“This is very important … I want to be buried with a fork in my right hand.”

Perhaps you’ve heard some variant of the story, “Keep Your Fork.” It has in recent years become a kind of internet meme. One version of it can be found here: https://www.guideposts.org/inspiration/life-after-death/why-do-people-say-keep-your-fork

In a nutshell, it’s about a woman who—having been diagnosed with a terminal illness—is meeting with her pastor to plan funeral arrangements. She tells him she wants to be buried clutching a fork, and the minister is understandably puzzled.

So she explains that—over many years of attending socials and church suppers—she noticed that whenever the main course dishes were being cleared away, someone would always tell her, “Keep your fork.”

“Then I knew that something better was coming,” she said. “Like velvety chocolate cake or deep-dish apple pie. Something wonderful, and with substance!”

As her pastor listened, she went on: “I want people to see me in that casket with a fork in my hand, and I want them to wonder, ‘What’s with the fork?’ Then I want you to tell them: ‘Keep your fork; the best is yet to come.’”

How can you not love that story? It’s touching. It’s adorable. And it reminds us that our Christian faith is forward-looking, regarding the future with hopeful anticipation. If you’re looking to pair it with a Scripture passage, a good one might be 1 Thessalonians 5:9-10, where the Apostle Paul writes:

“… God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him.”

Whether we are awake or asleep—whether we are living or dead—we are alive in Christ. We live with Jesus. In this world and the next, we belong to the Lord. Of course, in the world to come, Jesus will be even closer to us than he is now.

As Paul wrote elsewhere, “… now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know fully, even as I am fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12).

Keep your fork. The best is yet to come.

Keep a tight grip on your faith. Keep hold of your relationship with the Lord.

Destruction and chaos may be all around you. There may be “wars and rumors of wars,” and disasters—natural or otherwise—may throw down everything you’ve worked for. Don’t be alarmed. Something better is coming.

The day of the Lord is coming, when all of earth’s problems and conflicts will—with justice and mercy—be finally sorted out. So keep your fork. Keep hold of your optimism, holding fast to God’s promises.

That is good advice not only for the next world, but for this one, as well. Optimism and hope, surely, lay the foundation for dynamic faith.

In chapter 25 of Matthew’s gospel (vv. 14-30) Jesus tells a story of his own. It’s about a man who has three servants. He’s about to go on a long journey, and he needs them to take care of his business while he’s away. So he entrusts his property to them. Specifically, he opens up his treasury and hands over to each one of them a sizeable amount of cash: five talents, two talents, and one talent, in turn.

Now, a “talent” amounted to roughly 15 years’ worth of wages for a common labourer. At least, that’s what the note in my study Bible says.

According to the Alberta government, the average annual wage for a construction labourer in this province is about $58,644.* So even the guy with only one talent was left in charge of an impressive sum—well over three-quarters of a million dollars, in today’s money. That’s quite a pile of cash. There’s a lot of things you could do with it.

However, this last servant—the guy who was given one talent … Well, he doesn’t do anything with it. In fact, he is so worried about losing it that he digs a hole and buries it! He doesn’t even put the money in the bank.

Why? Because he doesn’t want to take any kind of risk with it, however small. That, my friends, is the very definition of pessimism.

If any of you have money invested in mutual funds, or annuities, or something like that … you expect your investments to grow over time, right? You expect the fund administrator to do something with them, don’t you?

Instead of digging a hole to hide your money, you want the person managing your funds to dig in to the market. You want that person to take a calculated risk. That is optimism. Optimism does not shun risk.

The first two servants did not shun risk. And each one of them managed to double their employer’s money. The man who was put in charge of four million dollars returned with eight million. The one who had two million came back with four million. Either the market was really hot, or their boss was gone for a very long time!

Anyway, they both got promotions—and, I think we can assume, hefty bonuses. They did well.

Why? Because they realized they’d been invited to a banquet—a banquet of possibilities. More importantly, they were not afraid to take their forks and dig in to the opportunities that lay all around them.

Living optimistically—living hopefully—requires us to be good stewards of the resources that God has entrusted to us. Living optimistically involves taking risks, sometimes. Living hopefully means stepping out of our comfort zones. Optimistic people—hopeful people, faithful people—do not shun risk.

As followers of Jesus, we are called to embrace risk, confident that—if we are doing God’s will—the Lord will bless our efforts. And the Bible promises that he will equip us to take those risks in his name. Writing to the Christians at Ephesus, the apostle Paul describes this equipment as “the whole armour of God.” Here’s what he says in the sixth chapter of Ephesians:

Therefore take up the whole armour of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. (Eph. 6:13-17)

What an evocative and imaginative writer, Paul was! The whole armour of God. The belt of truth. The breastplate of righteousness. The shield of faith. The helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit.

If Paul had described not only the soldier’s armour, but also his mess kit, he might have added, “the fork of hope.”

It is the fork of hopeful anticipation—which we grasp firmly, as we wait for dessert. But before it is that, it is the fork of hopeful diligence, with which we dig in to the meat and potatoes of Christian discipleship. You know what I mean—that hearty fare which is the diet of every servant of God.

In another letter, Paul reviews the menu, thus: “great endurance … purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God” (2 Cor. 6:4-7).

Stick a fork in any one of those dishes, and you’ll find yourself with plenty to chew on. As Eugene Peterson has put it, “Our work as God’s servants gets validated—or not—in the details” (2 Cor. 6:4, The Message).

Purity? Well, that’s about minding your table manners, because the world is watching just where you stick your fork.

Knowledge? That’s about understanding why it’s important to eat all the food on your plate.

Truthful speech is the yeast which rises into a trustworthy loaf.

And as for patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, and genuine love … Along with all the other ingredients, these things complete the recipe for bearing faithful witness.

Just like working all day—and every day—in a busy restaurant, the life of discipleship requires great endurance. Because the truth is—in the here and now of this present world, we’re not only called to sit at the table; we’re also expected to cook the meal.

Yeah. That’s right. It’s like a never-ending church supper!

It’s not easy to get volunteers to work in the kitchen, is it? And the few who do show up to start the coffee perking … and heat up the oven … and put up the tables and set out the chairs … Well, they can easily wind up exhausted. Feeling discouraged, and taken for granted.

And yet, strangely, somehow these faithful few keep coming back for more—more work in the kitchen, more miles on the road, with ever-heavier loads upon their backs. I think these must be the ones whom the Bible refers to as “the elect.”

Through sheer endurance, they display the power of God. And always—always—they take care to do the best they can, the most they can, with what their Master has entrusted to them.

Maybe it’s five million dollars. Maybe it’s five loaves and two fish. But whatever it is, the faithful ones get out their forks and dig in.

