Greater than Justice ...

Equality and justice are not enough.  In an ideology that governs a perfect universe, where love itself is the core abiding principle, merely exacting justice is simply not enough.  Love is greater than equality.  Love is greater than justice.  And forgiveness is greater than justice or vengeance.  Some have judged the character of God as vengeful, or vindictive, looking to visit punishment on those who dare to disobey, or reason differently than God reasons.  They look at the texts within scripture of “an eye for an eye, and a life for a life” as being God’s standard for equal justice under the law.  Texts that proscribe punishments for breaking the law are emphasized behind a rationale that to be fair, God must be just, and therefore the wicked must be punished, and only the righteous protected from suffering.  But this view ignores the very heart of God, and sees only what his enemy would have us see.

When we experience pain, we tend to look for retribution.  If you hit me, I must hit you back.  At least in that sense “fairness” will have won out.  But what if fairness was not the goal?  What if the elimination of hitting altogether was the goal, not just by me, but by you, and the entire world?  What if the true goal was the complete elimination of pain entirely?  How does my hitting you back foster a greater goal?  Justice may be served, fairness may be enacted, but hitting remains, pain remains, and now two hurt instead of one.  There must be an alternative to pain, something better for us to aspire to.  There must be an example of what is better, and why it is better, or our decisions to embrace pain may never change.

When Lucifer first rebelled against God in heaven, perhaps the most often asked question is why God simply did not eliminate him from the universe immediately.  He had the power to do that.  He had a legitimate reason to do that.  It would have been both fair and just.  But God is love, before He is justice.  God is mercy and forgiveness as long as there is hope.  God did not simply want Lucifer to humble himself, admit his error, and return to the throne of grace.  God wanted the entire universe to freely choose love.  Love could not be mandated.  The witness of all intelligent life must be free to see what the alternative to God’s reasoning was, where it would lead, and what would be its result.  Only then could intelligence freely choose love, and in so doing, turn away from pain altogether.  Killing Satan right away, would not have allowed this freewill decision to be reached by those who had not yet had the time to see where alternatives to God would lead.  There would forever have been a question as to whether something different from God, might indeed be better than God.  So to achieve the greater goal of the extinction of all pain, and because love was indeed the core principle within our God, Satan was allowed to pursue his choices.

And the war of ideas came to our world.  Adam and Eve were offered the choice of love by God, and permitted to face his alternatives in the garden.  They chose badly.  Already there had been a war in heaven.  Already the adoption of the ideas of “self first” had yielded a painful harvest.  Now it would be so again in our world.  Justice could simply have left us to our fate.  Equality under the law meant our extinction as a species was chosen at our own hand.  Permanent separation from God was the first result of our embracing the pain and deceit of his enemy, subjugation to Satan was now our lot.  This was at our doing, not part of the plans of God for us.  God did not desire this for us, He did everything He could to avoid this fate for us.  But He could not mandate our choices.  Now what to do?  It would have been easy for us to allow the guilty to suffer their fate – we do it regularly in our society.  We punish the guilty and hold in our own hearts the comfort of enacting justice.  But love is greater than justice, forgiveness greater than pain.  And so hope was offered to us, despite what we had done.

If the Bible were nothing more than a story of punishment or retribution, it need not proceed any farther than the story of Adam and Eve.  They had perfection, were offered a choice, were warned of the consequences, and chose badly.  It could easily have been the end of the story of man, as told by the unfallen angels in the millennia to come.  But it was not the end of the story.  God CHOSE to forgive man, to offer man redemption, even at the cost of His own life.  How does one show what love is?  Love is not shown in exacting justice, but instead returning mercy for hatred.  “Fairness” is not the standard God achieves, instead it is higher than that.  In point of fact, it is not fair, that man is offered an eternity in perfection because of the actions of the Son of God.  It is not fair that we who deserve death are offered life instead.  It is not fair that we who have so wounded the God of love, are given love back instead of what we deserve.  Fairness never seems to enter the equation.  But love does.  Mercy does.  Forgiveness does.  Everything of true value in the ideology of love is offered to us by the God who embodies love.

