Robert
Lyon is a retired clergyman who divides his time between
Guelph, Ontario and Melaque, Mexico. He taught high school
English, Latin, Greek and science, and served as an officer
in the Canadian Armed Forces Reserve, retiring in the rank
of Lieutenant-Colonel. His latest book, Don’t
Throw Out Your Bible, from which the essay below is
excerpted, should be availalbe by the end of the year (2023).
His monograph, A Christmas You Can Believe In,
can be requested as a PDF file from graphikos@gto.net.
When
Dr A. W. Tozer was pastor of Avenue Road Christian and Missionary
Alliance Church in Toronto, I cornered the good Doctor after
one Sunday evening service and asked him how something he
had said in his sermon fit with the idea of God's special
providence. Standing tall over me and pointing his finger
at my chest for emphasis, Dr Tozer replied, “Providence,
young man, is God playing his checkers.”
As
we play God’s game of checkers (we do so whether we
like it or not, and whether we know it or not) we need to
remember that God is not our opponent but the game-master.
Our opponents include ‘time and chance,’ careless
and malicious people, aspects of our own character and whatever
dark forces lurk behind things. Those are our opponents, not
God. Not the game-master. He is on our side and wants us to
emerge as victors.
However
(if I may shift the metaphor) we also need to remember that
it is the war that we will win, not all its individual battles.
We note, for example, that Paul healed the father of a man
named Publius, who had a recurring fever and dysentery (Acts
28:8). But when Paul himself prayed for relief from some unspecified
“thorn in the flesh” – an ailment, perhaps,
or maybe a troublesome person – the Lord denied his
request and told him, “My grace is enough for you: for
where there is weakness, my power is shown the more completely”
(2 Corinthians 12:9 JBP).
This
is the Paul who assured us that “in everything God works
for good with those who love him” (Romans 8:28). But
that same Paul was beaten, jailed, shipwrecked, and eventually
died a martyr’s death during Nero’s persecutions.
Jesus’ resurrection gave Paul confidence in the final
victory, but even for Jesus – especially for Jesus –
the way to that victory passed through suffering and death.
So we should hardly be surprised when we find that life is
a challenge.
Our
successes and failures in this game of life normally depend
on decisions we make within the scope of our abilities, attitudes,
efforts and opportunities, including time, chance, and God’s
providential ordering of the universe. If we use the things
of this world as God designed them – in accord with
his natural law and his moral law – we have a reasonable
expectation of success. If we use them any other way, we should
not be surprised when they come back to bite us. As a friend
of mine used to warn her children: “Beware of punishment
by consequences.” Such a view affirms that God made
an orderly world in which, in the exercise of our freedom,
we can choose lives that reflect the divine image, to our
good and his glory. Or not.
But
in the midst of this world of cause and effect, God does intervene
in providential ways – prodding our judgment or our
conscience, stage-managing events, sometimes even surprising
us with blessings. When he does so and we find ourselves unexpectedly
blessed, we need to remember that God plays his checkers to
advance his Endgame, not any of the games that we may think
he ought to be playing. And he does so without breaking his
natural laws or his moral laws. But we will recognize his
intervention only if we believe that God acts according to
the ‘both-and’ principle: divine action working
through natural events.
For
example, during the writing of this book I was speaking with
a friend who was about to incur some medical expenses that
he could not afford and that his health insurance did not
cover. I was considering whether I had the resources to help
him. No more than half an hour after our conversation the
letter carrier arrived and put in my mailbox a refund cheque
for nearly twice the sum that my friend needed. You can call
that coincidence dumb luck, or you can believe that, once
again, God’s timing was spot on.
My
friend needed not just the money but also encouragement for
his faith in the face of some challenging medical decisions.
God gave him both, and he died in faith a few months later.
A coincidence? Certainly. But as Archbishop William Temple
is reported to have said, “When I pray, coincidences
happen, and when I don't, they don't.”
We
must be careful not to trivialize this idea of providence.
In The Comfortable Pew, commissioned as a 1965 Lenten study
by the Anglican Church of Canada, Pierre Burton recalls that
his doubts about God began in his childhood when his Christmastide
prayers for a bicycle did not materialize. He seems not to
have recognized, even when recalling the incident as an adult,
that our motives in prayer have to be aligned with God’s
Endgame.
You
do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive,
because you ask with wrong motives, in order that you may
spend it on your pleasures. James 4:2,3
THE
BACK-STORY
Freedom
is a necessary condition for any meaningful relationship.
