Spiritual Abuse

Did you know there is such a thing as spiritual abuse?

Often, when we talk about this issue, our minds automatically go to some of the headlines that we've seen in recent years - about pastors who have fallen for one reason or another. The sexual abuse of minors and women in the church. The financial exploitation of followers. The secret things that men (sometimes women, but usually men) in church leadership have been getting away with for years, sometimes decades, that finally come to light and become scandal.

While spiritual abuse is scandalous, it's very rarely the kind of scandal we're talking about. It doesn't usually make headlines. The headlines that readily pop into our heads may have a component of spiritual abuse, but at their core, they are other types of crimes that just happen to take place in a spiritual setting. 

What I want to talk about now is actual spiritual abuse - the traumatic victimization of a person's relationship with God for whatever broken human nature lies behind it. 

The difference is that when scandals like the ones in the headlines break, everyone kind of stops to reflect on how God could let something like this happen. How does God enable men like these to be in these positions and to get away with these things? These scandals bring to our minds the questions of theodicy that we wrestle with so frequently - why do the wicked prosper and the good suffer? 

But true spiritual abuse is even more devious. True spiritual abuse leaves us questioning whether God even loves us. It leaves us questioning whether God ever could love us. It calls into question everything we think we know about God and ourselves, and it contradicts what we've read in the Bible at every turn. 

Often, those who experience spiritual abuse end up in a place where they believe that what the Scriptures say about God are true - He is good; He is merciful; He is loving; He is gracious; He has died for our sins that we may one day live with Him in Paradise. But they also end up believing that all of those things about God are true for everyone but them. That is, God is good, but He's not good to you. God is merciful, but He's not merciful to you. He is loving, but He doesn't love you. He died for our sins, but not yours. 

You are a wicked person who is neither deserving of nor receiving the goodness of God...and it's not God's fault; it's yours. 

A skilled spiritual abuser will make you think this is a reflection on you and that God wants to love you, but you just make it too difficult. You're too hard to love. You're messing up too much. 

They will also usually dramatically inflate their own role in your salvation, how important it is that you listen to them, how they are doing their best to "safeguard" you against your own self, how they only have your best interest at heart. 

They can get you to a place where God will really love you, they promise, but it's going to take a lot of effort. You are just such a piece of work. And they make you believe that your relationship with God hinges on their wisdom and insight until you are so crippled in your faith that you're not even sure you have any any more. 

Slowly but surely, they chip away at your soul until there's almost nothing left, until you become exactly what they've told you all along that you are - empty. defeated. desolate. a nobody. Once their "prophecy" (their "truth-telling") over your life has come true, or so it seems, they've got you. 

So what does spiritual abuse look like and how does it happen? 

It's simpler...and quieter...and less headline-y than you might think.  

A Sensory Experience

What does worship taste like? Smell like? Feel like? 

We live in a world of virtual reality, where we're very busy crafting multi-sensory experiences in places we could never really touch. Put on some goggles, and you can travel the world, but something is still missing. You can hike the volcanoes of Hawaii and never know what lava smells like. You can tour the street markets in Istanbul and not know what the local cuisine tastes like. You can hike with a caravan of alpacas through the Andes mountains and never know what their wool feels like. 

In the same way, many of us go to church and have the same kind of limited experience. We know what the sanctuary looks like. We know what shape the Cross takes. We recall how the worship sounds or what words the preacher said, but our sensory experience of the faith is limited. (Except, perhaps, for those special experiences that are sometimes designed to engage us a little differently. When I was in youth group, we would call these experiences "cheesy prayer night," but honestly, they are some of the most treasured memories of my faith.) 

It takes us to have a movie like The Passion of the Christ to even come close to having a sensory experience of Jesus. We need the dark theater and the surround sound and the way the seats vibrate and the noise of the crowds and the tears of the person next to us and...and there's still something missing. Because even in this, even in one of the most powerful immersive faith experiences of recent times, we think that Jerusalem, even Golgotha, somehow smells like stale popcorn and fake butter. 

Something is amiss. 

This is why I love the Table so much. This is what is so special about Communion. 

In the midst of an experience that we primarily see and hear, it is Communion that invites us to touch, to taste, to smell. It is a truly multi-sensory experience of the faith. It engages more of our senses than the rest of worship does, just by its very nature. 

I've heard it said that the elements we take in Communion don't taste like anything. That little bit of cracker and that one small sip of juice don't have enough substance to them to meaningfully create a sensory experience. 

I disagree. 

I distinctly remember one Sunday morning when we had accidentally come into a supply of cran-grape juice rather than pure grape juice, and I remember how much talk there was about how different the juice tasted that morning. I remember when someone came in and prepared the cup several days before service and left it in the refrigerator, how it tasted a little more stale and just...weird...and how everyone was talking about what happened to the juice. I remember when we changed our cracker, probably for supply chain or cost reasons, and there were so many complaints (church folk love to complain, sadly) that we switched back as soon as we were able. 

So don't tell me you don't taste that cracker and don't tell me you don't taste that juice because if we change it, you recognize it right away. 

The reason you don't think it tastes like anything is because you aren't engaged in the moment. And man, I really wish you were. 

Because this is the moment. This is the one. This is the chance you have to take a trip through a virtual reality right back to that upper room and here, now, you know what it smelled like - you can smell the bread and the people and the juice. You know what it felt like - you are holding the bread and the cup in your hand, your fingers running around their edges. You know what it tastes like - and again, don't tell me that you don't because if we change it, you know it's "wrong." 

There's something amazing about this immersive sensory experience, and it only comes to our worship each week through this Table. 

Jesus said, "Let those who have ears hear," but He also said this, "Taste and see (and feel and smell and know) that the Lord is good." 

Here's your chance to taste it.  

Let us feast at the Table of the Lord. 

God is Ready

On Mount Carmel, when the prophet of God challenges the prophets of Baal to a showdown of the gods, the prophet ends up taunting the false worshippers. "Oh, sorry. Maybe Baal is busy right now. Maybe he's somewhere far away doing something else and can't hear you. Maybe he's in the bathroom." Maybe, for whatever reason, your god simply isn't ready for this right now. 

That will never be the case for the Lord. 

Our God lives ready.

When you read the Bible, that's something you see over and over and over again. God shows up. God is there when His people need Him. He responds. He comes with flaming sword and strong armor and a stiff wind that blows through the whole battlefield. 

