Discipling the Nations
Stephen Terry
Commentary for the March 8, 2014
Sabbath School Lesson
“Now there were some Greeks among
those who went up to worship at the festival. They came to Philip, who was from
Bethsaida in Galilee, with a request. ‘Sir,’ they said, ‘we would like to see
Jesus.’” John 12:20-21, NIV
At times
there have been perhaps as many gods as there were nations. There was Dagon, a
god of the Philistines[i],
Moloch a god of the Ammonites,[ii]
who were descended from Lot, and Chemosh, god of the Moabites,[iii]
who were also descended from Lot.[iv]
Ashtoreth, goddess of the Sidonians, was worshipped by several nations under
different names. The Babylonians called her Ishtar. To the Greeks she was
Aphrodite, and to the Romans she was Venus. While their total numbers were far
greater, there are perhaps a dozen or more national deities that the Bible
acknowledges had an influence on the Jewish practice of religion.
In ancient
times, some felt that gods were such a localized phenomenon that when one left
their city or nation, it was obligatory to do so under the auspices of the god
of the territory being visited, since one’s own god lacked jurisdiction in the
new location. We can see some of this in the trip Jacob made to Haran in order
to flee the wrath of his brother, Esau.[v]
When Jacob had an unusual dream, he felt it was a sign from God. As a response
to that dream, he stated that if God would continue to care for him in the new
land he was traveling to, he would serve the Lord faithfully and exclusively.[vi]
Even long
after the time of the patriarchs and the judges of the Old Testament, many
continued to see religion as a regional matter with the various gods having
dominions limited by geographical features.[vii]
It may not have been until the period of the Neo-Babylonian captivity and
Jewish exposure to the dualistic religion of the Zoroastrians of Persia that
the Jews began to grasp the concept of an ongoing conflict between darkness and
light, evil and good.[viii]
Perhaps this explains the transition from a God who is responsible for
everything, as in Samuel, where God is said to cause David to number Israel,[ix]
to a God who is actively opposed by an evil entity as in Chronicles where Satan
is the perpetrator of the numbering.[x]
Whatever the
forces that affected the progress of theological understanding God somehow
became diminished in the minds of His people from all powerful Creator ruling
not only over the Earth He had created but over the entirety of His creation,
which included even the sun, moon and stars,[xi]
to a localized deity who might prove impotent in the face of other deities in
other realms. After all, hadn’t the Philistines overcome His might and stolen
His holy ark?[xii]
Hadn’t He failed to protect His temple and allowed Jerusalem, His holy city, to
be sacked twice by the Babylonians?[xiii]
The
revelation that there could possibly be a greater, universal controversy may in
fact have been a revival of original theological perspective going back to the
events portrayed in the first few chapters of Genesis, but it also created a
minefield of theodicy. When God was simply a small regional deity, his
impotence in the face of evil could be explained away as simply being a matter
of lack of jurisdiction. However, when a god is omnipotent, he suddenly becomes
responsible for the problem of evil and its effects as well. To this day, many
struggle with the problem that if God is both good and omnipotent, why is evil
allowed to continue?
Some Christians,
backed up by the Book of Revelation, believe that the problem will be solved at
some future moment when a vengeful God returns to settle accounts by destroying
everyone not on His “friends list.” Then the surviving friends will live with
God and get all the perks that provides. Of course those who promote this idea
naturally consider that they will be the ones that will be “in” and not “out”
at the Parousia.
While that
sounds great for those who are so favored, it still raises paradoxical questions.
For instance, once evil is gone and we are assured that it will not rise up
again,[xiv]
is it possible to still have freedom of choice, or will we simply be robots
prevented from ever doing anything that might allow evil a resurrection? It
would seem that perhaps God recognized that without choice there could be no
free will when He placed the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the
Garden of Eden. Yet in the restored Eden of Revelation, there is no mention of
such a tree, only the Tree of Life. Is there then more of Calvin than Arminius
in heaven?
But in spite
of these issues, historically, religion has moved from the realm of regional
deities to a search for understandings that are universal. Therefore, when in
times past, one could leave his or her religion back home without problems and
thereby avoid a certain amount of religious controversy, instead now one lives,
eats, and breathes in the name of their universal god no matter where they go
or what they are doing. If there were one religion, perhaps this would be no
problem. However, because there are several competing paradigms for universal
understanding of truth and religion, we have conflict unconstrained by
jurisdictional boundaries.
In the
United States, we have attempted to ameliorate that problem by giving all
competing religions equal status without endorsing one “true” religion over any
other. In practice, this hasn’t eliminated conflict, but does restrain the
state from using its power to advance one religion over another. Other
countries from the time of Constantine to the present have chosen one religion
as a state religion and sought to eliminate conflict by eliminating choice.
Both approaches have their flaws.
In the first
case, even if your religion actually does have the truth and the others do not,
government is prohibited from recognizing that. For advocates of Christian
Dominionism or Muslims who want to re-establish the Caliphate with its Sharia
system of laws, lack of government support may be difficult to accept. Such
beliefs are predicated on an inseparable union between the state and “true”
religion.
In the
second case, what if the religion the state chooses to endorse and promote is
not actually the “true” faith? This quandary resulted in the Puritans and the
Quakers coming to the United States to practice freely a “truth” that they felt
the State was suppressing. Later even within the religiously diverse United
States, the Mormons felt they needed to seek freedom for their “truth” outside
the boundaries of the then existing states when they fled to the shores of Salt
Lake in what is now the state of Utah.
It was
perhaps Israel’s practice of one state recognized and supported faith that
caused things to become so rigid and immobile that the new wine of Christianity
burst the seams of Jewish society during the first century. The full force of
the government was brought to bear to support the established “truth,” even to
the extent of crucifying for rebellion and sedition the One responsible for the
new paradigm challenging the governmental monopoly on faith.
Interestingly,
Jesus did not advocate for either the first or the second type of governmental
relation to religion. Instead, He appeared to provide a new way. In that way,
government was irrelevant to religion. Religion instead became a populist
social contract to seek the well-being of others. Theoretically, if that is
practiced universally then the well-being of all would be assured. Perhaps it
is this attitude of good will toward all that drew others to Jesus and filled
the early church with converts.
Possibly
some have diverged from that path by defining ourselves in terms of things we
own rather than relationships we nurture. While busily accumulating things to
safeguard our well-being, we too often know very little about others or care
about their need for well-being. However, we perhaps fail to see that happiness
does not come from chasing the carrot, for there is no end of shiny things to
grasp at.
Every day,
whether we are on the internet, listening to music on the radio or a media
player, reading magazines or simply driving, walking or bicycling around, we
are immersed in a sea of advertising telling us over and over again that we are
missing something that we need to be truly happy, and to our good fortune there
is someone who is selling it.
Perhaps that
is why some find it difficult to respond to God. Maybe they feel it is just
another sales job that will leave them disappointed and in debt after we commit
to buying what Jesus is selling. But what He offers is free.[xv]
In a world where we skeptically say, “You get what you pay for,” we find it
hard to believe that anything beneficial would be free. But that very
“free-dom” may be exactly what the nations need to hear about and perhaps it
will draw them that they also might say, “We would like to see Jesus.”
