Come Let Us Return Unto The Lord

New York Daily News' provocative article about God failing to address our nation's violence. "God isn't fixing this". We hide behind useless platitudes. We call on God and he does nothing. I don't remember them printing their prayers for help, you know, in big bold print so God is sure to read it from the sky. When were they asking for his help? If anything I recall us as a nation telling God he was not needed or welcome anymore. So what do we have? People firing guns in the streets and in schools. People acting like there are no moral standards or higher power to be accountable too, hmm... Now sadly this wasn't lamenting God's absence, because that would be something. No this is a smokescreen, an obvious cover of the bigger agenda of gun control. Now control should be discussed, but not here. That should happen in times of peace when our heads are on straight not in the wake of mass human loss. This isn't a political blog, but they brought him up, so let's talk about God's part in this.

What they are doing here is a provocation for us to move on something that will have actual impact, you know, because God doesn't? Because everyone knows God doesn't exist and we are silly for praying to him, right? How empathetic we are to those in mourning.

I guess calling on God for help is so 2001. Even before 9/11 I remember 1999 with Columbine and the prayers that went out. But since then apparently science has solved us of our God problem and politics have delivered us from evil, or have they not yet? But it is a good question even though it wasn't a question of a truly agnostic heart. Why isn't God helping us?

So another tragedy has taken place on American soil and rather than call out to God for help, we use him to push an agenda. They mock those who call on the name of the Lord. They even took the time to highlight all the silly people who do call for prayer. This reminds me of 2 Peter 3:4-9.

knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. 4They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” 5For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, 6and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished.7But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.

They mock and point out that God has not arrived yet. Where is God? Where is your deliverer? Where are your answered prayers? They say this and all the while they forget that God is delaying judgment so that more might repent. They fail to realize that while they mock they are being added to the very judgment, the very justice, they mock for not coming. 

Could part of the problem be we are more interested in politicizing this tragedy than calling for repentance? But Gabe isn't writing a blog about this doing just that? Well, no because I am offering real help to the real problem. We have lawless people running around in what is becoming an increasingly morally bankrupt America. We need a moral solution, one that is bed-rocked in something greater than ourselves. God. If we actually wanted God to fix this problem the place where we should start is on our knees. The direction of our culture however has not been one of seeking God's help. If we want God's help then why is our country going out of its way to remove him from public and personal life? Ah so he is probably not fixing this because we want no part with him. I am then reminded of Psalm 2

1Why do the nations rage and the people plot in vain 2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying,3“Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.”4 He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision.5 Then he will speak to them in his wrath,and terrify them in his fury, saying,6“As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill.”7 I will tell of the decree:The LORD said to me, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you.8 Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.9 You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”10 Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth.11 Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling.12 Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him. 

Now before we misunderstand, God does not sit and laugh at our tragedy he laughs at our plans to usurp him. He weeps at our tragedy, he beckons us to return and be made hold. He desires us to repent and be saved. He says I have set up my King in Zion, Jesus, go to him! He calls us to take refuge in him, but we have no interest in his blessing, we are busy with our prodigal living and show no sign of turning back to the ranch. This is on us, and maybe this is what the Dahli lama was trying to get at a few weeks ago, but we do need the welcoming arms of God to do it. We have run off, and we need to come back.

God has already said my help is available but we would have none of it! Verse 3 is telling of us when we as a people have said to God "let us break our bonds and cast the cords away from us."  How? Well we have made him unwelcome in our government, in our schools, he has become unwelcome at work, and we work to remove him from the streets. He is unwelcome in our morals, in our laws, in our speech. What's next, soon our homes maybe?  We are even taking steps to keep him away while making way for our false gods to take up residence. Our kings and rulers have said We will not have you rule over us! We have spit in the face of God but now we want to invoke him to make an impassioned plea and provoke a response from his people to make a political point for our system. We mock God but God is not moved by our ridicule or our arrogance, he laughs! But he is moved by humility.  If we will humble ourselves and return to the Lord and call on the name of Jesus that we have cast away, then and only then, will he rise from his position and perhaps help us.

But not while he while we continue pointing our finger in his face. We have thrown off the bonds of God and have the gall to wonder why a godless nation produces men and women who want nothing to do but steal, kill, and destroy. But rather than ask those questions about how we got here, why we are here? We focus on the symptoms. We make it about the particular instrument used in the incident. We pretend that the particular weapon is the problem rather than the people who do these things. Why don't we ask those deeper questions instead? What is wrong with our people, our souls? May it is because those questions will reveal a condition of the human heart that we all posses? Maybe a heart that we have fostered and coddled and paraded as virtuous. Oh I think we know and we don't want that curtain pulled back.

Well we pushed and wanted a godless nation and we got it. So much so that we will only bring God up to drag his character through the mud just to continue building our own kingdom of refuse. We have so little regard for God that we will jump on the first occasion to both undermine him, his followers and continue our world without him. Even while our nation crumbles. And we wonder why we are here? We dishonestly comment on his failure to help.

I don't say this gleefully, but...

Congratulations America, you are getting the utopia you purchased with your own sins.

But not all is lost! So do we pray? Yes we pray! We pray even when we are ridiculed for it. We pray in our times of want and in our times of plenty. We pray because we have a God who acts! We ask because we have a God who forgives, and not just that he does but he wants to! A God who will even forgive our mocking of him. Let us take him up on his offer. Seek refuge in the Lord!

It is not too late to return to the Lord, today is the day of salvation. Be warned O' Kings of the Earth. Kiss Son lest he be angry and you perish in the way. There is a warning and a call. He is calling to us. C.S. Lewis says that God is shouting to us in pain. He is saying Return and be saved! But to do this, well, that would require looking in the mirror once and awhile and bending our stiff necks.

thanks

Knives in Flesh (a pox on Planned Parenthood or rather America)

Be angry but do not sin. Vengeance is mine says the Lord. We have had ten videos that have been released about the barbaric practices of Planned Parenthood, but no a lot of people seem to care. It would be easy if we could only blame Planned Parenthood, but we the people of the United Stated of America have allowed this to happen.

We know how to riot, how to march, and how to get angry and demand change. It was done for homosexuals rights, it was done in the race wars, it was done for immigration and the refugees, it was done for a lion, but we can't be bothered with dead babies? This one is OK to have differing opinions, the hypocrisy is deafening. 

I don't like to write on politics because they are not my area, nor are they of particular interest to me. They do however have impact. So why to write about abortion? Well, this shouldn't be a politic, we are talking about human life! Christianity has a lot to say about human life given from God. But part of the problem is that this issue is stuck in the realm of opinion and not where it should be: in the realm of life and death. I want to extract it out of that as much as possible because it amounts to so much more than a political position.

When issues become politicized it quickly passes out the realm of right and wrong and into the area of simple preferences. The problem is it is granted that precious position of being decided by public opinion.  This is why our constitution is so great, it grant's certain unalienable rights, these rights grants us certain ground rules so that a society can exist.  We have the foundation to relate with one another with certain protections guaranteed.  Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

But when liberty is left unchecked than the pursuit of happiness stretches beyond the boarders of incredulity. It has so much so that the we are at a point in history where the right to life is no longer a right, but something that is politicized. This is a sad state indeed. The issue of a right to life is definitely Christian, even if it is no longer inherently human, and certainly not American.

Looking at scripture we see that this is the case. Genesis 1:27 says that we are created in the image of God. Psalms 139 testifies that God knits us together inside our mother's womb, and that it is a wonderful process. An important point is that we are a person in process not a thing, not just lumps of tissue. Exodus 21:22-23 Makes the point that a injury causing a baby to pass away before he is born is worthy of the death penalty for extinguishing a life. Proverbs 6:17 God hates hands that shed innocent blood.

He may not hate fags but he hates abortionists. This is not to say they cannot receive forgiveness but they need to repent.

So scripture sets a precedent of the life being carried inside as important and worthy of protection.