Even when the journey has been arduous, even when the kitchen’s been too hot and the burden’s been too much; even when they’ve done far more than their fair share, putting their talents into service while others seem content to just sit on theirs … even then, these saints persevere.

And why? The only reason I can think of is that they know something better is coming.

Maybe it’s a heavenly banquet table where somebody else is going to serve them dessert, and pour them coffee.

But I think it’s more than that. I think it’s more “here and now” than that. I think it’s the reward that comes when they behold the gratitude of a hungry one being fed. Or when they watch the spiritual growth of Sunday School kids as they progress in maturity and in understanding. Or witness the expression of joy on the face of a lonely person who is just so, so glad to have a visitor.

You saints—you know who you are! (At least, I hope you do.)

I think you persevere because you remember Jesus saying that when you care for the least, you are caring for him. I think you do what you do because you know you are making a tremendous positive difference in someone else’s life.

You find peace in your heart by working peace in the world.

“Something better” comes to pass—before your very eyes—all because, in your hand, you grasp the fork of hope. And because when—with both your hands—you put that hope to work, it not merely doubles, or triples; it expands infinitely.

That is the economy of heaven.

_____________

*https://alis.alberta.ca/occinfo/wages-and-salaries-in-alberta/construction-trades-helpers-and-labourers/7611/

TEXTS: Isaiah 2:1-5 and Matthew 24:1-14

For out of Zion shall go the law,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

He shall judge between the nations,
and shall decide disputes for many peoples;
and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more. (ISAIAH 2:3c-4)

Since long centuries past, humanity has longed for the fulfilment of Isaiah’s vision—of a world at peace, where all the nations walk in the paths of the God of Jacob. That beloved Scripture passage looks forward to the coming of God’s righteous Kingdom, where hope and joy and peace abound.

Alas. It remains a vision of the future. Here and now, as Jesus said, we hear of “wars and rumors of wars” (Matt. 24:6). Nation rises against nation, and false prophets lead many astray. As lawlessness increases, so do hatred and violence. And the end is not yet, unfortunately.

As much as world leaders seek resolutions to earth’s many conflicts—as much as preachers like me strive to deliver hopeful messages—people seem bent on destroying one another.

If you wonder why our religious tradition declares that humanity is “fallen” … you need look no further than the latest murder reported on the nightly news. Or any of our numerous battlefields.

During the week preceding Remembrance Day, we always hear a lot of 1940s-era music being played (at least, that’s the way it is in Canada. I wonder if the same is true of the lead-up to Veterans’ Day, in the United States).

Not that this is a bad thing. I like Vera Lynn as much as the next guy. But the truth is, our world is always creating brand-new combat veterans.

Canada’s role in the Afghan conflict, for instance, cost the nation dearly; 158 Canadian soldiers lost their lives in that theatre of war—and over 2,000 more were injured. ¹ American losses have been astronomically higher—close to 3,000 killed, and more than 20,000 wounded. ²

The number of Canadian Forces’ fatalities resulting from military activities in Afghanistan is the largest since the Korean War. And even though we’ve managed in this case to repatriate our war dead, the grief of friends and family members as they stand at the graveside of a loved one …

Well, their sorrow is every bit as deep as that of the man who penned “In Flanders’ Fields” on a battlefield in Belgium in the spring of 1915.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

That famous poem is an enduring legacy of the terrible battle fought near the village of Ypres 102 years ago. The poet’s name was John McCrae. He was a Canadian army doctor, and already a veteran of the South African War. Even so, the carnage at Ypres left him shaken. The suffering, the screaming, and the bloodshed almost overwhelmed him. In his field hospital, he had witnessed enough suffering to last him a lifetime.

As a surgeon attached to the First Field Artillery Brigade, Major McCrae had spent 17 days treating injured men—Canadians, British, Indians, French, and Germans—in the trenches at Ypres. It had been an unimaginable ordeal. Of it, McCrae later wrote:

“I wish I could embody on paper some of the varied sensations of that seventeen days … Seventeen days of Hades! At the end of the first day if anyone had told us we had to spend seventeen days there, we would have folded our hands and said it could not have been done.” ³

One death hit McCrae particularly hard. A young friend, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer of Ottawa, had been killed by a shell burst on May 2, 1915. He was 22 years old. Lieutenant Helmer was buried later that day, and—in the absence of the chaplain—McCrae himself officiated at the funeral ceremony.

The next day, sitting on the back of an ambulance parked just a few hundred yards north of Ypres, McCrae vented his anguish by composing a poem. In the nearby cemetery—where the young Lieutenant had been laid to rest—McCrae could see the wild poppies that sprang up in the ditches in that part of Europe, and he quickly scribbled 15 lines of verse in a notebook.

Another young soldier watched him write it. Cyril Allinson, a 22-year-old sergeant-major, was delivering mail that day when he spotted McCrae. The major looked up as Allinson approached, then went on writing while the sergeant-major stood there quietly.

“His face was very tired but calm as he wrote,” Allinson later recalled. “He looked around from time to time, his eyes straying to Helmer’s grave.”

When McCrae finished writing, he took his mail from Allinson and, without saying a word, handed his notebook to the young soldier. Allinson was greatly moved by what he read.

“The poem,” he said, “was an exact description of the scene in front of us both. He used the word blow in that line because the poppies actually were being blown that morning by a gentle east wind. It never occurred to me at that time that it would ever be published. It seemed to me just an exact description of the scene.” ⁴

In fact, it was very nearly not published. Dissatisfied with it, McCrae tossed the poem away, but a fellow officer retrieved it and sent it to newspapers in England.

The Spectator, in London, rejected it—but Punch published it on December 8, 1915. The rest, as they say, is history.

“In Flanders Fields” remains to this day one of the most poignant war poems ever written, and—even after all these years—it continues to touch hearts in all generations. It is John McCrae’s legacy to us.

It is also, I believe, something like a Last Will and Testament. For, even as McCrae urges his readers to “Take up our quarrel with the foe,” he also tells us to hold high “the torch.”

If we would indeed hold high this torch—if we would keep faith with those who died in that long-ago conflict—we need to reflect upon just what it means to do that. The “quarrel with the foe” of which McCrae wrote was, after all, settled before any of us were born. Unless …

Unless he had another foe in mind.

I’m sure we all know that World War One was called “the war to end all wars.” We’ve all heard that, right?

I have always assumed that phrase was uttered in retrospect—that it was applied after the war was over, as people contemplated the horrors of trench fighting and mechanized warfare, and told themselves that this atrocity surely could never be repeated.

But I recently learned that, in fact, that phrase was applied in advance—at the very beginning of the conflict. In an article published in The Daily News on August 4, 1914—and titled, “The War That Will End War”—the British futurist H.G. Wells wrote:

This is already the vastest war in history. It is a war not of nations, but of mankind. It is a war to exorcise a world-madness and end an age … For this is now a war for peace. It aims straight at disarmament. It aims at a settlement that shall stop this sort of thing for ever … This, the greatest of all wars, is not just another war—it is the last war! ⁵

Wells’s optimism would, of course, be trashed by the events of coming years. But his phrase, “the war to end all wars,” was quickly adopted as a slogan by the Allied powers.

The dream—the vision, the “torch”—was not about war, but about the end of war. The goal was always to establish peace on earth. And this should be no surprise. I’ve met quite a few combat veterans over the years—but I’ve never met one who thought that war was a good thing. Or a glorious thing. Those who have seen battle up close—like John McCrae did—have no illusions about that.

And so, as we consider what it means to “hold high” the torch passed to us from failing hands … Here’s how I think we can do it.

In a world filled with violence and conflict, we must hold high the vision of peace that Isaiah proclaimed.

In a world filled with tyranny and oppression, we must strive to establish justice for all.

In a world filled with hunger and greed, we must celebrate—and work to fulfil—the promise of abundance for all.

Today, we are called to keep the dream alive. We are called to be dreamers who dream of a better world. Today, we are called not merely to dream, but also to work.

May God increase our compassion, our generosity, and our hospitality toward the least of his children. And may God grant us the courage, the patience, the serenity, honesty, and gentleness of spirit required to mend this broken world. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.

_________________

¹ www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/history/canadian-armed-forces/afghanistan-remembered/fallen?filterYr=2011

² www.defense.gov/casualty.pdf

³ www.canadiangreatwarproject.com/searches/soldierDetail.asp?ID=6009

⁴ www.flandersfieldsmusic.com/thepoem.html

⁵ mentalfloss.com/article/58411/wwi-centennial-war-end-all-wars

“These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

For this reason they are before the throne of God,
and worship him day and night within his temple,
and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them.

They will hunger no more, and thirst no more;
the sun will not strike them,
nor any scorching heat;

for the Lamb at the centre of the throne will be their shepherd,
and he will guide them to springs of the water of life,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

(REV. 7:14b-17)

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven … those who mourn, for they will be comforted … the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled … the merciful, for they will receive mercy … the pure in heart, for they will see God … the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

(MATT. 5:3-9)

Those of you whose tradition follows the Revised Common Lectionary may recognize the above Scripture passages as the Epistle and Gospel lessons for All Saints’ Day (Year A). Both of them contain depictions of “the saints”—in the first case, martyrs; in the second … well, Jesus could have been describing saints in heaven or on earth. Or both, which was probably his intention.

Several themes weave their way through those two readings. But the one that spoke most loudly to me on this particular All Saints’ Day was the theme of reconciliation. Of life in a realm where all things are made right. Where there is no more hunger, no more thirst, no more forced labour in the noonday sun. Here the poor in spirit rejoice with the meek and the persecuted, as earth becomes the kingdom of our God and of his Christ. Here, mourning stops because there is no more death. Weeping ceases, for there is no more sorrow. Here is the fulfillment of all that has been promised to the children of God.

Here, everything—and everyone—is reconciled, and all things are made new. Here is atonement—“at-one-ment”—as all divisions and borders and barriers fall away. And with one voice, saints and angels sing together:

Blessing and glory and wisdom
and thanksgiving and honour
and power and might
be to our God for ever and ever! (REV. 7:12)

Reconciliation. Peace. Joy. Unity. Harmony. Because God’s people form one big, happy family … right?

Or, sometimes, not so much. Whether we’re talking about congregations or clans—or any other kind of human “family”—harmony is too rarely the correct descriptor.

Every family has its measure of discord—of conflicts and frictions, resentments and grudges. Over my years in pastoral ministry, I’ve watched families gathering for all sorts of reasons. And—not surprisingly, I guess—when the reason has been associated with severe illness or death, I’ve witnessed family dynamics at their best and at their worst. Maybe that’s because tragic circumstances tend to strip away our veneer of civility—thereby forcing the kind of emotional honesty most of us find terrifying under normal conditions.

Funerals and memorial services … and deathbed visits … they are, very often, occasions when rough feelings get smoothed out and crooked ways are made straight, when long-festering wounds get healed, and long-ago slights and insults are forgiven, and estranged people are reconciled.

But not always. And never completely. And let’s face it, one person’s saint is another person’s devil.

Yeah. Families. They’re peculiar. These days, we like to label them as dysfunctional. Which is a fancy way of saying that people just cannot—or will not—get along. It sets me to wondering what heaven is going to be like once all of the feuding siblings and sullen children and warring spouses and other adversaries arrive there. Will we like each other any better then?

How will souls be reconciled if they carry their grievances and resentments with them? And if they do that … how can it be heaven?

Maybe it isn’t.

Clive Staples Lewis (1898- 1963) was a British novelist, poet, academic, theologian, broadcaster, lecturer, and Christian apologist. He wrote many books. One of them is called The Great Divorce.

The Great Divorce is a work of fiction, wherein Lewis uses a dream motif to reflect on the Christian conceptions of Heaven and Hell. He begins by introducing us to a narrator, who is never identified.

The narrator finds himself in a grim and joyless city—the “grey town”—which is either Hell or Purgatory, depending on whether or not one stays there forever. Eventually, he comes across people who are boarding a bus. The bus is there to load passengers for an excursion to another place, which—we find out later—turns out to be the edge of Heaven. The narrator enters the bus and engages his fellow passengers in conversation. As they travel on, the people on the bus—including the narrator—are gradually revealed to be ghosts. When they arrive at their destination, the passengers disembark into the most beautiful country they have ever seen.

However, every feature of the landscape—including streams of water and rolling meadows—is unyieldingly solid compared to themselves. The land is material; they are not. And this is a huge problem. Even walking across blades of grass causes them excruciating pain, and a single leaf is much too heavy for any of them to lift.

Suddenly, luminescent figures—men and women whom they have known on Earth—come to meet them, urging them to repent and enter Heaven proper. They promise that as the ghosts travel onward and upward, they will become more and more solid, and thus feel less and less discomfort. These figures—who are called “spirits” to distinguish them from the ghosts—offer to guide them along the journey toward the mountains and the sunrise.

But here is an amazing thing: almost all of the ghosts choose instead to get back on board the bus, giving various reasons and excuses. What kind of reasons and excuses? Well, they sound very familiar.

An artist refuses to stay, after learning that he cannot sell his paintings in Heaven; a bitter cynic claims that Heaven is just a hoax; another is offended by the presence of people whom he considers undesirable; a nagging wife is upset because she will no longer be able to dominate her husband.

One man, however—who while on Earth had been enslaved by lust, which takes the form of an ugly lizard—permits an angel to destroy the reptile … which is then resurrected as a great and beautiful stallion. At the same time, the man is transformed into a shining being who mounts the horse and rides triumphantly into the everlasting dawn.

