Proverbs 1 - A Message from Jesus to the United States (Part 4)
Proverbs 1 - A Message from Jesus to the United States (Part 1)
Proverbs 1 - A Message from Jesus to the United States (Part 2)
Proverbs 1 - A Message from Jesus to the United States (Part 3)
10 My son, if sinners entice you,
do not consent.
11 If they say, “Come with us, let us lie in wait for blood;
let us ambush the innocent without reason;
Who would God call “My son”, who has been (or might eventually be) enticed by sinners to go to war against the innocent? Some candidates include Israel, the U.S., and the Church.
I am unaware of the U.S. ever accepting an invitation to war against innocent people. Ditto for Israel (well, modern day Israel anyway). The Church is another matter. We have had the crusades, a shameful fact of our past, and I am sure the Church has suffered for it.
It occurs to me that Nazi Germany fiegned Christianity in the 1940’s, and enticed German Christians to lie in weight for Jewish, homosexual, and gypsy blood… and many accepted, ambushing them all without reason. Yes. Nazi Germany seems a good example of how I have always read Proverbs 1. So let us continue reading this, as a message to German Christians who have been invited to participate in the Holocaust. We join in the middle of a Nazi invitation…
12 like Sheol let us swallow them alive,
and whole, like those who go down to the pit;
“Like” those. In other words, we are truly talking about innocents dying here.
13 we shall find all precious goods,
we shall fill our houses with plunder;
14 throw in your lot among us;
we will all have one purse”—
15 my son, do not walk in the way with them;
hold back your foot from their paths,
16 for their feet run to evil,
and they make haste to shed blood.
Now, that makes for an easy read, a warning against standing idly by while the Nazis trounce upon the innocent. And in the end, after much death, Germany was conquered.
17 For in vain is a net spread
in the sight of any bird,
18 but these men lie in wait for their own blood;
they set an ambush for their own lives.
19 Such are the ways of everyone who is greedy for unjust gain;
it takes away the life of its possessors.
One could say the Germans caught Jews, Homosexuals, and gypsies in their net, and so perhaps the parallel is not perfect. On the other hand, the Nazis themselves were conquered as described in verses 18 and 19. Of course, the Japanese of WWII are a good parallel for verse 16… they spread the net for us at Pearl Harbor, and got more than they bargained for when we dropped the bomb on them. That’s interesting. If you combine Germany and Japan as the united enemy of God’s people in WWII, then Germany is being described up to verse 16, and Japan from 17 to 19, and ultimately Germany partook in the consequences of Japan’s vain attempt at spreading the net in our sight (though the consequences for Japan were surely more dire). In WWII, we were the bird… an eagle in fact.
Okay then. Applying Proverbs 1 to WWII assigns German Christians (and I dare say European Christians) of the 1930’s and 1940’s the role of God’s son in this proverb. Many took part in the evil, some by doing nothing. Others got up in the Nazi movement, and participated in the atrocities. It is them that Wisdom now addresses in the Proverb…
The Call of Wisdom
20 Wisdom cries aloud in the street,
in the markets she raises her voice;
21 at the head of the noisy streets she cries out;
at the entrance of the city gates she speaks:
22 “How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple?
How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing
and fools hate knowledge?
23 If you turn at my reproof,
behold, I will pour out my spirit to you;
I will make my words known to you.
24 Because I have called and you refused to listen,
have stretched out my hand and no one has heeded,
25 because you have ignored all my counsel
and would have none of my reproof,
26 I also will laugh at your calamity;
I will mock when terror strikes you,
27 when terror strikes you like a storm
and your calamity comes like a whirlwind,
when distress and anguish come upon you.
28 Then they will call upon me, but I will not answer;
they will seek me diligently but will not find me.
29 Because they hated knowledge
and did not choose the fear of the Lord,
30 would have none of my counsel
and despised all my reproof,
31 therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way,
and have their fill of their own devices.
32 For the simple are killed by their turning away,
and the complacency of fools destroys them;
33 but whoever listens to me will dwell secure
and will be at ease, without dread of disaster.”
And that is in fact a great description of what happened when the United States entered the war. The bomb on Hiroshima, and the killing of Nazis in Europe are accurately described in these verses.
It would seem that in WWII, the United States was God’s agent of retributation against evil, and with Jews consituting half the deaths of the Holocaust, and the modern nation of Israel the eventual outcome of the war, pairing the United States with Israel as God’s agent of retribution against evil seems natural to me. Certainly, I am not the first to suggest it.
So now in modern times, I would say that collectively, the U.S. and Israel can fill in as the son in Proverbs 1, in which case we would need to heed God’s warning to reject any invitation to do as Germany did. When could that possibly happen? Well, in my opinion, it hasn’t happened, but I think I know when it could.
