Isaiah 30.18-31
Psalm 23
2 Corinthians 4.1-6
John 10.22-30

In the years since the terrorist attacks, we see lots of signs and bumper stickers with the words, "God Bless America." Maybe there should be a comma in that prayer, or slogan. "God, Bless America."

Those of us who have spent significant time sharing spiritually with our Jewish brothers and sisters (or even attending our Christianized Seder services, or maybe even watching the Simpsons and seeing Crusty the Clown give the blessing), well, we should have noticed something special about Jewish blessings. The liturgies are full of blessings. Almost all begin,

Baruch Atah, Adonai Eloheinu ...

Blessed are You, Lord our God ...

There is a significant difference in asking God to bless this bread for our use and blessing God who brought forth bread from the earth. It is much like the difference between saying, "God Bless America," and saying, "America, Bless God!"

Wrenched out of context, as is today's reading from Isaiah, the juxtaposed words of comfort, repentance and great slaughter are completely incomprehensible. Isaiah, the context would tell us, was deeply embroiled in what today we would call a political controversy. The chapter contains a series of oracles condemning the decision to pursue an alliance with Egypt. It is condemned as stupid policy and bad religion, for it shows contempt of God and God's will. It is a move that ignores God completely.

Isaiah is saying, your priorities are wrong. In your fevered negotiations to buy Egyptian military support, in your frantic planning to bolster your military capabilities, you act as if God has nothing to do with history. You act as if you must literally rely on yourselves alone or perish. The truth is that God is Lord of history, it was God who brought you into this land in which you now live. And until you recognize that and truly believe it, and believe that the defeat of God's enemies is God's own concern, all your clever diplomatic initiatives will gain you nothing.

Until you make the Lord your first consideration, the Lord will continue to wait to be gracious to you, as Isaiah expressed it in verse 18. God isn't waiting because he is tardy, but because you aren't ready. But when you finally get around to relying on the Lord, then you will be delivered. Glorious will be the Lord's victory, and the slaughter of the Assyrians will be great.

Isaiah's exposure of the inevitability of the failure of godless diplomacy must speak to us here and now. We must be careful, though. The pulpit (or the space behind this altar) must never be used as a sounding board for political opinion, however informed it may be, but the pastor is nevertheless called to examine all national policy in the revealed light of God.

The point Isaiah makes should come into focus when think about our own personal lives. Each one of us has a plan or ideals or values or a purpose in life. What is the place of God in our business, our ambitions and personal relationships? The value of my life goals, then, should be measured by the place of God in my plans. As a Christian, I believe that there can be no final happiness or success in my career path or plans if they leave God out of account. This is what distinguishes Christian marriage, by the way: It is the primacy of God in this most personal of relationships.

The national leaders of Israel have gone down to Egypt, having sought neither the word nor the blessing of God. Nothing good can come of that.

Now, a sermon on foreign policy, if it expresses the preacher's personal judgement, or even if it is based on disciplined analysis, is no more valuable or authoritative than the views of any other educated person. It is therefore not really preaching. Isaiah did not condemn the Egyptian alliance because he belonged to an opposition party. He examined it and denounced it in the light of the declared will of God.

The only justification for a minister's judgment on national policy is that he or examines it, not to declare whether it is good policy or good economics, but whether it is good religion. Is it consistent with the revealed will of God? The final authority of the modern prophet is the ancient "thus saith the Lord," which through the ages has prefaced the verdict of faith on human affairs.

A pitfall in preaching on national issues is the likelihood of a too-ready agreement on the part of the congregation. We so seldom realize that our position on national policy is the reflection of our own spirit. We persuade ourselves that the preacher is talking about the politicians and not ourselves, and we agree with what is approved or condemned, according to our own political viewpoints. The bottom line that we're looking for becomes the announcement of God's approval of what we already believe. The bottom line is simply saying, "God, bless America", when we should be saying, "America, bless God!"