Remember when the young man was scared and the prophet prayed, "Oh, Lord, open his eyes and let him see what we both, You and I, see," and all of a sudden, the hills were teeming with flaming chariots and the whole army of the God of Israel? Remember when, in the Old Testament, the people continually called Him "the Lord of Armies"? 

You don't get to be called the Lord of Armies if you don't have flaming chariots on every hill and if you aren't ready to engage in battle in the moment when Your people need You. 

I'm not saying that God always acts in our timing or that we never have to wait on Him. The Bible is just as clear that sometimes, His people have to wait. Saul was weary of waiting and made an unauthorized sacrifice, which cost him the kingship. There are 400 years of silence between the end of the Old Testament and the coming of the actual Messiah. Lazarus laid dead in a tomb for days before Jesus showed up. It would be foolish for us to believe that just because our God is always ready, that it means that He's acting in our time. He has His own time. 

But ready, He remains. 

One of the more interesting examples of this comes from Job. When God responds to Job and addresses the man's (and his friends') understanding, one of the things He says is, "Do you know where the storehouses are where I keep My hail? It's on reserve for the time of great trouble, for the day of battle, the day of war. Do you know where I keep it?"

In other words, God's weapons are stocked. His supplies are ready. At any given moment, He can step in and unleash what He's prepared; He is always ready for that day. 

That doesn't mean He's eager for that day. That doesn't mean He wants that day to come. That doesn't mean that day comes on our time or that we will even know when it is. 

It simply means that when that day comes, when the fight is at hand, God is ready. 

In the blink of an eye, the storehouses will be open and the holy hail will rain down. Blink again, and we will see chariots of fire over all the mountains and valleys. Blink thrice, and we shall see the angels with their flaming swords slashing about. 

Our God is the Lord of Armies, and He is ready for that day. 

God of Right

I like to think that I can do no wrong. Knowing my motives and intentions (and ignoring the ones that are plainly self-centered and wrong, justifying them away as best I can, usually based on the inherent evil of the party I am being self-centered against), I like to believe that I am always acting in the right. After all, if I thought I were doing wrong, I wouldn't do it. Would I?

But the truth is that I can do wrong. The harder truth is that I do do wrong. The harder truth than this is that I do do wrong a lot, especially for someone who thinks she can do no wrong. 

Can I get an amen?

The good news is that God is a lot better, a lot greater than I am, and He can do no wrong. And that gives me something, at least, to trust in. (And even more than that, to believe in, to hope in, and to build my life on.)

This is hard for a lot of us because of the little problem of evil in the world. (Theodicy, for you theology buffs.) How is there so much evil in a a world ruled by a God who can do no wrong? How do bad people thrive and good people suffer if God is thoroughly good and incapable of wrong? How do our lives continue to be so broken if God, who loves us, can do no wrong? 

It leads to a theology where perhaps God just loves to punish us. If He can do no wrong, then left is right and right is wrong and wrong is good and if wrong is good and God is good, then maybe God can be wrong, which would only be good...and these are the kinds of twirling thoughts that keep a man of good faith up at night. Are they not? 

The problem is that we have such a limited understanding of right and wrong, such a shadowed perspective of it. We see things from one angle, and we get so confident in what we can see, but give us a glimpse of something outside of our peripheral vision for a second, and we realize how complicated it is. 

For example, a man commits a violent crime, and we say that what is right is for us to kill him for it. Death penalty. It is the only just outcome for the victim of the crime. But what about the victims of our justice? What about the man's family, who lose him just the way his victims lost so much? Is that just? Is that right? We wrestle with these kinds of things almost endlessly; they cause rifts among us. We see how our limited perspective sometimes completely disregards something that on any other terms, we would consider extremely important - namely, human feeling. 

We view God's actions in the same way. We see them through our limited perspective, and we can't understand. We can't fathom how something might be good or s because from where we sit, it doesn't look like either. We think maybe God got it wrong. 

But He didn't. 

God cannot do wrong. 

Even Job's friends knew this; it's one of the few things they got right: far be it from God to commit evil acts; and from the Highest One to engage in wrongdoing!....Can one who despises justice also govern?

Could God be good if He was not just? The answer is, of course not. 

Of course, that doesn't help our hurting hearts that, sure enough, just don't understand. But perhaps we can hold to knowing our perspective, as sure as it seems, is limited by our creatureliness and instead, we can lean only on the truth....unlike us, God can't do wrong. 

He simply can't. 

God of All of Us

The Bible tells us that when God made Adam, He first formed the dust into the shape of the man and then breathed the Spirit into him to give him being. 

When He created Eve, He put Adam into a deep sleep, pulled one of his ribs, formed dust around it and breathed spirit into that dust, then woke the man up to see his enlivened bride. 

David confesses in the psalms that he was knit together in his mother's womb.

The rest of us just happened by accident. 

I'm kidding.

When we ask how it is that God created us, we often go back to the Adam story - we are dust and to dust we will return. He formed us, then breathed into us His life and now, here we are, paying our taxes in a foreign country until we can go back Home. 

But the biblical witness tells us plainly that scraping together some dust, even forming it, even breathing into it is not the only way to make a human being. I mean, think about how much hope goes into a baby like Samuel, for instance - one so desperately prayed for for so long. Or how much courage has to go into a man like Gideon, who will be caught hiding and still be hailed as a mighty warrior. Or how much promise goes into a little baby developing in the womb of the virgin - Immanuel. 

That's not just dirt.

There's more to a man than a little mud and Spirit. Dust we are and to dust we will return, but don't ever think for even one second that God has some creative studio somewhere up in heaven with just a big ol' pile of dirt in the corner and He's just laying it all out over and over and over again. No, there's more to us than that. 

But what is the same about all of us is that no matter how we came about, whether we were dirt of the earth, bone of the bone, flesh of the flesh, or some kind of tapestry knit together, it is the same God who made us all. 

Whether we are rich or poor, skinny or fat, pretty or plain, humble or proud, contrite or cocky, good or bad, right or wrong, right or left, or whoever we are, it is the very same God who formed all of us. Every single one of us was created in His image to reflect and bear His glory. And that at least gives us a starting point for getting together. 

It is Job who gives us this truth as he ponders his life, his loss, his faith, his love. He looks around and says, "God made me. But didn't He make my servants, too?" And my wife. And my kids. And my cattle. And my everything. God made all of us, so who is anyone to say that one man has more value than another? That one man is worth more than another? 