A Christian thus supports the idea that all men are deserving of life. As Christians we cannot and should not politicize an issue regarding actual life and allow it to be something that can simply be a matter of opinion. Life is not a matter of opinion, it is precious. When the right of liberty and the right of the pursuit of happiness of the parents becomes more important than the right to life of the baby than we have a serious moral problem that is hard to combat.

Why? Because this should be obvious, and sadly it isn't.

I know that part of the problem in this instance is simply ignorance, whether it is deliberate or deceptive, but there is an ignorance that is fostered that somehow the baby is not a person until his birthday. I get it, he hasn't been born yet. But Parents that want to keep their children have no problem understanding that their baby is inside, kicking, punching, jumping, interacting, responding to their cues. Doctor's don't have this problem either when it is understood that the baby is wanted. In fact their is such a thing as In utero operations, fetal surgery, why? Because life inside is worth operating on, worth saving. Doctor's understand that when treating a pregnant woman, they are treating two people. Their health is inextricably linked, that two lives are in the balance.

But when a different choice is being made about the baby then somehow the science changes. Doctors start to fudge the facts about babies and the science of new life. And then once the decision has been made the vocabulary changes yet again. What was previously just lumps of tissue now is specifically human body parts. "Be careful how you harvest the organs they are worth money." That simple pile of tissue has remarkably changed back into a miniature human with viable money making organs that could fuel industry. The only care offered at that point is applied to the removal of the parts rather than the care of maintaining the little one's precious life.

My Son Raphael came seven weeks early. He was only 3.5 pounds, He could fit mostly in my hand. He was breathing, looking, and grabbing our hands. But political thinking would say he wasn't viable as a person until his actual birth-date. But if a child can come early than it stands to reason that he is a person before he is fully ready to come out. Now my son didn't come nearly as early as many babies can and do, but they came all the same and were little people in their own times.

Now I don't say all this without understanding. If we can't sympathize with a pregnant woman scared to death about how to care for and what to do with her infant, when she is being told that actually he isn't a person yet, than all we will ever be is more people making her day worse. We have to be willing to love her and help with the care, if not, then we offer nothing but condemnation.

But don't miss the point. The condemnation is due, a life is taken away. Innocent blood is split and God hates it. There is always forgiveness, but we have to understand what we are doing first.

James says that true religion is caring for widows and orphans. This is an objection to the pro-life movement; who will care for all the babies? Perhaps the government should redirect that same money towards that very problem rather than on extinguishing lives. We understand using government moving to save human life in other countries, just not our own. But will Americans make hard moral life saving decisions when there is money to be made?  The videos have made it clear that there is money to be made and the answer so far seems to be "No."

The church needs a response. Why are Catholics the forerunners in orphanages? Where are all the protestant American orphanages?  Where do all our mega churches mega monies go? Could it be that we love to picket but still spend our money on bigger stadium churches rather than offering real help? Shouldn't we put our money where out mouth is? Churches need a comprehensive view of helping in this situation, but let's not temper what needs to be said and done on this issue because we haven't worked out the details of what the outcome will be. Lives are being extinguished now. Yeah they offer other services, but other organizations do as well such as uh, hospitals.

Whose kingdoms do all our Christian resources fuel? Jesus said his kingdom was all about the kids. He said it would be better that a millstone be hung around our necks and for us be flung into the sea than for us to cause them any harm. But we are causing them harm, lot's of harm.

The number is at about 50 million, 50 million babies that our country has extinguished so that the parents could continue on with the pursuit of happiness and their liberty, but the life, the life part is something that we can disagree on?! How did we get to the point where babies are discarded as trash, or for commercial trade? Perhaps it is because we don't recognize that the god Molech is alive and being worshiped here in America? We worship our own rights and Molech underscores our rights with every baby we sacrifice to him. Leviticus 20:2-5 speaks about this. Psalms 106 also comments:

36 They worshiped their idols,
    which became a snare to them.
37 They sacrificed their sons
    and their daughters to false gods.
38 They shed innocent blood,
    the blood of their sons and daughters,
whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan,
    and the land was desecrated by their blood.
39 They defiled themselves by what they did;
    by their deeds they prostituted themselves.

