Systemic Evil

“In every institution, there is something which sooner or later works against the very purpose for which it came into existence” —C. S. Lewis

 

While I don’t embrace Critical Race Theory—its roots are antagonistic to the gospel—it is true that evil exists within systems. Patterns of sinful behavior and oppression can become entrenched and once these patterns are in place, they make it easier for individuals within that system to sin with impunity. 

 

But the Bible makes it very clear that we are responsible for our own sins (Deuteronomy 24:16). I may be the product of an ungodly family or a member of a corrupt organization, but systemic evil is never a rational for wrong-doing. I can, by God’s grace, resist the pressure to conform to unjust standards of behavior. 

 

Ezekiel 18 is a case study on what happens when we place our emphasis on corporate evil: It leads to individual moral irresponsibility: If I’m not answerable for my actions I can evade the consequences of those actions. But the scriptures make it clear that I am responsible for my actions no matter what others do. “The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself” (Ezekiel 18:20).

 

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts” (Gulag Archipelago). Paul writes without nuance or qualification, “All have sinned” (Romans 3:23). 

 

So, while there is systemic and corporate evil in the world I must face the fact of the evil in me and the consequences of it. English journalist, Malcolm Muggeridge, was asked on one occasion  “What’s wrong with world?” Muggeridge replied with unambiguous candor, “I am.”

 

David Roper

3.24.21

 

The Worm at the Core

 

“He lives eternal life to bring, and dies that death may die.” —“Crown Him with Many Crowns”

 

“For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures…   So we preach and so you believed” —1 Corinthians 15:3, 11

 

Philosopher William James wrote, "Back of everything is the great specter of universal death, the all-encompassing blackness… We need a life not correlated with death, a kind of good that will not perish, a good in fact that flies beyond the Goods of nature…  And so with most of us, a little irritable weakness will bring the worm at the core of all our usual springs of delight into full view, and turn us into melancholy metaphysicians. —The Varieties of Religious Experience.

 

Or, as a whimsical friend of mine says, "Death makes you think about things." 

 

Death is indeed "the worm at the core of all our usual springs of delight,” underlying the fun and games with which we try to distract ourselves. Yet all efforts to stave off thoughts of death are futile. In all of us there is an awareness of our helplessness in the face of death, an awareness that effects every aspect of our being. We are never free from the knowledge that someday we too will die. 

 

Only the good news of Jesus Christ and the eternal life he freely offers can set us free from fear of dying. "He Himself shared (flesh and blood) with us, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage" (Hebrews 2:15). 

 

So then, though we may work to liberate our brothers and sisters from oppression and tyranny and provide opportunities for them to enjoy the "goods of nature," but must also seek, “a good that flies beyond the Goods of nature.” if we do not, at some point, proclaim the gospel we have received from God—“a good that will not perish"—we will have left our friends in bondage to fear and melancholy musing.  They will, perhaps, be better off in this present world, but live without hope, in mortal fear of "universal death, the all-encompassing darkness."

 

So, Lord, I ask… 

 

Make me a fellow worker with thee, 

Nought else befits a God-born energy;

Of all that's lovely, only lives the high,

Lifting the rest that it shall never die. —George MacDonald

 

David Roper

6.5.21

Once for All

"Whoever runs ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God. He who abides in what Christ taught has both the Father and the Son" (2 John 9).

Progressives “run ahead.” They go beyond what Jesus and the Apostles taught. "Jesus plus one more thing” is the heart of every heresy.

Christians are not avant garde—edgy and experimental. They are conservative: They go back to the traditions handed down by Jesus and his apostles, an emphasis John made repeatedly: "That which was from the beginning... (1 John 1:1; 2:7, 13, 14, 24; 3:8, 11; 2 John 5, 6). John’s appeal to the past is his way of stating that new insights do not eclipse the gospel "once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3). Christian faith is rooted in historical events: the Incarnation, the cross, the atonement and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. There's no "new” news to report. It's finished. 

Paul writes, playing with two different Greek words for “another”: "I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you in the grace of Christ, to another (ἕτερον—completely different) gospel, which is not another (ἄλλο—of the same kind)…" (Galatians 1:6, 7a).

Any other gospel than the gospel of Christ is not the gospel at all.

David Roper

5.27.21

The Roots of Anti-Semitism

And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth. And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon... 

And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it. She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron (cf., Psalm 2), but her child was caught up to God and to his throne… 

And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him… 

Therefore, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short! And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child” (Revelation 12:1-13). 

•••

John, in apocalyptic vision, sees a red dragon (the devil) hell-bent on killing a man-child (the Christ) who is about to be born. Foiled in his efforts to destroy the child, the devil turns his rage on the woman (Israel) who brought the child into the world and, bent on her destruction, pursues her to the ends of the earth (Revelation 12:13).

