What About Fido and Bambi?

As we have seen in previous posts, biblical shalom involves wholeness, delight, and a sense of meaning and purpose for all of God’s creation. Shalom is the way things are supposed to be.

Another way of thinking about shalom is to see it as a beautiful four-faceted diamond – peace with nature, peace in society, peace with ourselves, and peace with God. Let’s take a second look at peace with nature.

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Chapters 3-6 of Genesis record the destructive impact of evil on the world because of the sin of Adam and Eve. The first recorded murder in the Bible occurs because of envy between brothers in Adam and Eve’s family. It was not long before “the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and full of violence” (6:11). Yet, despite God’s anger, his righteous judgment included arrangements with Noah for preserving all forms of animal life.

The special concern of God for “all living creatures” offers us a remarkable insight into God’s heart. The Lord instructed Noah to bring into the ark a male and female “of every kind of bird, of very kind of animal, and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground.” God brought these creatures to Noah for their protection. Noah was told to store food not only for his family, but for the animals as well. When the flood waters receded, God repeated the original mandate given in the Garden of Eden that the animals should be fruitful and multiply on the earth.

The Bible provides us with a beautiful testimony of God’s special love for his creation – for birds, for fish, for land animals. The Lord of creation, the one who designed a world of nature that experienced shalom in the Garden of Eden, continues to care even about the sparrows (Matthew 10:29). Jesus often referred to animals in his teaching and portrayed himself as a shepherd who cares for his flock, especially the lost sheep.

A second biblical story confirms God’s special care for animals. In the book of Jonah, God and the prophet Jonah have an intense exchange about God’s loving concern for Nineveh, a major city of Israel’s enemy. In the last verse in this short book of the Bible, God’s deep love and compassion is recorded for the people of this city – the compassion of a father for his lost son. But then it notes that God cared about “many cattle as well.” The Lord of history, the Creator God, had compassion on the great city of Nineveh because of its people and its animals.

As with Noah and the ark, this story of Jonah and Nineveh shows us the heart of God. He created a world rich in fish, birds and animals, a world of shalom in nature, a world where animals flourished and men and women were instructed to care for them as stewards and trustees of God.

So What?

• Until I began this biblical study of shalom, I never thought about God’s special care for animals. It added a whole new dimension to my understanding of God as a Creator and Sustainer of life, not just human life, but even the lives of animals.
• Another thing I never thought about before comes to mind: Is this why people are so drawn to pets? All of my children have a cat or dog and this is not something that was a part of my upbringing. What is so endearing about a person’s relationship to Fido, their dog? Is God’s design a part of this? I am really on shaky ground here, but just wondering about this human-animal connection?
• This discovery in the Bible broadens my pro-life agenda. How about yours? The exception in my thinking on this topic would be deer, Bambis – the ones who destroy the vegetation in my backyards. Just kidding!

What An Incredible Creation!

As we have seen in previous posts, Biblical shalom involves wholeness, delight, and a sense of meaning and purpose for all of God’s creation. Shalom is the way things are supposed to be.

Another way of thinking about shalom is to see it as a four-faceted phenomena – peace with nature, peace in society, peace with ourselves, and peace with God. From a Biblical perspective, these four dimensions of peace are intimately related. There is no hierarchy among these aspects of shalom, with one dimension more important than another. There is no prioritizing between them. Together they form a beautiful whole.

This post is the beginning of a new series on these four dimensions of shalom. Let’s start with peace with nature.

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The creation account portrays a beautiful picture of the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve live in harmony with their natural surroundings and with the animals God created. Take time to read about it in Genesis 1-2.

"The Garden of Eden"
Jan Brueghel the Elder, 1615.

According to this narrative, on the fifth day God created “every living and moving thing with which the water teems” and “every winged bird” in a splendid display of originality and diversity. God created the birds of the air and the creatures of the sea and “saw that it was good.” Then God blessed the animals he had created and offered a benediction in which he commanded them to multiply and fill the air and the sea.

On the following day, Genesis records God’s creation of land animals, including livestock, insects and “wild animals” and again it is noted that “God saw that it was good.” The beauty and harmony of nature was clearly evident in God’s unfolding work during the first five days of creation.

