Don't Quit Too Early

There is a classic and well-known story of R.U. Darby and his uncle during the Colorado gold rush era (late 1800s/early 1900s). Here’s the factual account as recounted by Darby himself.

Darby’s uncle caught “gold fever” and staked a claim in Colorado. He and the young R.U. Darby began digging with pick and shovel. They struck a vein of gold ore, which was promising enough that they covered the mine, returned east to raise capital, bought machinery, and resumed operations. The first loads of ore sent to the smelter confirmed it was rich—experts said it looked like one of the richest veins in the region. They recouped their investment quickly.

Then the vein suddenly disappeared. They drilled desperately in every direction but couldn’t find it again. After months of frustration and mounting costs (with no more gold showing up), they decided it wasn’t worth continuing. They quit, sold the mine and all the equipment to a local junk man for a few hundred dollars, and went home.

The junk man wasn’t an expert miner, but he had a hunch they had stopped too soon. He hired a mining engineer to survey the site. The engineer’s advice was simple: dig in a different spot, just three feet from where the Darbys had quit. They did—and struck one of the richest gold veins ever found in that part of Colorado. The new owner went on to make a fortune from the very same claim.

That is a moving story, and it has loads of places that it applies. But I think it applies in theology and in Bible study as well, and that's what's capturing my attention today. 

I was discussing some basic Christian doctrines with Father recently, and I felt like he smiled and nodded to me and said, "Yes, but you may have quit digging in this one too soon." 

He and I have had this conversation before, but this time was a little different. It's not uncommon that he & I discover (well, I discover, while I'm with him) new treasures about his character and his ways, particularly when I'm considering new things that I haven't considered before. 

But this time, I was considering well-established truths, doctrine of the Church (and if I'm honest, dogma for the Evangelical community). We were talking about hell. 

I've been taught about hell, though pretty often, it's been in the context of "Turn or burn." For years, I've been growing less comfortable with "Turn or burn!" applying to my Creator who gave up his place in Heaven to become a slimy, squalling human baby, then grew up to teach us about the nature and Kingdom of God, and then submit willingly (what?!?) to a brutal murder so that you and I could be set free from sin and death. "Turn or burn!" doesn't fit that kind of self-giving, self-sacrificing love. 

Recently I've been reading George MacDonald. You know, the guy that influenced CS Lewis to the point that he called him his "master" as he came to faith. That guy. 

"MacDonald preached the unthinkable: that God's love is for everyone, not just the "elect." Now that sure sounds a whole lot more like Jesus (and a whole lot less like Zeus) than the "Turn or burn!" that I was raised under. 

That sounds a whole lot more like Philippians 2: "Instead he [Jesus] emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity. And when he had come as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death — even to death on a cross."

So my left-brained, analytical, western mind shouted at me, "Well if this is true, then hell can't be true!" or at least the kind of sadistic "burning forever in a lake of fire" type hell that the evangelists shouted about at the end of his fire-and-brimstone message. 

I was in a quandry. The Bible talks about hell (though we conflate a number of diverse ideas in our translations). So I maybe shouldn't just disbelieve what the Bible (actually) says about it. 

But the idea that God loves everybody is in the Bible, too. 1 Timothy 4:10 talks about "We have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe." All is a pretty big word. Maybe I shouldn't just disbelieve what the Bible (actually) says about this, either. 

What a quandry. 

Into this context, he reminded me: "Which pedal do you push on a bicycle in order to go forward?" Well the answer to that one is that I push whichever one is up, one after the other. It's not either-or. It's both-and. 

I had to admit, I've been prone to "binary thinking," where if I accept one thing as true, then I feel obligated to reject any other idea on that subject. (Examples of binary thinking include, "I didn't get that promotion, so my work here is meaningless and I'll never succeed." or the hallmark example of our day, "Donald Trump is the worst president we've ever had!" vs "Donald Trump is the best president we've ever had. The reality is that there's good and bad in most people; deal with it.)

I've run into a number of people who have discovered that God really IS good, so they have concluded that hell must be a lie or a misunderstanding. And I know a number of good folks who understand that hell is real and it's horrible, some of whom have actually visited it, so the idea of God welcoming everyone is anathema to them. 

So today, I was thinking about these, and the conundrum it was for my literal, logical mind. And it was into the middle of that, that Father whispered, "Yes, but you may have quit digging in this one too soon."

I'm beginning to think that maybe he's not as fond of black-and-white answers as I have always been. 

Ezekiel’s prophecy to the shepherds of Israel spoke to me recently. (I’ll quote it at the end.)

The essence of the accusation is that the shepherds – the ones responsible for taking care of the people – were taking care of themselves at the expense of the people. They betrayed the people they were responsible to care for. 

You might be familiar with the concept of a leader “fleecing the sheep.” That’s a bad thing. God sounds pretty serious when he talks about it here. 

I’ve encountered “Christian ministries” whose “ministry” was mostly asking for donations. It’s pretty easy to see there’s a problem with that. I’ve thought, “I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes on Judgment Day,” and I stopped asking questions. 

But this morning, I felt the Good Shepherd drawing my attention in a couple of new directions that I hadn’t considered before. 

○ First, I realized that while *some* of these failing shepherds might know full well that what they’re doing is wrong, there are probably others who are doing the best they can, and still failing, still qualifying for inclusion in this judgment. So far, I see four categories. 

• We’ve already considered the shepherds who are fully aware that they’re betraying their people.

• I have known leaders that had good intentions, but no actual skill at leading anyone. Bible School or Seminary doesn’t teach you to be a competent leader of people. 