 

This little vision teaches us that we're caught up in a wider and more sinister plot than the one we see played out in the media. The relentless persecution of the Jewish people, here and abroad, is part of a larger spiritual conflict between good and evil—God’s redemptive purposes and the murderous strategies of the devil.

 

Antisemitism is bigotry and racism, but it is more: It is Satan's way of avenging the birth of the One who loves us and came to save us. Anti-Semites stand on the wrong side of redemptive history, for "Salvation is of the Jews" (John 4:22). No true follower of Jesus would embrace it. 

 

David Roper

5.23.21

The Silence of the Lamb

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,

yet he opened not his mouth;

like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,

and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,

so he opened not his mouth (Isaiah 53:7).

One of the most striking examples of our Lord's silence was an occasion on which his opponents, unable to overturn his logic, resorted to a vicious ad hominem attack. “Well," they said, "(at least) we're not born of fornication" (John 8:41), with the implication that he was. (News travels fast in a small town. Everyone knew that Mary was pregnant when she married Joseph and assumed that Jesus was conceived out of wedlock.)

Had I been Jesus I would have launched into a lengthy  explanation of the Virgin Birth, yet, "He opened not his mouth," in that he did not offer a word of personal defense. 

This is meekness—strength under control. Jesus knew that he was God's dearly beloved son and cared not a fig for what others thought of him.  

George MacDonald underscores this robust virtue in his novel,  Malcolm, on an occasion in which his protagonist was the victim of a vicious slander.

"Well, Mem (said Malcolm), what would you have me do? I can’t send my old daddy around the town with his pipes to proclaim that I’m not the man. I’m thinking I’ll just have to leave the place.”

“Would you send your daddy round with the pipes to say that you were the man? You might as well do the one as the other. Many a better man has been called worse, and folk soon forget that ever the lie was said. No, no; never run from a lie. And never say, neither, that you didn’t do the thing, except it be laid straight to your face. Let a lie lay in the dirt. If you pick it up, the dirt’ll stick to you, even if you fling the lie over the dike at the end of the world. No, no! Let a lie lay as you would the devil’s tail!”...

“What should I do then, mem?”

“Do? Who said you was to do anything?. The best doing is to stand still. Let the wave go over you without ducking.”

"But there must be some judgment on lying.”

“The worst wish I have for any backbiter is that he may live to be affronted with himself. After that he’ll be good enough company for me. Go your way, laddie; say your prayers, and hold up your head. Who wouldn’t rather be accused of all the sins of the Commandments than to be guilty of one of them?”

And Malcolm did hold up his head as he walked away.

David Roper 

5.20.21

Why Then Should I the Burden Bear?

“Blessed be the Lord, who carries my burden day after day” —Psalm 68:19

 

What is my burden today? Endurance with joy: “To lark and leap on shanks grown dry as sticks!" 

 

I can only do that as God “carries my burden”—literally, “carries that which is to me”—a particularization that greatly encourages me: My burden is His. 

 

When my burden becomes too great to bear I can shrug it off my shoulders, knowing that the Lord will take it up and carry it for me “day|day," as the text puts it. He will do so because he cares for me (1Peter 5:7). 

 

As for tomorrow? Well, I shall have to do it all over again. 

 

What Thou shalt today provide,

Let me as a child receive;

What tomorrow may betide,

Calmly to Thy wisdom leave:

’Tis enough that Thou wilt care,

Why then should I the burden bear? —John Newton

 

David Roper

 

Pure Religion

 “This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. And neither strength nor wisdom will carry us far upon it. Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere." —J.R.R. Tolkien

 

“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world" (James 1:27).

 “.

Great acts of virtue come rarely, and rarely are they hard to do. They have their own reward: the rush and recognition we get from virtue signaling; the accolades we draw by going along with the crowd. It’s much harder to give ourselves to small, unheralded acts that no one sees. But these are the greatest deeds of all, the elements of which are found in Jesus, but in no other ethical system. 

 

True acts of mercy have to with the small stuff of life—doing good things in secret and in silence. This is pure religion, James says, “to look after orphans and widows in their distress.” Pure religion does what most people are unwilling to do. It “exaggerates what the world neglects,” G. K. Chesterton said.

 

Quiet, unpretentious deeds, done out of the way and in quietness, attack our pride, our hunger for power and prestige, our desire for recognition and approval, our determination to be relevant. Unseen acts train us in the practice of humility, which is the essence of godly behavior.

 

One way to test the authenticity of our social concern is to ask ourselves: “Do we align ourselves with the woke crowd  because it’s the admirable thing to do? Or are we willing to follow Jesus, though he takes us down paths that lead us away from the crowd. 

 

We can if we’re waiting for his “Well done!”—alone.  

David Roper

5.15.21