We are all one-off masterpieces of an incredible Artist. There has never been another like us and there never will be. Dirt, maybe. Spirit, for sure. But each of us still unique in our creation, bearing a specific mark of our Creator, whether we're knit, spit, or fit together. Here we are. 

Isn't that cool?

God of Light

Do you believe in the sun? Yes, the sun - that great, big ball of light that hangs around in the sky for 8-12 hours per day or so, illuminating our lives and warming them by its powerful rays. That sun. Do you believe in the sun? 

Does it matter if you do?

If you stopped believing in the sun, right now. If you found a way to somehow deny its existence. If you were able to turn your back and close your eyes really hard or hold up a big piece of cardboard or an umbrella and block it out, would it matter? Could you, by refusing to believe, somehow cause the sun to cease existing?

Of course not. 

Whether you believe in the sun or not, it illuminates your life. Whether you believe in it or not, it nourishes life all around you. Whether you believe in it or not, it determines the temperature of the atmosphere that you inhabit. You can ignore it, deny it, refute it all you want, but put your feet on the black asphalt in the middle of the day and you realize...it doesn't matter. The sun exists, and it affects everything - believing or not. 

The same thing is true about God. 

I chose the sun as an example for a few reasons, many of which might be obvious. One of the main reasons I chose it is because the verse in Job that prompted this reflection says, "As for His light, is anyone not illuminated?" In other words, is there anyone in all creation that God's light doesn't shine on?

The answer is no. 

That doesn't mean it's for lack of trying. There are those who try to deny, ignore, refute, rebuke, dismiss the notion of God, but like the sun, it doesn't matter. God's light shines on everyone. God's light hits everything. God's light illuminates life as we know it. It determines the temperature of the atmosphere in which we live. It nourishes the life all around us. 

We may try to hold a big piece of cardboard or an umbrella over our heads to block it out, but even in doing that, we must admit that there is something that exists that is affecting us that we are trying to dismiss, diminish, deny, refute, ignore. And the minute that we must confess we are trying to deny it, we must also confess that there is something there to deny. 

God's light shines on all of us. Believers...or not. 

What is He illuminating for you today?

Someone Like Me

We read about the disciples, the twelve guys that Jesus spent most of His time with, and we think, "I'm kind of like that." I'm kind of like Peter, a little bit impulsive at times, but well-meaning. I'm kind of like John, knowing for sure sometimes just how much Jesus loves me. I'm kind of like Simon, zealous for the things I'm passionate about and really believe in. I'm kind of like Andrew, quick to offer whatever I've got without realizing how small it is to most folks; maybe I'm just eager. Yes, that's it. 

On and on and on we go, identifying with something in every disciple that we know. I doubt sometimes like Thomas. I have to be told like Nathanael. I am ready to share like Phillip. There's a little bit of betrayer, of sinner, in me like Judas. Yeah, I'm like these guys. 

So obviously, there's a place at the Table for me. 

Isn't that the conclusion we're always trying to come to? I'm a lot like this other guy who Jesus loved, so He might be able to love me, too. Or I'm kind of like this guy who got to go to the Last Supper, so maybe I'm invited, too.

Maybe Jesus will break a piece of bread for me. 

Listen, I am all for whatever gets you to the Table, whatever gives you that last little bit of courage or faith or hope or whatever it is you need to come. 

But this line of thinking doesn't really help any of us. 

When we compare ourselves to the things about the disciples that we find laudable or even forgivable, whatever it is we're using to justify ourselves before the Lord (which is its own problem in itself, by the way), it ends up fragmenting us. When you tell yourself that God would break bread with the part of you that whatever, it's not a far jump to also start telling yourself that God would not break bread with some other part of you. That maybe He's okay if you're a little impulsive sometimes like Peter, but He's not really okay that you sometimes...whatever it is that you do. 

It doesn't take long, then, before you're developing your relationship with God with this part of yourself that you think is justified, this part that you think is okay, instead of all of yourself...and it doesn't take long from there before you are convinced God doesn't really love you. Not the real you. Not the person you are when you're not primping and preening yourself to be somewhat presentable to Him. 

God loves the Peter part of you, but does He love the you part of you? It quickly becomes hard to believe it. 

The truth is that Jesus broke bread with Peter not in spite of his impulsiveness, but out of love for the wholeness of who he was. He broke bread with John not because he knew how beloved he was, but even when he was a Son of Thunder. He broke bread with Judas not only as a betrayer, but as the fullness of a human being created in the image of God, with his good stuff and his bad stuff and everything in between. 

And He breaks bread with you for the same reason - because He loves you. All of you. 

Not just the parts you think you can justify by looking around the Table. You are not and never will be "someone like them." You are someone like you, and that is who Jesus loves. 

Take and eat. 

God Really Listens

Job's friends told him to shut up. Just shut up. Every word you say in your own defense is an act of rebellion because God has already judged you guilty and destroyed your life for it. At this point, Job, you're just proving God right to be upset with you. You're a rebellious little punk, an obstinate little brat, and God doesn't even care about your rambling. 

Do you ever feel like Job's friends might be onto something? Like God really doesn't want to listen to you any more, if He ever did in the first place? Like all your talking, all your praying, is just rebellion? It's just proving Him right the more you try to defend yourself against the brokenness in your own life. 

It's a common feeling, even among Christians. Even among mature Christians who are, we confess, still human. 

But it's a lie. 

God loves to listen to you. He loves to hear you tell your story...because He knows that when you do, you're also telling His story, and He loves to hear you tell His story, too. 

He loves to listen to you because it's not a one-way relationship. He's not some disengaged, detached authority imposing His Will on a non-participatory people; He wants you in on this. He wants you to be a full part of what He's doing, and that means you have to be having an ongoing conversation. And conversation requires not just speaking, but listening...by both parties. 

You know what? I'm gonna say it. I think God would approve of me saying it. So here goes: 

I think God likes listening to you even when you're actually being a rebellious little punk or an obstinate little brat. I think God always cares about your rambling. 

Do you have kids? Do you love listening to them talk about their video games all day? Do you enjoy listening to their excuses or the way they defend themselves when they've done something wrong? 

Okay, but do you love that they're still talking to you?

In a world in which they hold the entire world at their fingertips, at least they're still talking to you. I cannot think of a single parent I have ever spoken with who has not been thrilled that their kid still wants to talk to them, that their kid will still talk to them, no matter what age they're going through. 

