One of these days, I will learn how to not write out of my emotion. Today's not that day.
It's been 2500 years since these words were uttered by the prophet Habakkuk as he watched his own corrupt, unjust society (the Southern Kingdom of Judah) being violently invaded and overrun by an even more corrupt, unjust society (the Babylonian Empire) and cried out, demanding an answer from God. Why was God not listening and why was God not doing something about the insanity, violence, and destruction that was so prevalent in his own day?
They say, "the more things change, the more they stay the same." Because 2500 years later, I find this lament just as relevant today as it was then. The circumstances, in its own weird way, not all that different.
This passage just popped into my head last night as I was getting off the plane that had moments before landed coming out of - of all places - Dallas. When I left Dallas, President Obama had just finished giving an address to the nation regarding the murder of Philando Castile, a black man shot in Minneapolis by police during what should have been a routine traffic stop.
As I walked out of the West Palm Beach airport bathroom, I fell in beside the flight crew that was leaving the airport and heard one of them say, "Did you hear what happened in Dallas?"
Dallas? We just left Dallas. What?
My heart sank as I heard that ten officers had been shot during a protest and at least four were dead (later to be updated to five). I wanted to cry, not just for the officers, but for everything that had led up to it as well.
On days like this, it's hard not to despair. It's hard not to ask what on earth has happened to our "civilized," peaceful society we believed we lived in?
Then I had to remind myself: that perception is a lie and an illusion. For some time we have mistakenly thought we were more enlightened and civilized than ancient humans. That when we utilized violence, it was somehow justified and part of how we fought "bigger evils" in our world...not just part of our "nature."
Yet here we are, watching not some distant war half way across the world via drones and air bombings while we sit safe in our own recliners at home, but are watching violence erupt between our own members of society. Philando Castile was shot and killed on a street I drove on almost every day for four years while I attended seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. Police officers were being gunned down in the streets of Dallas as I boarded a plane out of the Dallas airport.
We don't need the fear of terrorists from the Middle East to rip our society apart. We do just fine on our own with home-grown prejudices and racism that has been at the core of American society since its inception.
I keep hearing from people, especially older generations, that we need to get back to "family values" like it was in the 1950's. They longingly desire and remember with nostalgia a time of perceived calm, economic growth, and safety - where kids could ride their bikes and run around the neighborhood without fear of being kidnapped or gunned down.
However, this is white nostalgia. Ask a black American who lived during the 1950's how fondly they remember that same time period, whether or not they lived in fear on a daily basis that they would be killed for no better reason than the color of their skin and that justice on their behalf would never come to fruition. A time period where black people were still denied the right to vote or even use the same drinking fountain as their white neighbors. They couldn't even sit at the front of the bus or eat in certain establishments.
Sorry America, your nostalgia of a time when things were "better" was only a time when it was "better" for a certain portion of the population. This "better" time eventually gave way to the Civil Rights movement and race riots throughout the country.
Then an uneasy calm settled in during the eighties and nineties, as we desperately tried to sweep the undercurrents of a still very real racism under the rug and focused on finding our own big bad "Hitler" type outside our country that was so clearly evil and demonic in the minds of the general public that no one would question why we were engaging in fighting and violence. Enter Saddam Hussein, and later Osama bin Laden.
"Peace" and security in America has always been an illusion. We've ignored the undercurrents and injustices in our society for hundreds of years - a nation that was founded not on "Biblical principles," but rather by wiping out the indigenous people in order to colonize land we just took (utilizing the Bible, erroneously, to determine Northern Europeans were a superior race and therefore justified in committing genocide), then revolting against the British crown while maintaining a system of slavery and bondage of our African brothers and sisters until we ripped ourselves apart in the American Civil War.
Those issues have never disappeared. They are a part of our history that has simply festered and remained while we have coated a glossy sheen over the top of our society to tell ourselves that everyone wants to be like us, and everyone wants what we want. Now those cushy lives are being threatened... whether it's by racial division, fear of immigrants, fear of losing our way of life... whatever you want to call it.
Finally, our national and corporate sins have come home to roost, so to speak, and white America is clinging to their rapidly changing world and demographic. We have always viewed ourselves as the "morally righteous" nation, based on "freedom," and democracy, yet there has always only been a section of our society throughout our history that has really been "free."
We have entered wars thinking we were the heroes that took on the big, bad evil tyrants of the world...only to discover that we have in many ways turned into the very Imperial power in the world that we claim to disdain so much.
