judgment valley

Consider the kindness and the severity of God. Romans 11:22

Judgment. Hellfire and brimstone. Second death.

Most of us could go all day without dwelling on those words with their harshness, their sobering reality. Surely God has gotten over all that fire and brimstone stuff, we may muse. Angry God has given way to Nice God. Or perhaps we might think we’ve matured in our understanding of God to the point where we see beyond the fiery demonstrations to the kinder, gentler Man behind the curtain.

I would be happy if there were no hell below us. If there were no harsh “Depart from me I never knew you” verdicts. No lake of fire, no second death, no place where “the fire is not quenched and their worm dieth not.” If when caught up to meet Him we were told Hell is cancelled, that grace has finally trumped everything and everyone; no eternal conscious torment for anyone; instead of the lake of fire there’s only the glassy sea…I wouldn’t complain as I snuggled into Abba’s arms.

But the prophet holds a double-edged sword of a future glory and of a gory fate. There is agony and ecstasy. There is delight and bright day as surely as there is doom and damnation. Isaiah has the redeemed of Zion gazing upon the bodies of the slain. Zechariah has skin melting off bodies and eyes rotting in sockets (definitely one of the lovelier pictures from the prophets). Joel sees the nations called to gather in “Judgment Valley”:

"In those days, yes, at that very time when I put life back together again for Judah and Jerusalem,
I'll assemble all the godless nations.
   I'll lead them down into Judgment Valley
And put them all on trial, and judge them one and all
   because of their treatment of my own people Israel.
They scattered my people all over the pagan world
   and grabbed my land for themselves.
They threw dice for my people
   and used them for barter.
They would trade a boy for a whore,
   sell a girl for a bottle of wine when they wanted a drink.

Let the pagan nations set out
   for Judgment Valley.
There I'll take my place at the bench
   and judge all the surrounding nations. Joel 3:1-3, 12

Blessing and curse. Life and judgment. Kindness and severity. Light and darkness. I can’t escape the theme!  And throughout this journey there were plenty of those who wanted to – those generally called “false prophets” by the true, false prophets who beat a drum of “Peace, peace” while the world crumbled around them. Even in Malachi’s day, a people plucked out of the furnace of captivity found themselves gravitating towards a judgment free universe, and God said it wore him out (his first line is a great line for all preachers and bloggers!):

You make God tired with all your talk.

   "How do we tire him out?" you ask.

   By saying, "God loves sinners and sin alike. God loves all."
And also by saying, "Judgment? God's too nice to judge."  Malachi 2:17

Maybe we do want God as the ultimate Santa. Sure, Santa may only leave you coal, but at least he doesn’t turn you into coal! But Malachi quickly turns up the alarm when we’d much rather hit the “snooze” (again) dashing our images of a God “who’s too nice to judge”:

"Yes, I'm on my way to visit you with Judgment. I'll present compelling evidence against sorcerers, adulterers, liars, those who exploit workers, those who take advantage of widows and orphans, those who are inhospitable to the homeless—anyone and everyone who doesn't honor me." A Message from God-of-the-Angel-Armies. Malachi 3:5

We can debate about such judgment being temporal or eternal, about the nature of hell (is it darkness, is it fire, are there worms, is it a lake, etc. etc.), whether judgment’s fire is one that consumes or one that purifies or one that torments forever. Maybe it’s none of these. Maybe it’s all of them.

But regardless, Judgment Valley, the Valley of Decision remains before us, the theme picked up by Jesus and the rest of the New Testament. “These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life,” says the Savior to whom all judgment has been given by the Father. And in one of his more extended “rants” on hell, Jesus warns his disciples:

“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea. And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’ For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.” Mark 9:42-50 ESV

Still waiting to see these words on a Christian calendar – or featured on a Thomas Kinkade painting. It’s a harsh reality that I see mirrored in the world around us.

True, hell has been used as a manipulative tool of religion to build vast religious empires; and true, we need to pay closer attention to just who consistently is said will be there or who will be judged, whether here or there.

