Compromise

Jeremiah 34:8-16 Zedekiah had proclaimed liberty to the slaves, according to the law of God that sets everyone free every 7 years, but then the people of Israel had turned around and taken them back into slavery. So Jeremiah condemns them for it. I was just thinking about how does God intervene into cultures and I realized that even though his perfect ideal is a world without slavery, he compromised with the economic culture of that time which relied on slavery, to make the best out of a bad situation.He puts laws in place to deal with a sinful culture to drag it out of the worst it could be and at least afford some hope and protection for the oppressed. My study has been a lot lately about how do Christians try to change our world, or intervene in our culture. In America, it basically comes down to you either believe that the US is going into moral decline and Christians need to take over the government (Christian right/republican), that we need to be relevant to the culture and the Christian right has represented Christianity wrongly, (Christian left/democrat) or that the whole system is evil and we should have nothing to do with it (neo-anabaptist). Instead, in the book i am reading by James Davidson Hunter, he proposes a theory of ' faithful presence' which actually sounds an awful lot like basic Christianity. And so I was thinking of how would God react to our culture,and frankly when you look at how he deals with the Hebrews, he makes laws to try to point towards a better way of living, but he doesn't deny their current culture. He recognizes that their current system is based on slavery, and he makes the best of it, with the final view being that in the kingdom of God all men are brothers. In fact, freedom has tended to break out where the gospel is in history because eventually we realize that we can't enslave one another when Jesus has set us all free. And so how do we deal with our cultures? Firstly, stuff may be wrong in our culture, but rather than jumping ship and creating our own Christian bubbles of safety which we're very good at or embracing it without criticism,we need to acknowledge the wrong and then try to make the best of it, alleviate it however we can, with the understanding that it may not change instantly, but it could over time. And we need to protect the oppressed.

Why must we be apart?

So today I had to say goodbye to people who are very near and very dear to me. This is something that has been recurring over and over on furlough, because inevitably I must return to Thailand. I know that is where I am called and where I will be for a very long time, but it causes me grief to know I have to live apart from those I love and I find myself asking God "why?" Why is it that to serve You I have to leave people behind when it feels so much more natural that we should be living life together? Why must I leave them when I feel like they need me? And I am afraid of this: At the end of my life I just don't want to find myself wishing that I had lived it more with them! And so I come to these few answers, and I don't know if any other missionary has found better ones. I give people up to God knowing that He loves them so much more than even I do, even if it feels like my heart will burst. He can also take care of them so much better than I could, even if I stayed. We also have all eternity to live together, and our short time of separation on earth is going to seem trivial to that and I must do the work that is set before me. Finally in the end, there is only this: My Lord is worth the sacrifice, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt.