A larger and truer confession

Someone forwarded Ben Stein’s CBS Sunday Morning “Confession” to me by email. Mr. Stein uses the following exchange as a springboard for discussing God’s alleged departure from America:

Billy Graham’s daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her ‘How could God let something like this happen?’ (regarding Hurricane Katrina).  Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response.  She said, ‘I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we’ve been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives.  And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out.  How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?’

Mr. Stein is Jewish and does not purport to speak for Christians, but the comments of Anne Graham Lotz reflect a common sentiment among believers, one I’ve heard before. I have no problem with the idea that we reap what we sow, but I take issue with how that principle is interpreted here. I disagree with the notion that God used to confer special blessing on America, but he’s gone now. I think it reflects a misunderstanding that strips God of both faithfulness and transcendence.

Biblically, the only nation God ever explicitly chose was Israel. With the advent of Christ, he didn’t withdraw that blessing, but he did widen it to extend the invitation to all nations. Jesus’ last recorded words are,

¹⁹“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,

²⁰teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28, emphasis added)

The idea that America is/was a “Christian nation” is true only in a limited sense. Its humanistic ideals are Christian; the Bible affirms the glory of humanity made in God’s image. The ideal that all are “created equal” was biblical when the founding documents were drawn up, and in every instance in which Americans have been challenged to rise up out of the hypocrisy of official oppression. But the idea that because of this we can appropriate a collective divine blessing implies that Christianity is a nationalistic proposition. It isn’t.

Jesus called for “disciples.” Throughout history, misguided rulers have assumed that he meant “nations.” But disciples are individuals. Disciples are not legislated or coerced, but choose freely to follow.  Disciples are, as Dallas Willard points out, apprentices learning to be like Jesus, to do what he said, to reflect his character. The impersonal cultural Christianity defined as a set of lifestyle choices is probably the worst thing that ever happened to this country’s understanding of the gospel.

If the conception of nationalistic Christianity is erroneous, then the suggestion that God would “calmly back out” is equally erroneous. But beyond the logical untenability of it, think about how false to the biblical picture of God this is. How can we believe that he, having made salvation available “once for all” out of his great love and mercy, would abandon us? “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” is quite clear. He has dwelt here not in our institutions, but in individual human hearts. To suggest that he has departed is to claim that he has gone back on his promise to those who believe. It would be a betrayal of the worst proportions, one that would discredit one of the central tenets of God’s nature as he has always defined himself: faithfulness.

The Anne Graham Lotz comment above paints God as an aggrieved, merely polite, and ultimately powerless parent. It reduces the problem of evil in the world — a problem theologians and ordinary human beings have wrestled with for centuries — to a cause-effect equation similar to that suggested by those folks who argued that God was punishing America on 9/11.

I don’t pretend to have the problem of evil neatly solved. I do recognize, however, that it has something to do with the high stakes of the freedom God has built into his universe. (Even natural events like hurricanes, Paul implies in Romans 8, are related to human freedom; the falleness of creation began with the human fall.) A.W. Tozer offers a picture of a ship to illustrate the relationship of God’s sovereignty to human freedom:

An ocean liner leaves New York bound for Liverpool. Its destination has been determined by proper authorities. Nothing can change it. This is at least a faint picture of sovereignty.

On board the liner are scores of passengers. These are not in chains, neither are their activities determined for them by decree. They are completely free to move about as they will. They eat, sleep, play, lounge about on the deck, read, talk, altogether as they please; but all the while the great liner is carrying them steadily onward toward a predetermined port.

Both freedom and sovereignty are present here and they do not contradict each other. So it is, I believe, with man’s freedom and the sovereignty of God. The mighty liner of God’s sovereign design keeps its steady course over the sea of history. God moves undisturbed and unhindered toward the fulfillment of those eternal purposes which He purposed in Christ Jesus before the world began. We do not know all that is included in these purposes, but enough has been disclosed to furnish us with a broad outline of things to come and to give us good hope and firm assurance of future well-being.

Unlike the “saddened gentleman” of the excerpt above, who alters his purposes and withdraws his presence because he is displeased, the God of Tozer (and the Bible) is always present and always sovereign no matter what evil choices people may make. He is a much grander God, one who is surely grieved by evil, but who is as far superior to it as the sky is above the earth. We can choose to worship him, to be reconciled through the provision he has made, or we can defy him. Either choice has a consequence. But we cannot unseat him from his throne.

I second David Bentley Hart’s perspective on God’s attitude toward hurricanes and other evils:

For, after all, if it is from Christ that we are to learn how God relates himself to sin, suffering, evil, and death, it would seem that he provides us little evidence of anything other than a regal, relentless, and miraculous enmity: sin he forgives, suffering he heals, evil he casts out, and death he conquers. And absolutely nowhere does Christ act as if any of these things are part of the eternal work or purposes of God.

We need a larger and truer Confession, a creed that squeezes out the self-pity and pessimism of much that passes for Christianity today. And instead of lamenting and blaming, we need to pray without ceasing for our neighbors, our leaders, and each other.

What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? (Romans 8:31)