God is this way. He may not love your video games or your excuses or your brattiness or your obstinance or your rebellion, but He's listening anyway. Because He loves when you talk to Him. 

Job knew this. 

That's why when Job's friends told him that God doesn't care and doesn't want to hear it and isn't interested in Job's side of the story, Job said plainly, Would He oppose me merely with His great power? Surely not! Surely, He would show me the respect of listening to my argument.

Surely, Job says, God is listening to me. Of that, I am sure. 

You can be sure, too. So talk away. 

God really listens to you. (Job 23:6)

God of the Guilty

I want to live a life worthy of my God. I want to live a life that glorifies His name. I want to live in such a way that when others look at me, they know I'm different and they wonder why...but they don't have to wonder for long because I want to live as a witness. 

We all aspire to this, once Jesus has our hearts. This is what we strive toward, the race we are running. And we think that the best way to accomplish this goal is to accomplish another - be perfect, just as He is perfect. 

We want our perfect lives to represent God's very best. That's why, by the way, most of us feel like failures most of the time because if we're quoting Scripture here, let's just throw this one in - all have fallen short. 

And let's just update that Scripture a little, too, and say what it really means - all will always fall short. There's not going to come a time in any of our earthly lives when any single one of us is actually perfect. We will always be human. We will always be creatures. We will always be fallen. (Until That Day.) 

For those of us who think our perfect life is the best offering we have to give God, this is bad news indeed. 

But it's not really bad news. 

Imagine buying a car that you never drive because it might get dirty. Having that car in pristine condition as a showpiece is what you wanted, so you can never drive it. How long until folks start to think you're weird?

Or what about buying a nice new outfit and never wearing it because it looks so nice just as it is? You buy it, take it home, hang it in the closet, and show it to everyone, but you never wear it because it might get wrinkled or stained. How long until you look at it and wonder if you even really needed (or wanted) it in the first place? 

A lot of Americans have a bad habit of buying food they're never going to eat. They like the idea of it, so they buy it and take it home, but it sits on the counter or in the fridge until it spoils, then it's thrown away. How much longer do you keep buying that food? 

The same is true with God. 

God is awesome because He's the Creator of everything. But there are hundreds of religions with an awesome creator god. The thing about our God is that He's not just awesome - He's amazing. And the amazing thing about Him is His grace. And mercy. And steadfastness. And love. And the folks who are looking at our lives are never going to know those things about Him if we don't need them. If our lives are already perfect and we don't need the incredible, good, awe-inspiring, amazing things of God, then our lives will never really witness to Him. 

It's counter-intuitive, but God doesn't need us perfect. Job perhaps says it best when he says, Does [God] profit from your perfect ways? 

The answer is no. God doesn't profit when you're perfect. His name does not get glory when you're perfect. No one learns any good thing about Him when you live a life that doesn't need Him.

God profits when you're being perfected. And that's a far better story to live. 

God Speaks About You

"Oh, I've heard so much about you!" 

Have you ever heard that from someone you just met? Chances are good that you have. And our first reaction is almost always the same - from who? Who's been talking about me? We want to know that what they've been saying about us is good. 

This brings us to the story of Job. 

Job was a good man whose reputation preceded him. Everyone knew about Job, and everything they knew about him was good. His family spoke well of him. His friends spoke well of him. The townsfolk where he was clearly a leader among them spoke well of him. Everyone spoke well of him.

So did God. 

This is what's interesting. God is sitting up in the heavens on His heavenly throne, looking down at His footstool, and He's talking about Job. He's telling even the Adversary all about this good man. God can't stop talking about Job's goodness. It's how Satan gets drawn into the whole thing in the first place - God is talking about this earthly man in the heavens. 

What's cool is that even after Job is sitting in his ash heap, scratching his boils, void of family and friends, having lost everything, not doing any particular good at the moment with no standing left in the community, God is still talking about him in the heavens. 

What's really cool is that Job knows it. 

In one of his defenses to his friends, while Job was again proclaiming his innocence, he declares, "Look! Even at this very moment, my witness is there, in heaven; my advocate is seated on high." Look! Even right now, God is talking about me. He's taking up my case and defending my name and telling my story because He knows me. 

That's one of the most wonderful things about Job - just how much God speaks about the man out of His great love for him. 

Did you know that God speaks about you? Did you know that He knows your name and He's up in the heavens talking about your earthly self? Did you know that He's taking up your case, defending your name, and telling your story, yes, but that He's also just talking about you, like He was doing at the beginning of the book of Job? 

Have you seen My servant? Pretty cool dude. 

I think a lot of us are in for a shock when we get to eternity and are greeted with a chorus of, "Oh, I have heard so much about you!" from the saints who have gone before. We'll look around for a second, confused, perhaps, wrinkle our eyebrows and say, "You have? From whom?"

From your Father, of course. He can't stop talking about you. 

Even at this very moment. 

God's Good Advice

Job is an interesting tale. Here is a man who has everything in the world and not only that, but the world thinks highly of him. He's somehow done what so many of us struggle to do and surrounded himself with good friends - the kind of good friends who will come and sit on an ash heap with him and talk about life, God, and faith. 

Those are good friends. 

And yet...they're wrong. 

We know this because we remember this every time we read the story. Once you've read it a time or two, it's hard to read without getting frustrated or downright angry with Job's friends because they're just spouting all this religious-sounding stuff - the kind of stuff we're all familiar with ourselves and that hasn't been helpful to us in our times of trouble - but it lacks fundamental understanding and basic...kindness. 

Job's friends mean well, but they are not nice to him. Actually, I think they think they are being nice. I think they think they are speaking the "hard truth" that Job "needs to hear" and that "real" friendship is sometimes "tough love," and the more Job pushes back against them and tells them they are misguided, the more they double down until you get the sense they are at the very least exasperated with him. At most, they think maybe he's duped them and he's not the kind of guy that they thought he was. 

Now we're getting into the kind of friends that most of us know. 

The arguments we get into with our friends are not over our differences of opinion. It doesn't matter to us, when we're really in relationship with someone, whether they like chocolate cake when we like vanilla or whether they buy from the local coffee shop down the street or the big name chain place across town. Preferences don't matter; it's the deeper stuff that makes us friends. We believe that we have the relationship to speak the hard truth to one another. 

And...that's why they're our friends. We trust them to do that. 

In fact, many of us go to our friends more often than we go to God when we need advice. We ask our friends what they think. We ask them to pray with us. We invite them to sit in our ash heap and reflect and reminisce and ruminate and help us figure out where we go from here, what's happening, what our next step is. 