But he is a rare exception. The majority of the ghosts choose to return to the grey town. Why? Because—as it turns out—life in Hell is not that different from the life they led on Earth. Early in the story, as the narrator rides the bus, we hear the following exchange:

“It seems the deuce of a town,” I volunteered, “and that’s what I can’t understand. The parts of it that I saw were so empty. Was there once a much larger population?”

“Not at all,” said my neighbour. “The trouble is that they’re so quarrelsome. As soon as anyone arrives he settles in some street. Before he’s been there twenty-four hours he quarrels with his neighbour. Before the week is over he’s quarrelled so badly that he decides to move. Very likely he finds the next street empty because all the people there have quarrelled with their neighbours—and moved. So he settles in. If by any chance the street is full, he goes further. But even if he stays, it makes no odds. He’s sure to have another quarrel pretty soon and then he’ll move on again. Finally he’ll move right out to the edge of the town and build a new house.” *

This is the opposite of reconciliation. And this, according to Lewis, is a vision of Hell. It’s like a city that expands continually, as its citizens move further and further away from one another—all because they cannot get along. They are as quarrelsome in the grey town as they were on Earth.

Today, Jesus offers us, instead, a vision of Heaven. He also provides us with a travel brochure with tips about how to prepare for our destination. If we would receive mercy, we must show mercy. If we would see God, we must strive for purity of heart. If we would be God’s children, we must embrace peaceful living.

On All Saints’ Day—or any day we stand before our Lord’s banquet table—we should ask ourselves: is unity our heart’s desire? Is reconciliation something we truly want? And if we say it is …

What are we doing about it, right now? How are we actively pursuing reconciliation, here on Earth?

I wonder … will we heed the advice in Jesus’ travel brochure? Or … will we simply … get back on the bus?

___________________________________

* C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), p. 9.

There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death. (Proverbs 14:12)

Not long ago, on our local CBC Calgary radio morning show, medical contributor Dr. Raj Bhardwaj—speaking about hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to relieve the symptoms of menopause—provided some insight into why this particular treatment has been surrounded by controversy.¹

Dr. Bhardwaj began by stating that, today, only about 10% of post-menopausal women are receiving HRT, compared to about 30% of them some 20 years ago.

In other words, doctors used to employ HRT much more frequently. Why the change?

The history around this is fascinating. Back in the 1960s, Dr. Bhardwaj explained, physicians reasoned that—since menopausal symptoms are caused by decreased estrogen production—it made sense that replacing the estrogen would relieve those symptoms. And so, doctors began prescribing estrogen pills for their middle-aged female patients. However …

“After about 10 years of giving estrogen to women,” Dr. Bhardwaj said, “research started to show that doing that actually increased their risk of uterine cancer!

“So then they changed things around, and another 10 years of research showed that if women took both estrogen and progesterone—another hormone that’s in most birth control pills—it actually decreased their risk of uterine cancer, and it looked like it decreased their risk of heart disease, as well. So in the ‘80s, a lot of middle-aged women were getting put on hormone replacement therapy to protect them from heart disease, not because they had menopause or any kind of menopausal symptoms at all.

“And then, [in] 2002, this big study called the Women’s Health Initiative Trial hit the media.² And it hit hard, because it was actually stopped early, because they found that the effects of hormone replacement were significantly different from what they were thinking. So they found that not only was there no big protective effect of hormone replacement on heart disease, it also showed that there was an increased risk of stroke, breast cancer, blood clots—all sorts of bad things—for women who were on hormone replacement pills, compared to women who weren’t.”

That totally changed the “risk/benefit equation,” and physicians began thinking that HRT’s dangers outweighed its benefits. As a result, hormone treatment for menopausal symptoms fell out of favour.

But that was in 2002. As the good doctor put it, “Science marches on!”

Closer examination of the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) Trial revealed a problem: it focused exclusively on women between the ages of 50 and 79.

“But menopause happens sort of in the 48- to 52-year range,” Dr. Bhardwaj said. “And the perimenopause—that four-or-five years when women approach menopause—that’s really when a lot of them get their symptoms. And there were no women in their 40s in this study.”

As medical scientists investigated further, they discovered some facts that were not emphasized in the WHI results. For one thing, there was no evidence of increased heart disease risk in women under 60. Plus, the breast cancer risk seemed to virtually disappear if HRT was used for less than five years.

So the HRT pendulum, Dr. Bhardwaj said, has swung from “Use it in everyone” to “Better not use it in anyone” to “now, it’s sort of panning out to use it judiciously, not for too long, and expect bigger benefits in women in early menopause rather than in late menopause.”

In other words—based on the most up-to-date research—the bottom line for HRT is that it’s safe if carefully administered. As Dr. Bhardwaj went on to say, “This is why science is science and not alternative medicine … As [new] evidence comes out, we change. We change our practices.”

“That’s why science is science.” Indeed. And that is why, for the most part, we can rely upon scientific methods to produce accurate results and beneficial applications … in the end.

The trouble is, it’s not always clear when that “end” has been reached. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that future research—reported next year or next week—will yet again point to HRT being unsafe or ineffective.

Or so it seems to this layman. Like most people, I am not scientifically trained, and so I rely upon science journalists for my information about new medical advancements, or about developments and discoveries in other scientific fields. And so, when I hear about the latest Killer Asteroid hurtling toward earth—or when I hear conflicting “expert” opinions about the efficacy of flu vaccines … Well, that gets my attention. But it doesn’t always satisfy my appetite for clarity.

That’s why—despite the number of high-profile scientists appearing in the news media to assert the absolute perfection of the scientific method—I’m unwilling to embrace science with the kind of almost-religious fervor of folks like Richard Dawkins.

I can only judge scientific advancement according to the information I’m given. And much of that information points to a very widely- (and often wildly-) swinging scientific pendulum. Which means that (again, I think, like many other people) I tend to take much science reporting with a grain of sodium chloride.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not preaching some kind of anti-scientific gospel here. Obviously, the benefits of science to humankind far outweigh its detriments. Science has provided blessings in abundance: improved agricultural methods yielding greater harvests; jet transportation that has brought the world closer; internet technology that’s brought the world to every desktop; surgical techniques that can repair an infant’s defective heart. Plus smart phones, espresso machines, and microwave ovens. Not to mention penicillin, organ transplants, and emergency defibrillators. The modern world is much better off because of science.

However, I would argue that science—being, after all, a human enterprise—will always be less than perfect. I refuse to make an idol out of the scientific method, or to build a scientific religion around it.

Yet it’s true that science and religion have much in common. They both seek Ultimate Truth. Yet, inevitably, each falls just short of its goal. Or, sometimes, very far short of the goal. Often, each one just plain gets it wrong.

