As for me and my newsletter...
As for me and my newsletter...
If we want to serve the Lord, we have to know the goodness of God. PLUS: A Door Knockers, Karl Barth, and Justin Martyr
When my family moved into a new house during my first-grade year, the realtor gifted us a brass door knocker inscribed with a Bible verse. She knew we were Christians; she was a Christian.
So, for my entire tenure in that home—until it was sold while I was in college—entry through the main door meant being reminded of Joshua 24:15.
This verse comes from the lips of Joshua as he nears his death. Israel is in a period of rest as they finally begin to settle in the Promised Land. Everything is on the up and up.
Joshua gathers all the tribes of Israel together for a big farewell speech. He begins with a history lesson, repeating God’s words, reminding them that Israel did very little of the work—God did the lion’s share of the effort to help them settle in this land.
Joshua then urges his people to remain faithful. He tells them to throw away all the gods worshipped by their ancestors. Joshua then speaks the words later enshrined on my childhood home:
“But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”
—Joshua 24:15
The idea behind the door knocker was to dedicate our house as a place exclusively for serving the Lord.
That home saw many spiritual conversations, small group Bible studies, lively holiday meals, vigorous theological debates, and self-sacrificial love over the years. While it wasn’t perfect, I like to think we took the side of Joshua.
As for our household, we served the Lord.
When Joshua presented this choice, the people responded with a resounding “For sure!” just as my family did.
In verse 16, the people respond, “Far be it from us to forsake the Lord to serve other gods!” They think of it as almost unthinkable to reject God! The next verses recount the faithfulness of the Lord God and how they were protected from their enemies. They say they choose to serve God as their One and Only.
But with the benefit of the larger canon of Scripture, we know how easily Israel rejected God as their One and Only. Time and again, they served other gods. Throughout Judges, their faithfulness to the Law of God is almost entirely dependent on whether a righteous leader is alive—by themselves, they are an utter mess.
Prophetically, Joshua seems to realize this. In verse 19, Joshua says, “You are not able to serve the Lord,” then explains the seriousness of this commitment. If the people turn away, they will feel the consequences of their actions.
But the people of Israel remain naively optimistic. They continue to claim they will serve the Lord!
This account is then picked up in Judges 2 with narration about what happens with the people after Joshua’s death. Apparently, as long as the elders during Joshua’s time were living, everyone remained faithful… But then, uh oh…
…Another generation rises up.
“After that whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation grew up who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel. Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals. They forsook the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They aroused the Lord’s anger because they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths.”
—Judges 2:10-13
The people didn’t keep their promise for very long!
So Many Theologies
It’s easy to talk a big game about serving the Lord. And sure, there are people who, from womb to tomb, have been extraordinary examples of servants of God! It’s possible!
But more often than not, who we choose to serve each day… is not God.
Part of our problem is that God has a lot of competition in the world! To be clear, there’s truly no real competition because God is greater. Yet, we still place God on a shelf with many store-brand and knock-off varieties. There are a lot of choices for whom to serve!
The 20th-century Swiss theologian Karl Barth writes at the beginning of his Introduction to Evangelical Theology that there are many kinds of theologies because there are many interpretations of “God.” He notes:
“There is no man who does not have his own god or gods as the object of his highest desire and trust, or as the basis of his deepest loyalty and commitment. There is no one who is not to this extent also a theologian. There is, moreover, no religion, no philosophy, no world view that is not dedicated to some such divinity.
Every world view, even that disclosed in the Swiss and American national anthems, presupposes a divinity interpreted in one way or another and worshiped to some degree, whether wholeheartedly or superficially. …It might also be ‘reason,’ progress, or even a redeeming nothingness into which man would be destined to disappear. Even such apparently ‘godless’ ideologies are theologies.”
Our modern English word “worship” comes from the Old English term “worðscip,” which means to assign value, to give status, to acknowledge worth. Anything we give such a supreme position in our lives is something we worship.
With such fierce competition from objects and ideas wanting us to worship them—from political candidates to systems of efficiency, retribution, sex, or even violence against others—how do we choose to serve the Lord?