• I have known leaders that had good intentions, had great skill at leading, but they had missed the memo that they were called to build God’s Kingdom, instead of their own. It’s too easy to get a business card printed these days. 

• I have known leaders that had good intentions, great skill, and wanted to build God’s kingdom, but their moral compass had lost its bearings, and they fell into all sorts of temptations and corruption. So sad.

○ And, of course, there are a huge number of faithful shepherds, who put both the needs of the sheep and of the Good Shepherd ahead of their own, many times at great personal sacrifice. I’m really thankful for these men and women among us!  <3 

Outrage is a really popular, and really powerful thing these days, and frankly, it’s a worldly response to some of these failing shepherds. But for some of them, I wonder if pity might not be appropriate. 

And since neither outrage nor pity fixes anything, maybe we should pray for these poor failing individuals. And especially for the sheep that they oversee. The Good Shepherd, it seems, is more about redemption than about punishment.

But he wasn’t done stretching me. 

I’ve always thought about this passage in the context of church leaders; after all, we call them “shepherds” sometimes. 

But then I realized that he’s talking about people who have a responsibility to take care of other people, and that is not just about church leaders. (That unbiblical and artificial “sacred/secular division” busted my chops again!)

I realized that God is no less concerned about “secular” leaders who betray their people, too. 

• These days, it’s not too difficult to think of political leaders who betray the people who voted them into office. The number of leaders whose net worth increases by tens of millions of dollars while on a moderate salary is indicative. And embarrassing. And those whose income grows the fastest seem to not stand up very well for the issues of the people they represent. 

But then I realized that this betrayal might be a bigger issue than even self-enrichment. No wonder God is so frustrated about it. 

• I thought about business leaders who put their own profits, the profits of their businesses ahead of the people that they are “serving” in their business. Names came to mind: Disney, Pfizer, Merck, Amazon, Enron, Weinstein, Epstein. There are others. I suspect that there are business leaders in all the same categories of failure as church leaders. 

• Then it occurred to me that there has been a similar betrayal in our education system. Claudine Gay at Harvard made a lot of headlines in the past year or two, and higher education has, as a whole, been pretty active at intentionally disassembling the faith of their students. And there have been thousands of videos of teachers and school board meetings revealing an intentional effort to change the values, and occasionally the gender, of the students they “serve.” 

• We’ve discussed the betrayal of the mainstream media enough over the past several months; so many of them have transformed from “presenters of news” to propaganda tools of both government and big business. Both news media organizations and news personalities.

So what do we do with all these shepherds who have failed us, who are still failing us? 

Well, I begin by praying. If we fail in our prayers, nothing else matters. I’m still praying that the things that have been hidden in the darkness so long would be brought out into the light, and dealt with justly; I pray it for every aspect of our culture here: government, church leaders, business leaders, media, all of it. (I pray this for my own life as well, but that’s a different conversation.)

More and more, I’m finding my prayers including calling for repentance in the hearts of the leaders who have made a living betraying our trust, preying on those they are called to serve. God is no less interested in redemption in the 21st century than he was in the first century. 

-----

Here’s the passage from Ezekiel that started this: 

The word of the LORD came to me: "Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them: 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Woe to you shepherds of Israel who only take care of yourselves! 

Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. 

You have ruled them harshly and brutally. So they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and when they were scattered they became food for all the wild animals. My sheep wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. They were scattered over the whole earth, and no one searched or looked for them. 

"'Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD: As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, because my flock lacks a shepherd and so has been plundered and has become food for all the wild animals, and because my shepherds did not search for my flock but cared for themselves rather than for my flock, therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD: This is what the Sovereign LORD says: 

I am against the shepherds and will hold them accountable for my flock. I will remove them from tending the flock so that the shepherds can no longer feed themselves. I will rescue my flock from their mouths, and it will no longer be food for them. 

[Ezekiel 34:1-10] 

Does God owe us anything?

This question comes from my walk with Papa yesterday. I was thanking him for all that he is, all that he does for me, and I found myself saying that I owe him everything. The logical follow-up to that is to acknowledge that he doesn't owe me anything, and I started to say that, but I felt a check in my spirit. 

So we talked about it. He reminded me that he required people who make a promise to him to fulfil that promise [Numbers 30:2, Deuteronomy 23:21-23, Ecclesiastes 5:4&5 for starters]; if he expects that of us, then he will expect that of himself as well.

So yeah, if he has promised something, he does owe me the thing he has promised. 

• It's complicated by the reality that there are things that I think he has promised which he has not actually promised. That's my error.

• It's complicated by the fact that some promises in Scripture have conditions on them: If you do this, then God will do that. Ignorance of the conditions does not invalidate them.

• It's complicated by the reality that not every warm and fuzzy statement in the Bible is a promise to me personally, or to the people I hang out with. It's beyond the scope of this article to identify which are for me and which are for someone else. 

• It's complicated by the fact that he doesn't generally promise to live up to the timetable of my expectations. He very well could be still working on it. 

• It's complicated by the reality that sometimes we think that we're owed something because of what I've done (or tried to do), or because I think of myself as something special. That is not part of his promises, and he specifically rules it out [Titus 3:5].

• It's complicated by the reality that there are promises that he has already fulfilled that I haven't seen/experienced yet. I don't know if that's my mistake, or if that's just the way life is (or if he's just being sneaky, like my bride does with birthday presents).

So yeah, God owe us anything? Yeah, he does. But only what he's promised. He doesn't owe us anything based on who we are or what we've done for him.

It strikes me that it might be worth my time to learn what promises God has actually made, and listening to warm fuzzy things that other people say about God is not a substitute. 

At least that's how I see it. How do you see it?