Josiah's
Reforms
Stephen
Terry
Commentary
for the November 21, 2015 Sabbath School Lesson
“I
rebuked the nobles of Judah and said to them, ‘What is this wicked thing you
are doing—desecrating the Sabbath day?’”
Nehemiah 13:17, NIV
Since last weekend, the news has been filled with the
images of the horrific events that unfolded in Paris as several young men of
Middle Eastern extraction went on a rampage through the city. Some, who were
suicide bombers, blew themselves up, hoping to inflict massive casualties on
the populace. Others used automatic rifles and other guns to shoot as many
people as they could before being brought down themselves. Entering a concert
hall, they killed people by the score before police could storm the building
and stop the carnage. Several hundred unarmed civilians were either killed or
wounded by the evil terror that stalked the Friday evening streets of this
great city. The world was first outraged, then heartbroken, and finally
expressed solidarity with the French people in their suffering and resolve.
Many landmarks and monuments around the globe were festooned in the French
national colors as an expression of that sentiment. The tragedy touched us all.
The suffering, like that of the attack of September 11, 2001 in the United
States, will not easily, and perhaps never, be forgotten.
Maybe the most natural reaction to events such as these is
outrage and even a desire for revenge. I do not yet know what the French will
do as a nation, but after 9/11 here in the United States, groups of people
drove around in pickup trucks waving the American flag, and vowing to attack
those who had attacked us. Military enlistments rose, and we sent armies into
Iraq and Afghanistan in response to belief that they were harboring terrorists
or colluding with them. We tramped the length of Iraq, laying waste to their
military machine and destroying their governmental command and control. We slew
and captured their leaders and claimed victory against a great evil.
In Afghanistan, we overthrew the Taliban and established
another government in its place. Scouring the tunnels of Tora Bora, we then looked
in vain for the purported mastermind of 9/11, Bin Laden. Finding him in
Pakistan, instead of Afghanistan or Iraq, after a lengthy search, we ended his
life in an assault on his compound. Since then we have rained death throughout the
Levant, The Arabian Peninsula, Afghanistan and North Africa. The number of dead
on 9/11 pales in comparison.
All of this over the past one and a half decades has
been in the name of making the world more secure and safe. In the interests of
that goal, we have sacrificed personal civil rights, believing that giving up
those rights would protect us all. However, as the events of November 13, 2015
in Paris have shown, the illusion of safety may be all we get for all our
efforts. Individuals, who are “known to intelligence” as persons of concern,
still somehow manage to perpetrate these horrific events. Perhaps this is
because they are willing to die to accomplish them. After all, how do you stop
a mentally unstable person with a death wish? Many ideas will no doubt surface
as we try to adjust to this reality, but is there a bigger lesson to be gleaned
from all of this? Perhaps this lesson is not one many are willing to entertain,
because it is a religious perspective, but those who are making these assaults are
claiming to do so in the name of religion. Can we safely ignore the
implications of that?
If we examine the times of Jeremiah, the prophet, we
discover that Jerusalem, too, was under threat from a barbaric force from the East.
That force had come to the very gates of the city, threatening it with
destruction. The response of many of the leaders was to make the military
stronger and the fortifications higher.[i] In other words they looked
to the military and technology as the answer for the threat. Similarly we see
missiles and drones as the modern day equivalents. Feeling safe behind our
technological walls, we continue as we always have, just as they did in
Jeremiah’s day. What were those normal activities? Isaiah tells us.
“For day after day they seek me out; they seem eager to
know my ways, as if they were a nation that does what is right and has not
forsaken the commands of its God. They ask me for just decisions and seem eager
for God to come near them. ‘Why have we fasted,’ they say, ‘and you have not
seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you have not noticed?’”
“Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please
and exploit all your workers. Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife, and
in striking each other with wicked fists.” Isaiah 58:2-4a, NIV
Isaiah, as Jeremiah, and several other prophets tried to
point out that the apparent indifference of God and consequent suffering, was
neither due to God not caring nor the evil of those who were threatening them.
The problem was systemic and no military or defensive technology could provide
a solution. Quite bluntly, the problem was not the rest of the world so much as
the rot within. During the reign of Manasseh, we are told that the evil was so
pervasive that the streets of Jerusalem were filled with blood from one end to
the other.[ii] The message pointing out
that corruption was not welcome, and Manasseh had Isaiah sawn in two for having
the temerity to do so.[iii] That one human being
could do this to another demonstrates the depths of degradation the Jewish
nation had descended to. In the end, the Babylonians swept the country clean,
hauling those with any value away to Babylon until, seventy years later,
Babylon itself fell. This freed the Jews from their captivity, but only a small
remnant returned to eventually rebuild.
We read Jeremiah and the prophets today, and we ask
ourselves how could they be so foolish to do the evil they did instead of
giving their hearts to God and saving themselves? Yet we are not much
different.[iv] As time has gone on,
Ronald Reagan’s “shining city on a hill” has accumulated a great deal of
tarnish. In the United States, we have become a people with the attitude of “I’ve
got mine and if you haven’t it is just because you are a lazy leech on society.”
In a country that is arguably one of the richest to ever exist, children still
go to bed hungry each night.[v]
People also still suffer from lack of medical care. This
is perhaps not as much from lack of the government’s desire to provide it since
the passage of the Affordable Care Act, but more from the greed of those providing
the medical care who are gaming the system to increase their profits while
minimizing actual care. For instance a simple trip to the doctor which might
cost a small co-pay is now much more expensive. The doctor, who may be a principle
in a medical corporation doesn’t see you because he won’t make enough money if
he does, so you are referred to Urgent Care which is a part of the corporate
entity, then because the reimbursement rates will not provide enough profit,
every effort is made to refer the patients to the hospital emergency room where
the co-pays are much higher as are the reimbursements to the medical corporation.
The simple visit to the doctor which in the past cost maybe $15 now may cost
over $100 due to all the co-pays. The poor and the elderly on fixed incomes may
not be able to afford this, so they stay home instead of seeking medical care
that could prolong their lives and improve life quality. Medical facilities,
insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, medical equipment companies all
work together to drain the assets of the poor and disabled. But those who run
these entities still drive their expensive cars and live in expensive homes
while decrying the lazy people on public assistance and Medicare that they
swore not to harm in their Hippocratic Oath[vi] or equivalent. Are the
cars and homes the problem? No, they are only symptoms of a sense of
entitlement that they decry in others yet manifest themselves to a far greater
degree.
Perhaps some medical practitioners may be offended by all
of this; however, I freely admit that this example is not the problem. It is
only a symptom of the real problem. We as a people have replaced the humble
service to God and our fellow man with a greed for gain and self-promotion. These
are the modern idols we are setting up in our homes and communities, and we are
paying a price for this selfish materialism. Once again people paying lip
service to God are threatened by barbarians from the east. Is it too late to
repent and change? Have we become so corrupt and our hands so stained with the
blood of those harmed by our choices that like God told Josiah, the coming
onslaught cannot be averted?[vii] If we repent and change
our ways, is the best we can hope for also like Josiah that the downfall will
not happen in our day? These are serious questions. Even if God were to relent,
how can we keep from drifting back to our same evil exploitation of “the system”
at the expense of all of the other fish in the pond?
From Josiah’s example, this is not something that can be
directed from the top down, for once he died, things quickly drifted back to
the way they were. Instead we must each come to God one by one and seek again for
ourselves what has been lost. Then God promises to write His law[viii] in our hearts where it
can remain without regard to what choices others may be making. For if the
onslaught is unavoidable, be assured, a remnant will be saved.[ix]