I do not weep for us, I weep for the babies. I don't know how to respond, I understand the killing of abortionists from the Leviticus passage. I do not agree with it as we are not Israel as Israel was God's but I understand the cry for justice. I understand the being angry at a system that does not even follow it's own established principles for a free society.

So what do we do? First we pray. We ask God for the killings to be stopped. We ask God for practical ways to put an end to it. I wish I knew what the equivalent to the commandment in Leviticus 20 is. I think that Christians need a unified voice on this for starters. We need to stop with the burying our heads in the sand. We need to stop framing this as a "choice" issue. A Christian simply cannot take that stance. I am all for women's rights, but a woman does not have the right to murder, nor does a man. It is not OK for Christians to support abortion. God hates the hands that shed innocent blood. God hates those that are involved. Yes, God hates things. We need to stop with the ignoring the volatile nature of these events. This is a polarizing issue, but it shouldn't be among Christians.  It is a great shame and travesty that baby killing is debatable. It also shouldn't be debatable among the civilized world.

Our hearts are so hardened that we cannot see that Romans 1 has come true. We have debased minds. God has given us over to our sinful ways. If it makes you angry to hear than take it up with God but his response will be repent or likewise perish.

When a society is so blind to right and wrong that they will not acknowledge the butchering of children and the practices involved in abortion as evil, well even Jesus didn't refrain from calling some people the son of the devil. Motives do not count in this instance. God hates those who shed innocent blood. The only innocent parties are being carved up with knives and the populace does nothing. God have mercy on our souls, but he will not, not without repentance.

We live in a society that grants us a voice and thus we need to use it. We highlight that life is being extinguished, this is a human problem. We Christians agree that abortions are wrong and we never stop saying it. We lift our voices in unison, we demand that our Government uphold justice and stop allowing the murder of our children. But it is up to God to move as we cry out to him. So cry out to him!

This is not a political issue this is a Christian issue that life is precious. But it shouldn't be a Christian issue it should be a human issue, let's bring this back around. When life is minimized to just a choice than we should expect nothing less than the commoditizing of human baby body parts. Fall on your face and repent America.
As Psalms 106 ends: Save Us O' God.

thanks

Do we really need to fight the Avenger?

With another law passed from the supreme bench in our country some have started to speak out more about rebellion. But what is all this rebellion business about?

The obvious example is the civil war but is that what we really want? 

Well the question is of course at what point should the church stand up to a corrupt government? You know because of Nazi Germany? Well how about instead of going to that extreme which may be a legitimate barometer for a culture to at least reference, let's instead ask how should a Christian think about this?

I am not so interested in how a republic should respond to this type of losing of its rights; I will leave that aspect to the political scientists. Since the government is not a Christian institution how should it act fair in this instance? How do you legislate for a people of differing values? differing worldviews? How should both anti-discrimination laws and free speech work? It can become so nuanced that someone is going to feel violated at some point; probably making an executive judicial ruling in favor of one over the other without the input of the people is not such a great idea, but here we are. I am no lawyer so I can only speak to the faith of those who feel like they are living in an increasingly sinful world with no help from a system they thought would help them.

So if using the system doesn't work as many feel in this case what does a Christian do? Do we grab our guns and religion and start a revolution? I sure hope not, and here's why.

We should always look at how those who resisted in the Bible did it. We are called to live at peace with everyone after-all. Christians do not go to war for their rights. They do not even go to war over the Gospel, they peacefully present it and they accept the consequences.

But even Biblically speaking there is precedent to run for our lives but never, never to kill for them. We have too many times in history taken principles in the Bible and have turned them into reasons to kill for and quite frankly we have been wrong every time. Vengeance is God's.

We have to of course deal with what Jesus said to Peter about the sword. In preparedness Jesus told the disciples that a time was coming where they may need to buy swords, but was this for going on the offensive? When the time came for Jesus to be taken away one of the disciples decided that that was the purpose of the sword and rose to the occasion. But what was the outcome?