Here's another analogy. (Jesus also used examples from the business world.) Quality. W. Edwards Deming pointed out that quality can not be tested in. That is not as obvious as it sounds, since a lot of people acted as if it could. Quality must be designed in from the start. Similarly, we must plan with God's will for us in mind. We can not plan and use our religion as a filter or a veto to weed out bad plans. And we certainly can improve neither our foreign policy nor our own lives by simply invoking the name of God.

I'm going to turn to Paul, now. We find that, surprise surprise, Paul is again mired in controversy. He is alienated from the congregation that he, himself, founded and finds himself compelled to defend his motivations and actions. But Paul prevailed in the end. We know that reconciliation did take place, otherwise, they would not have saved his letters, would they?

It is remarkable that Paul found it necessary to say, We have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways; we refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. (4.2)

It saddens me to see many well-meaning people today doing just the opposite in their zeal to spread their version of Christianity. For example, when I was a teenager, I heard a preacher say there was more historical evidence that Jesus rose from the dead than that Julius Caesar ever lived. Years ago, someone made up a story alleging that computers at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center found a discrepancy in astronomical data, that could only be explained by the event in the book of Joshua, in which the Sun stood still for several hours, so that the Israelites could slaughter more of their enemies. A contemporary example is the device I often see on the backs of cars driven by fundamentalists, showing a stylized fish, labeled "Truth", swallowing a stylized salamander (or whatever that fishy thing with legs is called), labeled "Darwin." You must have seen it.

You can wrap the Gospel in fabrications to make it more believable or more reasonable or more palatable, but then it is no longer the Gospel.

Paul recognizes that the unvarnished Gospel will still be obscured to some. The world is a battleground between the "god of this age" who struggles with the God of All. When Paul talks about those who are lost because they chose a counterfeit god, he is not talking about those whom we today would call seekers, but rather those who have actually made a choice. A name often used for this "god of this age" is Satan, by the way.

When we, as a nation, set economic policy or enter treaties or go to war, without seriously considering that God is Lord of All, and then ask God to bless our actions by invoking, "God Bless America", are we not actually following the counterfeit god of this age? Are we not doing exactly what Isaiah has condemned so forcefully?

Why do I say that we are, in effect, following the bogus god? This is why:

I used to have in my email signature file, the following parody: "Epistemology! We don't need no steenking epistemology!" There actually was a point to that saying. Epistimology is the philosophy of how you decide what to believe and what to not believe. The point is that if you don't have a conscious means of deciding what is believable and what is not, they you are adopting, unconsciously, a default epistemology, which is, that you are liable to believe anything that sounds nice to you, like, there are space aliens in a spaceship just behind that comet who are coming to rescue me.

I can generalize this idea: If you don't have an X, then you are, in effect, adopting a default X, which will be controlling your thinking, your decisions, and possibly your life, but it will be veiled. You cannot see it, understand it or resist it.

Economic theory, for example: If you don't have an economic theory, then you are, in effect, adopting a default economic theory, which will be controlling your thinking, your decisions, and possibly your life, but it will be veiled. You cannot see it, understand it or resist it.

Sounds right. I think the default theory, in today's environment, would be laissez-faire capitalism, by the way.

My point here, however, is the following: If you don't have a God, then you are, in effect, adopting a default god, which will be controlling your thinking, your decisions, and possibly your life, but it will be veiled. You cannot see it, understand it or resist it.

That default god is the "god of this age", sometimes known as Satan. So by avoiding choosing God, the Lord of All, we have chosen whatever is in the environment, and, unconsciously, we have invited it to control our thinking, our decisions and our lives. Is there any more cogent description of demon possession?

The "god of this age" cannot be cast out by simply invoking the name of God, as in, "God, bless America." God is not an add-on, like a dealer-installed option to your new car. God can't be added on to your career. God can't be added on to your development policy, or your foreign policy, or your war. Sure, you can wrap fish in pages torn from the Bible, but that won't improve the fish any more than the pages from yesterday's newspaper.

The "god of this age" can only be cast out by repentance, that is, by turning about and choosing the real God, by saying, "Blessed are You, God." We have to backtrack a long way, and then pray sincerely, "THY will be done."

Return to previous.

© Copyright 2004 John Stewart.
Last modified: Tue 11 May 2004