On the sixth day, God “created man in his own image . . . male and female he created them.” Genesis 1:28 describes God’s special blessing on his human creations and summarizes their responsibility: “fill the earth and subdue it.” This instruction from God has been called the “cultural mandate.” It is interesting that God first gives humanity instructions about work before he gives instructions about worship. He gave a hoe before he gave a candle!

Genesis 2:15 tells us that God places Adam in the Garden of Eden “to work it and take care of it.” God then instructed Adam to name all of the animals in the Garden. This act of naming the animals establishes Adam’s dominion and ownership over the animals, in the same way that God’s naming of “night” and “day” on the first day of creation (1:5) established his ownership over the universe. Dominion and ownership do not mean the right to exploit or to abuse animals, but to care for them as a trustee of God. Peace within the created order was God’s original intention and is an essential part of Biblical shalom.

So What?

• When I was young, I never heard any sermons about peace with nature. I heard pastors talk about peace with God and peace with ourselves, but this was one of the missing dimensions of shalom. For followers of Jesus, living at peace with our natural surroundings is part of our calling. We are trustees of God and we need to care for his creation. Our challenge is to work hard to be good trustees and not polluters. Recycling is just one small way we can reduce waste. Can you think of others?
• When we think about the beauty and diversity of our world, the richness of its animal life, and the splendor of its mountains and valleys, this reflection should make us more sensitive to our role as good stewards of “our Father’s world.”

Christmas Hope

"Adoration of the Shepherds
G. vanHonthorst, 1622

Professor Lewis Smedes said “Keep hope alive and hope will keep you alive.” Those powerful words have stuck with me over the years. For most of us, it is natural to hope for our own well-being, to hope for a good future. It’s a way of affirming the life God gave us and generating excitement about future possibilities.

It’s natural and healthy to hope for ourselves, but it is narrow-minded and self-destructive to hope only for ourselves. Biblical hope, the hope that accompanies the celebration of Advent and the birth of the Prince of Peace, “has a wide-angle lens.” That’s how Neal Plantinga describes it and I have learned much from his insights.

Biblical hope takes in whole nations and peoples. It brings into focus the entire created order. In Plantinga’s words, “this webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight is what the Hebrew prophets called shalom. We call it ‘peace,’ but it means far more than just peace of mind or cease-fire between enemies . . . In the Bible, shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight – a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, all under the arch of God’s love. Shalom, in other words, is the way things are supposed to be.”

For years, my colleagues and I on the staff of the American Studies Program (a public policy work-study program in Washington, D.C.) taught our students that injustice and oppression in our world need to be addressed by Christians who respond by saying “It doesn’t have to be like this!” We encouraged our students not to become cynical or hard-hearted, but to become agents of hope.

In the middle of the world’s brokenness and pain, we need to center our hope on Jesus Christ, the Lord of the cosmos. There are no other gods, no other foundations, upon which to base our hope. That’s the great joy of Christmas. God intervened in history and gave us his son -- and this son is the promised Prince of Peace.

Jesus taught us how to be people of hope, how to creatively live according to his commandments, and how we will one day see him return in glory. Our biblical hope looks forward to a whole “new heaven and new earth” in which pain, mourning and death will no longer be present. This is the “big picture” seen through Advent’s wide-angled lens. Let’s celebrate!

So What?

• Cornelius Plantinga Jr.’s book, Engaging God’s World, is a treasure and I would encourage you to get a copy. I read and re-read it regularly, especially when I feel overwhelmed by the challenges I face both in Russia and here in the States.
• Have a blessed Advent season and work on expanding your sense of hope so that it becomes a “wide-angle lens.”

Seek the Peace of the City

Building a Community Garden

There are times when I feel like I am in exile in a foreign land, both when I am in the States and in Russia. Trying to follow Jesus in a post-modernist world, where religion is privatized and marginalized – and often treated as irrelevant to life by the opinion makers – can be a struggle. In times like this, I can identify with the Jews who were literally in exile and to whom the prophet Jeremiah shared powerful insights about how to live in these conditions.