When this account happens in John:

Jesus said to Peter, "Put the sword into the sheath; the cup which the Father has given Me, shall I not drink it?"

It was more important that God's will be done even when they were threatened with physical violence.
Luke records the same event. Luke 22:47-53
This time Jesus rebukes his disciples when this happened and even goes so far as to heal the man's ear.  He did not want his disciples engaging in acts of violence and even restored the person.  

Mathew records it this way.
52Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword. 53Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?

Jesus teaches that if one wants to live in such a way that he takes justice into his own hands then he will be opening himself to that kind of death. He also reminds Peter of God's own sovereignty and plan.

So yes he did tell them to obtain a sword, but was it to go on the offense? It seems that this was not what he was getting at. It seems he was simply acknowledging it may be dangerous out there and be prepared, an object lesson perhaps?

So let's understand the context they are in the process of putting Christ to death and he was not at all interested in the self-righteousness of even his own protection from this with acts of violence from his followers. Ah but that was for a pivitol time in redemptive history, what about when something not as essential as Jesus dying on the cross is happening? Well if the answer is not already in the question then let's look at the New Testament. 

Paul writes to the church is Rome. Now when we hear Rome we think of cool ruins and exotics locals over in Italy and that awesome movie Hudson Hawk. Nice.  But think about what that culture was really like. I was just in Italy last year I walked the halls of the Vatican, strolled over the canals of Venice, and the stood in the middle of the Roman Colosseum. The Roman Colosseum was a system in place for the sport and entertainment of the people. But the sport was brutal fights to the death, often with Christians and simple slaves trying to stay alive. Not only this but the system supported cults, temple prostitution, and yes homosexual lovers was common. You could also be jailed with no supply or care for your lively-hood for speaking against the Caesar. He used Christians as human torches for his garden parties and blamed the fire of Rome on Christians to incorporate open and free persecution of them. There were so many religions and gods that if you violated one of them you could bring the ire of the whole community down on you. You could say sin abounded. In fact Paul points out the state, not of just humanity, but of Rome in the beginning of his letter to the Romans.

So let's understand the context that Paul writes when he pens Romans 13. 

1Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. 2Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.

Remember this is the government that eventually puts Paul to death. To further the example the new Jewish converts had to live through John the baptist being beheaded, James the brother of John being beheaded. Phillip the evangelist being stoned to death and let's not forget Jesus was put to death as well, he rose again thankfully. If you read Fox's book of martyrs the traditions are that almost all of the disciples had their end in this way. But the persecution was never a reason to get organize and raise the capitol. In fact the disciples had a reputation of rejoicing when they were persecuted for the Gospel's sake. The only other response that came about from persecution was a scattering and a spreading of the Gospel. 

The resurrection took the power out of violence. What is the point of physical striving with arms when there is a resurrection of the dead to look forward to?

In other words the response of Christians to a corrupt government is a doubling down on the preaching of the Gospel. The message is reinforced by Paul telling the people to "Owe no one anything except love." Now love did have stipulations for living for sure, but for Christians. We see in the rest of chapter 13 that the responsibility was to display love nonetheless. I mean Paul reminds them to keep paying taxes. It would be nice that if I can't go to war at least I can stop supporting them financially. But Paul seems to think that the Christian should continue to love and support God's avenger. 

If part of our system of government is to allow dissent then we are still in fullfillment of Romans 13 by using the system as given to us. This is what Paul did in appelaing to Rome, he did not simply let the system silence him he used it for the gospel's sake. But when a system changes for the worse all we can do is thank God for time that he gave us to establish his kingdom in the way we were able to do and then continue to do so under a stricter hand. 

Part of the rub for us I know is that we live in a society that grants us a voice of dissent. In fact our free society was based on a voice of dissent. We are blessed to live in a country that started out honoring God and thus adopted some tenets of freedom. But unrestrained and undefined freedom will always consume itself. It will leave behind all those good intentions of the people who believed that man was somehow better than he actually is. 