When science gets it right, it yields all the benefits named above, plus a cornucopia of life-enhancing fruit.

When religion gets it right, we are blessed with ethical systems of law, love of neighbour, equitable sharing of resources, ways of reconciliation and peace, spiritual enlightenment. Salvation.

When science gets it wrong, we get thalidomide babies,³ radioactive fallout, biological weapons, bogus racial theories and Nazi eugenics.

When religion gets it wrong, we get suicide bombers, pogroms, crusades, doomsday cults and residential schools. We get false prophets forecasting specific dates for Armageddon, rejection of needed medical treatment, entrenched bigotry and racism.

Yes. Science and religion do, indeed, have much in common. When we get it right, human existence is made better, Ultimate Truth is more closely apprehended, society benefits, and lives are saved. When we get it wrong, truth is obscured. And people die.

In fact, it seems to me that—for all of their shared positives and negatives—neither science nor religion can afford to view the other with scorn. Of professor and priest alike, smugness is unbecoming.

“Without the Way, there is no going; without the Truth, there is no knowing; without the Life, there is no living.” —Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471)

___________________________________

¹ http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/programs/eyeopener/dr-raj-bhardwaj-on-menopause-1.4358646

² https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/news/press-releases/2002/nhlbi-stops-trial-of-estrogen-plus-progestin-due-to-increased-breast-cancer-risk-lack-of-overall-benefit

³ http://www.thalidomide.ca/the-canadian-tragedy/

 

 

“Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” (Matthew 22:17)

Consider, if you will, the Canadian 10-cent piece; or consider, even, the lowly nickel—or almost any other Canadian coin. You will see on one side a portrait of Queen Elizabeth, surrounded by the inscription, “D.G. Regina” (or “Dei Gratia Regina”), Latin for “By the Grace of God, Queen.”

This design mimics the coinage of imperial Rome in Jesus’ time. The portrait then was that of the emperor. The inscription, in Latin abbreviation, included the emperor’s name and his titles.

The coins of the Roman Empire circulated over a vast area populated by people of many races and languages. It was an empire which included Judea and Galilee—troublesome regions at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea; troublesome, because they were never docile in their subservience to Rome.

In the days of imperial Rome, back before photography and television and modern travel, coins and sculpture were the only ways that most of the residents of the empire had to see what their emperor looked like. These coins also played an essential role in the empire’s sophisticated economy. They were essential to trade and taxation.

And so the stage is set for the dramatic encounter in Matthew 22:15-22, where Jesus embarrasses his opponents by making reference to the Roman coin he holds in his hand.

Two quite disparate groups come gunning for Jesus. First, there are the Pharisees (or at least, a faction of them). They are devout Jews scrupulous in their observance of God’s law as they interpreted it. Then, there are the Herodians—Jews who support Herod Antipas—referred to most often as a Jewish King, but in reality nothing more than a Roman puppet.

Pharisees and Herodians differed on several issues, one of which was the question of whether to pay taxes to the occupying power. It is remarkable, therefore, to witness representatives of these opposing camps working together. Evidently, both groups feel threatened by the rabbi from Nazareth.

So they approach Jesus over one of the “hot-button” issues of the day. After a sickly-sweet overture (“Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth …”), they present their toxic question: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”

They hope to trick Jesus into siding with one group or another—either with the revolutionaries who are plotting to drive out the Romans, or with the collaborators who benefit from the occupation. If Jesus disallows payment, he leaves himself open to charges of sedition. If he encourages payment, he loses credibility and the people’s respect.

Jesus, however, is onto their game immediately, and challenges them: “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites?” Then he asks to see the coin used to pay the tax. He is handed a denarius—a silver coin about the size of a modern dime. The particular denarius shown to Jesus would have borne the likeness of the reigning emperor, Tiberius. It would also have had a Latin inscription, translated as follows: “Tiberius Caesar, Son of the Divine Augustus.”

Remember, the Latin inscription on our modern coinage proclaims that Elizabeth is Queen “by the grace of God”; but the inscription on Roman coins claimed divinity for the emperor. If Caesar Augustus was a god, so is his son Tiberius, according to the Romans. Tiberius is depicted as heir to his divine predecessor. The Romans gloried in these titles; the Jews were scandalized by them.

Now Jesus asks what seems like an unnecessary question: “Whose head is this, and whose title?” The answer is simple: “The emperor’s.”

Jesus then gives his famous response. He lifts the tax controversy to a different level, well above the deadlock between revolutionary and collaborator. “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s.”

In other words, you can pay him this coin and others like it, for after all, his name and portrait appear on them. He has a just claim to property of this kind.

“And give to God the things that are God’s.” What belongs to God? Consider!  If the emperor claims a coin that bears his image, then certainly God claims whatever bears his image.

But what is it that bears the image of God?

Certainly, the Pharisees and the Herodians are familiar with the Scriptures. They remember the Genesis account: “So God created humankind in his image …” (GEN. 1:27)

They know that God has made humanity in his own image. It is right to pay the emperor taxes using coins with his image. But it is an even greater responsibility to give God what bears his image—namely, one’s own self. Even as the coin bears Caesar’s image—and so belongs to Caesar—we bear the image and likeness of God. And so, we belong to God. Jesus both affirmed the tax … and made it irrelevant. His meaning is clear: though we do owe the state, there are limits to what we owe. But he places no limits on what we owe to God. God calls us to be the embodiment of his Kingdom—the picture of it, if you will. The likeness of our Maker is supposed to be stamped upon us as indelibly as Caesar’s likeness was stamped upon that denarius.

Jesus refuses to become embroiled in a futile controversy. More than that, to each person present—and to us—he makes it clear that we must return our lives to God. Each one of us is made in the divine image. Each one of us owes final and complete loyalty to God. Tiberius may claim to be the son of divine Augustus—but the truth is that each human being is a child of the true King, Israel’s Lord. Thunderstruck by this realization, the Herodians and the Pharisees slip quietly away.

To be sure, this gospel drama does not answer all our questions about what it means to be—at one and the same time—citizens of earth and of heaven. It does not resolve every dilemma about obedience and taxation and resistance. But it does point out the sort of moral inquiry that must inform all of our difficult choices:

• Have I given myself—fully and completely—to God?
• Am I in right relationship to God?

If the answer to these two questions is “yes,” then I have a shot at making my other relationships work—complex and challenging though they may be. But if the answer is “no”—if I have cheated or shortchanged or forgotten my Creator—then everything else in my life will be out of whack, and whatever my good intentions, I will not be able to live justly or happily with others.

Our humanity is, after all, constituted in that way. Unless I do right by my relationship with God, I cannot do right by any of my other relationships. But if that most important relationship is somehow healed and made whole—repaired by the One who established it—then my other relationships have a hope of being set right, as well.

