Tag Archives: Contract

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Big, Uncomfortable Questions

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Big, Uncomfortable Questions (CaD Job 1) – Wayfarer

“Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied.
Job 1:9 (NIV)

As a child, I remember my concept of God was that of a omnipotent source of all blessings and suffering in my life. The relationship was transactional in nature. Every strongly felt desire prompted an internal debate about what good I had to do, or what wrong I had to avoid or atone for, in order for God to grant my wish. Likewise, any experiential suffering in life was, of course, the result of my fatal flaws. Surely, I did something to warrant all four Vikings Super Bowl losses in the 1970s. My sins were just that bad.

I grew up. My relationship with God became very real, and I began to realize how foolish and vainglorious was my childish belief that I was solely responsible for every perceived fortune and misfortune in life. Nevertheless, there is a thread of wisdom throughout the Great Story that lays out a seemingly contractual system. Follow God’s ways and be blessed. Follow the path of evil and painful consequences will follow. While this is generally true, the human experience reveals that there are, and always have been, exceptions to the general rule. Good people suffer horrendous evils they don’t deserve. Evil people seemingly prosper and escape any earthly consequences for their actions. Both of these earthly realities are humanely unjust. How do we reconcile these exceptions?

That’s the question that Job grapples with.

The story of Job is one of the oldest and most difficult stories in all of the Great Story. The basic plot is well-known. A godly man who has done nothing wrong is allowed to suffer in what appears to be a spiritual test-case, to determine whether or not the man will lose his faith and curse God. My experience is that very few people have actually waded into the text itself which is an extensive exploration of human suffering and the theological arguments that ultimately fall short of explaining a justification for it.

The opening chapter is a prologue to the main story. The scene is set in God’s counsel chambers as God points out what a good man Job is. Satan then asks a pertinent question: “Does Job fear God for nothing?” It goes to the heart of my childish spiritual notions. Do we fear and serve God in exchange for security and blessing? The accuser even seems to implicate God in the question and give some credence to my perceptions of a tit-for-tat, quid pro quo relationship between faith and blessing: “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land.“

God allows the adversary to put Job to the test, and Job experiences the worst day of his life. His wealth is stolen or destroyed and all ten of his children are killed when the house they were feasting in collapses from a derecho wind.

The result?

Job, in his sudden grief, utters his famous faith-filled lament:

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
    and naked I will depart.
The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away;
    may the name of the Lord be praised.”

In the quiet this morning, I find myself entering this latest trek through Job with mixed feelings. My previous journeys through Job reveal it to be a story that asks big, challenging life questions that test the human limitations of understanding. I have always found it both uncomfortable and humbling. At the same time, I have also found beauty in the struggle of wrestling with Job’s core questions, which I have found to be ironically consistent with the experience of suffering itself.

The first challenging question: Do I fear God for nothing?

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Childish Notions

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Childish Notions (CaD Jud 11) – Wayfarer

And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord: “If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the Lord’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.”
Judges 11:30-31 (NIV)

As a boy, I remember that my prayers were often contract negotiations. In my childhood, prayer was something that happened on three occasions outside of church. There was the prayer before meals which consisted of dad saying the Lord’s prayer or his other stock pre-meal prayer followed by all four kids chanting the simple pre-meal prayer in Dutch that grandma and grandpa Vander Well taught us. Then there was the bedtime prayer, which was the stock “Now I lay me down to sleep” version. The third occasion for prayer was when I desperately wanted something to happen and I had no control over it.

Examples of these things that I desperately wanted typically involved girls. For the record, I never experienced the “girls a dumb” phase of boyhood. I had my first crush in Kindergarten and things only grew more intense from there. There were also the four Super Bowls in my childhood that involved the Minnesota Vikings. Those were, perhaps, the most desperate contract negotiations with God of all time. History will tell you how that worked out for me. I’m sure I made God all sorts of promises and vows on those Super Bowl Sundays. Sports, in particular, were the catalyst for contractual prayers: “God, if you see to it that my team wins, then I will….”

Today’s chapter is one of the most difficult and disturbing in all of the Great Story. It involves a man named Jephthah who utters a contractual prayer as a vow to God. If God grants him victory then he’ll sacrifice the first thing that walks out of his home as a burnt offering to God. He is victorious, and the first thing that walks out of his home is his only child, a young daughter.