See if our anthropology is that people are basically good then we will think that ultimate freedom will lead to utopia.  But an anthropology that reflects true human nature reveals that when we are given more freedom we use it selfishly, sinful humans with ultimate freedom leads to more moral decline and the collapse of society or at least one that wants to live in opposition to God. That is why our founding Father's though wanting to establish a free society still recognized the need for laws and even laws to protect the people from the newly instituted government. The separation of church and state as Thomas Jefferson penned it, not in the constitution I might add, was to prevent government interference with religion not prohibit it. Now somehow it is interpreted backwards. But if God's deems our plight worthy of an exodus then he will provide his own Angel of Death, he doesn't need us for that role, but if not and probably not, we must continue to be faithful and humble ourselves. All we can do is pray for our leaders to change or for the Maker to return.

If our prayer leads us to anger and temptation to rise up then our focus is wrongheaded and we are not resting in the one who has both the power to raise up kingdoms and bring them down.   

Daniel 2 reminds

“Blessed be the name of God forever and ever,
to whom belong wisdom and might.
21He changes times and seasons;
he removes kings and sets up kings;
he gives wisdom to the wise
and knowledge to those who have understanding;

When commanding Jeremiah the prophet God tells him of his power over the nations

1:10See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms,
to pluck up and to break down,
to destroy and to overthrow,
to build and to plant.”

Psalm 75 is also about this. 

The last point is simply this. We are not Israel, so we are not a true theocracy and we do not get to act as his sword. He did that under a different covenant for judgement, but at this point in history he has reserved all judgment to the Son, who when he returns will administer it all. As I said before all we can do is know that they will give account, even the very avengers that we had a hard time living under that God allowed for a time.

This is a hard truth no doubt. It takes humility to let God handle his own affairs in the realms of men but they are his affairs. His affairs are justice, mine are obedience. The only warfare Christians wage are on their knees humbly before God.  So maybe we should we should enact some warfare: take it to the Lord in prayer. 

thanks
 

God's Avenger

The fourth of July is here and it is a very testy time to say the least with the government and Christianity.

On everyone's mind right now is the role of government. What did it do? What should it have done etc? How should Christians react? Paul gives an interesting summary of the purpose of the Government and he calls it God's avenger. This doesn't so much hit on the ruling yet but setting some ground work for the discussion to happen. I know that Paul's discussion doesn't quite get to what everyone is so mad about right now. This isn't the hot topic of the day right now, but, the reach of the government is. In order to get there though we need to see what its purpose is supposed to be. We need to look at Romans 13.

I started writing about this honestly because I occasionally see someone comment about how Christians shouldn't be for the death penalty because we are pro life and believe we are made in the image of God.  Rightly so, we are.  But so much has happened historically that this will be a two part-er.

On more reflection on my previous needing a hero blog and our desire of justice, it got me thinking about another hero. Or rather an anti-hero The Punisher.  I was familiar with the comic book character and so I watched the movie a few years ago and I remember struggling with a line in the movie where he says "It is not vengeance but punishment." In other words he was justified because it was not a personal vendetta but administering the due desert.

At the time I remember struggling with how it was any different, mostly because he was entirely spurned on by the personal loss of his family. But I do understand the intent. Vengeance in the our typical sense is reactionary despite justice, whereas punishment is in direct response measured by desert.

Any vengeance is in a sense retribution but our typical vernacular tends to be more along the lines of a personal tit for tat, or payback with righting the wrong of personal feelings. True desert involves righting the wrong as in restitution, it is a measured response to the wrongdoing. The problems of vengeance tend to be emotional and thus the solution may be greater than the crime.

For example: "He should be in prison, but I want him dead."

This as I have said before is why God instructed the rule "An eye for an eye". So the punishment is measured.  God is about just measures, remember?

So at the time I didn't understand it for the movie, I am not sure if it conveyed the idea well, but I do understand the difference in principle. The idea is that sometimes people escape through the system and true justice cannot be levied so the Punisher brings the desert for the crimes.  This is the very premise of the Steven Seagal movie Above the Law (1988).