Let me briefly set the context for the exile of the Jews. Jeremiah lived during the tumultuous days when the Kingdom of Judah was a pawn battered about by the “superpowers” of his day. The land of Palestine was a battleground for the ravaging armies of Egypt, Assyria and Babylon and the Jews were caught in the middle of the violence. As if this weren’t bad enough, Jeremiah told the people of Judah that God’s judgment was coming for their disobedience and that their sins of idolatry and injustice would result in the collapse of their small, beleaguered kingdom.

After they had been carried off into exile by the Babylonians, Jeremiah sent them a letter with a surprising message: build houses, plant gardens, marry, have children and “seek the peace and prosperity of the city” (Jeremiah 29:7) in which they had been relocated. Jeremiah gave them a message from God to seek shalom within the borders of the empire that had just conquered their land and deported them.

Sometimes followers of Jesus are caught in political situations beyond their control. They are forced to flee their mother country, are trapped in nations with repressive political regimes of the Right or the Left, or are politically powerless because of economic deprivation or other reasons. Or, like disciples in secular societies in Western Europe and America, are treated as narrow-minded sectarians because they believe the Bible to be God’s Word.

Building Homes
(c/o Habitat for Humanity)

The Biblical message for practicing peacemaking has relevance in all of these contexts: seek the peace of the city where God has put you. Even if you are not able to have an impact on the national or international level, everyone can be peacemakers in their city, neighborhood, and family.

Like the exiled Jews, followers of Jesus can be people of hope because they know God’s promise: “For I know the plans I have for you . . . plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11, NIV). The practice of peacemaking for ordinary Christians begins right where we are.

So What?

• Can you identify with this sense of being an exile? Often, when attending foreign policy conferences where religion is ignored or quickly dismissed by secular-minded analysts, I get this feeling of being an exile. Does this happen to you in your work place or school setting?
• Can you think of some practical steps you can take to “seek the peace of the city” where you live?

Peace and Justice

Pastor Tim Keller’s book, Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just, gave me some fresh insights on the topics highlighted in the title of this post. In fact, this topic of the relationship between justice and peace will be a subject frequently discussed in this blog. Keller brought in a third dimension and I want to share his insights with you.

Keller’s discussion is set in the context of the creation story and how radically different the Jewish Scriptures are from every other ancient account of the beginning of the world. Except for the Bible, most ancient cultures depict creation as the result of a battle or a struggle between warring cosmic forces. But the people of Israel, unlike any of their neighbors, did not believe any other divine power was on par with God. They believed that creation was the work of God without a rival, and that God created the world like an artist paints a picture or shapes a sculpture. God is a craftsman, an artist.

The Old Testament uses two kinds of imagery to describe the creation of the world. One image is architectural – God built the world like a person constructs a home or a royal dwelling. But the Bible also describes the creation of the world as the weaving of a garment. The fabric metaphor conveys the importance of relationships. If you throw lots of pieces of thread onto a table, no fabric results. The threads must be carefully woven together, one thread over and around many others.

This, in Keller’s judgment, is what God did at creation. He created “all things to be in a beautiful, harmonious, interdependent, knitted, webbed relationship to one another. . . . This interwovenness is what the Bible calls shalom, or harmonious peace” (p. 173). Keller is in agreement with the argument I made when I began this blog -- the English word “peace” simply does not adequately convey the true biblical meaning of this word shalom. Keller defines shalom as “complete reconciliation, a state of fullest flourishing in every dimension – physical, emotional, social and spiritual – because all relationships are right, perfect, and filled with joy” (p. 174). I think this is a great definition!

When sin entered the world, it defaced and marred everything that God had made and ripped apart the harmonious relationship between God and human beings. The whole world stopped “working right.” Because our relationship with God has broken down, shalom is gone.

Keller argues that if we desire to “do justice” as God commands us, we need to live in a way that generates a strong community where human beings can flourish. To “do justice” means to go places where the fabric of shalom has broken down, where the weaker members of society are falling through the fabric, and to repair it. Keller stresses that “the only way to reweave and strengthen the fabric is by weaving yourself into it” (p. 177).