But to take the Book seriously and the vistas it shows, I with Paul and the rest of the prophets find myself compelled to “consider the kindness and the severity of God.” And in so doing I find myself driven headlong into kindness as I step across the threshold of my home onto these streets…

waking up is hard to do

Consider this: there’s not much point to Christianity without Christ, and there’s not much point to Christ without resurrection…Christianity, to put it baldly, is a religion of waking up.
Robert Rowland Smith,
Breakfast with Socrates

“Awake, O sleeper,

        and arise from the dead,

  and Christ will shine on you.”  Ephesians 5:14 ESV

Christianity is a religion of waking up.

I really hadn’t expected deep truths and insights from what I had figured would be a light and entertaining read, but Robert Rowland Smith’s Breakfast with Socrates has been a pleasant surprise. It is light and entertaining, but right there in the first chapter on “Waking Up” (literally just waking up in the morning – the premise of the book is to go through the ordinary activities of our ordinary day accompanied by the wisdom of Socrates and others) I found myself stumbling across some wonderful insights.

"Christianity is a religion of waking up."

Funny thing is that no sooner had I read those words than I picked up the book of Haggai and came across these words:

"Take a good, hard look at your life.
   Think it over.
You have spent a lot of money,
   but you haven't much to show for it.
You keep filling your plates,
   but you never get filled up.
You keep drinking and drinking and drinking,
   but you're always thirsty.
You put on layer after layer of clothes,
   but you can't get warm.
And the people who work for you,
   what are they getting out of it?
Not much—
   a leaky, rusted-out bucket, that's what.

That's why God-of-the-Angel-Armies said:

   "Take a good, hard look at your life.
   Think it over."   Haggai 1:5-7  Message

The prophet Haggai issues a prophetic wake-up call to a generation that has grown lethargic and discouraged. They started this great work of rebuilding the temple, but when opposition appeared (literally, right on the scene) they stopped, and then shifted gears to building everything but the temple they had begun. Fine houses for themselves, fields being farmed and worked, and with each passing day they glance less and less over at the stump that was the temple. The funny thing was, of course, that the harder they worked, the less progress and profit they seemed to make.

Is it just me or does this story have a familiar ring to it? And I was floored by the pointedness of Haggai’s soul-searching questions. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe it’s the holidays.

Then I read on in Breakfast with Socrates and came upon this little gem (still on the subject of waking up):

The word for truth is aletheia,from which in English we get the word lethargy. But see how the Greek word is a-letheia rather than letheia; that is, truth is the opposite of lethargy. And what is the opposite of lethargy, if not waking up? The truth lies in being awake and throwing off the sheets. In a certain sense, you’re the most truly yourself when you awake. It’s hard to wake up inauthentically.

Wow.

What a connection. Truth and being awake -- truth the antithesis of lethargy.

And how we love sleep, turning in our beds like a door on its hinges.

Sleeping brain.

Slumbering heart.

Dreamy dozing – but you can just never remember any of the dreams.

And then comes a tapping. Is it a finger on a table? Water dripping in the sink? Or is it the prophet’s voice repeating over us, “Consider your ways.”

Waking up is hard to do at times – harder for some than for others.

But once awake in this God-alive world filled with its God-inspired colors, hearing the Voice, feeling the Breeze on your face, filling your soul as you are becoming most truly yourself – how utterly impossible to even consider going back to sleep.

beholding the glory

Zechariah has been a good read this week.

The four riders; the horns and the blacksmiths smashing them; the man with the tape measure; the adversary rebuked and Joshua’s new clothes (what a picture, Revelation 12!); the lampstand and the two olive trees; the flying scroll (at least Zechariah didn’t have to make a meal out of his scroll); the woman in a basket; the four chariots.

A rich prophetic tapestry for a people who needed an infusion of hope.

Haggai and Zechariah were the tag team that got Israel moving again after a twenty year stall upon their return home. Haggai was terse, a man of few words. Zechariah lingered with vivid colors and dramatic images. Between the two of them, they sparked a fresh revival.

Revival is an interesting word in our religious heritage and lingo. Often we primarily associate it with fiery meetings with wild charismatic manifestations. Our focus tends to be on what’s happening under the tent (or roof). It’s been a while since I read it, but Jonathan Edwards, who had a bit of experience with revivals happening under such tents, commented at length that the sign of a true, genuine revival is what you would see on the streets and in the homes a year later when you went back and visited. As Wilberforce would have put it, you would have witnessed a radical “reformation of manners” among the people.

Zechariah’s passionate message stirred a people to stay, to build, and to weather the uncertainties of their times. The temple was completed, and they moved forward – and readily received the next “workers on the wall” that God would send: Ezra the priestly scribe and then Nehemiah the cupbearer turned builder and governor. Each brought their physical and spiritual building among them – some of who were more ready than others. And then they waited.

As the voice of the prophets stilled, and the pagan nations remained over them, they waited.

As temple was desecrated, the hammer of revolution was raised, and miraculous lights were lit on holy ground reconsecrated, they waited.

Zechariah didn’t have the elaborate Ezekiel vision of a new temple stretching on chapter after chapter, but I caught his breathless excitement over what would happen “on the big day”:

What a day that will be!
No more cold nights – in fact, no more nights! The Day is coming – the timing will be God’s – when it will be continuous day. Every evening will be a fresh morning.

What a day that will be!

Fresh flowing rivers out of Jerusalem, half to the eastern sea, half to the western sea, flowing year-round, summer and winter!

God will be king over all the earth, one God and only one.

What a day that will be.

Zechariah 14:6-9 (The Message, of course)

How we need Zechariah hearts among us, in us, stirring holy imagination, enflaming our hearts, firing our minds, and delivering us from souless eyes that see only a darkened and wanting landscape. Delivering us from the inward turn of skepticism and critical carping as we turn inward upon ourselves with our backs to a cold world of night. Giving us Spirit eyes to see the glories of the Big Day already blooming all around us, glowing from downcast and dim faces just waiting to be awakened.

Eyes beholding the Glory.

Restorationists

And the name of the city from that time on shall be, The Lord is There. Ezekiel 48:35

Ezekiel was off-putting to me at first.

Perhaps it’s just because I so identified with the earthiness of Jeremiah; his miry pit and tears and running debate with God; with his (for me) effective redefining of what a real, successful ministry looks like (a bit counter to what is in vogue amongst us). I greatly identify with Jeremiah’s teary and earthy groanings!

But then comes Ezekiel with his spectacular, technicolor dazzling light show – so seemingly ethereal and detached and “out there.” It was actually hard for me to get into it on many levels this time around. But ultimately, the other-worldly notes he strikes complete this combined symphony he shares with Jeremiah beautifully. Both prophets do their share of “dream smashing,” and both hit the notes of future restoration; what I noticed this time around is how Jeremiah excels in the former, while Ezekiel soars in the latter. It was hard for me to make the transition at first (perhaps I’m not alone in that). I like the drama of smashing a pot – but these weird visions are another matter beginning with the first vision “of the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord” that leaves many confused and others speculating about everything from LSD to UFOs.

And then the coup de grâce: the final vision occupying the last nine chapters of Ezekiel – a section through which in my own dullness I’ve generally had to repeatedly poke myself to remain alert while reading it. It feels like Exodus again. Not the dramatic chapters of plagues unleashed, of bondage broken, of a sea parted, of an oppressor routed, of a people freed. No, it’s the more tedious (to me) chapters of tabernacle description and construction. Back again in the land of many cubits.

Why all the minute details? Outer court and inner court, east gate and north gate and south gate, vestibule and priestly chambers, altars and sacrifices. Many get lost in all the details – details not nearly finding their fulfillment in the reality of the rebuilt temple of Zerubbabel – or even in the gloriously refurbished and refinished temple of Herod (finished practically days before its complete desolation). Old timers wept at the foundation of Zerubbabel’s rebuilt temple years after Ezekiel’s time; it just didn’t measure up to Solomon’s before or to the expectations of Ezekiel’s vision. Herod’s temple had the style and flash, but when it went up in flames, so did any thought that this was it either. So, many of us await another temple; we call it a millenial temple, and proceed to eschatological debates over timing and scenarios. And while I have no problem with a millenial temple or anything else that God wants to build during a future millenium or at any other time, I see something much bigger, much closer.

Ezekiel was measuring a dream. And like his first vision, I wonder if this one also is but “the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord.” What was so vividly taken away from them and destroyed is now vividly re-envisioned with a glory that caused even Solomon’s to pale. It may not be the dreamscape we would envision and design as dream architects, but Ezekiel’s vision on his mountain is a marvelous extrapolation of Moses’ vision in Exodus – a vision which gave Moses a working plan to build something that would reflect the heavenly pattern he had seen upon his mountain.

In Ezekiel’s temple vision, I see more than a meticulous plan for a future temple that we are all waiting to happen some day (and in the meantime, we’ll happily fill the time with arguing over how and where and when, or even engage in political manouverings to make it happen). This temple vision is not merely an eschatological curiosity, an end time’s bone thrown to an impatient crowd lined up outside the door; it’s a call to overt action rather than merely passive viewing. It’s a vision that sustained a generation of returning Israelites as they returned home and built up the waste places of what was once home. The temple vision is a vision of restoration – a restoration of justice and righteousness and truth and beauty and holiness. A restoration begun by a generation of returning Israelites; a restoration continued now in our generation, our culture, our time in present day followers of the Prince who has come.

Another interesting intersection.

Friends had me sit down with them and watch the 2007 film Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium. I would never have suspected an Ezekiel connection. But there it was. (I’m not going into detail about that film, you’ll just have to watch it if you wish to fully appreciate this paragraph). Mr. Magorium sees seemingly endless, colorful, kinetic, kaleidoscopic possibilties where others see only a plain block of wood. The “Mutant” blindly calculates numbers, while children’s eyes see magic unfolding right before them and they enter joyously into creative play. Replace Mr. Magorium and the children with us, magic with the kingdom of God, and the toystore with the big, wide world all around us, and you just might see Ezekiel’s ever deepening river flowing through your own neighborhood. Through ghetto streets and red light districts and war zones and famine & disease stricken lands. And “wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very many fish. For this water goes there, that the waters of the sea may become fresh; so everything will live where the river goes.” Ever deepening holiness, spreading everywhere. Through us. Unstoppable.

We’re not talking about escapism, wishful thinking or even wild-eyed imagination. We’re talking about Elisha eyes that instead of barren hills see the surrounding mountains filled with divine possibilities and then call those divine possibilities into being (prayer) through our own creative acts in engaging with our culture and our world (faith expressing itself by love). And even the dead-end Salt Sea becomes Galilee with such a diversity of teeming life that the Great Sea looks on with envy. The most arid and brown landscape has treelined streets whose branches are filled with life-giving fruit, and the very touch of their leaves brings healing. And there is always a tree. Always. Fully repenting of our first parent’s sin, we turn from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and it withers away. Always do we reach for and share the fruit from the growing forest of the tree of life. It’s shade is never far, its fruit always near.

How sad to keep this temple vision bottled up as we debate its contents.

How sad to think of this primarily as a river other there, some day.

The river is here, and the forest is spreading.

I look out my window. I see the man or woman standing on the street corner holding a sign. I see today’s headlines. I see my own daughter in her wheelchair. Do I see the river? Will I move in its currents? Will it flow from within me to the pain that I encounter daily? Or does the bitterness of a Salt Sea seemingly rising to high tide still sting and blind my eyes?

Is the story true?