Then, we get disappointed when that's not going well. In hard times, a lot of us find that our friends are a lot like Job's friends - well-meaning, but rough around the edges. They have a lot to say, but not a lot that seems to be in context. They have their opinions, but not a lot of understanding. I think every single one of us can think of a time we got angry with our very good friends, maybe even started yelling at them or sulking away, because they just didn't "get it." 

We forget that we have one Very Good Friend who does. 

This is Who Job remembers (which is why he can give such grace to his earthly friends). It's how he's able to look at his friends, thank them for sitting in his ash heap with him, invite him to say, but gently reject their advice. He knows, and he plainly says, "With God is the sum total of all wisdom and of all power; His is the greatest of plans and the deepest of comprehensions" (12:13). 

In other words - God understands what we don't. God understands what our friends don't. So when we're looking for understanding and good advice, it's God alone who can give it to us. 

And if we're lucky, we'll have some friends to sit in the dust together while we wait to hear it.   

The First Breakfast

When we come to the Table, we like to talk about the Last Supper. After all, it was here where Jesus said, "Do this in remembrance of Me." So, remembering, here we are. 

Yet, there's more to the way that we feast with Jesus than just this. 

In that Upper Room, the disciples had no idea. None. They had traveled with Jesus for somewhere around three years, heard many sermons, taken in many parables, witnessed many healings. They were living the good life, really. Sure, the Pharisees and Sadducees were constant antagonists, but for the most part, the yoke was easy. At least, they don't tell us if it wasn't. 

In that Upper Room, they were breaking bread like they had probably done a thousand times before, their Lord and Rabbi so close to them that the disciple whom He loved could lay his head on Jesus's chest. As deeply-ingrained in their Jewish nature as the ritual of Passover was, there was something light and airy about the room. Something casual. Something...familial. (Read that again - familial.) A gathering of brothers, good friends, students. Teacher. 

In that Upper Room, very little was different than it had been every other day, as far as the disciples knew. They had probably even celebrated this meal with Jesus and maybe with some subset of each other twice already. After all, faithful Jews held this feast every year, so we can be certain that Jesus, at least, did. And we can be certain He did not eat it alone. 

And while that's all well and good, there's something about it that can seem disconnected from our own experience. Because we don't live on the Passover side of Golgotha; we live in the shadow of the Cross. 

And that Cross changes everything. 

Last week, we talked about the Next Supper - the next meal that the disciples had to eat, the first one they had to eat without Him. What it must have been like to break that bread. But remember, Jesus didn't stay away long. 

Three. simple. days. 

Then, here He was again. And look what He's doing - He's preparing another meal. 

Let's call this the First Breakfast.

The disciples are out fishing. They don't know what else to do now that their Lord is gone, so they go back to what they know. But it seems they don't know it all that well any more because they've been at it all night and haven't caught a single thing. Not a one. 

Then, there's this guy, this stranger, and they catch sight of Him over on the shore. And He's...grilling some fish. Fresh fish. Like it's nothing at all. Like these masters of their craft haven't just come up empty after a long night on the lake. Like He is just somehow casting a line and reeling in breakfast. Just like that. 

And this is important. Because remember what Jesus said at the Last Supper? He said they would not have this meal again until all things were finished. And then, remember what Jesus said on the Cross? He said, it is finished. And now, here He is on the shore of the lake, grilling up fish and breaking bread, and you can just see the grin on His face - after all the disciples have been through for three days, after all their doubts, their fears, their disappointments, after how lost they have felt without their Rabbi all of a sudden, after the mocking of the Roman guard and, we can say, the Pharisees and the Sadducees and a whole host of other persons who were all around who all have the same taunt: Messiah? Ha! 

But now, but now you can just see the grin on His face as He takes the bread, blesses it, breaks it, hands it out to the weary fishermen...and zealots...and tax collectors...and doubters...and...and says, It really is finished. 

Take and eat.  

By Grace

When trauma comes into a new season, into a good season, into the kind of season I feel like I've been waiting my whole life for, there's something in my heart that cries out in exhaustion - how long, O Lord?

But if I can stop for a second, take it in, breathe, and pull myself back, I'm grateful. I'm grateful for good seasons, even ones that look like they're being ruined by old things. Even ones that look like they've come maybe a bit too early, like maybe I haven't matured enough yet for it but here it is anyway.

That's really it, isn't it? We want to believe, when our good seasons come, that we're ready for them. We want to believe that we've outgrown all those former things, put them away, put them behind us, worked through them - whatever terminology we want to use - and that we're somehow "ready" now to "just enjoy" something good. "Finally." 

Then...BAM. 

But you know what? I'm thankful. 

Because it's only by the grace of God. 

Your hard things in your good seasons are a gift from God. They are an invitation. An opportunity for healing. An offer of healing that only He can provide.

You'd think that a good season would teach you that God is good. And it does. But a good season that still requires wrestling with hard things can teach you even more about God than this. 

I think it's fair to say that I have learned my most important lessons through the hard things in my good seasons. I have learned far more in these times than I have ever learned in the hard times, the times when the only thing I could devote any meaningful energy to was simply surviving. 

But put me in a good season, and suddenly, I have the reserves. I have the energy. I have what I need to confront some things, to embrace them, to challenge them, to accept them. To learn to live with the gifts they bring, to wrestle with their trials. In my hard times in good seasons, I learn the very best of me - the kinds of things I had hoped I had already learned, the things I thought would make the good seasons truly good. 

Yet, here I am, learning them for real. The things I've dreamed of. The things I've worked for. The things I'm still working for. The things that I'm finding are just as good, if not better, as I always dreamed they would be and, even more than that, they're possible. 

As much as you dream for them, they aren't possible in your hard seasons. Not if you don't already have them on reserve. When you're in fight, flight, or freeze mode all the time, none of that inspires growth. None of that puts down roots. None of that matures. It can't; it's always either in motion or anti-motion, and for real good, you need something steady - not stagnant nor frantic. 

So I'm thankful for hard times in good seasons because they mean I'm growing. They mean I can keep growing. They mean that the things I've dreamed of and prayed for are possible. They mean that God's promises are real. 

By His grace alone. 

Amen.