Now while I can grant them the premise for the fictional comic book character and for a movie, this doesn't work in real life. When real people do this they also have to give account.

A more realistic yet still fictional story tried to portray this as well.  The movie A Time to Kill (1996) from a John Grisham book dealt with this exact premise. A Father whose daughter was brutally raped knew that the accused were going to be let go because of racial tension so he took it upon himself to punish them. He shot them both dead and the movie plays out about his own trial. Despite his own obvious guilt he feels justified because the system failed. His guilt is undeniable the question becomes should he be prosecuted? In the end he isn't because the jury realizes he acted as probably any father would because he was himself denied justice. A very good movie.

But the obvious point is sometimes the system isn't enough.  Now this system is in fact what God has left behind to be his own avenger. Romans 13 calls the government a servant of God for the common good. The government is referred to as his avenger who carries out God's own wrath on the wrongdoer. In other words God is about punitive desert.

So what are the common responses?

People are the image of God. God told us we are made in his image and he believes in the death penalty. God enacted the penalty many times and had his people do the same. God is not so concerned about his image bearers that he refrains from snuffing them out when they corrupt his image by offense. But that was the Old Testament. Well in New Testament rightly so that responsibility has been handed over to God's Avengers: the Governments. Their primary purpose is to restrain evil and this is done by the sword (by force). But what about the woman caught in adultery? The scenario was that the mob wanted Jesus to allow them to put her to death. They actually didn't have the right under Roman law to act such. There was no formal trial and the man was mysteriously absent. But primarily Jesus' purpose was to save lives not destroy them. Jesus reminds his own disciples this in Luke 9:56 when they wanted to call down fire on his opponents. His purpose was to bring the gospel, his mission from God was to spread news of the Kingdom. It was not his responsibility to act under Old Testament laws when the New Covenant was being put in place. However he did teach Paul to instruct that Governments did hold that power as his servants.  Why do we kill people to show that killing people is wrong? Because death is a great message. Really it is. The death penalty serves as an object lesson for sure but first and foremost is a just desert. It is also to curb evil. God gave us the example of punitive justice.

I would further point out the punishment for our sins was punitive; the death penalty. Furthermore when reading the New Testament at this point God is delaying punishment til his return for the purposes of showing mercy 2 Peter 3:15. God wants to grant grace in forgiveness through his Son. But a time will come when he shows up and the time for mercy will have expired. This is why everyone wants to put a date on the apocalypse. Read the New Testament about the Day of the Lord. God's justice is about the death penalty. The wadges of sin is death. God does offer a way out but if people don't take it then they deny the savior end up paying it themselves.

Now the purpose of this blog is not to defend the death penalty, but to advance the notion that sometimes justice is punitive. Justice doesn't really care about the rehabilitation, that is for a separate office. Rehabilitation is on the individual. A system can be put in place to help, but rehabilitation is not justice. Rehabilitation is necessary for a society to function but it is a luxury. A luxury that we all very much hope that people take advantage of, but it cannot take the place of just desert. God demands justice, he is not as much interested about his avenger creating programs to reintegrate the people into society, the avenger's job is justice. Rehabilitation is the Church's job. It is called the Gospel.

Before we get caught up in the why's of this or that tragedy let's not skip over the just desert. When we skip over desert we compound the trespass, multiply the victims, and encourage repeat offenses. The punishment must fit the crime after-all.

Without punishment we breed lawlessness. And thus we get a country that hates accountability and screams for little more than anarchy. If we need to change the system we should use the system lawfully or else our own lawlessness brings about more sin. Again in chapter 13 of Romans we are told to not resist the government as they act as the avengers or else we are found to be fighting against God himself.

If the Avengers go bad, they will give an account to new governments and ultimately to God. Avengers will give an account. Just as God punished those he used to punish Israel. Avengers are not above the law as Steven Seagal taught us.

Thus we leave punishment to the government and we leave the government to hands of God. But what about when they violate God's law? Well we can look at that next time.

thanks