The Pre-Advent Judgment
Stephen Terry
Commentary for the November 30, 2013
Sabbath School Lesson
“Look, I am coming soon! My reward is
with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done.”
Revelation 22:12, NIV
“He’s making
a list. He’s checking it twice. He’s going to find out who’s naughty or nice.
Santa Claus is coming to town.” So go the lyrics of the Christmas standard, “Santa
Claus is Coming to Town,” by John Coots and Haven Gillespie.[i]
Written and first performed in the midst of the Great Depression, it was a song
of its times. Addressed to children, it nonetheless spoke to the greater
economic picture.
The
suffering masses, which had lost jobs, bank accounts, and much of their
material possessions, were looking for the proverbial light at the end of the
tunnel. This song and the myth of Santa Claus carried with them the hope that
there would be a reward waiting at least once a year if everyone would not
succumb to despair and continue to live by a high moral standard because it was
the right thing to do. Better you be nice, not naughty, if you want that
reward.
In a
Capitalist system, hard work is supposed to ensure prosperity. The “Roaring
Twenties” seemed to epitomize that with fortunes being made on Wall Street and wealth
flowing like a river. Consumers rushed to purchase and enjoy products made
possible by advancing technology: radios, automobiles, movies, and many familiar
items made more desirable after being recast in the Art Deco image. The Great
War to end all wars had recently ended and peace and prosperity were the expectations
of the day. Little did everyone know that the good times would soon come abruptly
to an end.[ii]
When the stock
market crashed in 1929, the downward spiral began. This created widespread
unemployment. While those who lived and worked on the farms did not share in
the prosperity of their urban fellow citizens, they also were not as devastated
by the crash. They had their farms and at least their food and shelter were sure
as long as they could grow fruit and vegetables and raise livestock. Then the
Dust Bowl hit and several years of repeated drought destroyed both crops and
livestock. Desperate to feed their families, the farmers started to migrate in
search of work and food. This migration was illustrated in John Steinbeck’s
novel, “The Grapes of Wrath.” Farmers who needed work went with their families
to places like California where there wasn’t enough work to go around even for
those who were already there. In the midst of this bleakness, Coots and
Gillespie wrote their hope-filled song.
Suffering
has always been a difficult concept for humanity to deal with. Rather than
accept the idea that suffering might be totally random and without specific purpose,
we tend to search for meaning in suffering. Per a website quoting Friedrich
Nietzsche, “To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the
suffering.”[iii]
There is something about the very core of our being that eschews any idea of
senselessness to life. We wish to find meaning in everything, both good and
bad, but especially in the bad.
Buddhists
simply accept suffering as a given. Their First Noble Truth, “Life is suffering”
is based on observation that no one living escapes suffering.[iv]
They tell us that suffering results from our cravings. For instance, our
craving for a corporeal form makes us subject to disease, weakness, death and
many other sufferings. To some Christians, the idea of suffering being the
result of wrong motives and actions is appealing. They cite instances such as
when Jesus would heal someone and tell them to stop sinning else something
worse might happen to them.[v]
However, at other times, Jesus stated that suffering was simply random and not
based on the wrong actions of the sufferer.[vi]
Perhaps this
idea that suffering cannot be avoided and is without meaning is why Solomon
wrote, “There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: the righteous
who get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked who get what the righteous
deserve. This too, I say, is meaningless. So I commend the enjoyment of life,
because there is nothing better for a person under the sun than to eat and
drink and be glad. Then joy will accompany them in their toil all the days of
the life God has given them under the sun.”[vii]
He apparently felt that since we could not make sense of the suffering, better
to enjoy the good whenever God granted it to us.
Yet there is
something within us that seems to rebel against the idea that all boils down to
simply enjoying what we have when we have it. For example, we see the millions
of dead in the Holocaust and seek meaning in their suffering. Perhaps we can
accept random suffering to some degree on a minor scale, but when it impacts
millions, we have a hard time believing that it was just a “Whoops! I rolled a
bad result!” on some cosmic dice roll. Some anti-Semites, who ignore the
millions of others who died in the Nazi death camps, focus on the Jews and
blame the Holocaust on an imagined racial rejection of Christ as the reason for
their annihilation. The idea is ridiculous. Thousands of priests and pastors
were rounded up and ended their lives as prisoners of the Holocaust. There was
even a special barracks for these clergymen in Dachau. There were only a few
survivors at war’s end.[viii]
The Holocaust was not simply a “God act” of retribution for Calvary.
Did these Christian
clergy find meaning in their suffering at Dachau and other death camps? Perhaps,
but maybe more importantly, some found that they could make a difference
against the overwhelming tide of evil engulfing them. Some preferred to suffer
even more in order to relieve the suffering of others through acts of
self-sacrificing kindness both inside and outside the camps. Some, like Father Maximilian
Kolbe, a Polish priest, even chose to pay the ultimate price by dying so that
others might live.[ix]
It is hard to conceive of individuals doing this if they did not believe that
their suffering had purpose and that ultimately justice will out.
While Santa
Claus is certainly an imaginary figure and the many songs about him are only
delightful holiday melodies, they do speak annually to the bigger issue of
ultimate justice, that there is a reward for being good and a punishment for
being bad. This illustrates a teleological understanding that transcends
scientific causality. It is also a biblical concept in that Jesus is attributed
to have repeatedly said as much.
For
instance, in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats,[x]
Jesus makes the point that relieving human suffering is salvific. However, He
was not alone. The idea was broached in very similar terms by the Old Testament
prophet Isaiah as well.[xi]
When we see the suffering multiplied around us, we are tempted to ask God, “Why
don’t You do something about it?” But the wise Christian understands not to ask
that question, lest God also asks us the same thing.
Whether as
the Buddhists claim, “Life is suffering,” or as Nietzsche opines that in order
to survive, we must find meaning in our suffering, one thing that runs like a
golden thread through Scripture is that we have a responsibility to relieve it
to the degree that is within our power. There is no biblical command to figure
out what caused the suffering in order to determine if the sufferer is worthy
of relief. Perhaps we might even go so far as to say that beyond personal
introspection, causality is not a concern of the Christian when faced with
suffering, except as it focuses on relief. Telling a person that their poor
choices have led to their hunger is not likely to get a hearing unless we have
first relieved the hunger. If we choose to blame the sufferers before helping
them, we will only drive them away and threaten both their salvation and ours.
As we draw
closer to the Parousia, the Bible tells us that suffering will increase.[xii]
Therefore the need to relieve suffering will increase as well. How we will
understand and address that suffering is vital. God is not Santa Claus, but He
is keeping track.[xiii]
And unlike Santa Claus who is keeping track of naughty missteps, God is only putting
the good on His list, those who are caring, compassionate relief workers to the
need of a fallen world. Those who are not such individuals will not be found
there.[xiv]
This does not mean they are ignored or forgotten, far from it. Their end is not
glorious. It might even be said that all the suffering they chose not to
relieve will, in the end, be visited upon them. Paul said as much in his
Epistle to the Galatians.[xv]
Better we are found on God’s list.