This is a powerful metaphor and it accurately describes how Jesus lived his life. He spent his time and energy repairing the broken and torn “fabric” of first-century Palestine. If we choose to follow Jesus, we need to learn how to repair torn fabric and re-weave the broken strands in our society.

So What?

• To be a peacemaker, we need a vision of God’s shalom and an ability to articulate what it is that we are working for in the context where God had placed us. Making “right relationships” so everyone can flourish is a big vision -- but we can participate in this venture.
• Buy Keller’s Generous Justice – it has helpful insights and you will be blessed by this short book! Keller’s strength is highlighting biblical truths and then giving them practical application. Let me know if this book was helpful to you.

The Apostle Paul’s Practical Advice

Saint Paul Writing His Epistles,
V. de Boulogne c. 1594-1632

As we have noted in recent posts, the Apostle Paul emphasizes the importance of the gospel as a message of reconciliation. He highlights the fact that God has given us the task of being his agents of reconciliation in the world and that’s part of our witness as followers of Jesus.

But then Paul offers some very practical advice on what this means in terms of our daily lives:

• “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:3-4, NIV).
• “Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification” (Romans 14: 19, NIV).
• “Live in peace with each other. . . . Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always try to be kind to each other and to everyone else. Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances. . . . Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil” (I Thessalonians 5: 13-22, NIV).

Practical advice like this is hard to follow in our rough-and-tumble world. But Paul gives us an assurance that if we are ”in Christ,” we are a “new creation.” He goes on to write that God has committed to us the message of reconciliation and “we are therefore Christ’s ambassadors” (II Corinthians 5: 17-20, NIV).

So God is telling those whose sins have been “blotted out” (forgiven) by Jesus’ death that now they have the privilege of carrying that message to the rest of the world as royal appointees of the King!

So What?

• An ambassadorial appointment – not bad for people like us! I remind myself periodically when I am meeting with government or business leaders in Russia that I am there on an “ambassadorial appointment” and therefore have no reason to be fearful. This gives me strength and courage, in times when I could be intimidated.
• What a radical concept in our culture – make the interests of others, not just of yourself and your family, a priority! “Consider others better than yourselves” – what a testimony this would be in our world if we practiced this teaching!

Jesus Holds All Things Together

The Apostle Paul,
Rembrandt c. 1633

The Apostle Paul was a Jew, trained in the finest religious instruction available at that time. Fervent in his faith and committed to eliminating false religious beliefs, he was a zealous persecutor of Christians before his conversion on the road to Damascus. How did he understand Jesus’ teachings and deeds related to peacemaking? Recently we discussed other disciples and their views on this topic, but how about the Apostle Paul?

When Paul was in prison in Rome, he wrote a letter to the church at Colosse that was arguing over different views of who Jesus was. Paul’s epistle to the Colossians is a marvelous statement of the role of Christ and, in fact, biblical scholars believe that six verses (Colossians 1:15-20) of this letter may have been an early Christian hymn, used to teach important doctrines.

Take the time to read these powerful verses. The text begins by establishing Christ’s reign over all of creation, both in the spiritual world and the physical world. Paul emphasizes this point by deliberately referring to things in heaven and on earth; to make sure the point is not missed, he then refers to the visible and the invisible.

Paul describes Jesus’ central role in the process of redemption and summarizes Christ’s ministry as one of reconciliation. God the Father chose to reconcile all things in creation to himself by “making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” For the Apostle, the gospel message was summarized in the concept of reconciliation and peacemaking. It was not reconciliation merely on the spiritual level, but – as these verses make clear – a reconciliation that included all the dimensions of shalom described in the Old Testament and reinstated in Jesus’ “manifesto.” For indeed, “in him all things hold together.”

So What?

• I find great comfort in the fact that in Jesus all of creation holds together. When things seem so out of control in our world or in our personal lives, it is reassuring for me that the Bible teaches I can trust God because “he’s got the whole world in his hands.”
• The Apostle Paul also teaches me that reconciliation and peacemaking is not just an abstract theological concept, but is practical – it relates to “things on earth.” God is in the reconciliation business, making people whole, making communities whole, and that’s part of our calling as well.
• To be Christ-like, then, means to work for peace and reconciliation. This is what it means to “follow Jesus.”