Faith, Obedience, and the Will

I am afraid I might be a little overambitious with this one. Faith, obedience and the will are all huge topics in and of themselves, but God has been showing me how they are all inextricably linked. It all started with me coming here. I mean, that took some serious faith. Trust me, it has been a roller coaster of emotions throughout the planning of living in Jordan. It still takes a lot of faith. But what does that mean? It means unconditional obedience. During the past few months I have pondered and questioned mi**ions, min***ry, and “calling.” There is lot I could say about all that, but the main conclusion is obedience. When I don’t know why I’m here or how God wants to use me, it all comes back to being obedient, by faith, in what He has told me to do. Just as there cannot be faith without works, there are not works without obedience. Living here comes with a lot of questions that require guidance and wisdom. Should I dress to please my Chri***an or Mu**im neighbor? Do I focus only on language or min***ry as well? Everyone here has his or her own opinion on everything. So how do I act? Every detail of my life demands obedience and faith. I have been reading James and have gotten really stuck on chapter 2. Abraham was justified by his works, but they weren’t just arbitrary good works. He was justified by his obedience to God in sacrificing Isaac (or Ishmael as people here believe – just a cultural side note). In Calvin’s commentary on James he says:
….We do not attain salvation by a frigid and bare knowledge of God, which all confess to be most true; for salvation comes to us by faith for this reason, because it joins us to God. And this comes not in any other way than by being united to the body of Christ, so that, living through his Spirit, we are also governed by him. There is no such thing as this in the dead image of faith. There is then no wonder that James denies that salvation is connected with it.

I found a passage in Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost for His Highest that enhanced my study on obedience:
“Bind the sacrifice with cords to the horns of the altar” (Psalm 118:27). You must be willing to be placed on the altar and go through the fire; willing to experience what the altar represents – burning, purification, and separation for only one purpose – the elimination of every desire and affection not grounded in or directed toward God. But you don’t eliminate it, God does. You “bind the sacrifice…to the horns of the altar” and see to it that you don’t wallow in self pity once the fire begins….Tell God you are ready to be poured out as an offering.
What struck me most about this passage was the point that we can’t eliminate our own sin or selfish desires. All we can do is completely abandon ourselves to Him. He does the work, but we must make the decision. Once we give Him our will as a sacrifice, he will give us the faith to obey Him.

Social Injustice and all that good stuff

I am compelled to write on this subject because of a few things I have been watching and reading. There are two movies I really like for the same reason. Crash is an old favorite, and The Kingdom is a new one. Both basically send the message that “no one is good, not even one” (Romans 3), concluding that there will be no end to war and violence so long as there is hatred. No amount of revenge will suffice. There will never be a “war to end all wars.” Both movies deal specifically with the social problem that haunts every society: Racism. If you don’t think racism is still an issue where you live, you are fooling yourself. It is everywhere, especially here. I can’t even say “Israel” without getting people upset. Around Arabs you only call that place across the Jordan river “Palestine.”
We are all naturally prejudice against anything and anyone that is different from us. We are innately hateful and prideful. It is just an effect of the fall. Moreover, it is evidence that we cannot and will not be good or do good on our own. Everyone needs the reconciling message of the Gospel, or else chaos ensues.
For whatever reason, I am drawn to victims of racism and prejudice. Maybe this is because they are such stark reminders of the sin in this world and the damage evil can do. A vast majority of the refugees I have worked with are the result of genocide, an obvious example of racism at work. It is easy to be angry at the evil doers and makers of war; however, “the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God” (James 1:20). I hope for world peace just as much as anyone else, but more so I pray for the peace that comes to people only through Jesus. An author I was recently introduced to talks about how we, as Christians, are to treat socially oppressed people such as these, as well as their oppressors:

I am going to Iraq because I believe in a God of scandalous grace. If I believed terrorists were beyond redemption, I would need to rip out half of my New Testament Scriptures, for they were written by a converted terrorist. I have pledged Allegiance to a King that loved evildoers so much He died for them [and of course the people of Iraq are no more evil or more holy than the people of the US], teaching us that there is something worth dying for but nothing worth killing for… We are all wretched, and we are all beautiful. No one is beyond redemption. May we see in the hands of the oppressors our own hands, and in the faces of the oppressed our own faces. We are made of the same dust, and we cry the same salty tears. -Shane Claiborne (Quote borrowed off of Jim’s blog)

I think that if we come to this point of understanding, we can in turn find “true and undefiled religion…to visit orphans and widows in their distress” (James 1:27), no matter what their background or differences from ourselves. I encourage you to find the prejudices in your own heart that might be hindering you from “walking in love” (Ephesians 5:2). If this doesn’t convince you, the last scene in The Kingdom definitely will.

“As it is written, ‘There is none righteous, not even one…There is none who does good, there is not even one'” (Romans 3:10,12).