Poor Old Jeremiah

Poor old Jeremiah, he just couldn’t seem to get out of the way of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. He had to call it like he saw it and that offended just about the entire country. It’s difficult to swim against the current and the consequences of his determination cost him a lot . . . he was beaten and put into stocks; he was imprisoned by the king; he was threatened with death; he was thrown into a cistern (a big vat); and he was condescendingly opposed in public by the local good-guy prophet, Hananiah. Even his own family turned on him. In the end, when it turned out that he was seeing clearly and everyone else was wrong, he received no apologies or acknowledgements. But that seems to be the way it is with the human condition. The Apostle Paul said, “. . . they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear” (2 Tim 4:3). It’s not meanness and ugliness; it’s a sincere desire to want things to be fair and kind. But, we are poor judges of what is true. “There is a way that seems right to man but in the end it leads to death." (Prov. 14:12). Our ability to see and hear properly depends on whether we have “eyes to see” and “ears to hear.” (Mark 4:9)

The Gospel, of course, is simple. All that other theologian stuff can get fairly complicated: Justification, Sanctification, Glorification, Hermeneutics, Systematic Theology, Eschatology, etc. Yet, if we could just stumble on the simple prospect that “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever would believe in Him would not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16) we could realize that it’s not about us but all about Him and rest in the peace that transcends all understanding (Phil. 4:7). But the world is full of other stuff too, like politics, economics, history, science, relationships and family. Even when we ask God to weigh in on these matters it seems we’ve already made up our minds about what he will say . . . or should say . . . to be fair. In his 2001 historical dissertation titled “While God is Marching On,” Steven Woodworth illustrates how both sides in the great American War Between the States were convinced that God was on their side. Yet, we have a peculiar and fervent gift for interpreting things through a prism of self-centeredness. We simply will not tolerate hearing the truth if it doesn’t pass the muster of our prideful world view. Following WWI, wherein the British lost about a million (dead) and another 1.5 million wounded out of a population of less than 30 million men, they were in no mood for another fight. By the 1930s they were already determined not to listen to even one as eloquent as Winston Churchill who warned of the need to oppose Hitler and the Nazi movement as early as October 1930. Yet he was booed and hissed in Parliament, ridiculed in the press, and suffered tepid support even in his own political party. As late as May 1940, King George VI did not want him to be his prime minister and he was dumped less than a month after VE Day.

Today, there are voices of prophecy in the political/economic arena, warning of impending disaster. Will we call on God to ratify our beliefs and strategies, or will we get serious about jettisoning all unnecessary philosophical baggage and turn to Him for our deliverance? Our first destination ought not to be the voting booth but a place where our knees can find surface. “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” (2 Chr. 7:14)