So Joshua took all that land, the hill country and all the Negeb and all the land of Goshen and the lowland and the Arabah and the hill country of Israel and its lowland from Mount Halak, which rises toward Seir, as far as Baal-gad in the Valley of Lebanon below Mount Hermon. And he captured all their kings and struck them and put them to death. Joshua made war a long time with all those kings. There was not a city that made peace with the people of Israel except the Hivites, the inhabitants of Gibeon. They took them all in battle. For it was the LORD’s doing to harden their hearts that they should come against Israel in battle, in order that they should be devoted to destruction and should receive no mercy but be destroyed, just as the LORD commanded Moses. Joshua 11:16-20 ESV

“Those stories about Africa, about you, they’re true aren’t they?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does too. Around my mom all I hear is lies…I don’t know what to believe.”

“Damn, if you want to believe in something, believe in it. Just because something’s not true doesn’t mean you can’t believe in it. There’s a long speech I give to young men, sounds like you need to hear a piece of it. Just a piece. Sometimes the things that may or may not be true may be the things that a man needs to believe in the most…that people are basically good…that honor, courage and virtue mean everything…that money and power, power and money, mean nothing…that good always triumphs over evil…and, I want you to remember this, that love, true love, never dies…you remember that, boy, you remember that…it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, you see, a man should believe in those things because those are the things worth believing in…got that?”

“That was a good speech.”

This is a key exchange in Secondhand Lions between Uncle Hub and his young nephew Walter. The film revolves around some rather spectacular tales of adventure and daring-do, as well as a romantic love won and lost. Other opinions had circulated about Hub and his brother Garth, and the tales they tell simply seem impossible to believe. Yet Walter holds the picture of the heroine, Jasmine, which captures his imagination. Finally he just has to know: Is the story true?

Reading Joshua, and then reading about Joshua this past week, I was confronted with the same question.

Is the story true?

One of the books I’m occasionally dipping into on this journey just for a different perspective, is How to Read the Bible by James Kugel. It’s a book I would have been far too insecure to read in my college days or in my early days of ministry, just from the questions it asks and the possibilities it isn’t afraid to explore.

Reading his chapter on Joshua and the Conquest of Canaan brought me face to face with questions I knew about but had never actually waded through. But into the stream I went (I’m finding that books are the one place in which I can truly be adventurous). And so I waded into Kugel’s explorations about Joshua with such observations as this:

The book of Joshua clearly relates that the Israelites replaced the native Canaanites, but it presents no clear picture of what happened to that earlier population. There are no reports of massive emigration at the time of the emergence of Israel (and no evidence of such emigration elsewhere); there is little reason, scholars say, to believe that the native populations were simply slaughtered and buried somewhere. Indeed, the book of Judges itself mentions the numerous places in Canaan where “the Canaanites continued to live” among the Israelites or – equally surprising – where the Israelites lived “in the midst of the Canaanites” (Judges 1:27-35; 3:5-6). To this point most archaeologists add that during the whole period when Israel might have emerged (that is, between 1300 and 1000 BCE), there is in fact no evidence of any sizeable influx of people into the region, save for that of the coast-dwelling Philistines. Kugel, p. 382

Kugel goes on to relate the absence of evidence for the violent destruction of cities during this period (there is evidence, he says, of destruction earlier and later, but not in the chronology the Bible seems to present). The absence of corroborating evidence leads him to explore alternative theories concerning Israel’s origin. There’s the one about them coming from peaceful, nomadic tribes that gradually emigrated into the area we now know as Israel (ala Abraham’s story in Genesis) with the story of dramatic conquest then being a cultural invention to give these scattered tribes a national and religious identity. Then there’s the theory that the Israelites were themselves Canaanite revolutionaries known as the ‘apiru who were dissatisfied with the Egyptian hegemony that operated in Canaan through a network of puppets and vassals. “The disgruntled ‘apiru and other disgruntled elements eventually overthrew these entrenched powers and took over,” Kugel says. The Amarna Letters (actually 382 stone tablets of Egyptian records discovered towards the end of the 19th century at El Amarna in Egypt), he relates, “frequently mention the danger of people being joined to the ‘apiru, suggesting that there was some grassroots movement afoot. In one of the passages, the trembling ruler confesses, ‘Look, I am afraid the peasantry will strike me down.’ This too might suggest some sort of popular revolt.”