Fortunately, hope abounds for us! Why? Because “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us” (2 Corinthians 5:19).

In Christ, humanity and divinity are reconciled. And the message of reconciliation has been entrusted to us. Friends, we are the coinage of heaven. Let’s spend our lives so that others may see—in us—the image and likeness of our Lord.

 

TEXTS: Jonah 3:10-4:11 and Matthew 20:1-16

So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord … And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth. (Jonah 3:3-5)

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard.” (Matthew 20:1)

 

The Book of Jonah. One of the 12 “minor” prophets of the Old Testament—and easily the most widely-known. Even if you’ve never opened a Bible, you’re probably familiar with his story. Jonah was the guy who got swallowed by a whale. Right?

Well, sort of. The Book of Jonah is largely allegorical, and the text nowhere mentions a “whale.” However, it contains one of the most fascinating accounts in Scripture because of what it does tell us.

This is a story about somebody who really did not want to do what God was calling him to do. His name was Jonah, and he was a prophet of Israel.

We presume Jonah did not mind preaching to his fellow Israelites, warning them about sin and urging them to stay on the straight and narrow. After all, that’s what prophets do!

But now God was asking him to do something quite different. God had commanded Jonah to preach repentance to a faraway city called Nineveh —a place whose evil was so great, it rose up heavenward like a stench.

Jonah did not want to do it.

Why not? Well, you see, Nineveh wasn’t just any city. No. It was the capital of a ruthless empire that was bent on expansion, gobbling up its neighbours on all sides. In fact, within a few decades, it would obliterate the kingdom of Israel. And since Jonah was a prophet, I guess he could see that coming.

Jonah figured that, if he left the Ninevites to their own devices, God would get fed up with them and wipe them out—maybe with a Sodom-and-Gomorrah-style nuclear blast!

Jonah did not want to preach repentance to these people, because he knew that—if they did listen to him, and did repent—God would have mercy on them and spare them.

But mercy for Nineveh would one day spell destruction, death, and deportation for Jonah’s own people. I think that’s why he wanted no part of God’s plan. That’s why he got on a boat going in the opposite direction. He was trying to run away from God—or, more specifically, from this thing God was calling him to do.

Well, we know how the story of Jonah plays out. The Lord causes a storm to toss the boat violently around, Jonah finds himself in the water, and then … he is swallowed by a big fish. After three days inside the fish’s stomach, the prophet cries, “uncle!” He agrees to do what God wants, and the big fish vomits him out onto the shore.

Fortunately for Jonah, prophets are hard to digest!

Grudgingly, he makes his way to Nineveh—which, by the way, was nowhere near the Mediterranean coast. Nineveh lay on the east bank of the Tigris River, near present-day Mosul in northern Iraq.

From that beach where the fish deposited Jonah, it was 745 kilometres—or 463 miles—to Nineveh. And that’s as the crow flies. By road, it was over 900 kilometres (577 miles). Today, at highway speed, it’s about a nine-hour drive … but for Jonah, it would’ve been at least a 13-day journey on foot.

Anyway, to make a long story short, Jonah finally staggers into Nineveh and urges its people to repent … and they do! In spite of himself, Jonah has carried the salvation of God to a people that seemed utterly beyond redemption.

But the prophet is not rejoicing about this. He exits the city, and stations himself a safe distance away, waiting to see what will happen next. Apparently, he hopes that God may decide to nuke them, after all!

Of course, that’s not what happens. Instead, the Lord tries to reason with the angry prophet: “How can I not care about Nineveh? How can I not care about 120,000 people who don’t know right from wrong? I’m glad they changed their ways. I did not want to destroy them. They are my creatures, after all!”

But of course. To us, I guess, (I hope) it makes perfect sense that God cares about the people of Nineveh. Why wouldn’t he care about them?

To Jonah, though … the question sounds like this: why should God care about Israel’s enemies? Why do they deserve mercy? Why do they deserve to be saved? Where is the justice in God’s grace?

Well, where is it?  Where is the justice in God’s grace? The same question is raised in another Biblical story—this time from the New Testament. In Matthew 20:1-16, Jesus tells a crazy parable about a landowner who pays all his labourers the same amount, no matter how many hours of work they actually put in. How can you run a business doing that?

Imagine the corporate executive’s reaction to this story: “If reimbursement is not commensurate with hours worked, then how will I motivate my employees? And if I can’t motivate my employees, how will I sell my product, serve my customers, and turn a profit?”

Or imagine the reaction of the committed workers who put in the long hours. Well, we do not really need to imagine this, since Jesus tells us what they said: “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat” (Matt. 20:12).

They are indignant. And who can blame them? It’s just not fair. If that’s how it’s going to be, why shouldn’t we just laze around all day long, and then punch in at four o’clock?

Well … look. This is a parable. Personally, I think the story of Jonah is a kind of parable, too. Parables aim to teach us important truths—and often, they get our attention by setting up the most bizarre situations. When Jesus tells us about the landowner and his workers, he’s not trying to answer questions like: “How should I run my business?” or “What kind of wage should I expect as a farm labourer?”

No. He’s dealing with another question altogether: “What is the Kingdom of Heaven like?” And in describing the kingdom to his disciples, he has to use human categories and analogies. It’s “like” this; and it’s “like” that. No single parable—not even all the parables—can fully capture the kingdom of heaven for us; but we can learn something about it if we listen carefully.

If this parable is about Jesus’ kingdom, then it is really not at all about “reimbursement” or “fair wages.”  In fact, it’s not about any of the principles we normally associate with hired labour. Rather, it is about a gracious and undeserved gift. It is about what Jesus brings to the world and how he transforms it.

It is about the economy of heaven.

Notice that even the workers who were hired early in the morning—the ones who later complain about their employer’s fairness—roll out of bed un-employed. But the landowner finds them and gives them work. I imagine they were, no less than the nine-, or three-, or five-o’clock-hires, “standing idle in the marketplace.”

Whatever they were doing, they weren’t getting paid for it. They had no livelihood prior to the vineyard owner seeking them out. But, by the end of the day, they seem to have forgotten this. Or perhaps they never really understood. Clearly, come payment time, they are thinking only in terms of just reward. Pay must be commensurate with the hours worked—as if the work itself was not the real “reward.”

Jesus’ parable is not so much about a landowner looking for help from others as it is about a landowner who looks to help others. More to the point: it’s about an employer who gathers up idle people and gives them a purpose. Indeed—given that this is a parable about the kingdom of heaven—what we’re talking about here is the purpose of our lives; the purpose we’ve been looking for all along. Or, if we’re like Jonah, the purpose we’ve been avoiding all along … namely … God’s purpose for us.