Therapy

We live in an age in which mental health, and the struggles that we have from living as fallen human beings in a broken world, are being acknowledged and, to the best of our ability, addressed. So when we talk about trauma and the way that it follows us around, popping up all over again even in particularly good seasons, the natural inclination is to simply recommend that we go to therapy and "work it out." 

To some degree, this is true. No one is responsible for the way you handle your trauma but you. At the end of the day, if you want to have a different relationship with your trauma, it's up to you to pursue that. To put in the effort. To put in the work. To take the initiative. To make it happen. 

But as much as we have made a business out of trauma therapy, we have to be realistic about what we can and cannot do. And what we cannot do is "cure" trauma. Nor can we determine how quickly we work through it. 

You can spend years of your life and thousands of dollars in therapy, working through your trauma with absolute earnestness. But anyone who has ever lived with actual trauma knows that even after all of that, there are going to be things in this world that still remind you. And trauma is never just nudged; it is awakened. When something reminds you, it reminds you abruptly, without warning, in full color and sound and smell and feel. It is a full body experience that you don't get to choose to experience or not. 

You only get to choose what to do with it.  

The trick, then, is not getting rid of trauma so that it doesn't get to ruin anything any more - the trick is reconfiguring your relationship with trauma so that when it shows up, your life isn't ruined. It's learning how to grieve, how to embrace the pain, how to forgive, how to offer grace (to yourself as much as others). It's learning to make the knots in your fabric as small as possible, knowing they are never going to go away, while learning how to run your fingers over the tapestry, feel them, and just keep moving on. 

So often, we think that if we still feel trauma, if we're still affected by it, if it still impacts our life and intrudes into places we haven't invited it, then we haven't "dealt" with it. We haven't "healed" from it. 

That's simply not true. 

Your trauma can come back tomorrow in a way that is so profoundly familiar to you. And if, when it does, you handle it in a healthier way, then you are dealing with it. You are healing it. You are recognizing how to live with it and making adjustments so that it doesn't destroy you any more. 

There is a way to live with trauma and gratitude, and it comes when we are able to encounter trauma well. When we are able to let it have its moment without stealing ours. That's the whole goal of trauma therapy. Not that you would never be triggered again - we're human; this stuff stays with us; it's the way we're wired - but that you would never be taken hostage by your triggers again. 

Not that you don't have trauma, but that you don't live trauma's life; you get to live your own. 

And listen, I'm not saying not to go to therapy. I'm not saying not to get professional help. I'm not saying not to build a support network. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that we have to recognize trauma for what it is and not expect too much out of our pop psychology. We have to have a realistic perspective on what we can and can't do with trauma, what we can and cannot heal, what we can and cannot help. 

We cannot control what will bring trauma flooding back on us, no matter how much we work through. There will always be little details we didn't think of, things that remind us that we never thought to mention in therapy. So we have to figure out how we're going to deal with those moments.

That's the only way to keep trauma from robbing yet another season of its good things. 

Trauma

How long, O Lord? How long must I wrestle with my human things? With the same human things that seem to keep coming around and ruining every single season of my human existence? 

We're talking, of course, about trauma. It's a bit of a psychological buzzword in today's world, and it's often not used correctly. The younger generations use it to mean anything that made them upset or didn't give them what they wanted, talking about things such as, "I asked for a cup of milk one time when I was 3 years old and it took my mom and hour to get it for me and that trauma has stuck with me forever." But I'm not really talking about this kind of "trauma." I'm talking about real trauma. 

We live in a fallen world. We know this. We are assaulted by micro-traumas every day, the small slights and inconveniences that happen just by living as fallen men and women in community with other fallen men and women. The stuff that's just...life. And no matter how much we want to talk about them as these major traumas and labor to eradicate this kind of stuff from the world, we never will. As long as we are human, we will wound each other in small ways every day without ever meaning to. A little grace covers many microtraumas and keeps them from becoming pathological. For most of us. 

But some of us know real trauma. We have stories. We have pasts. We have the really heavy stuff that we always seem to have picked up again somewhere, no matter how many times we've thought we've laid it down. 

That's what we do, right? We get into these good seasons when things finally seem like maybe they are starting to break open, like maybe there's a little space for us to breathe again. Like we can see a little bit of the sun through these dark clouds and all of a sudden, we raise our faces heavenward, take a big, deep, healing breath in, and blow those dark clouds all to smithereens because here, now, we're finally in a place where we can do that. Where our trauma doesn't have to follow us into a new season. Where there's nothing but wide open future in front of us, and we'll be damned if we're going to let the past poison that. 

And then, we look up, and there's that stupid cloud again. Without our permission. Without our conscious thought. Without our want. And we're screaming all over again - how many more seasons of my life does this junk get to ruin? 

And the answer is...complicated. 

Because the thing about trauma is that this is what it does. It follows you around. It goes with you. And it does this until you deal with it in a healthy way. 

Unfortunately, you can't deal with trauma in a healthy way when you're busy adding to it. When you're in dark seasons, unsafe seasons, traumatic seasons, broken seasons - you just don't have the resources (physical, mental, spiritual, emotional) to actually deal with the trauma, so it keeps following you around. And all of these little things keep triggering this stuff in your mind whenever it seems safe to do so, reminding you that it's there and that you need to deal with it. 

It's that same feeling you get when you walk into the kitchen and know you went there for a reason but can't remember what that reason was. Trauma nudges you just enough to move, but you can't remember what you're doing there. Because it's not obvious and you don't have the resources and there's nothing really to do, but trauma keeps reminding you that you need to go to the kitchen. 

Until, of course, you're in a season in which you can actually just go to the kitchen. That's why the bad stuff always seems to get into our good seasons and bring its poison with it. You're never more likely to survive a poisoning than when you're at your strongest, so as soon as you get into these strong seasons, these good seasons, these days you've been waiting for, your trauma is like...I've been waiting, too. I've been waiting for you to be able to deal with me. So here I am! It's me! I came to live in your good season with you so we can do all the things together! 

Ugh. 

How many more seasons do you get to ruin for me? 

As many as it takes until your heart can truly untangle it and work through the mess and take out the knots that life has made in the you that was knit together with tremendous love. That's how many.  

How Long, O Lord?

Do you have these things in your life that just seem to follow you around, no matter where you are or what you do? You just can't seem to get away from them. 

We think that changing our circumstances will get us away from them, but here they are again anyway. We think that having a really good season gets us away from the bad stuff that haunts us, but it seems to follow us anyway. There doesn't seem to be a day, doesn't seem to be a breath, without this stuff hanging over us like a thick, dark cloud - always threatening to rain, even on the days when it doesn't. In fact, that cloud seems to be all the darker on the brighter days. 