We've watched as innocent black men get gunned down by the very people who are sworn to "protect and serve," and on the flip side, innocent officers who ARE doing their duty getting gunned down while attempting to fulfill their calling to actually protect and serve.
This is our legacy as of 2016. A society that has devolved into a state where its two leading presidential candidates are a criminal who should have been federally indicted and a narcissistic sociopath. Those aren't options. We're shooting one another in the streets and trying to pretend like one or the other deserved what they got somehow. We're arguing over whether or not assault rifles should be easily obtained as an interpretation of the second amendment.
We think we've moved beyond sexism, when the reality is women are still constantly harassed and dismissed in the work place and are just expected to "suck it up" and "play the game" in order to just have the same opportunities as their male counterparts.
If this is what an enlightened society looks like...
A part of me is tempted to pull a Habakkuk, actually, and go stand on the ramparts (well, I don't really know where any ramparts are, so maybe just my back patio?) and demand God answer my complaint. Except for the fact that I'm pretty sure the answer I would get would wind up being just as unsatisfying as the answer Habakkuk received.
He'd probably come back with, "Really? You think if you foster a civilization like this for a few hundred years, there won't be repercussions? Think again."
There is no way for us to say "here's the real bad guy" in all of this. It's far too complicated for that. It's humanity doing what humanity does.
Most of you know I love the book of Revelation - but not for the reasons other people do. Others tend to see it as a road map, as a step by step guide to the end of the world.
That's not exactly how I perceive it. Revelation is a prophecy - in the same vein as the prophetic voice we hear in Habakkuk's lament as he watched the destruction of his corner of the world. Prophets offered up warning and promise. Warning that if we continue down certain roads... bad things will happen. Promises that despite the destruction, God will not abandon us forever to our own devices.
Revelation thus serves not as a road map so much as it has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is yet another prophetic warning to shape up and stop treating those around us with contempt and hatred and engaging in beastly and oppressive systems. Because guess what? Oppressive systems always - ALWAYS - self destruct. The beast devours the harlot that has been happily riding atop that system, getting drunk on the blood of the innocent, getting rich off those she had taken advantage of for so long.
Realizing that once again, as has happened time after time throughout human history, Revelation's stark warnings to repent from our engagement in these systems or suffer the same sort of destruction and downfall the beast and harlot represent are coming to fruition.
Will we heed the warning as a people and a society? Or will we continue to ignore the prophet's cries of warning and hurtle toward our own end? (However that may eventually look.)
Or do we turn to God in repentance - repenting not only of the violence and bloodshed we are guilty of ourselves but been complicit with simply by ignoring the realities of those who suffer in our society. Repentance from how we have taken care of the earth itself? (We tend to ignore this verse from Revelation 11:18: "The nations were angry and your wrath has come. The time has come for judging the dead, and for rewarding your servants the prophets and your people who revere your name, both great and small--and for destroying those who destroy the earth.")
Yet amidst all the doom and gloom... I have to cling to a hope and a promise that Revelation also gives us. That Christ overcomes. No, we may be too far along to avoid what's coming that is going to rock not only our nation but our world, but in the midst of the crazy images and violence that occurs in Revelation there is one truth that shines through - that is not the last word. This insanity is not where God will leave it.
Bad things happened to the nation of Judah when the Babylonians invaded. Judah reaped what it had sown. God tells Habakkuk to write down this Revelation (yes, there are "revelations" in other prophetic books as well) and make it plain on tablets for the Judeans to see.
“Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed
and establishes a town by injustice!
Has not the Lord Almighty determined
that the people’s labor is only fuel for the fire,
that the nations exhaust themselves for nothing?
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.
Judah's own corruption had left it open to destruction by a bigger, more powerful and more destructive force (which would also eventually collapse in on itself as the Babylonians eventually gave way to the Persians... who gave way to the Greeks, who gave way to the Romans...blah blah blah...)
History has a tendency to repeat itself. Habakkuk's cry and God's indictment are both just as relevant today as they were 2500 years ago. Yet we learn nothing. We somehow think we're immune. Revelation reminds us of this same warning and lament when the figurative "Babylon" is destroyed. The language and warning is in the same vein as what God tells Habakkuk about its own society.