If our God’s hatred of pain and evil were his overarching personality characteristic, then the story might well have ended at the flood.  Evil had grown so intense, so pervasive, that to witness what man did to man, and what man did to nature was nearly beyond the capacity of God to sit and watch.  Evil was so bad in our hearts, minds, and actions, that it caused God to be “sorry” He had made us.  So why not with a simply flick of the wrist, or speed of thought, wipe man from existence then.  Obviously our choice to embrace pain and sin had yielded a harvest beyond the scope of our imaginations.  The world was nearly as evil as it had ever been, or could be.  But God’s love was greater than His desire to see the world rid of pain.  So instead Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.  It was not that Noah was perfect, nor his children, but they still chose to follow God.  For 120 years, Noah would preach to the world of an impending destruction to end the pain God must daily witness.  Had his listeners repented, the flood would have been cancelled as the destruction of Ninevah was cancelled when they listened to Jonah many years later.  Think of it, 120 years more, not a day, or a week, or a year, or even a decade longer, but for 120 years the flood was delayed; patience and time for the world to decide to continue to embrace pain and death, or to escape it.  But only Noah and his family chose to enter the ark. 

Throughout scripture the stories of love, mistakes, forgiveness, and redemption would be illustrated over and over and over again.  Enemies of God would arise, and seek to kill those who chose to serve the Lord.  It would take divine intervention to keep those who served the Lord from immediate destruction.  Fairness was not the standard.  Mercy was.  God attempted to reach every enemy of His and of His people throughout time, but so many would not hear His calls, or accept His mercy.  Even those who claimed to serve Him made mistake after mistake.  But despite our own actions God did not abandon His love for us, or His plans to redeem us.  Even when we, His creations, the object of His love, put Him up on a cross and crucified Him, He remained steadfast determined to redeem us.  The leaders of His own religion that He established would be the chief instigators in His death, yet He did not shy away from His love for us.  Christ defined how far love would go.  It was so much farther than justice, so much farther than fairness, beyond the imaginations of all who witnessed it.  This was the standard to which God ascribes.  This was the fulfillment of salvation to man, and the definition of love to the universe.  On Calvary, Christ illustrated to all intelligent life how far love would go.  And in so doing Satan was defeated.

It was not because Satan was killed at Calvary that he was defeated, but it was because his ideology of pain and hate was fully revealed.  The results of any alternative to love were finally shown for where they would lead, how far they would go.  These ideas stood in striking contrast to the Son of God who laid down His own life to redeem the creations bent on His destruction.  The contrast of love against all other ideas, and love won.  Evil and pain are dead in the universe from Calvary to infinity, not because intelligent life lacks the ability to choose, but because they have made a choice that will not be undone.  Now it only remains for man to see, and choose again as all other life has done.

Creation, followed by roughly 2000 years and the flood, followed by roughly 2000 years and the Messiah, followed by roughly 2000 years and it is we who enter the stage, ready for His second coming.  But the message that must be preached to all the world before He returns, is not one of the impending justice to be enacted.  Instead it is the bright shining alternative to Satan found only in unconditional love.  It is not threats the world needs to hear of the final fires of Hell.  It is the alternative to life of pain, a life of empty self-serving pursuits that can never be satisfied.  It is the reality that separation from God, and from love, is ALREADY the highest form of torture that could exist.  It is worse than dying by flame.  To live without love is to exist in torture.  But because of love, this need not be our fate.  Because of His love, we are offered an escape from pain, and a life worth living.  A life that seeks always to answer the infinite question – how does one show love?  This question will find answer in our every thought and deed for all of eternity.

The Bible then, is a love letter from God.  Our God is not interested in seeing us suffer the justice and fairness we have earned, rather He is interested in seeing us embrace the love He offers us.  His salvation from the pain we embrace is His gift to us.  He charges nothing for it.  He offers it freely.  He makes it easily available.  He does everything to lead us to it, and nothing to hide it from us.  Love is truly greater than justice.  Forgiveness is greater than equality, or vengeance.  Those who know what love is, through the daily submission of the will to Christ, begin to understand why we should turn the other cheek.  Those who begin to see how deeply He loves, and aspire to do the same, begin to wish to participate in His goal, of bringing about an end to all pain.  It becomes less about being fair, and more about reflecting love.  For that love is the character of our God, the reason for our redemption, and the reason for us to choose forever to abandon evil and pain that mark its alternatives.  In this, God achieves His goal forever and pain and death will one day cease to exist.

