Our Life and Hope

I love History, as a subject and as an idea.  When I look at old things, the age of them amazes me.  To think that someone else, somewhere else, many many years ago, crafted, wore, and valued the item I’m looking at is incredible. Mankind is vastly outlived by its legacy. These items are not just items, they are products of an era, and their design and existence reflect the thinking, the fears, and the dreams of the times that produced it. They are a part of the bedrock that produced who we are and what we go through. Great men and women, secondary causes of the purposes of God through history, existed alongside them, held them and crafted them. One item in particular that amazes me and has lead me to praise God for his work, is Charles Spurgeon’s Bible on display in The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary’s library. In it are the very words made of the very ink on the very pages that our Lord inspired the great preacher with, as well as the beautiful and meticulous handwriting of Spurgeon written in the margins of the pages. When I look at things like these, the world around me fades and becomes a crafted vision of the past, where heroes and giants of the Faith and times work to form history. I imagine their fingerprints living out beyond their body, stuck to the silver, gold or wood, fingerprints that are slowly replaced by others.

This week I visited the Frazier Museum in down town Louisville. The displays were excellent; the plastic and wax figures covered in ancient clothing were very lifelike; the staff were very knowledgeable, helpful, and skilled. I was present at a fantastic sword fighting demonstration where the interpreters expertly, and with great humor, explained German sword craft and demonstrated great skill in handling the weapons and executing the maneuvers. There was also a skilled interpreter who performed an excellent monologue from the perspective of a Buffalo Soldier, explaining what it might have been like to see the Spanish-American war through the eyes of these brave men. Walking through the halls and levels I saw many very old things. There were beautiful fabrics, intricately engraved pieces of armor and expertly crafted weapons among various other objects of antiquity.

Ultimately however, the Frazier Museum is a museum of war, filled with the legacies of Kings, Queens, Emperors and Soldiers. Walking through, I am struck by all the different ways humanity has designed to kill each other. The methods of death are always getting more complex in order to defeat other methods. This was immediately visible in the sword craft our interpreters demonstrated. One move designed to defeat another, and then a crafted response to the defeat or parry the previous response; like chess at lightning speed. And alongside such methods to kill there must also be methods to defend, to keep ones self from being killed. Those who become the subjects of death, whether by individuals of greater or equal political and economic power, must protect themselves and their posterity.

The Items of history point to the fact that death is a part of our human experience. Life is hard and in order to provide life for ourselves and our families and children we have to struggle with the ground so that it will produce food for us. For various reasons we conquer each other, whether because of our need for resources, which added to our selfishness breeds a desire for endless security, and power over those resources, or for other sometimes more sadistic desires. We kill each other to survive. Life is war, war with the ground, war with the animals, war with the elements, war with each other. We make war so that we can continue in the lifestyles that we think are best. Some want to live and some want to live extravagantly and excessively. We even kill the children in our wombs so that the life we like can continue and sadly our culture today looks at such barbarity and applauds and helps fund the destruction. Human life is a culture of war and death and humanity continues to sinfully express that culture in more and more disgustingly creative ways.

The human struggle for life is both passive (responsive/defensive) and active (initiatory/offensive). We protect life from being taken from us (passive, defensive) and we secure the continuation of life in our always-dying bodies (active, offensive). All of this must be seen as the result of the Fall. This is exactly the curse that was given to our first father who because of his sin plunged his posterity and the world he represented into sin. In Genesis 2:17 God says to Adam,

“but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

Paul expounds on this situation in Romans 5 saying,

“Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. (Romans 5:12)

And so death, physical and spiritual, entered the world with their sin. We do everything in our power to keep that now present and inevitable death from happening to us by defensive and offensive gestures of expansion and suppression.

Life is not as it was, life now begins in struggle, continues with struggle and ends with struggle.

“To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat of the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:16-19)

This is our experience on Earth: struggle. The weapons, armor, stories, and skills on display at the museum are a standing, glass enclosed, testament to that reality.

We know that our physical war is the result of a spiritual war. The physical condition of the Earth is the tangible result and manifestation of the spiritual condition of the Earth. Ultimately we do not wage war against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places (Ephesians 6:12). As Christians we long for the recreation and renewal of the world. We long for life! We long ultimately not for physical life, but for spiritual life, freedom from the forces that govern this present darkness we inhabit; this world of the Curse. And just as the transgression and curse were not only spiritual, but also physical, so the renewal is not only spiritual but also physical. We long for the salvation of our souls and the resurrection of our bodies. We are pining for this long war to end. For those in Christ, that will be the reality. God who has been bringing salvation and restoration to the earth through redemptive history has promised that when the plan is finished he will beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks. He has promised that nation will not lift up a sword against another nation; neither will we learn war anymore. (Isaiah 2:4).  

            As it is, we suffer the Curse and must at times defend others and ourselves. But we are ultimately on a mission of peace, declaring to all those under the Curse who struggle for life, that life is to be found for free from the hands of God. We explain that God has purposed for himself from eternity a people who would be his, and he decreed the Creation, the Fall and the Curse to glorify himself in justice and mercy. The purpose of the world and all that has happened in it is to glorify the Son of God who is Jesus the Christ; and our message is that any person who runs to Jesus in faith and repentance will find him to be a perfect savior. Though we suffer and struggle with the strugglers now, we have hope in the promise of God to send a Redeemer and to redeem creation.

“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” (Romans 8:18-23)

The items I saw on display were amazing, but they are the evidence of our Curse. I long for the day of peace when we will not require sword fighting manuals and arrows. We will not need to defend our selves with armor and gates. There will be no struggle for life, because life will have been given, fully and completely. Kings will not war for control, for the world will have one King and he will provide all that is needed for life. Life will flow out of him and will cover us. Until that day we wait, and do the work of God as new creatures that though in the world, are not of it (Romans 12:1-2; John 15:19).