Ecclesiastes 11:5-6
"As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything. In the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good."
Let me place this text in context with a few more pertinent portions of Scripture:
Exodus 16:3
"The Israelites said to them (Moses and Aaron), "If only we had died by the LORD's hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.""
1 Samuel 8:4-5
"So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. They said to him, 'You are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint us a king to lead us such as all the other nations have.'"
2 Thessalonians 3:11-12
"We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies. Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat."
Steve Brown, a favorite Bible teacher, once said that only when the pain of prison becomes greater than the fear of freedom, real change starts to happen. This change is necessarily rooted in trust and trust, by definition, is hope in things not seen. That's hard for a society rooted in naturalism to embrace. I would say its harder than any other generation. Let me explain.
When I was about 14 years old, my Dad and Mom drove us to Temple, Oklahoma, where my Mom grew up. I saw the old farm she was raised. I walked around in the barn that contained alot of stuff she hadn't seen since her childhood. It amazed me to see the differences between how she lived at age 14 compared to me. On the way back, Dad drove us through Mill Creek, Oklahoma, where my Dad spent a few years growing up. We drove through a dead town, down a dirt road and ended up in a pasture. In place of the home, there was a concrete foundation, a well house, milk weed, spiders and a few snakes. I saw where they had to cut down trees to build the log cabin, the well they dug for water. Again, I was amazed at how different it was from my own youth.
My parents succeeded in making sure none of their kids had to worry about the things they had to worry about in their own childhood. My family is not alone. I would say that many of you reading this have similar situations and stories about your parents or grandparents, their struggles and their hard work to create a better life for you. They did that because they loved us and wanted the very best for us. The problem with the 'very best' is that life and human nature have a way of miring that lofty goal.
Being an adult, with a family of my own, I realize that I am in their position now. I am to create a good life for my daughter and try to provide for her all the opportunities I can. But the fear of failure and having to deal with the same things prior generations had to deal with can be haunting. I sometimes think of what my parents accomplished and through heavy circumstances and think that there is no way I could possibly have the strength or the brains to do the same thing, if it were called upon me. There is a motivating fear of failure, being the head of a household, that can seep into many areas of our psyche, our opinions, our reasons for doing things and reasons for not doing other things. There is an option, in the midst of this fear: look for someone or something to take responsibility for my family and me. I would relinquish my freedom, but would also find solace in a replacement for parents, or so I would think.
I am not alone, either now or in any time in history. In fact, in my own day, there are those who know no other life than that of being taken care of by the government. Groceries are paid for, transportation is supplied, all paid by Medicaid. Rent is free. Generation after generation grows up in this reality and it is all their reality. Just as my nightmares of having to dig my own water well and log cabin in the middle of nowhere haunt me, their nightmares of having aid cut off haunt them. And it keeps them in the prison. It keeps them fighting for safety of the prison. Then there are those, similar to my background, who have similar fears, but decide the idea of increased government control over aspects of health, transportation, education, communications, all aspects of life, is comforting. It means exchanging this safety for many liberties. But those liberties could result in a failure too much to risk. So, like the Israelites who chided Moses and Aaron, or commanded Samuel to find a king, just like all the surrounding nations had, these folks are looking for exhanging the uncertainty of liberty for the comfort of the Nanny, even in the face of the loss of certain lilberties.
Now, before someone considers this just another political blog, keep in mind, my point to this is not political, even though politics is a part of it.
This is about trust.
Trusting God is a carefully chosen myth for those who are permeated with naturalistic thinking. First of all, such trust is blind and in a contentless object that tends to change forms, definition and purpose, as the circumstances of life change. That is not at all what I am talking about. I am talking about the God who is there, has spoken, revealed Himself in a Son, in time and place. I am talking about the same God that requires our trust in Him to grow in desert wanderings, when game plans have gone out the window, when the enemy has surrounded the city. He requires it because trust is worthless unless it is real and it can't be real unless we can truly direct it towards something beyond our immediate line of vision. Hebrews 11:1 states that faith is hope in things not seen. The Israelites were forced to trust God for nourishment when none was seen. They were forced to trust God as thier King, although pressures from without and within were intense, and they were the only ones that seemed to be different from surrounding nations.
