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10:30 am Worship

Friday, December 20, 2024

Isaiah 10: 5-10

⁵ Ah, Assyria, the rod of my anger— the club in their hands is my fury!
⁶ Against a godless nation I send him, and against the people of my wrath I command him,
to take spoil and seize plunder, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.
⁷ But this is not what he intends, nor does he have this in mind;
but it is in his heart to destroy, and to cut off nations not a few.

What are we to make of the idea that humans with good motives often take steps which cause great social harm, while others with evil intent may work an ultimate good?

This discussion, I believe, occurs in any great drama. In novels, films, television shows. We have all seen it, the accomplished killer who saves the day. The good man who becomes mired in tragedy because of unforeseen mistake and error. The man of peace who reluctantly turns to violence, and the man of violence who somehow inexplicably finds himself concerned with good. This is irony, which lies at the center of all such human creations.

We all love Popeye, who slugs Bruto in the eye and saves Olive Oyl! The ugly, murderous Terminator who is rewired to become a savior.

How did humans come to prize such stories? Perhaps because they witnessed them coming true in real life.

First Isaiah wrote in a moment when a great neighboring nation intended harm against his homeland. Its ruler had no good intent, but rather only the desire to smash all opposition, to control everything he could see. He did so with brutality. Using murderous destruction. But the prophet saw this as somehow a work of God. How can this be?

It’s a very real question for all of us.  

Can we see these things in the chaotic predation so common in this moment, our moment? Can we see, as Isaiah did, the hand of God moving and using even the darkest human achievements to work a final and great good?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer thought deeply about this, for he felt himself called by God to assist in a murderous act. Being a man of religion, a believer in the deepest goodness of God, he tried to understand why he should assist those seeking to kill Adolph Hitler.

“Good is not the correspondence between a criterion which is placed at our disposal by nature or grace or whatever entity I may designate as reality,” he wrote. “Good is reality itself, reality seen and recognized in God.” (Ethics, 190.)

We all make judgments. My nation is somehow preferable to that nation. This other nation is somehow inherently evil. So too my political party and the other political party. My legal system as opposed to your legal system. All too often, we believe in the reality which happens to surround us, seldom thinking seriously of other opposing realities. Sometimes we are right, and action is necessary. Very often, though, our motives may be good but bring forth awful consequences.

Consider the prisons where America tortured terrorists.

How am I to find good in this intricate web of earthly realities, Bonhoeffer wondered?

He realized, finally, he could find good in only one place. In a reality he could not see or hear. In God. He looked to his Bible and saw how useless it was to attempt to separate our worldly realities one from another.

“The divine words ‘Behold it is very good’ (Gen. 1: 31) refer to the whole of creation,” he wrote. “The good demands the whole, not only the whole of a man’s outlook but his whole work, the whole man, together with the fellow-men who are given to him.”

Herein lies the only solid foundation of faith, hope, and love.

We must perceive the complete goodness of God, trust the hope he implants in our hearts, and live out the love the Deity represents. Doing so, we can find peace in any storm. Here, and only here, in the reality of God, in the will of God, will we achieve goodness.

I believe men with evil intent will always exist. I also believe God will enter into such darkness and shape new forms of love. We dare not forget. God brought forth the creation from chaos and nothingness.

Where is this revealed most clearly? In a word, the gospel: Jesus.

Hymn of the day: It Came Upon a Midnight Clear. Online at Rossford UMC - Media.

Rev. Lawrence Keeler