Maybe it's the contrast. I don't know. 

I have these things in my life. I have these things that just chase me around and seem bent on ruining whatever good thing I have going for me. Even if they don't ruin the actual thing itself - even if they don't run me wholly into the ground the way they so often seek to - they still ruin my ability to enjoy my good seasons.

I go home at night and wrestle with these things. Knowing, knowing, they are there. Knowing they're trying. Knowing I'm wrestling against them, even if I also know that it's not going to rain today. At least, I'm fairly sure that it's not going to rain today. 

But they're heavy anyway. The threat looms large. The history that I have with my things, knowing what they've done to me in the past, hangs like dead weight around my shoulders, pulling my head down. I find myself just wanting to scream, How many more times do you get to destroy my life? How many more good things, good days, good breaths do you get to take from me?

Sometimes, I do. 

And listen, I'm not talking about "big, bad things." I'm not talking about the stuff we always think we're talking about when we talk about stuff like this, although those things qualify, too. I don't have a bunch of big, dark secrets hiding in my closet. I don't have some heinous double life where I've been hiding the "real" me from everyone. I don't have some massive thing going on that would shock you if you heard about it. 

I've got human things. The byproducts of living in a broken flesh in a fallen world. The years of accumulated baggage that I've picked up from the baggage that others have thrown into my existence. The baggage I've added to my own shoulders by the way I've responded. The wrestling of the flesh that comes with not absolutely loving everything about the unique way that God has created me - complicated, of course, by others who also have not loved everything about the unique way that God has created me and who have not been polite about it.

Human things. The same kinds of things we're all wrestling with, our own versions of them. And yet, that familiar heavy weight that makes me just want to scream - how much longer? how much more? how many more times, more days, more breaths? 

How long, O Lord?  

The Next Supper

When we talk about the Table, we talk about the Last Supper - that Passover feast when Jesus broke bread with His disciples in the Upper Room. When Peter complained about having his feet washed. When it got into Judas's heart to betray the Lord. When Jesus said, "Do this...in remembrance of Me." 

But sometimes, I think about the next supper. 

I think about the next day, the day when Jesus was crucified. It was the day before the Sabbath, which would have started at sundown that night. It was the day in which the people were preparing not only their last fresh meal, but a meal that would keep and be a little stale for the Sabbath. Cooking, depending on what part of it you were doing, would be considered "work." So many of the things had to be made ahead. 

There were persons who were threshing wheat while nails were being driven into Jesus's hands and feet. Persons who were kneading dough when a spear was being plunged into His side. Persons who were pouring wine while a rag was being soaked in bitter gall. 

Was it hanging heavy over them?

What about when they sat down to dinner that night, their Rabbi in a borrowed tomb, all the life drained from His body, and they broke the bread? I picture this moment, this catch in their hearts the way Peter's heart must have caught when he heard the rooster crow just a few hours earlier. 

Do this.... 

Lord, I can't. You lay dead in a borrowed tomb, and how? How can I break bread? How can I do this when it reminds me of You, reminds me of this Table we shared just last night?

How can I break bread on the Sabbath, on the day of rest, when everything inside of me is in turmoil? When I'm torn up inside-out? When my guts are wrenched within me?

I break bread, and...I remember. Whether I want to or not, I remember. Whether I intend to or not, I remember. That's what You said, Lord - You said, "Remember."

And today, I don't want to. I don't know how I can. I don't know what it means to remember when everything I think I know has changed in a single day, in a single breath. In Your last breath. 

The Last Supper? 

No. The challenge is the Next Supper. The one I have to eat while my Lord is crucified. When it's not His hand that gives me the bread, but my own. When it's not His voice I hear, but the heavy silence. 

When I remember...because I can't forget.  

God of Justice

We are living in a time when "justice" is a buzzword - social justice, racial justice, criminal justice, election justice. Justice for everyone! Justice for all! 

Can we even define justice? 

In the very same breath that we try to define it in one term, but we can't. Justice is ensuring equal opportunity for everyone, but we think it also requires stripping "privilege" from some. Justice is holding everyone responsible for their actions, but some are more responsible for their actions than others. We want to have justice for the black man killed by the white man, but we also recognize that if we had true justice to begin with, neither of those men would have been in that position in the first place. 

Thus, at the very same time that we think we know what justice is, we realize that justice starts someplace way before we are ready to execute it and true justice will never come until we trace it all the way back and find the absolute fundamental root of it and start there. 

Until we do, we're just putting a band-aid on the symptoms. And we know that.

So let's go back to where justice begins. 

It begins with God. 

It begins with goodness that spoke everything into being, set everything exactly into place, commissioned the world to grow and to thrive together, and had order. That "very good" God talks about in Genesis 1 is justice, in every single way that we want to define it. It is the thing that keeps us from being in a place where we have to try to figure out what justice is at all. 

If we want to restore justice, we have to get back to God. Period. We have to go back to the way He does it. We have to seek His heart in all things and then, execute. Put it into practice. Bring it into the world. 

I know, I know. There are many who will wrestle with this. Many who struggle to reconcile a good God in a broken world the way it is. We struggle with putting the pieces back together because there's something in us that has us even questioning God. 

But God's way is still good. It is still very good. And even Job's friends - who didn't get a lot of things right - got this right. When it comes to justice, they had this to say: 

Does God corrupt justice, or does the Highest One corrupt the good? 

The answer is intended to be a resounding, "Of course not." Of course not. 

So if we're looking for justice, we have to go back to God. Because there and only there will we find it uncorrupted. 

God's Miracles

Job had every trouble conceivable to man. Every single one. He faced loss, disease, brokenness, condemnation. His own friends, his very good friends, sat next to him while he scratched himself with broken shards of pottery until his boils were bleeding all over the ash heap that used to be his life, and they told him what a terrible sinner he must be - a terrible sinner in secret, since he had such a high reputation in the entire community. 

Wow, Job. You're just not who we thought you were. And now, look at you - all exposed like this. Did you think you could get away with it forever? 

The entire book of Job is basically one long discourse encouraging the man to just "curse God and die." Just call God out. Blame God for the trouble. Take Him to the mat. 

And yet, Job - from his very own ash heap - cannot stop talking about the goodness of God. The rightness of God. The righteousness of God. 

The miracles of God. 