Quite frankly, I believe this is easier for third world nations than for us. We're so steeped in naturalism, that trust in anything beyond our immediate observation seems foolish. That in itself seems extraordinarily foolish, in perspective. But even I have been permeated with the same worldview that allows no trust in anything except what can observevd and controlled, manipulated. In this way, Zimbabwe is more advanced in knowledge and wisdom than we are. As a sidebar, the activity of the Kingdom of God in Zimbabwe is so tangible and widespread, that we would not be able to comprehend it. I believe demonic activity can be more effective and successful in a secularized, naturalistic society, than any other. It hides the ugly, revealing it slowly, as it does so through playing on our distrustful nature...our fears of the uncertain...causing us to embrace immediacy, even though it could mislead us and even destroy us.
The biggest reason Michael Moore trusts government is because it's safe to him. There are other reasons, but that is the biggest. It's also something with cash value that can further the message of him or anyone like him. Everyone understands fear. And since he has no apparent belief in anything larger than government, its sufficient and all other avenues of safety are dangerous, foolish and pure folly. It is much safer than the uncertainty of going it alone in the absence of a well funded Parent, to replace our biological ones. True, there are great evils in our society. There is greed, waste, fraud, abuse, neglect. The insane part of the socialistic ideal is that government, unlike large corporations, inherently doesn't have the problems of large corporations, or at least not to the extent of large corporations. Without getting into another topic, I would say that view is totally irrational and doesn't jive with reality at all. I am not saying large corporations don't engage in bad stuff. But there is nothing more dangerous than a monopoly over what large corporations have engaged in competitvely. People are in both corporations and government. It's a blinding insanity fed off of fear. That sort of thing can make a sane man or woman think things unimaginable, as all fear can do. To suggest Cuba is more efficent and humane than America is an incredible claim. However, when you control the content, editing and promotion, you can just about make anything seem reasonable, especially when you play off of their fears and anger.
Just as the Israelites commanded Samuel for a king, so they can look more like the other nations, we too have apparently called for a king and a country that looks more like all the other countries, out of the same mistrust and fear. Just like the Israelites, instead of sustaining a nation where we are can forge our own lives out of trust in Someone larger than our circumstances, even in the face of possible failure, we embrace another sort of nation that will provide us safety in exchange for it.
You see, failure does a couple of things to us. First, it lingers as a possibility that creates a motivating fear within us that can take our eyes off of God. Second, it causes indignation and jealousy for those that didn't fail, creating a seething anger that tends to eat away more at the person holding it than the ones that sort of wrath is supposed to be poured upon.
Our only answer is a rutheless trust in God who offers redemption for ourselves and our world, despite what is in front of us. You might suggest that your decision is based off of trust...maybe out of principle or righteous indignation. I personally doubt it. On just about either side of the arguments, I can't help but see anger, jealousy and indignation, stemming from fear of failure or realized failure.
What if I was to say that no matter what hand we are dealt right now, everything will truly be alright? What if I then told you I wasn't being hopelessly optimistic about that, but realistic? Well, you'd probably laugh at me or consider me naive.
Maybe I need to hang out with more people from Zimbabwe :-) I don't know.
But it will be. I have a trust in Him that grows deeper, not through meaninglessness of comfort and realized expectations, but in struggle and disappointment. We are just not naturally wired to trust Him. That's the essence of our sinful nature and it should be apparent to everyone who's honest with themselves. But we are. Sometimes, it takes an act of love to place us in a rocky boat on huge swells and wind, to get us to realize where trust is properly placed.
Maybe, despite the aims of Obama and his supporters, that is what God is doing for us now. We tended to replace our trust in God with our trust in America. As Schaeffer stated years ago, we began to wrap up Jesus in an American flag. So, it could be He is shaking America so we can see where our trust should be placed. To be honest, I was really getting sick of the Religious Right's banging trash can lids for all these years anyway. It got to the point where there was no Gospel. It was all about foriegn and domestic policy. So, in that sense, Obama and socialism has been good for us. What's even better about that is instead of a socialistic regime change being in control of everything, it is a mere pawn in God's plan to strip the old paint of mistrust off of His own people. In that case, bring it on! I would love to see revival under those terms....and I think I am seeing it. But, of all things, whether conservative or liberal, He will not accept our trust in anything other than Him. Think about how that trust works in your life, how it has changed and why.
I see it starting in the church. It's an opportunity for us to extend it to a really lost and hurting world. And, I think that healing is going on in countries we consider far less civilized and developed as our own. God has a way of doing just that, to humble the proud and, above all, show Who is God.