Ordaining Women ...

Separate but equal?  How can we divide people based on an arbitrary criterion and simultaneously expect equality post division?  The Supreme Court of the United States finally came to see the wisdom of eliminating arbitrary divisions in order to affect equality.  But the church seems reluctant to do the same.  The church seems content to segregate based on sex, and sometimes even on race, or age, yet continue to expect equality in the work of Christ.  After all, the Bible does seem to identify certain roles for men that it does not seem to state women should perform.  This has led some modern folks to decry the scriptures as based in the prejudice of the day, and the prevailing sexism in Middle Eastern cultures.  But if we are to accept the Bible as our cornerstone of faith, unaltered, and speaking only truth, what should be our position on equality in the church.  Is it OK then to ordain women to the ministry of Christ?

To begin I think it important to understand how the word of God comes to mankind.  In the beginning, God Himself walked in the Garden of Eden with both Adam and Eve.  He spoke to them both.  He treated them both as His children.  He did not choose to speak alone, and only with Adam, trusting Adam to relay His messages of love to Eve.  Instead He showed Eve the same respect He showed Adam, and the same love.  Later, God spoke through Miriam, the sister of Moses, as His prophetess.  Moses already had direct communication with God.  Aaron, his brother, was already God’s high priest in the Sanctuary services.  Yet despite both of these men in elevated positions, God still spoke His prophecies through the mouth of their sister Miriam.  One could argue that Moses was the leader of the people, and Aaron the leader of the ministry, yet Miriam’s role was no less important to the people of the Lord.  And Miriam was not the last woman to serve the Lord in the role of prophet to His people.  Others would follow.

In the days of Christ, there is much focus on His disciples and work they performed.  But when the friends of Christ are mentioned there were at least three – Lazarus, Mary, and Martha.  Two of the closest friends of Christ were women.  He counted them as His friends.  In addition to saving Mary Magdalene from stoning, He also accepted her gift in washing His feet, and seemed to take a genuine interest in her life.  Christ speaks openly to the woman at the well.  He rewards the sickly woman who touches merely the hem of His garment.  He compliments and blesses the widow who gives her last two mites into the offering – elevating her sacrifice ABOVE all the rich Pharisees who gave much money into the coffers.  Christ heals the daughter of the Roman Centurion and holds out this Gentile’s faith as an example for the Israelites to aspire to.  Christ showed through His own life and ministry that the lives of women were as important to Him as the lives of men.  He spoke with women directly, not through their husbands or other intermediaries.  He held direct conversations with women.

The counsel given to men regarding their wives, was to love their own wives more than they love themselves.  Were men to honor this counsel, the problems in marriages would all but disappear.  Women are NO less important to God, or to His work, than are men.  So assuming that God values each of us the same, does not mean He intends each of us to be exactly alike.  There are some men who are excellent speakers, and could make excellent evangelists.  Other men, not so much.  We tend to gravitate towards those who appear endowed with the gift of evangelism, and away from those who are not so blessed.  It is the gift of God’s Spirit that determines our ability to fill a role in His church, not our age, not our sex, not our race, nor our education and seemingly natural abilities.

“And a little child shall lead them.”  How often have we quoted the words of Christ, and ascribed them to some cute thing done by one of our kids.  But to consider that a little child would lead us full time appears to stretch our credibility.  Yet Samuel was called to God at the age of seven.  Christ taught the most learned men of His time, at the young age of 12.  Ellen White began a course to God that started in her teens.  All of these past servants of God were not called in their old age, but in their youth, even when youth was not such a prized commodity.  Being 12 years old would not afford Christ much respect in a community of older learned Rabbis who spent lifetimes acquiring wisdom – yet they were so intent to hear His words they stayed for 3 days listening to Him teach.  What was surely a baby in their eyes, had such a clear understanding the love behind their scriptures, that ALL were captivated by His teachings.  A 12 year old.