Seeing What God Has Done
As one part of the answer, if we look to our ancient Israelite ancestors, we should be sure never to forget what God has done.
When the Israelites fell away after Joshua, the text says, “another generation grew up who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel” (Judges 2:10), which led them into doing evil and serving Baals.
Obviously, the Israelites worshiped other gods many times even when they were fully aware of the Lord, AKA Yahweh. We’ve explored that syncretism in this newsletter before (see below). So just knowing about God isn’t the only solution—you also have to know what God has done.
There’s a reason Joshua started his speech about whom they should serve with a history lesson. Even the people who responded so emphatically recalled how much good God had done and how God “performed those great signs before our eyes” (Joshua 24:17). Their decision to serve ties into their experience of the goodness of God.
Do you know what the Lord has done for you? For the Church? For fellow Christians?
Do you see the goodness?
A friend astutely pointed out the other day that some people might leave the faith because they didn’t have enough church experience. Even with the not-so-great stuff, because I was so exposed to the Church, I saw more good than bad. Sunday mornings, Sunday night small group, Wednesday night, and youth group events… so much exposure each week meant I saw a lot of people being Jesus’ hands and feet. I witnessed love, joy, peace, patience, and the other fruits of the Spirit. I was friends with young and old Christians who were on fire for Jesus.
However, someone with a childhood of only Sunday morning experiences, where the family races out after service to get to lunch first, might very easily see the negative outweigh the good. It matters where we look and the experiences we have.
This applies equally to modern idolatry. Perhaps we just haven’t taken note of how advantageous God is to our lives! That’s why other things seem so attractive—they are advertised better!
We miss out on what God has done in the world in so many ways when we:
Give sole credit for the eradication of a disease to the doctors.
Forget how prayer and spiritual disciplines are good for body, mind, and soul.
Boil with anger at the bad things in the world, even though we know the story ends with our victory.
Downplay how awesome it is to be a part of a global community that worships together at least weekly and is willing to go above and beyond for each other—treating non-relatives like family!
Dismiss the powerful impact of grace and forgiveness in transforming lives.
Overlook how much Christian charity has historically provided support to those in need, from orphanages to hospitals.
But don’t take my word for it. Look around! Ask your church friends about what God is doing in their lives. Call up your grandma and ask her what advantages faithful living has brought to her life. You could even poll your social media followers.
The Proof is in the Good
If we forget the goodness of God and the benefits of Christian living, we are much more likely to fall prey to shiny temptations, idols, foreign gods, and alternative theologies.
Because next to God, those things look pretty pathetic.
As Karl Barth was saying, we all have theologies. But how, pray tell, do we figure out the best one? He dismisses modern apologetic projects and simply claims:
“The best theology (not to speak of the only right one) of the highest, or even the exclusively true and real, God would have the following distinction: it would prove itself…by the demonstration of the Spirit and of its power.”
But he notes that he can’t just accept the claim of a theology that it’s the best and most true. A true theology can’t just say it’s true; it has to be true.
To highlight this, let’s time-travel back to the 2nd century. It’s appropriate to bring up what Justin Martyr says about the truthfulness of Christianity—its truth is found in how objectively better it makes people. He writes to the Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius:
“We who formerly delighted in fornication now embrace chastity alone; we who formerly used magical arts dedicate ourselves to the good and unbegotten God; we who valued above all things the acquisition of wealth and possessions now bring what we have into a common fund and share with everyone in need; we who hated and killed one another, and on account of their different customs would not live with men of a different tribe, now, since the coming of Christ, live familiarly with them and pray for our enemies.”
—Justin Martyr, First Apology 14.
Justin argues that the evidence that Christianity is divinely true is because it accomplishes a level of moral transformation that pagan religions or philosophy could never hope to achieve. It’s just better! It has demonstratable power.
There’s something different about the God of Israel, especially now that the Spirit is poured out onto all nations, where people from across the globe now embrace a radical new way of living through this transformation.
But if we forget… we might turn back to our old ways. So let us not forget what the Lord has done and what we’ve been saved from and saved for.
So that on this day, and every day, we will choose to serve the Lord.
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