I am fond of remembering that these stories come out of the toddler stage of human civilization when humanity’s knowledge and understanding of life, self, and God was about as developed as your average three-to-five-year-old is today. There are a couple of other contextual observations I must ponder as I mull over this tragic story. One is that the author of Judges reminds me twice that during this period of time “everyone did as they saw fit” (17:6; 21:25). Jephthah’s vow was incongruent with God’s law, yet this was also a time when the Hebrew people regularly worshipped the gods of neighboring peoples and participated in their rituals, including deities like Chemosh and Milkom. It is well documented that these religions would at times practice child sacrifices and the practice was viewed as a very serious act of religious devotion. In Jephthah’s day, his actions were, sadly, understood and accepted. His actions stand as an example of why God so desperately wanted His people to forsake these other religions.

Paul wrote in his epic love chapter: “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.” As I look back at my childhood and my childish notions about God and life, I am both amused and ashamed to have thought and believed such things. At the same time, they stand as a benchmark and a reminder of my spiritual progress over fifty-some years. The real tragedy would be to look back and find that my spiritual understanding had never progressed beyond contractual negotiation for trivial gain.

In the quiet this morning, that’s how I find myself viewing and mourning Jephthah’s tragic story. After over 40 years of reading and studying the Great Story, I am mindful that it contains stories that are examples to follow and stories that are warnings and examples to avoid. Today’s chapter is the latter.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

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Parental Covenant

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Parental Covenant (CaD Ex 19) – Wayfarer

Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples.
Exodus 19:5 (NRSVCE)

Our daughter, Madison, just closed on her first house this past week. We’re so excited for her and her husband, Garrett. What an exciting waypoint in their journey.

As we were discussing home ownership, the subject of paperwork and bureaucracy came up. I told Madison, “Just wait until you close!” There is nothing like sitting there with a stack of paper that requires your signature and initials everywhere for everything. Even if you’re trying to be careful and understand what you’re signing it all becomes a fog. By the end of it my brain was fogged over and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome had permanently settled in my left hand. The closing agent just kept thrusting papers in front of me and I kept signing.

All the paperwork, of course, is part of a complex contract between buyers, sellers, real estate agents, government, and financial agents. It is an agreement between parties.

In ancient times, this type of contract was known as a covenant. It was the ancient form of a binding contract between parties. It’s already come up in the Great Story. God made a covenant with Noah after the flood. God made covenants with Abraham. In today’s chapter, God makes a covenant with the Hebrew people. The concept of a “covenant” between God and people was unlike any other religion of that day. But the Hebrews would have understood the concept because covenants were common in personal, familial, business, and international relationships. Two parties agree to binding terms and obligations. While the “Sinai Covenant” in today’s chapter is like other ancient covenants, scholars point out that it is unique and has no direct parallel in antiquity.

The covenant in today’s chapter is quite simple. God agrees to make the Hebrew people His “treasured” people, a priestly kingdom, and a “holy” nation. In return, the Hebrew people agree to be obedient and keep their obligations as will be set out in the commandments and laws given through Moses.

In the quiet this morning I find myself mulling over one of the commentaries I read about this text:

Typically, both parties to a contract, treaty or similar legal agreement could expect to benefit from their commitment. It is not at all clear that the Biblical text wants its readers to believe that Yahweh will receive some benefit from this relationship with the Israelites that he would not otherwise be able to obtain. The text speaks of great benefit awaiting the Israelites for their consistent obedience to their covenantal obligations. For Yahweh’s part, his actions do not appear to be based in self-interest but in a willingness to be gracious and to extend freely his blessing.

What is Yaweh getting out of the covenant? “His actions do not appear to be based in self-interest but in a willingness to be gracious and extend freely his blessing.”

I couldn’t help but think of these words from Paul’s letter to Jesus’ followers in Philippians:

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
    did not regard equality with God
    as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
    taking the form of a slave,
    being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
    he humbled himself
    and became obedient to the point of death—
    even death on a cross.

God is establishing and foreshadowing the core theme of the Great Story. What was lost in Eden? Relationship. How does the prophesied story end at the end of the book of Revelation? Restoration and relationship. In my podcast Time (Part 1) I talked about the Great Story being like a human life-cycle from birth-to-death-to-rebirth.

What is a parent’s relationship like with a toddler? The parent dictates the rules and asks the child to obey. Rules and obligations. Parents graciously extend protection and provision. They expect obedience. While the child can’t cognitively understand just how graciously his or her parents are being, they simply understand that when they obey things are okay and when they disobey they get in trouble.