One day (after the rapture in my opinion, but certainly during the Tribulation), the Anti-Christ will come on the scene and will put out a hit on any follower of Jesus. He will do so as a world leader, from his kingdom in New Babylon… which is most likely to be somewhere in the Middle East, but in my opinion will be in Iraq. Certainly with Iraq being a democracy, it opens up the possibility in ways that a dictatorship never could. And so, even while our actions may good and well-intentioned in Iraq, and are helping secure our safetly as terrorists concentrate their energies on us there (instead of here), it seems to me that we are also helping set up the very situation that the Church has been waiting for.
In my opinion, creating a free Iraq is supported by Christians (such as myself) who have no desire to do any of the evil we have been discussing in Proverbs 1. As a litmus test for my own heart, it passes, because I was never asked (in my opinion) to lie in wait to kill the innocent. I was asked to help depose a bloodletting dictator who wanted us blown off the face of the earth. And I have to say that once the 9/11 occurred, I was quite a bit less tolerant of evil in the world, and a little more willing to get rid of it. It seemed like a wake-up call to me… and I still believe it was. The fact that we have killed so few innocents, that we spared the Iraqi population instead of killing them, that we did not conduct ourselves like a Hitler, is proof to me that even where innocents died, it was not by design.
As a litmus test for my more liberal Christian brothers, they pass as well, and with flying colors. They believed there was something wrong with this war, and I can see the events that transpired that they were afraid of happening… it was no holocaust, but even a just war will result in evil, and this war has. And while I believe it was a choice between evils, and that we chose the lesser of the two, these brothers in Christ stood their ground, and very respectably so.
God has written it on our hearts to hold up his ideals, and God tests our hearts, one at a time. He sees how we will act. He judges us on those terms. If you believe a war is wrong and sinful, Proverbs 1 implores you to steer clear; if you believe a war is righteous, Proverbs 1 implores you to test the ones requesting your support, to make sure Wisdom isn’t crying for out for you to walk away. It is not the correctness of our judgement of that war that is the bottom line, but our desired and attempted faithfulness to God.
When the Israelites were in the desert, they were told to gather an omer(?) of manna, and then have it measured by the priests, lest they have too much or too little and their families go hungry. Well, no one who brought their manna for measurement had gathered the right amount. Some gathered too much, and some too little, but those who followed God’s instructions to have it measured found it to always measure exactly right… because God does not measure our actions against our ability to follow the rules, but against our desire to be right with Him. It is my own opinion, that neither group of Christians gets it entirely right: one group (mine) fails to consider the innocents that die from actions that go above and beyond what we support; the other fails to consider the innocents that will die if we take no action at all. However, both groups are making choices based on the innocents they feel are at the most risk… one group gathering too much manna, the other not enough. However, as both groups bring their manna before the Lord (i.e., live out their heart’s drive to love and obey their God), they will find that God meets them where they are at, and somehow (when they go to Heaven to be judged and rewarded) their manna will measure just right. But in that case then, who can possibly be wrong in God’s eyes when it comes to war? Those who pick a perspective, and do not bother measuring at all, because they think they have it all together; they will pick an action and not bother testing it against the law written on their hearts, or in the Bible, and their actions will either result in hunger (not enough manna) or in maggots followed by hunger (too much manna).
I would like to say that one group is right and the other group is wrong, but as I always find when it comes to humans, God meets us where we are at. He does not require us to be right in every judgement, or to agree on what the true nature of an even is. He merely calls us to repent of our sins, live in Christ Jesus, and choose actions within the parameters set before us in scripture. The litmus test in Proverbs 1 therefore turns not to be a test of our actions, but of our heart… it is the lesson of Jesus, to learn to look at our hearts… to learn to look at our brothers’ hearts, as iron sharpens iron. American Christians are not doing a good job at that, settling for conflict and division as they judge each other by action and point of view, instead of judging as Christ does. The message of Christ, of Wisdom, in Proverbs is not simply to support just wars over unjust, or to discern the evil wars vs. the good ones (assuming there are any good ones… but remember WWII… was it evil or good?). No, the message is to check our hearts against what we perceive. What do we hear? We can only act based on that. Whatever we hear, make the most godly decision you can, and then present to the Lord as your offering without fear. Then, allow your brothers some latitude, giving them the benefit of the doubt that they are doing the same. They may disagree with you and that is fine, as no one hears everything that God says. But, whatever you do hear, you are accountable for… as is your brother.
It is time we build each other up, and stop tearing each other down. If we cannot come together based on what we hear from God, then let us come together on the standards by which we act on what we do hear, and trust your brother to do the same. And then support each others choices. Be joined by heart, if not by action. Agree on the standard, because the standard does vary… it is we who vary, and we must do our best with what we know and hear, and let us not be so quick to assume that Christians who disagree with us are not doing the same thing… because they are. Let us all love God together, and defending innocents the best that we can. We will be imperfect, but just do it, and God will work out the rest. It is a message that American Christians are having trouble with as a body, and is the message I think Christ would have us hear in Proverbs. It’s the real message to the United States from Jesus in Proverbs 1.