What would Jesus have us think?

What would Jesus have us think?

Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Jeff Lampl

Friday night’s horrific event has left Americans debating guns, Islamic theology, gender identity, bigotry, immigration, Homeland Security, the perpetrator’s parents, friends, family, schooling & sexual orientation, whether to name the massacre a hate crime, terrorism, or Islamic Jihad against the West. . . . much to discuss, all of it important.  

Jesus would have us add one more thing to that list.   Read more

That ‘one more thing’ is for some, including (and especially?) Christians, offensive.   It’s the Gospel.

The Gospel, (a word that means “Good News”) is that God loves all human beings and because of that love God came to earth in Jesus, died on the cross to forgive the sin of everyone, and by way of his resurrection rendered the cosmic powers of evil ultimately impotent.   His end game?  To rescue the earth including the humans he’s so passionate about and pave a way for them to live with him forever both now in their current life and in the New Creation with Him forever.  

In short, Jesus’ rescue mission excludes no one.

It’s more radical and outrageous than most of us can possibly imagine.  To many it’s absurd.     It means that Jesus died for murderers because he loves murderers (hate the sin, love the sinner).  Not only that,  Jesus tells us to love them,  Offended yet?  Christians follow an offensive Savior.

It seems to me that the victims of Friday night’s massacre are many.   They include those who lost their lives, those still fighting for their lives, the victims’ families, the targeted LBGTIQ community, Muslims who will face increased prejudice because of their ethnicity and religion, . . the list goes on and on. 

There is another special category of victims to include on that list, however, a category that most if not all of us instinctively exclude.   It’s simply too outrageous to consider.   

This category includes the killer, Omar Mateen and his family.  Omar Mateen was born and raised in the kind of Muslim context that views women as subordinate to men, and views homosexuals as worthy of death.   He was heavily influenced by religious leaders quoting their holy book, the Koran, to authorize the execution of gay people.  Omar didn’t choose the context in which he raised.  Like you and I he didn’t choose his place of birth, his parents, his religious context, his cultural values, the voices who trained him up into his worldview.

Each of us grows up within the context of our individual worlds.   Each of us has a perspective of life and the world that was given to us.   The Cosmic forces of evil (Satan) will ‘work the angles’ to corrupt all that is good, to turn us from good, and especially to deceive us into adopting their (demonic) directives.   Each of us must deal with a conflictedness that exists in every segment of society and within every micro-part of our soul.  Each of us is responsible for choosing the good and rejecting evil. 

Perhaps our biggest problem is deception. 

What happens when evil is defined as good in such a culture-permeating way that it is impossible to know that one is deceived.  It is the nature of deception that when one is deceived one won’t know it.  We are sucked in and re-created by those deceptions.   We become the fish who doesn’t know he’s wet.    

It’s not just Omar who is a victim of this deception.   Each of us is also susceptible to deception, deceptions like “other-izing” Omar, viewing him as more fallen than we, thinking of him as a low-life animal, thereby absolving ourselves because “at least I’m not that bad”, an ‘absolution of comparison’   None of us hears the God’s trumpet’s call with clarion uncorrupted purity.   Each of us is a victim, to one degree or another, of the deceptions of the cosmic and local powers of evil.

We do, however, have Jesus, who reminds us that none of us is uncorrupted and that our enemies and those whom we think of as “hideous, animal-like, murderers” differ from each of us only in degree.  The capacity to do what Mateen did (and, I would argue, the capacity to do even worse things than that) exists in each of us.   And, lest we forgot, Jesus tells, no commands, us to forgive our enemies and love them.   Jesus takes this very seriously.   When we rationalize not doing so are we not then corrupted and deceived by the same forces of evil that animated Omar to slaughter 4 dozen people?

I suspect that Jesus meant exactly what he said while dying on the cross, dying for Omar?   I believe Jesus would authorize this paraphrase of Luke 23:34 “Omar didn’t know what he was doing”.

Of course he knew exactly what he was doing, but no, he didn’t know what he was doing.  Does Jesus mourn the life and death of Omar Mateen?  If He does not grieve over Omar’s tragic life and death, then I find it impossible to understand how God could mourn and grieve over the death of any of us.      

Of course God holds Omar, you, and me accountable to whatever of Himself God has revealed to us individually, but why stop there?   The Gospel doesn’t stop with accountability.   It ends with love, forgiveness and hope.   God has forgiven and will give up on no one, not on you, not on me, not even on Mateen, right up the bitter end.

I find the implications of this to be staggering.   

Every human being is loved.  I am commanded by Jesus to love even the worst of my enemies.  I am commanded by Jesus to grieve the death and loss of Omar.  I am given marching orders telling me to forgive him, just as God has forgiven me, a sinner.  

The horror of Omar’s act is immense.   Yet the horrors of the thoughts and actions of the rest of us have played into in the killing of the souls of countless others by way of our hates, prejudices, pride and our avoidance of being our “brother’s keeper”.   How many have suffered because I, in my comfortable complacency have stood by, unwilling to do anything that would rock my comfortable world.  How often have I been the 1940’s American who said nothing when our nation refused to admit a giant ship full of Jews sending them back to Germany and its concentration camps and death.  We were too (legalistic? Busy preserving our nation? Prejudiced?) to worry about the fate of a few Jews.  As a nation of millions we were simply okay with that.   I fear I’m like that.  I worry, no, I am certain, that there is too much of me that is deceived by the forces of evil into sins of commission and omission that will one day be seen for what they are, participation in the anti-God, anti-human, anti-life forces of evil.

It is true that none of us “good Christians” has bought a semi-automatic rifle and pulled the trigger on a hundred people as Omar did.   And the part of us that reacts in anger and horror is a godly reaction because God hates sin and evil.” What he did shocks our souls.  But I suspect Jesus would want that shock to migrate from seeing the evil in others only to seeing and feeling the shock and shame at the sin and evil in us.    I think Jesus would want us to see our own demons which, were they to be exposed and unleashed, would reveal a person who is both a perpetrator of sins against God and others, at the same time victim of the corruptions and deceptions of the forces of evil that have found their way into my mind, heart, soul, will, and actions.  And then, having seen them, to be flattened/overwhelmed by God’s Grace, Forgiveness, and Love of us, even us.

Is Omar a perpetrator who committed an horrific act of evil?   Yes.  How, then, would Jesus have us think about him?  

 "To you who are ready for the truth, I say this: Love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst.”    Luke 6:27 (MSG)

“Lord, your outrageous, unfair, impossible love and forgiveness leave me stunned and angry and ashamed and humbled, one emotion contradicting the other.   I am in awe at how I am capable of receiving your so incredible, undeserved Love, Grace and Salvation, yet I am instinctively averse to directing what I have received to Omar.  Were I born in his shoes I can claim no grounds by which I would have been any better than he.  Lord forgive my sanctimony and pride.  Give me tears both for the victims and for the victimizer, himself a victim.  In the Name of the one was both Victim and Victor, Jesus Christ, our Savior, Amen”