At Sinai, I believe that God and humanity are in the toddler stage of relationship.

I’m looking at it, of course, from 2000 years past Jesus’ death and resurrection. We’re much further in the life-cycle of the relationship between God and humanity. There are a couple of things I’ve learned in my parenting journey now that our daughters are grown and have established their own adult lives and families.

First, the desire and willingness to be gracious and extend blessing never ends no matter how old your children are. Second, the desire for relationship with them does not end, but only gets stronger. When they come home, reach out, call, or write it is the best blessing ever.

The bottom-line. God desires relationship with me. The Father graciously sent His Son to suffer on my behalf. The Son willingly did so. The Father and Son sent their Spirit to abide in me. Everything is about inviting me into this relationship, this circle of love, this divine dance.

I just have to choose in.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

My Payment for these Posts

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hired.
(Photo credit: jakebouma)

Chapter-a-Day 1 Corinthians 9

If I were doing this on my own initiative, I would deserve payment. But I have no choice, for God has given me this sacred trust. What then is my pay? It is the opportunity to preach the Good News without charging anyone. That’s why I never demand my rights when I preach the Good News. 1 Corinthians 9:17-18 (NLT)

Four or five years ago I was approached by a publisher who wanted to make a book out of my chapter-a-day posts. I won’t lie to you. I was thrilled and flattered. Being an author has always been a bit of a dream. At that point in this blogging journey I’d just about blogged on every chapter of the New Testament, so I quickly made plans to package that for publication as a book of devotional thoughts. I made preliminary arrangements with the publisher, hired an editor and began the task of compiling and cleaning up the material.

When the contract came from the publisher and I began to read it through, I suddenly woke up to the hard reality of the situation. I would be signing over the rights to the material in all of those posts to the publisher. I would have to delete each one from my blog and take them off-line. I would no longer have any control of the content. It would be the publishers material to package and sell as they wished, and it would no longer be in my hands.

I will never forget the conversation Wendy and I had that day. It was Wendy who saw the obvious and did not hesitate to answer. “I think your posts reach far more people than you realize,” she said to me. She then told me directly that she felt that it was the wrong decision to package and sell what has been, and should be, freely given. She was right and I knew it as soon as the words left her lips. Just like Paul relates in today’s chapter, I was called to proclaim God’s Message [which is another story I’ve been reminded that I need to share in a post someday – thank you, Kevin]. I am compelled.

Perhaps I will still realize my dream of being an author someday. It will not, however, be my chapter-a-day posts. I threw away the publisher’s contract that day and told them I was respectfully declining their offer. The posts would remain on-line and freely available to anyone who cares to read them. My payment is the simple knowledge that you’re reading these words.

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Chapter-a-Day Luke 24

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Note to readers: This is an old post from back in 2008 that got lost in my “Drafts” folder and was never published. So, I’m publishing it today. Better late than never. Cheers!

Then he said to them, “So thick-headed! So slow-hearted! Why can’t you simply believe all that the prophets said? Luke 24:25 (TM)

For the past fifteen years I’ve worked with a consulting firm that believes in following Biblical principles. Because of those principles, we never sign long term contracts with any client. One year at a time. That’s it. Towards the end of every year, we begin working on the following year’s contracts. Hopefully, we’ve brought measurable value to our clients and they want us back the next year. But, I don’t know that for sure.

Some members of our consulting group are often anxious this time of year. You can see the wheels spinning behind their eyes. Will I have work next year? Will we have enough renewal business? Will I be able to pay my bills? Should I get my resume together?

As an employer, I can’t give them assurances. I can only encourage them to have faith.

Faith. Simple belief. Being sure of what you hope for. Trusting in what you can’t see. Faith can be scary. Faith involves risk. If you want to be assured of a certain income, then you probably don’t want to work for our group. Of course, if you’re assured a certain income, then you’re probably not going to make any more than you expect, either.

When you operate on faith, the outcome is unlimited. If you simply believe, if you are willing to follow where your faith takes you and do the work required, then there is no limit to how much you might eventually profit.

Faith is requirement for this journey. Following Jesus is, at the core, a faith journey. As Madeleine L’Engle said, “Faith is what makes life bearable, with all its tragedies and ambiguities and sudden, startling joys.”