Is Revelation thus speaking to American society? Absolutely. Is it speaking ONLY to American society? Of course not. It speaks to all societies that engage in this behavior, as Habakkuk's prophecy points out as well.
As a Christian - I feel compelled to cry out and lament just like Habakkuk. To feel the anguish and despair of watching my own society crumble and fall because we have failed to learn from thousands of years of self-destruction. Failed to heed the warnings from scriptures that so many of us claim to follow and cling to.
Yet as a Christian, I also cling to the hope and the promise that God makes to his faithful... that while corrupt nations will rise and fall, and the innocent will get swept up in the violence as much as the guilty... God will still triumph in the end.
Christ rides into our messy world, our dark world, our violent world, wearing a robe dipped in his own sacrificial blood wielding the sword of his mouth - the Word of God. A reminder that the beastly systems of the world will eventually give way and yield to the Lord of Lord and King of Kings, and all nations will be brought low before Him. A promise that after all of the ways in which we hurt ourselves and destroy ourselves, Christ comes in and destroys the destructive systems.
He does not destroy the nations - just the systems upon which they operate. Because Revelation 22 shows us how the nations are led to the city of God and are healed by the leaves from the tree of life. That is the vision and promise of our future. Eventually. Some day.
Yet watching us not heed the warnings doesn't make life in the present any less difficult or sorrowful or stop many of us from calling out for repentance and change. For this is one of the visions God gives us as well in Revelation 11, where judgment is muted and the nations repent and give glory to God rather than giving glory to the demons that were responsible for their torment (as had happened in the two previous cycles of visions). Perhaps one of these days, we too will turn in repentance that is achieved through Christian witness and destruction can be mitigated rather than glorifying the things that only continue to wreak havoc and destruction.
I have this hope - which is why I cry out for humanity to change its direction and path. And I have faith that either way - God will triumph over our self-destructive nature in the end.
"How long, LORD, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, "Violence!" but you do not save? Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrongdoing? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds. Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails. The wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted." - Habakkuk 1:2-4
They say, "the more things change, the more they stay the same." Because 2500 years later, I find this lament just as relevant today as it was then. The circumstances, in its own weird way, not all that different.
This passage just popped into my head last night as I was getting off the plane that had moments before landed coming out of - of all places - Dallas. When I left Dallas, President Obama had just finished giving an address to the nation regarding the murder of Philando Castile, a black man shot in Minneapolis by police during what should have been a routine traffic stop.
As I walked out of the West Palm Beach airport bathroom, I fell in beside the flight crew that was leaving the airport and heard one of them say, "Did you hear what happened in Dallas?"
Dallas? We just left Dallas. What?
My heart sank as I heard that ten officers had been shot during a protest and at least four were dead (later to be updated to five). I wanted to cry, not just for the officers, but for everything that had led up to it as well.
On days like this, it's hard not to despair. It's hard not to ask what on earth has happened to our "civilized," peaceful society we believed we lived in?
Then I had to remind myself: that perception is a lie and an illusion. For some time we have mistakenly thought we were more enlightened and civilized than ancient humans. That when we utilized violence, it was somehow justified and part of how we fought "bigger evils" in our world...not just part of our "nature."
Yet here we are, watching not some distant war half way across the world via drones and air bombings while we sit safe in our own recliners at home, but are watching violence erupt between our own members of society. Philando Castile was shot and killed on a street I drove on almost every day for four years while I attended seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. Police officers were being gunned down in the streets of Dallas as I boarded a plane out of the Dallas airport.
We don't need the fear of terrorists from the Middle East to rip our society apart. We do just fine on our own with home-grown prejudices and racism that has been at the core of American society since its inception.
I keep hearing from people, especially older generations, that we need to get back to "family values" like it was in the 1950's. They longingly desire and remember with nostalgia a time of perceived calm, economic growth, and safety - where kids could ride their bikes and run around the neighborhood without fear of being kidnapped or gunned down.
However, this is white nostalgia. Ask a black American who lived during the 1950's how fondly they remember that same time period, whether or not they lived in fear on a daily basis that they would be killed for no better reason than the color of their skin and that justice on their behalf would never come to fruition. A time period where black people were still denied the right to vote or even use the same drinking fountain as their white neighbors. They couldn't even sit at the front of the bus or eat in certain establishments.
Sorry America, your nostalgia of a time when things were "better" was only a time when it was "better" for a certain portion of the population. This "better" time eventually gave way to the Civil Rights movement and race riots throughout the country.
