THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back. Let's think about the world.

There are two views about our relationship to the world. One is terribly wrong and could very well make Christianity irrelevant and absurd in the coming decades. The other is right in line with Jesus’ teaching and could very well spur our faith on for centuries to come.

Before I proceed, I would like to make an introduction by reminding everyone of President Jimmy Carter.

President Carter was avowedly the first born again Christian in the oval office. He taught Sunday school in a Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia. The Southern Baptist Denomination numbered him among its members.

Now, Harry Truman was a Southern Baptist, but he dropped the bomb on two Japanese cities.  He never elevated his faith to the level of consideration that President Carter did.

Strangely, President Carter was never popular among the fundamentalists. Whatever political capital he raises in the beginning of the Iranian Hostage Crisis of 1979 was squandered as the months dragged on.  After a failed rescue attempt, called Desert One, ended in tragedy, President Carter’s presidential life began to sputter.

His own wife, Rosalyn Carter, said to him once, “Why don’t you do something?”

He said, “What would you have me do?”

She said, “Mine the harbors.”

He said, “Okay, suppose I mine the harbors, and they decide to take out one hostage everyday and kill him?  What am I going to do then?”

As we all know, not a hostage was killed. No Iranians were killed. The only Americans who died during that terrible time were the casualties of Desert One. Eight servicemen were killed and three were wounded when a helicopter crashed into a transport plane. The humiliation kicked us all in the heart as the Iranian media showed images of the burned aircraft and the jubilant faces of Iranians cheering the disaster.

I have never spoken to President Carter, but that day must have been the worst of his life. As a praying man, he would have struggled with the silence from God amidst the noise of his critics.

The world wanted a show of American power. President Carter wanted a show of liberated, safe Americans. He possessed the power to shock and awe Iran out of existence, but he chose another way. He chose a peaceful way that remains incomprehensible to our mammon imbued and power enthralled culture today.

Because of President Carter’s foreign policy, the United States turned the other cheek, more than once, and waited for God’s providence to unfold. Has this ever happened in America’s past? 

I recall the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the North Korean invasion of South Korea, Pearl Harbor, the Lusitania, the Maine, Custer’s Last Stand, Fort Sumter, British impressment of American sailors, and the shot heard round the world.

My answer would have to be, “No. Never. Not once. Only during the Carter Administration.”

President Carter had no other choice short of murdering thousands of people in that fine American tradition of being the most macho nation on earth.

The result remains etched in history. President Carter lost his reelection, but the hostages were released minutes after President Reagan’s inauguration. Peace worked.

It felt like hell, but it worked.

I mentioned above that there are two views about the world and our relation to it. President Carter, the born again, Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher represents one view.

Since President Carter, we had another president, also avowedly born again--a fundamentalist evangelical whose foreign policy represented another view of how we are related to the world.

So I want to think about these two views.  One view is very Jesusy, very Christlike, and very unpopular. The other view is very popular, intrinsically absurd, and murderous.

Indeed, both views are consistent if we accept their underlying presuppositions about our relationship as Jesus people to the world.  It’s the presuppositions that are full of worms or grace.

Blessings…