Stephen
Terry, Director
Managing
in Tough Times
Commentary
for the March 18, 2023, Sabbath School Lesson
"Naked I
came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord
has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised." Job 1:21, NIV
Over fifty years ago, as a young
man recently received into the Seventh-day Adventist Church by baptism, like
many young people, I saw the world in black and white, without the subtle
nuances of gray that color my vision today. While in the Army in Alaska, I met
and married the wife of my youth, a third generation Adventist raised to see
the world in that same black and white starkness. We both did all we could to
be obedient to everything we were taught within Adventism. We were faithful in
Sabbath observance, faithful in tithes and offerings, and I pursued a theology
degree at an Adventist university while my wife earned her "PhT," Putting Hubby
Through by working to help support us under the heavy load of educational
expenses. Later, when we had our son, we dedicated him to the Lord at church,
and he attended Adventist parochial schools as faithful Adventist families
would do with their children.
Based on what our lesson
quarterly emphasizes this quarter, as faithful and obedient Adventist
Christians, our lives should have been filled with material blessings and a hedge
of protection should have surrounded our family circle to protect us from evil.
Instead, at my first pastoral assignment, my wife was diagnosed with Multiple
Sclerosis and her health began to rapidly go downhill. Under the advice of
doctors, we had to relocate from the high humidity of the Midwest where I was
pastoring to the dry air of Eastern Washington. While we experienced acts of individual
kindness during this change from a few lay church members, the denomination
refused to facilitate a transfer. I was told that this was because the
denomination was self-insured and could not afford a pastor whose wife had a
chronic, debilitating illness. We struggled for several years until I found
that secular employment was more open to assisting us in our plight than the
denomination. I felt a little like Hannah Moore must have felt.[i] It
is interesting that her story begins on page 666 of Volume one of the
Testimonies. According to Isaiah, chapter 58, and the Parable of the Sheep and
the Goats in Matthew 25, few things speak more eloquently of the power of the
beast in our hearts than our ill treatment of the poor and needy. This is especially
ironic in a church that teaches that obedience will bring overflowing blessings.
In my case, the end result was the premature death of my wife after years of suffering.
My experience led me to examine the
Bible for understanding. Of course, every one who suffers naturally turns to
the book of Job. But although it begins with suffering, it ends with the
expected "the Lord restored his fortunes and gave him twice as much as he had
before." (Job 42:10) This reward was after we were told that before his
suffering, he was the greatest man in all the east with all he possessed. It is
Exhibit A for reinforcing the idea that obedience will eventually play out as
material blessings in this life. But we do not have to look far for events that
challenge that idea. John the Baptist, the antitypical Elijah, was faithful in
the extreme but was imprisoned in a dungeon and beheaded. His life did not discover
physical, material blessings. Isaiah, the prophet who heralded the coming
Messiah more profoundly than any other was sawn in two by the evil King Manasseh.
He also did not receive overflowing material blessings for his faithfulness. Foxe's
"Book of Martyrs" is filled with hundreds of examples of those who were
obedient right up to their premature deaths without receiving more wealth than
they ever had before in this life. All of this begs the question, if we are
teaching people that they will receive great material blessings if they only
drop their coins in the church offering plate, send their children to parochial
school, and live in obedience to denominational dogma are we presenting the Bible
as it is or how we wish it to be? What then of all those under the altar in
Revelation that were slain for their obedience?[ii]
Where was their material, earthly blessing?
Why do we teach such things? Did
all those martyred under the various persecutions by Imperial Rome die because they
believed they would receive great wealth in this life? Something far greater
was driving them. The grace of Christ had set them free from lives of fear and
hopelessness. While an emphasis on obedience can keep gold flowing into the
church coffers, it crucifies any idea of grace. Instead, it substitutes a fear
of losing heaven because of never doing enough to earn it. Do what the church
tells you, or you will be lost. Keep the money coming into the church or you
will be lost. Put your children through parochial school or they will be lost. Fear
of loss then becomes a means to control. But such fear has no place in the kingdom
of God. We must not allow others to subvert our confidence in Christ and replace
it with fear, even if those others speak from a pulpit or with the derived authority
of a global denominational majority. Martin Luther stood alone before the episcopal
might of the church at the Diet of Worms but did not yield to the fear they
offered him. He stood in confidence in righteousness by faith alone through the
grace of Christ and not through the dispensation of the church. Perhaps because
of the remoteness of history or a desire by denominational leadership to
exercise temporal power over the minds and hearts of parishioners, the church
has chosen to see things otherwise and has become a major means for instilling
fear instead of confidence through its teachings.
I have said this repeatedly in
the past, "God is love."[iii]
We were created to bear the image of God.[iv] A
loving person is the reflection of the perfect image of God.[v]
Paul went so far as to state that actions without love as their motivation are
useless in his first letter to the Corinthian church.[vi] But
the greatest attribute of love is revealed by the Apostle John who appears to have
had an intimate understanding of God's love. He wrote that "perfect love drives
out fear."[vii]
We want so desperately to be in
control of everything that we have a hard time understanding this. Because someone
used fear to control us, we feel that is how control should work, and we threaten
to gain that control. We instill fear in our families, our employees, our
fellow believers, and worst of all, we instill it in ourselves, fearing that if
we do not control others through fear as others taught us to do, we must fear
that we will be lost as inattentive watchmen on the walls of Zion. Maybe a case
could at one time be made for this in the Old Testament, but we are living post
Crucifixion. The battle has been won. The outcome is certain. We are not called
to enslave anyone to the church through fear. All are offered free access to
the cross, enabled to come as they are. God knows that encounter will change
them as it has changed us. That change comes in response to love, not fear.
Only love can change a heart of stone to a heart of flesh.[viii]
We live in chaotic times.
Disease, crime, poverty, and warfare threaten at every hand and life tells us
to cower in fear of these things. It asks us to give up hope of anything
better, any idea of love. It wants us to believe that love can be bought if you
only have enough money, and it offers so many immoral means to have what it
takes. Unlike real love, money cannot drive out fear. Instead, it increases it.
Fear drives us to pursue wealth, and fear haunts us with the fear of losing it.
Once we allow those chains of fear to be forged, only God can remove them. When
we allow ourselves to be deceived into believing that God is the source of our
fear, we close our only avenue to freedom. But if we reach out to him and seek
him out, he will begin to re-create the image of love we were originally meant
to be. As love replaces fear as our raison d'etre, we will discover a
freedom and a hope that inspires our future and contagiously infects the world
we live in with kindness and compassion as our confidence reveals no one need
live in fear. Love can bring true meaning to our lives and allow us to live as
humanity was originally meant to live. No matter how chaotic the world becomes,
as Paul wrote, "Love never fails."[ix]