In conjunction with this, Kugel states that “Archaeologists have found that the central highlands of Canaan were settled relatively sparsely in the Late Bronze Age. Thereafter, however, the region experienced a sudden boost in population: starting around 1200 BCE, the number and density of permanent settlements in the Canaanite highlands increased dramatically. In just a generation or two, a network of roughly 250 highland settlements sprang up. Settlements continued to increase for a time thereafter. Interestingly, this spurt in highland settlements seems to have accompanied the depopulation of previously thriving Canaanite urban centers: just as suddenly, it seems, the cities in this same period dropped to less than half the number of their former inhabitants.”

So how do I reconcile all this? Some things seem to harmonize with available evidence while others clearly don’t. How do I sync the Joshua story with what the archaeologist’s spade hasn’t found – at least not yet? And if we can’t sync it are we sunk – and the Bible with us?

Just how much does my believing depend on my seeing?

Do I have to find (or rather read the reports of someone else finding) the ark to believe Genesis 6-8?

Do I have to find evidence of toppled walls that can with surety be dated to the period 1300-1000 BC to believe Joshua 6?

Do I have to find a scientific rationale or corroborating empirical evidence for the sun and moon stopping in the sky for a full day to believe and embrace Joshua 10?

In our inerrancy debates we fight with proverbial might and main to justify and prove the Bible and its truth empirically, putting it into the test tube of modern scientific and critical thought. In doing so have we in fact followed our “educated and enlightened” culture up the wrong, modern western culture tree – or into postmodern shrubbery? Am I converted in the scientist’s laboratory, in the archaeologist’s latest dig, in the historian’s accredited chair?

Do I only eat the entire scroll after it’s veracity has been empirically demonstrated to my reason’s satisfaction?

Do I vomit up the scroll, or those portions of it, when someone’s latest discovery or cultural innovation invalidates it – only to lick up my own vomit when the next discovery or innovation re-validates it?

Or does believing, in fact, run much deeper than that? Does truth run much deeper than that?

“Blessed are those who do not see, and yet believe.”

What I realized – again – is that I have chosen to eat the entire scroll, and I’m not going to selectively vomit portions up that seem disagreeable to me or unverifiable to others. After reading Kugel I looked into some other sources like the NIV Archaeological Bible which essentially confirms that we have no idea when anything happened, for sure, when it comes to the Exodus or the conquest, because of the absence of clear corroborating evidence that pinpoints anything. So we simply don’t know. We can’t put the conquest into a test tube and verify it. And I realized that simply isn’t necessary for me – that in fact it would be disappointing to me on some levels if we did find the ark on Ararat or the fallen walls around Jericho. I believe and love a God who hides himself, so I would expect him to hide his tracks.

And yet, in the midst of all these proffered theories about Joshua and Israelite origin, here stands Kugel’s summation of the scholars’ conclusions: “Most scholars today would probably admit (some grudgingly) that we will probably never know exactly where the people of Israel came from or how they got started on their separate existence. There is some merit to all of the theories mentioned, they say, but none of them alone can decisively account for all the biblical and extrabiblical data. One thing is clear, however: something must have happened.”

Which brings me back full circle to Uncle Hub and his “long speech that I give to young men.”

“You remember that, boy, you remember that…it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, you see, a man should believe in those things because those are the things worth believing in…got that?”

That fact is that despite Hub’s somewhat obtuse answer to the question, “Is the story true?”, at the film's end real, tangible corroborating evidence literally lands from the sky and verifies the entire story to a now much older Walter. But the fact is, Walter was only told what he already knew.

They really lived.