The title of this post is quoting the president’s response on the news of Robert Mueller’s death. It is characteristically Trumpian in both its callousness and its blunt honesty. It has been widely criticized and condemned. I am sure their will be pulpit born critique this Sunday morning as from a Christian perspective death is the enemy – regardless of whose death it actually is. But as a Christian I find myself wishing such honesty were more common in the church.
If we are honest, everyone one of us can think of someone in our lives whose death we would find, at a minimum, unregrettable. I will agree, such is a character flaw – God intends for us to be better people. But does God always expect us to pretend to be better people?
One of the more remarkable Biblical stories is when a father asked Jesus to heal his son:
But Jesus said to him, “‘If You can?’ All things are possible for the one who believes.” Immediately the boy’s father cried out and said, “I do believe; help my unbelief!” When Jesus saw that a crowd was rapidly gathering, He rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and do not enter him again!”
In this story Jesus both rebukes the father for his lack of faith while simultaneously recognizing the father’s brutal honesty concerning his failings and honoring that. I cannot help but wonder what would have happened had the father’s response stopped at “I do believe.” What if the father had pretended his faith was adequate? Would Jesus have been so gracious?
In the end, I don’t know. What I do know is that nothing gets fixed until you acknowledge it is broken. That toaster you have to use a knife to get the toast out of every morning is broken, but until you quit being satisfied with using the knife, acknowledge the toaster is broken and do something about it, it is just going to stay broken.
Hiding our foibles means our foibles remain.
I opened by saying, “from a Christian perspective death is the enemy.” Astute readers will recall last Sunday’s post where I noted that God can be quite brutal at times – calling for the total destruction of the enemies of Israel. I noted that God does, at times and in His wisdom, dispense death. Therefore, sometimes there must be enemies worse than death.
The theological proposition that the modern nation of Israel has inherited God’s blessing in the same sense that the ancient, pre-Christian nation enjoyed it , is begging for an irresolvable debate. About all the Christian can know for sure is that God has something special in mind for the Jews – that His judgement of the Jews will be different than His judgement of the rest of us.
But there is one thing I must note. The ancient kingdom of Israel could measure its standing with God by its success or failure in war. The Old Testament record is full of such citations, “God looked favorably upon Israel and the XXX were beaten,” or God did not look favorably and exile ensured.
If such a standard applies today then God’s favor must be shining on Israel most brightly. Their success in this war with Iran is immense.
This observation makes me pray for those in opposition to this war. Rather than see God working, they see only the President’s personal failings and therefore oppose what seems to be God’s activity in history.
God is far more complex than we can possibly imagine. He is full of surprises to the mind that thinks they understand Him. I think we are in one of the most surprising periods of history in a very long time. I simply ask God to allow me to maintain an open mind to see Him working.
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