The landowner’s rationale for payment is extraordinarily simple: “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?”

I’m reminded of Paul’s words to the Corinthians: “What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift?” (1 Cor. 4:7). How easy it is, over the course of the day, to forget that every good thing comes to us as a gracious gift from God! And yet, God is not required or compelled to do anything for us at all—not even to give our lives a purpose.

Atheists tell us that life has no inherent purpose—even as the universe itself has no purpose, no grand reason for existing. And if you take God out of the picture, that does appear to be the truth. However, God is in our picture, and God knows that our lives need a purpose. We need a purpose. The work God gives us is his gift to us. It’s not about us doing God a favour. It’s not about working for a wage or a reward. It’s about receiving a gift of divine love.

Yet, how often we seem to miss that point! Maybe that’s because answering the call of God—doing the work God gives us to do—is seldom easy, or convenient, or even appealing. Most often, it causes us discomfort—like when it demands that we go out of our way to do good to our enemies, or face up to our own prejudices … or to be reconciled with someone who’s wronged us. Jonah was given an opportunity to become not just a prophet, but also a saint. But it seems to me that he missed it. He missed the point of God’s grace, just as we miss it when our ideas about “fair play” keep us from recognizing the will of God.

When does that happen? Well, unfortunately, in the church, it happens all the time:

• It happens when old-timers resent newcomers taking leadership positions.
• It happens, sometimes, when we resist change.
• It happens when someone decides to sulk because they feel their hard work has not been properly acknowledged.
• It happens whenever Christians—who should know better—refuse to forgive someone for a real or imagined slight, or fail to embrace a repentant sinner.

In other words, it happens whenever we turn away from the grace-work God has given us to do. Christian discipleship is challenging. Confronted by God’s boundless love—especially when we witness it being poured out on people we think do not deserve it …

When that happens, we must choose how we’re going to respond. We should choose carefully, for the Lord is watching. And the way we respond shows how we view our own labour in his vineyard.

May God help us live according to the grace we have received.

“Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.” (JOHN 1:29b)

Those are, of course, the words of John the Baptist, and he is referring to Jesus the Christ. The people who heard John say that would have recognized the allusion to animal sacrifice and the concept of atoning blood. Twenty-first-century people, though … Well, John’s declaration leaves most of us scratching our heads.

In a blog post like this one, I haven’t room to even begin to properly discuss the institution of temple sacrifice. But let me try to explain in very simplified—perhaps overly simplified—terms. To the Hebrew people—and to other ancient peoples—the idea of sacrifice as something that could take away sin was both deeply spiritual and very commonplace.

As I said, I’m oversimplifying. But in a nutshell, the belief was that an individual could somehow place his or her sins upon a living animal—quite often a lamb—and then offer it for sacrifice. When the animal died, the sins died with it, and therefore the person who brought the sacrifice was free of the bondage of sin—at least, for a while.

Now, that brings us back to Jesus being the “Lamb of God” who would bear humanity’s sins and take them to the cross. By dying as a sacrifice to God, Jesus assumed our punishment and made us holy in the eyes of God. Again, an oversimplification, but that has been—more or less—the prevailing doctrine through most of Christian history.

However, I have to admit that this idea has always made me uncomfortable. And maybe it’s supposed to! Trouble is—to the vast majority of modern folk—the idea of “substitutionary atonement” is not merely nonsensical, but actually offensive!

At this point, it has to be said that most of Jesus’ contemporaries also found the idea offensive. Sacrificing an animal was one thing, but human sacrifice was strictly forbidden (and was viewed with horror by Jews and Romans alike). That’s what the apostle Paul is getting at when he writes: “we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (1 Cor. 1:23).

And it is a horrifying idea, is it not? For one thing, it appears unjust. After all, where is the justice in requiring Christ—who was guilty of nothing—to bear the punishment we deserve? How could it really help, anyway? And how could a just God accept such an unjust sacrifice? Critics have a point when they say this reduces Christ to a sort of cosmic whipping boy.

I wonder: is it possible to re-examine these ancient conceptions? To see them in a way that applies a different meaning to the Biblical ideas of sin and sacrifice? In what way is Jesus a lamb? In what sense does he “take away the sins of the world?”

Hmmm … that’s another huge discussion. I think the best thing I can do here is tell you a story. It’s a true story—and it is suffused with lessons about grace. At least, I think it is. So here’s the story …

When I pastored a church in Kamloops, I came to know a woman who was a former heroin addict. I still hear from her occasionally.

I’ll call her Susan. She did all kinds of unpleasant and ugly things to get money to support her habit. By her own account, she worked for a while as a prostitute in Vancouver’s infamous Downtown Eastside. A few times, she made some half-hearted efforts to get clean—but without success. Susan now says part of her problem was that she really didn’t see any good reason for quitting.

That is, not until her baby girl was born. Then it quickly became clear that Susan’s drug use had caused great damage to the tiny child. The baby looked normal enough, but she screamed and cried all the time, and she was very sick most of the time. When Susan saw this, it broke her heart. She had not realized that she would love this little girl so much, and she was appalled by what she herself had done.

Then social workers from the government came and took the baby away, because they realized that Susan was unable to care for her. They placed the child in foster care. But Susan wanted her baby back. And so, for the first time in her life, she had a compelling reason for straightening herself out. She went into a special treatment centre for women with drug problems, and worked very hard to get well. After that, she joined a support group and made some tremendous positive changes in her life.

To make a long story short, after Susan had been drug-free for about a year, her child was returned to her. That was over 20 years ago now, and Susan has managed to stay away from drugs throughout all that time. Her little girl is now a fine young woman. Susan turned out to be a very good mother.

If you were to ask her what made the difference for her—what finally made her want to turn her life around—Susan would tell you it was the sight of her newborn baby in severe distress. In that moment, she found out what love feels like—and also saw how terrible her addiction (her “sin,” if you like) truly was. And her love for her child was what finally propelled her into rehab.

In a very real sense, it seems to me, Susan’s daughter became as Christ to her. She literally bore her mother’s sin, and—ultimately—she took it away.

I believe the sight of Jesus upon the cross can be like that. If we love him, we cannot help but be profoundly affected by his violent, painful death. When we consider that the One who was sent to demonstrate God’s love for humanity ended up being killed by human hatred and fear, does it not make us realize how desperately we need to change? When we hear the phrase, “Jesus died for our sins,” we may interpret it as being—at the very least—an example of God trying to get our attention.

“Look at me!” we may imagine Jesus saying. “All of your human history has been about war and suffering and injustice. Now it’s come to this. Here I am, hanging on the cross. This is what your hatred and selfishness has led to, for countless millions of innocent victims. When will you stop hating?”