We ignore our youth as being too inexperienced to really lead us on a sustained basis.  We cynically disregard their idealism as being not based in the real world.  Similarly we set aside the wisdom of our much older folks as being “dated” and based on a life in the past that no longer represents reality.  We look at the differences of people from other races and cultures and decide it is better to “allow” them to meet and group together and worship however they like, rather than attempt to integrate “how” they worship into our own services.  Then we attempt to develop ministries to meet the unique needs of groups of people based on age, or sex, or race – thinking that meeting unique needs can only be done through segregation.  But this was not the approach Christ took.

Christ so valued children, He stopped what He was doing and took time to minister to them first.  Christ so valued women, He spoke directly with them, and was found in their company – even the ones whose reputations were not so stellar.  Christ so valued those of different races and cultures that He personally took time to heal the daughter of the Roman oppressor, and accepted help from the Foreigner who bore His cross.  Christ instructed Peter through a dream that Peter would understand. that the Gospel was meant for all, not for just the Jewish people.  Age was not a barrier to Christ.  Sex was not something to be segregated against.  Race was no obstacle.  Culture was no wall to Him.  Literally ALL were included in His work, His love, and His ministry.

“Where two or three are gathered together” – note He did not specify two or three men, or two or three people of certain ages, cultures, races, or even doctrinal persuasions.  He said two or three who gather in the name of Christ.  Our church was to include all.  The gifts of the Spirit were to include all.  The Holy Spirit was not confined to merely men of a certain age, and a certain race.  Instead the Holy Spirit was poured out on ANY who would accept the gospel and this gift.  Any who were willing to serve the cause of Christ were eligible for this outpouring.  And ALL were blessed as the Spirit saw fit, and the church had need.  Not everyone was called to be a preacher, or teacher, or evangelist – but it did not matter who was called to these tasks.  Whether young or old, men or women, Jew or Gentile – all served, and many died martyrs of persecution for their faith.  The enemies of God did not spare women, children, or foreigners – they killed any who claimed the name of Jesus.

In our day, we limit God, by limiting through our own expectations “how” and to “whom” His gifts should be poured out.  Instead of accepting whoever He chooses, we disregard those who do not come in the appropriate packages; according to the standards we have setup.  The Pharisees missed the Messiah in doing a similar approach.  Our church should cast down the barriers of prejudice based in human tradition and human wisdom, and allow the Spirit to determine where and to whom He will pour out His blessings upon.  If a woman is called to preach, teach, or evangelize – then praise God she is willing to serve, and He is willing to reveal Himself to us through her.  She should not be denied ordination based on our collective “wisdom”.  It is our job, our duty, to accept the will of the Spirit, not to try to define it.  It is our job to accept the wisdom of Christ, not to try to override it based on our own ideas.  If God calls a seven year old girl, from an Inuit culture in northern Alaska, with different traditions and cultures than our own, to be our next evangelist – are we to supersede the ideas of God in this regard?  God forbid we refuse His guidance.

And while we should not deny God His ability to pour out the gifts our church needs on whomever He sees fit, we should also avoid conferring roles to those who are clearly NOT called to serve in the capacity they desire.  We may think ourselves fit to serve in a particular capacity, but if the Holy Spirit does not bless our efforts in this regard, it may be that we deceive ourselves as to where we are actually supposed to serve.  We should not ordain a woman simply because she is a woman, no more than we ordain a man simply because he is a man.  We should instead look for the influences of the Spirit, and the lives and skills that have been clearly touched by God and seek to honor His will in so doing.  We should include everyone in our desire to serve God, disallowing no one based on our preconceptions, nor forcing anyone into a role they are not fit to hold.  We should in a word – follow the will of God, not attempt to define it.  Were the church to do this, the questions of women and ordination would completely disappear.  Children would lead more often than they do.  The aged and elders would carry the respect they deserve.  And the cultural diversity found in the world, would be reflected in our worship services and ALL would benefit as a result.  In short, the church would become UNITED under the banner of Christ, without any form of segregation based on any criterion.  This is what Christ intended for His church; perhaps we could forsake our own wisdom and get back to His plans.