We were created for freedom, and we relish it. It is an aspect
of the image of God, and that freedom enables us to choose
lives that reflect his image. Or not. But we all without exception
too often choose the ‘not.’ The question that
we have not yet addressed is: Why do we so often choose the
‘not?’ Why is sin universal? What is the reality
behind the saying that “In Adam’s fall / we sinned
all”?
We
have already noted that the tree and the serpent in the Garden
of Eden were derived from Mesopotamian myth, where a Tree
of Truth and a Tree of Life were said to guard the eastern
gate of the heavens. Serpents were associated with various
gods, some of whom were more likeable than others; serpents
were also associated with divination, and with the copper
industry. The snake-god Ningishzida (lord of the good tree)
was lord of the underworld, while the snake in the Gilgamesh
story, though it eats the flower of eternal life, is not evil
but a chance force of nature. We also noted that the names
“Adam (earth-man) and Eve (life) are symbolic. So we
are not going to read the story of the Fall as history or
journalism. Nevertheless, it is a true story. But what is
the truth that it tells?
Remember
that the Old Testament, though it contains material handed
down from the time of the patriarchs, the exodus, and the
judges, was likely not compiled in its present form until
some centuries later. So the writers of the Pentateuch were
not dealing with something new to them when they recorded
the Ten Commandments and the sacrifices that were prescribed
for the Tabernacle and the Temple. Those things had been part
of the writers’ daily religious experience. When they
told the story of the Fall and its consequences, they were
intentionally writing the ‘back-story’ to their
current religious views and practices. The fact that they
felt moved to write this back-story suggests that those views
and practices needed some reinforcing among their audience,
as would have been the case whether that back-story originated
during Hezekiah’s reforms (around 700 BC), or during
Josiah’s reforms (around 625 BC), or during the Exile
in Babylon (597-538 BC).
In
writing that back story, they repurposed familiar myths in
a way that parallels the story of the exodus and turns it
into the universal story of mankind. Their back-story goes
something like this: Humans were made of the dust of the ground,
just like other living things, except that our powers of reasoning,
valuing, feeling, and purposing more closely resemble those
of our Creator. But our biological instincts are those of
animals, who see the world as it affects their own interests.
Therefore, we actually need to learn – indeed, need
to be taught – how to use our freedom properly.
To
start the learning process, God gave us law: not the 613 laws
that the rabbis found in the Torah, nor even the Ten that
he gave to Moses, but originally (maybe to get us used to
the idea) just one law : “Don’t eat from that
tree.” In a typically Jewish way, it’s a food
law: the forbidden fruit was not kosher. But the original
pair let themselves be distracted from keeping even that one
law. Like the rest of us. For the tree is symbolic: ‘the
knowledge of good and evil’ refers to our desire to
experience both good and evil as we wish, and to make up our
own minds about which we prefer. That’s a sure route
to chaos: it’s a dangerous way to build a country, run
a business, or raise a family. So God gives us laws: not arbitrary
laws, but laws that function like a user’s manual. Many
of those laws can easily be inferred from a common-sense observation
of nature. And God assures us that if we break them often
enough, the system (of whatever sort) will become dysfunctional,
and fail of its divine purpose.
In
the creation story, the system breaks down as early as the
next generation. And in that worst-case scenario the one who
dies is the innocent party. Abel is killed by his jealous
brother because Abel has fulfilled the requirement to offer
a blood sacrifice, whereas Cain, despite knowing the requirement
(which had long been common knowledge among the writer’s
audience), figures that a grain offering ought to suffice.
Not surprisingly, the failure occurs right at the place where
human values originate: it was a violation of a divine precept.
But why, we must ask, was there any need for animal sacrifice?
The
first and obvious answer is that the Hebrews inherited the
practice of animal sacrifice from their Mesopotamian forebears.
Mesopotamian myths depict humans preparing food and drink
for the gods. The goddess Nintu, you will recall, liked her
beer, and when Utnapishtim offered sacrifice after the Flood,
“The gods smelled the sweet odor of the sacrificial
animal and gathered like flies over the sacrifice.”
That sort of anthropomorphism has no place in Judaism, but
as you can see from the parallel statement at Genesis 8:21,
it did not preclude repurposing an old practice to serve new
ends. God starts with where we’re at and eases us along
to where he wants us to be.
Whatever meaning animal sacrifice may have had in other Mesopotamian
cultures, it was well suited to depicting the Jewish understanding
of the exceeding sinfulness of sin and the exceeding grace
of a holy God. The penitent worshipper, reflecting on the
sacrificed animal, acknowledges with gratitude: “That
should have been me.”