I don't know that anybody in all the Bible talks about the miracles of God the way that Job does. 

In his discourse to his friends, while they're busy condemning him and judging some kind of private lift they've concluded he must be living, from the pile of rubble that used to be his life, covered in ashes, bleeding from his boils, childless, money-less, homeless, Job declares, 

He does wonderful things that confound, infinite numbers of miracles.

Infinite numbers of miracles. I doubt at this point that Job could even count, realistically, the numbers of things that he's lost in his tragedy. He's described early in his story as an extremely wealthy man. Can he number his losses at all? Could he even try? 

Yet, here he is saying that if there's something in this world that you simply can't count, it's God's miracles. If there's something it's impossible to put a number on, it's God's goodness. His friends are trying to get him to reflect on how empty his life has become, and how quickly, and all Job can talk about is the fullness of God. 

All this stuff? It's nothing. Look at the miracles. We could talk about the miracles forever. 

Life is about perspective - what are you looking at? 

If you're looking at your shards and ashes, all you'll ever count is your losses. And maybe you could count forever. Maybe, like Job, your losses seem neverending and your life is truly empty. 

But maybe, it's not as empty as it seems. Maybe there are miracles all around you, even in a time like this. Maybe...maybe God is just as Job has seen Him - the Lord of infinite numbers of miracles, wonderful things that confound human minds. 

Maybe you just have to be willing to be confounded. 

God of Trouble

It's interesting, but it's actually more common for Christians to believe that God is the source of our trouble than it is for the world to believe that. The world wrestles with theodicy - the problem of evil in the world in contrast to stories about a loving God - but they do so on sort of a grand, philosophical scale. Christians, on the other hand, seem to wrestle with it on a very personal level. And what they often come up with is that God is causing our problems. 

We have a number of reasons we give for attempting to justify this line of thinking. Perhaps God is testing us. Perhaps we have sinned and we are being punished. Perhaps our parents or grandparents sinned and we are just bearing the burden of it. And on and on and on we go, attempting to justify in our minds how our loving God could still be loving us while also giving us trouble. 

And, of course, we always say that "God's discipline is good even if it doesn't feel good." But we say this while trying to justify what would not be a loving, disciplining Father but an abusive monster. 

Friends, that's just no way to believe. That's no God to believe in. That's no Lord to love. 

The Bible tells us plainly that the things that we say aren't true.

God doesn't tempt us. God always gives us a way to stand up under temptation. God already punished Jesus for our sin; if He was punishing us with terrible things, it would be rendering less-than-perfect the sacrifice of His Son. Can you imagine Him doing that? God doesn't punish us for the sins of others; He stopped that practice well before Jesus, and Jesus did not bring it back. God's discipline isn't abusive. 

The Bible is clear on these things.

And in case it weren't, in case we can't read the very plain words written right in front of our faces over and over and over again, through covenant after covenant, through the Gospel (the Good News) of Jesus, and into the church, God gave us one more story that ought to put this to bed for us: 

Job. 

Job is a lesson in the trouble that we have in this world. And...none of it was caused by God. Not a bit of it. 

Job considers the idea. His friends feed him the same ideas that we have when we're trying to justify our troubles as God's doing. But Job comes to the same conclusion every time - nope. Wasn't God. Wasn't my sin. Wasn't some punishment. Isn't some discipline. Isn't God's doing, at all. God is still good. God is still faithful. God still loves me. 

And...the book tells us he's right. The book tells us God didn't cause any of Job's troubles. 

So if the rest of the witness of the Bible wasn't enough, we have this. 

Is God the cause of your trouble in any way, shape, or form? 

One look at the Cross should answer that. 

God and World

One of the things that frustrates us as believers is that God doesn't just come and put everything right in the world. From the beginning of time, we as humans have been asking - why do the wicked prosper? Why do the good suffer? Why doesn't God just step into this broken world and put it back together? Why doesn't He stop bad things from happening?

It's called "theodicy" - the problem of evil in the world - and it seems to most of us that the most simple way to solve it is for God to just be God and do God things and exert His force and power (and, uhm, love and stuff, you know) as God to just end it. 

But...He doesn't. 

Drives you crazy, doesn't it?

Whenever I'm thinking about this sort of thing, whenever I'm wrestling with what God does and doesn't do about evil in the world, I'm drawn to the book of Esther. Yes, Esther.

In Esther, the evil man Haman acquires the king's signet ring and signs, seals, and delivers an order for all of the Jews in the entire kingdom to be executed. Slaughtered. En masse and on the same day. When that day comes, all the people have been instructed to kill their Jewish neighbors. 

Of course, Mordecai has the king's favor, and so does Esther, and when the whole plot comes to light, Haman is hanged on a pole he erected himself, Mordecai is promoted, and things are looking up. 

Kinda.

Because there's still this little problem of a decree signed in the king's name that permits the killing of all Jews. All the men of the kingdom are aware of it by now. They're already planning. They already know how that day is going to go. And by the rule of the land, anything sealed in the king's ring cannot be undone. You can't just rip up the order.

But Mordecai is given the king's ring to issue whatever order he sees fit in response to Haman's order. 

Now, if it were me, I would issue a new decree that says that we don't listen to dead men, especially dead men who were hanged on their own pole for their own wickedness. I would issue a decree that says that we don't entertain that kind of nonsense and appeal to the moral character of the people as a whole. But...of course, it wasn't me. And honestly, in a society that is ruled by dictate, appealing to the innate moral character of humanity probably doesn't work. 

Still, I would have been tempted to simply issue a decree stating that the old decree is null and void. It, too, would be sealed with the king's ring, so...newest order wins? 

That's not how it goes down. Instead, Mordecai issues a new order stating that the Jews can fight back. (Could they not fight back without an order? Actually, they could not. For they would have been guilty of murder, which would have further threatened their place in society.) But Mordecai tells them they can fight back. They can defend themselves, even unto death. And now, it's all-out war basically. 

And this is where we find ourselves, as well. 

We're in constant battle with the world, at odds with the way they do things here. At odds with how they live. God has plainly told us we would be at odds with this world. And as much as we want Him to just step in and end it all, put all the broken things back together, the truth is that He doesn't. What He has done is to issue a new decree telling us that we can fight back. That we don't have to conform to the patterns of this world. That this world is not our home. That we are to be in the world, not of the world. 

He has told us we can stand up. That's the decree of the Lord in the face of evil. 

...for now.