Now and then when I’m unable to write a new post for one reason or another, I’ll recycle something from our archives, generally without comment. But I couldn’t help but notice that this end-of-2014 post about the suddenness with which change comes to our world was definitely NOT inadvertently prophetic. Not one bit. Really.
Last week, Matt Drudge linked to an article in The Guardian that informs us “we are
safer, richer and healthier than at any time on record”. In “Goodbye to one of the best years in history”, Fraser Nelson wraps up 2014 by reminding his readers that while it may have escaped
our notice:
- our lives now are more peaceful than at any time known to the human species;
- global capitalism has transferred wealth faster than foreign aid ever could;
- global life expectancy now stands at a new high of 71.5 years;
- traffic deaths are down by two-thirds since 1990; and
- there has never been a better reason for people the world over to wish each other a happy and prosperous new year.
While Mr. Nelson may have overlooked one or two little
atrocities here and there in his glowing report on the human condition, he makes
an effort to substantiate his claim that relatively at least we are doing
pretty well as a species.
Terrific for us, until things change. And change is coming.
Prosperity and Idolatry
Isaiah has one or two things to say on the subject of idolatry.
In fact, when reading the middle chapters of the book that bears his name it is
almost impossible not to notice the number of times God makes what appear to be rather obvious declarations. Declarations like “I am God, and there is no
other” are repeated so often that you cannot help but think that God took
for granted that his audience really didn’t know it.
Because it seems … they didn’t.
It doesn’t take a very attentive reader of Isaiah (or, in
fact, any book of the Old Testament) to observe that despite its nominal monotheism,
Israel remained in perpetual danger of turning away from Jehovah to the would-be
deities of its neighbors, especially when things were good; like, for
instance, in the days of Solomon.
Idols and … Idols
Nowadays, of course, almost nobody in our western countries that
are “safer, richer and healthier than at any time on record” carves or casts images
and makes a habit of groveling in front of them. We’re far too clever and sophisticated
for such silliness.
Instead we make gods of the Nanny State, insurance policies, credit cards, the stock market, the pension plan, the 401(k), love, sex, fame,
respect, the family, the “good life”, homes, careers, sports teams, the cult of
entertainment and all manner of other things. It is from these sorts of idols that
many of us derive whatever security, satisfaction, motivation and self-image we
are able to find in this world.
And just like Israel during its very checkered history as “the
people of God”, believers live in constant peril of finding ourselves looking
to such things to give our lives their real meaning while deprioritizing our
relationship with Christ, who is the only genuine source of it.
So, yeah, Isaiah remains much more relevant that he might initially appear.
When Everything Crashes and Burns
That said, one wonders how idols deliver on their promises
when social conditions, the economy and the state of the world are not quite as
rosy as the The Guardian currently paints them.
I’m not sure how I missed this short passage in chapter 46 my first dozen or so times through the Old Testament. I’m sure I’ve read it over and over again. Sometimes, though, when you read aloud, certain things jump out at you.
Isaiah, speaking for God, is talking about the extremely limited utility of
false gods in times of crisis:
“Bel bows down; Nebo stoops; their idols are on beasts and livestock; these things you carry are borne as burdens on weary beasts. They stoop; they bow down together; they cannot save the burden, but themselves go into captivity.”
Isaiah makes the very valid case that when you are being carried
off into captivity in a foreign land, as was in the process of happening to
Israel and the nations around them during the prophet’s own lifetime, all the
stuff that gave your life security and meaning up until that moment of crisis doesn’t really add up to a whole lot.
Whatever is not completely obliterated is bundled up on the back of a donkey staggering off to
Babylon. Your false gods are about as useful as the rags on your back. You get
to walk; they get to ride. Perhaps they’ll come in useful to somebody somewhere,
but it sure won’t be you.
Mr. Nelson’s Curious Caution
In good times a retirement plan, a 401(k) or an RSP may actually
appear to be a form of security, and a fat bank account, real estate or a series
of well diversified investments may be counted upon to provide the results they
promise.
And hey, as Mr. Nelson says, we live in REALLY good times — the best of times, if he’s correct. But his piece, curiously and perhaps prophetically,
ends on this cautionary note:
“Just over a century ago, a period of similarly rapid progress was coming to an abrupt end. The Belle Époque was a generation of scientific, medical and artistic advances, which, then, felt unstoppable. John Buchan summed up this mood in his 1913 novel The Power House. ‘You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilisation from barbarism,’ one of his characters says. ‘I tell you: the division is a thread, a sheet of glass. A touch here, a push there, and you bring back the reign of Saturn.’ So it was to prove.”
A thread. A sheet of glass. Ouch.
How Thin a Sheet Would That Be?
About as thin as a lone EMP or another provocation on the
scale of 9/11. About as unimaginable as a single nuclear error. About as implausible
as a solitary act of terror that turns into a cascade. Somebody hacks the NYSE,
or we get a run on the banks. And everything changes overnight.
In terms of world history, the forms of security with which we have become all too
comfortable in western society are aberrations, not constants.
But in contrast to idols and the false security they provide
stands the true God; the God of Israel and the same God we worship today if we
have truly come to know and understand his son Jesus Christ, and he has this to
say about the security that comes from being called by his name:
“ ‘Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been borne by me from before your birth, carried from the womb; even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save.’ ”
I am no prophet but I cannot believe that I will go to my
grave with the world in its current rosy condition, and if I do, many of my
contemporaries surely will not. Whatever it is that we rely on for our security
or satisfaction, if we harbor idols in our lives, they will wind up packed on
the back of donkeys on their way to Babylon, metaphorically at least.
Or probably somewhere worse than Babylon. One day there will
be no RSPs, no NFL and not a whole lot that we currently know and are familiar
with. Those optimistic Christians who want to erect bigger and better
buildings to attract the neighborhood? I have a feeling they do not have their
fingers on the pulse of world affairs, or that if they do, it’s simply incomprehensible
to them just how thin a sheet of glass separates us from social conditions that
are quite unrecognizable and terrifying.
But we do not put our faith in such things. And if the Lord
could tell wavering, idol-loving Israel that he had carried them from before
they were born and would carry them until their old age, then most surely he
can be depended upon to carry those who love his Son through whatever looms
ahead of us: “I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save.”
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