Then an uneasy calm settled in during the eighties and nineties, as we desperately tried to sweep the undercurrents of a still very real racism under the rug and focused on finding our own big bad "Hitler" type outside our country that was so clearly evil and demonic in the minds of the general public that no one would question why we were engaging in fighting and violence. Enter Saddam Hussein, and later Osama bin Laden.
"Peace" and security in America has always been an illusion. We've ignored the undercurrents and injustices in our society for hundreds of years - a nation that was founded not on "Biblical principles," but rather by wiping out the indigenous people in order to colonize land we just took (utilizing the Bible, erroneously, to determine Northern Europeans were a superior race and therefore justified in committing genocide), then revolting against the British crown while maintaining a system of slavery and bondage of our African brothers and sisters until we ripped ourselves apart in the American Civil War.
Those issues have never disappeared. They are a part of our history that has simply festered and remained while we have coated a glossy sheen over the top of our society to tell ourselves that everyone wants to be like us, and everyone wants what we want. Now those cushy lives are being threatened... whether it's by racial division, fear of immigrants, fear of losing our way of life... whatever you want to call it.
Finally, our national and corporate sins have come home to roost, so to speak, and white America is clinging to their rapidly changing world and demographic. We have always viewed ourselves as the "morally righteous" nation, based on "freedom," and democracy, yet there has always only been a section of our society throughout our history that has really been "free."
We have entered wars thinking we were the heroes that took on the big, bad evil tyrants of the world...only to discover that we have in many ways turned into the very Imperial power in the world that we claim to disdain so much.
We've watched as innocent black men get gunned down by the very people who are sworn to "protect and serve," and on the flip side, innocent officers who ARE doing their duty getting gunned down while attempting to fulfill their calling to actually protect and serve.
This is our legacy as of 2016. A society that has devolved into a state where its two leading presidential candidates are a criminal who should have been federally indicted and a narcissistic sociopath. Those aren't options. We're shooting one another in the streets and trying to pretend like one or the other deserved what they got somehow. We're arguing over whether or not assault rifles should be easily obtained as an interpretation of the second amendment.
We think we've moved beyond sexism, when the reality is women are still constantly harassed and dismissed in the work place and are just expected to "suck it up" and "play the game" in order to just have the same opportunities as their male counterparts.
If this is what an enlightened society looks like...
A part of me is tempted to pull a Habakkuk, actually, and go stand on the ramparts (well, I don't really know where any ramparts are, so maybe just my back patio?) and demand God answer my complaint. Except for the fact that I'm pretty sure the answer I would get would wind up being just as unsatisfying as the answer Habakkuk received.
He'd probably come back with, "Really? You think if you foster a civilization like this for a few hundred years, there won't be repercussions? Think again."
There is no way for us to say "here's the real bad guy" in all of this. It's far too complicated for that. It's humanity doing what humanity does.
Most of you know I love the book of Revelation - but not for the reasons other people do. Others tend to see it as a road map, as a step by step guide to the end of the world.
That's not exactly how I perceive it. Revelation is a prophecy - in the same vein as the prophetic voice we hear in Habakkuk's lament as he watched the destruction of his corner of the world. Prophets offered up warning and promise. Warning that if we continue down certain roads... bad things will happen. Promises that despite the destruction, God will not abandon us forever to our own devices.
Revelation thus serves not as a road map so much as it has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is yet another prophetic warning to shape up and stop treating those around us with contempt and hatred and engaging in beastly and oppressive systems. Because guess what? Oppressive systems always - ALWAYS - self destruct. The beast devours the harlot that has been happily riding atop that system, getting drunk on the blood of the innocent, getting rich off those she had taken advantage of for so long.
Realizing that once again, as has happened time after time throughout human history, Revelation's stark warnings to repent from our engagement in these systems or suffer the same sort of destruction and downfall the beast and harlot represent are coming to fruition.
Will we heed the warning as a people and a society? Or will we continue to ignore the prophet's cries of warning and hurtle toward our own end? (However that may eventually look.)
Or do we turn to God in repentance - repenting not only of the violence and bloodshed we are guilty of ourselves but been complicit with simply by ignoring the realities of those who suffer in our society. Repentance from how we have taken care of the earth itself? (We tend to ignore this verse from Revelation 11:18: "The nations were angry and your wrath has come. The time has come for judging the dead, and for rewarding your servants the prophets and your people who revere your name, both great and small--and for destroying those who destroy the earth.")
