One of the most powerful poisons to our faith and peace in the Lord is the way we perceive other people, or perhaps how they really are. I sometimes struggle with a deep and monstrous problem: the darkness of human nature all around me. How many claim that they don’t go to church because of the hypocrisy there? And it’s not just in the church but out of it, on our streets, in our workplaces, and unfortunately, even in our own homes.
Let’s face it: humans are nasty critters. They destroy almost everything they touch. Is there some beautiful countryside out there? Well, you won’t have to wait long to see it either ruined by concrete or garbage, or surrounded by “no trespassing” signs. I’ve suggested to the Lord not a few times that He should have stopped His creative juices with the animals, rather than going on to make humanity. Look at the trouble humans cause each other and the rest of creation!
I CONFESS
People are stinkers. And before you point it out to me, I’ll confess that I know full well I’m as human and flawed as anyone else. Yes, I too am a hypocrite. There – I said it. Can you?
THE WORST PART OF IT ALL
However, what compounds the problem for me, and I suspect many millions of others out there, is that the Lord appears to do nothing about it all. Have you read about the wickedness of Manasseh and Ahaz, and how their reigns were longer than those of any other king, including the relatively good ones? How did that happen, if God is Lord of all things? How is it, as the psalmist has pondered, that the wicked prosper while the righteous suffer? My mother, not the most Biblical in her pronouncements, would say quite frequently that “The devil looks after his own”.
The question which must surely follow this assertion is, “Then why doesn’t God look after his own?” Many pious Christians will protest that He does indeed do that, and yes, I’ve thanked God a million times for being faithful to me. Yet I have to confess to being confounded by the fact that He seems to let the wicked be wicked with no hindrance. He never seems to tap them on the shoulder and give them a piece of His mind. He never seems to threaten them to the point that they back off and soften their attitude, and He never seems to land them in the proverbial manure where I myself have landed on a number of occasions when I stepped out of line.
Oh, they may come to their end and to judgment eventually as the more spiritual among you will insist, but what about now? Why are they allowed to cause havoc and destroy lives and make life miserable for the rest of us now, sometimes throughout our lives? Why are they not opposed? Why are they not convicted? Why are they not caused to deal with their attitudes? Why indeed do they prosper?
CHANGELINGS
I recently wrote about Lazarus suffering at the end of the rich man’s driveway, all the way up to the point of his death. There was no respite for him. I can’t help wondering why it is that the Lord seemingly did nothing to convict the rich man. Perhaps, as some of you are thinking now, He did, but the rich man flatly refused to take any notice. He pushed any thought of caring and compassion out of his mind completely. If he gave away some of his wealth he wouldn’t have so much – what would be the point of that? Herein is part of the explanation for the whole problem: God gives us all opportunities to change and to get it right, and in order for those opportunities to exist, someone has to suffer.
LOOKING AT SOME EXPLANATION
Someone close to me turned away from the Lord many years ago on the basis of what other people had done to him. In one of those awful events, the wife of his youth – his first and true love – left him and their children for another man. Oh, the pain! How do we reconcile such painful experiences in our lives with the Biblical claims that God is able to direct hearts according to His will, that he convicts the wrongdoer, that He cares for us and loves us?
The answer is that much as we sometimes wish He wasn’t, God is merciful even to the wicked in this world, and we just have to put up with them anyway. We have to take the pain, just as Jesus Christ took the insults and the rejection and the pain during his earthly life. We have to allow their unpleasantness to change us, whether they’re prepared to be changed or not.
WE ALL SCORE AN “F”
In truth, we’re all below God’s standards in the way we live and think, act and talk, so that as Paul said, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”. It’s a difficult fact for us to stomach sometimes, but we’re no better in His sight than those we regard to be horrible people. Without Christ, we’re heading for the same judgment as they are: eternal separation from all that’s good.
There is none perfect besides God himself, said Jesus Christ. Therefore in God’s sight we’re no better than the people we wish the Lord would send a lightning bolt upon. We’ve all failed the test, and the only hope any of us has for an eternal future with Him is to appeal to the mercy which He offers through the sacrifice of His son. God waits patiently while we all live out our lives, including the times when we ourselves fall a long way short of His glory. Will we come to humble ourselves and call upon His mercy, or will we, like many millions of others, harden our hearts to Him and to each other?
THE TEST
It’s difficult to keep a soft and humble heart and mind, particularly when we’re surrounded by the failure and the horrors of human nature, but that’s what our Creator requires of us.
Fuel for Faith, Food for Thought 