Such an interpretation has been favoured by more than a few theologians over the centuries (including Peter Abelard). Some have called it the “Moral Influence Theory” of atonement.*

Of course, this presumes that we truly do love Jesus! For only if we love him will his suffering move us to change our own behaviour, or to labour for a better world.

Fortunately, Christ’s love is available freely to anyone who will accept it—and that, my friends, is why the good news really is good news! May we never cease proclaiming it—for it remains a story our world needs desperately to hear.

________________

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_influence_theory_of_atonement

 

As I write this, Hurricane Harvey appears to be fading at last—but not before wreaking hundreds of billions of dollars worth of damage, causing at least 40 deaths and displacing tens of thousands in Texas, Louisiana and throughout the Caribbean.

As I write this, 24 people have been reported killed in a building collapse in Mumbai; a man in his 20s is dead after a daylight shooting in a Toronto shopping mall; a 32-year-old husband and father has finally died after being struck in the head by a softball during a charity slo-pitch tournament in Courtenay, British Columbia two weeks ago.

As I write this, North America’s opioid crisis goes on claiming hundreds of lives every week, the State of Nevada contemplates using Fentanyl as an execution drug, and—years after the Cold War ended—we face a fresh nuclear threat from North Korea.

What is our world coming to?

Or, to ask a more uncomfortable question: “Why does our good God allow evil things to happen?” Things like murder and terrorism and earthquakes and cancer. Motor vehicle accidents. Misfortune both random and designed. Tragedies you’d think the Lord would want to prevent.

So, why doesn’t he?

Why doesn’t he stop suicide bombers, mass murderers, and drunk drivers? Why doesn’t he “rend the heavens and come down?” (to ask the prophet Isaiah’s question).

There are at least a couple of time-honoured answers to questions like those. One of them appeals to the sovereignty of God—saying, in effect: “God is in charge. When suffering and misfortune come into our lives, it is not accidental. And since God is good, even our severest suffering must be—somehow—for a good purpose.”

Honestly, I do not like that answer very much. Because I find it impossible to believe that the God I know would deliberately cause suffering—especially the suffering of innocent children.

Another traditional answer appeals to the concept of free will. God gave people free will, and they chose evil instead of good. I like that answer better. I find it more agreeable. I would rather pin the blame for evil on the will of human agents.

But, however much I prefer that answer, I have to acknowledge that it creates a big problem. And it has to do with the aforementioned sovereignty of God. Because, inescapably, it leads us to the conclusion that human beings can circumvent God’s will. This calls into question the whole idea that God is in control of absolutely everything.

God knows everything that happens—and he knows everything that will happen … right? That’s what we believe … isn’t it?

Certainly, that is the view of “classical Christianity.” But how can there be such a thing as “free will” if the future is already written out like a screenplay? If we’re just actors on a stage—playing out a predetermined script—then we really don’t have any free will at all … do we?

Let’s back up a bit. Why is free will important, anyway? A theologian named Alvin Plantinga has stated the case better than I ever could:

A world containing creatures who are significantly free (and freely perform more good than evil actions) is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all. Now God can create free creatures, but He can’t cause or determine them to do only what is right. For if He does so, then they aren’t significantly free after all; they do not do what is right freely. To create creatures capable of moral good, therefore, He must create creatures capable of moral evil; and He can’t give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so.¹

In other words, without free will, we’d just be robots, carrying out our programmed behaviour. And if that is not what we are—if we are not robots, or characters in some kind of divine novel—then that must mean that the future is not predetermined. But if the future is not predetermined, how can it be known by God?

One proposed solution to this problem is known as “Open Theism.”

Open Theism is, to be sure, controversial. It holds that God does not and cannot know in advance the future choices that his free creatures will make. Or, to put it another way, open theists claim that—while God can know in advance what he has planned to do, he cannot know what his free creatures will choose to do. In other words, the future is a blank page. It really is open—and not available to foreknowledge, even on the part of God.

Wait! Is this not heresy? How can we say that God doesn’t know the future? That’s like saying that God can change his mind!

Hmmm. Consider the story recorded in 2 Kings 20:1-6. Through an inspired prophet, the Lord tells King Hezekiah that he will not recover from his illness. God says that Hezekiah’s days are numbered: “Set your house in order” is God’s message to the king.

But Hezekiah pleads with the Lord. And what happens? The Lord reverses his stated intention!

“I have heard your prayer,” God says. “I have seen your tears; indeed, I will heal you … I will add fifteen years to your life.”

That’s quite a reversal. And it’s not the only example in Scripture of God apparently changing his mind. There are many. One of them is from the 26th chapter of the Book of Jeremiah, where the Lord tells Jeremiah to warn Israel that they should repent, saying: “I may change my mind about the disaster that I intend to bring on them because of their evil doings” (v. 3).

Okay. So God changes his mind, sometimes. So what?

Here’s what! If God can change his mind about certain things, it must mean that the future is not absolutely fixed. Or at least, there are some aspects of the future that are not absolutely fixed.

Not only that, but it suggests that at least some things—certain outcomes—truly are in human hands. What’s more, it means that prayer really does have a purpose. It actually can have an effect. Prayer changes things.

Gregory Boyd has written a book about open theism. It’s called God of the Possible. And in it, he says this:

Open theists … maintain that God can and does predetermine and foreknow whatever he wants to about the future. Indeed, God is so confident in his sovereignty [that] he does not need to micromanage everything. He could if he wanted to, but this would demean his sovereignty. So he chooses to leave some of the future open to possibilities, allowing them to be resolved by the decisions of free agents.²

Now, I’m not saying that I’ve completely bought into the “Open Theism” school of thought. I don’t believe it provides all the answers to all our questions about good and evil. And I’m certainly not saying that our prayers always bring about the kind of changes we desire.

In John 12:27, we hear Jesus ask a rhetorical question: “What should I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’?”

Immediately, he answers his own question: “No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.”

That sounds like Jesus thought everything was fixed—that his fate was sealed. And maybe it was. But even he must have thought that maybe—just maybe—there was a possibility of changing the outcome. Because later—in Gethsemane—this was his earnest prayer: “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42).

So what can we make of all this?

Here’s what I think. However we may try to wrap our heads around the paradox of suffering in a world made by a good Creator, it seems clear—from Scripture and from our own experience—that human agency makes a tremendous difference.

Whether it’s the prophet Isaiah bringing God’s message to the king, or Jesus bowing to his Father’s will—or you and I choosing to do the right thing, even when that costs us—what we do upon this earth matters! Our actions matter. Our prayers are never futile. God chooses to work through us—to combat evil, to do justice, to make real the compassion of Jesus.

As a very wise six-year-old once said, “Jesus does things in the world because we do them. So we better do good things.”

Amen. Let’s do them!

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¹Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1974), 30.

²Gregory A. Boyd, God of the Possible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2000), 31.