Yet amidst all the doom and gloom... I have to cling to a hope and a promise that Revelation also gives us. That Christ overcomes. No, we may be too far along to avoid what's coming that is going to rock not only our nation but our world, but in the midst of the crazy images and violence that occurs in Revelation there is one truth that shines through - that is not the last word. This insanity is not where God will leave it.
Bad things happened to the nation of Judah when the Babylonians invaded. Judah reaped what it had sown. God tells Habakkuk to write down this Revelation (yes, there are "revelations" in other prophetic books as well) and make it plain on tablets for the Judeans to see.
Woe to him who piles up stolen goods
and makes himself wealthy by extortion!
How long must this go on?’
Will not your creditors suddenly arise?
Will they not wake up and make you tremble?
Then you will become their prey.
Because you have plundered many nations,
the peoples who are left will plunder you.
For you have shed human blood;
you have destroyed lands and cities and everyone in them.
and makes himself wealthy by extortion!
How long must this go on?’
Will not your creditors suddenly arise?
Will they not wake up and make you tremble?
Then you will become their prey.
Because you have plundered many nations,
the peoples who are left will plunder you.
For you have shed human blood;
you have destroyed lands and cities and everyone in them.
“Woe to him who builds his house by unjust gain,
setting his nest on high
to escape the clutches of ruin!
You have plotted the ruin of many peoples,
shaming your own house and forfeiting your life.
The stones of the wall will cry out,
and the beams of the woodwork will echo it.
setting his nest on high
to escape the clutches of ruin!
You have plotted the ruin of many peoples,
shaming your own house and forfeiting your life.
The stones of the wall will cry out,
and the beams of the woodwork will echo it.
“Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed
and establishes a town by injustice!
Has not the Lord Almighty determined
that the people’s labor is only fuel for the fire,
that the nations exhaust themselves for nothing?
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.
Judah's own corruption had left it open to destruction by a bigger, more powerful and more destructive force (which would also eventually collapse in on itself as the Babylonians eventually gave way to the Persians... who gave way to the Greeks, who gave way to the Romans...blah blah blah...)
History has a tendency to repeat itself. Habakkuk's cry and God's indictment are both just as relevant today as they were 2500 years ago. Yet we learn nothing. We somehow think we're immune. Revelation reminds us of this same warning and lament when the figurative "Babylon" is destroyed. The language and warning is in the same vein as what God tells Habakkuk about its own society.
Is Revelation thus speaking to American society? Absolutely. Is it speaking ONLY to American society? Of course not. It speaks to all societies that engage in this behavior, as Habakkuk's prophecy points out as well.
As a Christian - I feel compelled to cry out and lament just like Habakkuk. To feel the anguish and despair of watching my own society crumble and fall because we have failed to learn from thousands of years of self-destruction. Failed to heed the warnings from scriptures that so many of us claim to follow and cling to.
Yet as a Christian, I also cling to the hope and the promise that God makes to his faithful... that while corrupt nations will rise and fall, and the innocent will get swept up in the violence as much as the guilty... God will still triumph in the end.
Christ rides into our messy world, our dark world, our violent world, wearing a robe dipped in his own sacrificial blood wielding the sword of his mouth - the Word of God. A reminder that the beastly systems of the world will eventually give way and yield to the Lord of Lord and King of Kings, and all nations will be brought low before Him. A promise that after all of the ways in which we hurt ourselves and destroy ourselves, Christ comes in and destroys the destructive systems.
He does not destroy the nations - just the systems upon which they operate. Because Revelation 22 shows us how the nations are led to the city of God and are healed by the leaves from the tree of life. That is the vision and promise of our future. Eventually. Some day.
Yet watching us not heed the warnings doesn't make life in the present any less difficult or sorrowful or stop many of us from calling out for repentance and change. For this is one of the visions God gives us as well in Revelation 11, where judgment is muted and the nations repent and give glory to God rather than giving glory to the demons that were responsible for their torment (as had happened in the two previous cycles of visions). Perhaps one of these days, we too will turn in repentance that is achieved through Christian witness and destruction can be mitigated rather than glorifying the things that only continue to wreak havoc and destruction.
I have this hope - which is why I cry out for humanity to change its direction and path. And I have faith that either way - God will triumph over our self-destructive nature in the end.
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