Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Pretension Busters: Bitterness

www.despair.com -- "Increasing success by lowering expectations"
(so much like the Old Adam and the Old Eve)
Arrogance cannot be avoided or true hope be present
unless the judgment of condemnation is feared in every work
--Martin Luther
(Heidelberg Disputation, Thesis 11)


Let the prophet who has had a dream go ahead and tell his dream. Let the person who has received my message report that message faithfully. What is like straw cannot compare to what is like grain! I, the Lord, affirm it!

Jeremiah 23:28


Dreams versus the Word of the Lord... the situation there in Jerusalem during the time of Jeremiah pitted him--who had become known as "trouble all around" because of his steadfast proclamation of God's judgment upon the city and its people--the situation pitted Jeremiah against the tame prophets, the "pets" of the ruling class, who brought out of themselves "dreams" and delivered those "dreams" to the people. Now those sweet dreams were more palatable to the people than the "bitter" words of God's judgment delivered by Jeremiah. In a world more determined by "taste" (over which there can be no contention) than by "truth" (which always must be contended for)... in such a world "sweetness" wins.


I have observed my generation's adulation of Martin Luther King, Jr. The man's vision, determination, and martyrdom left a deep and abiding mark upon many and upon our nation as well. There is no doubt of the good which came of the Civil Rights Movement and King is its most enduring figure. Who--having once heard them from King's own mouth--can forget the inspirational words and rousing cadence of his "I Have a Dream" speech. The words of his vision were sweetness and life itself to those of the Movement.


Perhaps we've gained enough generational distance to admit that there has been some bad with the good; that some of the "sweetness" has become "bitter." John, in the Apocalypse, ate the little scroll received from the angel who promised him that the scroll would be sweet and sumptuous in his mouth but bitter and vile in his stomach. Indeed, that is exactly what came to pass (Revelation 10:9-10). So, too, is the way of dreams: their good is in their proclamation, not in their enactment.


Whenever what "could be" becomes what "must be" through the coercion of legislation, then the freedom of possibility becomes the tyranny of certainty. Forcing your lambs to lie down with lions will only give you fewer lambs and well fed lions.


Theologians of glory have no patience. They can't wait upon God to deliver upon the promises of his Word--especially as those promises are preceded by judgment. Theologians of glory--full of the dreams and visions they bring out of themselves--rush in, take charge, and through radical redefinition, seek to bring about what was promised but without the judgment. Martin Luther (the original) knew something of this. In his Heidelberg Disputation he contrasted theologians of glory with theologians of the cross: "A theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theologian of the cross calls the thing what it actually is." Eventually he would conclude by saying: "The love of God does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to it. The love of man comes into being through that which is pleasing to it."


Man... humanity... the world loves that which is pleasing to it--especially the sweetness of dreams, the things they could make of themselves--what they "could" be. God loves what God creates out of the bitterness and nothingness to which we are driven through his judgment. Only then, when I am solely the work of my Lord, am I pleasing to him. And that... that is better than anything I could have dreamed up.


Those who call evil good and good evil are as good as dead,

who turn darkness into light and light into darkness,

who turn bitter into sweet and sweet into bitter.

Isaiah 5:20



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