, "Where's God? Why isn't He intervening in this situation?" This question usually arises from a painful situation for which there is never an easy answer, and so I want to preface my remarks below with a disclaimer: I am not addressing every situation in which God seems silent in the face of pain. (A very helpful book to read is Philip Yancey's Disappointment With God.)

God's silence in Psalm 50:21 is based on His Self-restraint in response to human wickedness. Earlier He confronts the hypocrites among His people: "You hate my instruction and cast my words behind you. When you see a thief, you join with him; you throw in your lot with adulterers. You use your mouth for evil and harness your tongue to deceit. You speak continually against your brother and slander your own mother's son" (vv. 17-20). Unlike the case of Aaron's sons Nadab and Abihu, whom God struck dead for their sacrilege (cf. Ex. 10:1-4), or Ananias and Sapphira (cf. Acts 5:1-11), God rarely strikes people dead today. Why is this? Doesn't He know that people don't fear Him when He restrains Himself? That He loses their respect? And it's not like He expects us in the Church to be His executioners (a responsibility entrusts to the "state" according to Rom. 15:4).

No, like it or not, God's silence is based on His patience. "The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance" (2 Pet. 3:9). His "silence" is the calm before the storm, the opportunity we have to repent. We must not waste it; it will not last forever.

Monday, October 26, 2009

The Real Voldemort

Evangelical Christians love to debate Harry Potter. Many decry him and his Hogwarts gang as the insidious heralds of a new witchcraft that will destroy the remnants of American Christendom. Perhaps he (and they) will, perhaps not.

But one thing that is far more likely is that we will fall victim to forces worse than Voldemort and his Dark Arts cohort. These aren't sinister fiends wearing black capes with dementors at their beck and call. Rather, they are the scientists and marketeers who equate knowledge with power unrestrained by wisdom or morality. Our modern life is filled with "advances" that have become necessities, and we unthinkingly accept the claims of "You need this!" and "Lose weight with this (magic) pill!"

I'm not a Luddite. I am typing, after all, a blog entry on a computer that I happen to enjoy using. But I do worry about what will happen to a community when its members cease to worship God and refuse to acknowledge His authority. Professor David Bentley Hart, in his incredible Atheist Delusions, shares a dire prophecy about what will happen to us:

"When the aspiring ape ceases to think himself a fallen angel, perhaps he will inevitably resign himself to being an ape, and then become contented with his lot, and ultimately even rejoice that the universe demands little more from him than an ape's contentment."

Worse than such "banality" and dissolution, Hart foresees greater horrors produced by a society that replaces Christian humanism with dangerous "advances" in science:

"The mass manufacture of nerve toxins and nuclear weaponry, court-mandated sterilizations, lobotomies, the miscegenation of human and porcine genetic materials, experimentation on prison populations, clinical studies of untreated syphilis in poor black men, and so on: all of this required the scientific mind to move outside or 'beyond' Christian superstitions regarding the soul and the image of God within it."

Lord Voldemort, you've met your match in the blood-lust of the modern and post-modern age. You have slaughtered your thousands; scientism has slaughtered its millions.