Whatever is Beautiful

One of the larger theological revelations in my life came by way of children's fantasy fiction.  It may be less than surprising to hear that this fiction was one of C. S. Lewis's Narnian books, the last in his Chronicles series, The Last Battle.  As you mayknow, the Chronicles of Narnia are a thinly veiled allegory of the salvation story of Jesus Christ.  They are also excellent fantasy fiction with many generations of stories woven together with overlapping characters, themes and geographies.  To dismiss them because they are Christian allegory would be as foolish as dismissing them because they are children's fantasy fiction.  There is good stuff in these books whether you look for the allegorical or not, but for me the allegory is a strong pull and the reason for the revelation.

If you're not familiar with The Last Battle, it is the culminating story of the Narnian world where the forces of right and good battle with the forces of evil.  These evil forces are an advanced nation with a pagan god, a fearful and demonic and very real god named Tash that they call into battle almost unwittingly.  One boy in this pagan army believes firmly in Tash and endeavors to see his god by entering a shack where he believes the god to be.  However instead of his pagan god he meets Aslan, the lion that represents Jesus, and is surprised to be welcomed by the lion even though he has obediently served Tash his entire life.  He questions the lion about this, and Aslan lays out a surprising theological argument.

Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me.  Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thous hast done to him.  For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him.

 When I read this I was taken aback; this is not a subtle theological point Lewis is making and this is where the allegory is important.  Here we see Aslan, the representative Jesus,  saying to a man who is a non-Christian that everything good he did in his life was for the glory of the true and living God, not for the false demonic god he had intended to serve.  His fervent obedience, his desire for religious piety, his service to his god and to others in the name of that false god; all of it was to his credit for God's glory.  I had never heard an argument like this, but it was a revelation I had been searching for, one that seemed to answer questions I had harbored for a while.

I remember as a kid wondering what would happen to people who didn't hear about Jesus.  As I grew older, that significant question held a place in my heart even though I didn't pursue an answer.  Looking back I think that I supposed the answer was exactly as Lewis describes it in The Last Battle, but I would have articulated it with biblical context.  I would have quoted Paul when he said no one has an excuse for not believing in God - just look around you at this amazing world: His divine nature is all over the place.  But this isn't the same as knowing Jesus and knowing about his sacrifice on the cross, so the question would linger.  There are other instances in the Bible that hold up under Lewis's scrutiny, but didn't strictly hold up under my theological requirements.  Much like other aspects of my theology, I had to go beyond what I thought was true and embrace what God was revealing to be true.

This is an uncomfortable place to be as a believer, in a place where the Lord forces you to either claim that His revelation is wrong or incomplete or admit that your theology is.  It's much easier to have a flexible theology when you walk with the Lord, especially when you consider which of the two in the relationship is omniscient and perfect in all ways.  But we don't always do that, do we?  Most of the time we dismiss the revelation of the Lord by assuming we're misinterpreting it, or that it doesn't hold up to our current convictions so it must not be God.  Or if those around us aren't up on that revelation it can't be right.  We have a lot of reasons for leaving God in our theological box when things get uncomfortable, chief among them the motive to keep things comfortable and contained.  My box is just fine the way it is, thank you.

I think something else in the scripture that stuck out to me became the final revelation that broke my box open.  In the book of Philippians, Paul's letter to some apparently good friends, he gives some significant pointers about how to live godly lives.  Stand firm in the Lord; work in unity; rejoice in God always; pray in all things without worry.  He seems to sum it up in verse 8 when he says,

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if ther is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

In my own mind I like to summarize this verse with one phrase: Whatever is beautiful.  But any way you say it, do you get what Paul is after?  This list that could easily be put together by a new age Buddhist yoga instructor with a "Hillary 2016" bumper sticker was written by the principle Christian theologian of the first church as a compendium of things on which to meditate.  Now why would that be?  Why would Paul culminate his passage of Christlike directives with a list of adjectives that could be uttered without a context of God whatsoever?

Well, maybe because these ideas CAN'T exist outside of the context of God.  Just as Lewis's Aslan said: all service that is not vile is to the credit and the glory of God.  It's a beautiful revelation and a beautiful affront to so much bad theology in the American church, because we learn that the beautiful things in the world, regardless of their source, are divine.  Just as Jesus told us to offer a cup of cold water, he wasn't limiting the grace of this act to those who believed in him.  The cup of cold water is the kind act that glorifies God regardless of who hands it out.  To my eye and ear this is just the kind of thing Jesus would teach, baffling and deep and wonderful as it is.

For my part I'm taking back the beautiful things of the world for myself, for the glory of God.  I'm celebrating whatever is beautiful because I know that God is glorified in it.  Especially so-called secular music, and the best example I've found to date may be the Avett Brothers, so I will leave you with the lyrics to "The Ballad of Love and Hate" (although I could easily substitute any other of their songs).  Aside from the musical, melodic beauty of their music, the poetry and sentiment of their lyrics are right up my alley as a lover and follower of Jesus.  I like to imagine this song as a contemporary parable, the kind of quirky and deceptively deep story Jesus would tell (or sing to) a crowd just to confuse them and haunt them until they yearned to learn the truth behind it all.

The Ballad of Love and Hate

Love writes a letter and sends it to hate.
My vacations ending. I'm coming home late.
The weather was fine and the ocean was great
and I can't wait to see you again.

Hate reads the letter and throws it away.
"No one here cares if you go or you stay.
I barely even noticed that you were away.
I'll see you or I won't, whatever."

Love sings a song as she sails through the sky.
The water looks bluer through her pretty eyes.
And everyone knows it whenever she flies,
and also when she comes down.

Hate keeps his head up and walks through the street.
Every stranger and drifter he greets.
And shakes hands with every loner he meets
with a serious look on his face.

Love arrives safely with suitcase in tow.
Carrying with her the good things we know.
A reason to live and a reason to grow.
To trust. To hope. To care.

Hate sits alone on the hood of his car.
Without much regard to the moon or the stars.
Lazily killing the last of a jar
of the strongest stuff you can drink.

Love takes a taxi, a young man drives.
As soon as he sees her, hope fills his eyes.
But tears follow after, at the end of the ride,
cause he might never see her again.

Hate gets home lucky to still be alive.
He screams o'er the sidewalk and into the drive.
The clock in the kitchen says 2:55,
And the clock in the kitchen is slow.

Love has been waiting, patient and kind.
Just wanting a phone call or some kind of sign,
That the one that she cares for, who's out of his mind,
Will make it back safe to her arms.

Hate stumbles forward and leans in the door.
Weary head hung down, eyes to the floor.
He says "Love, I'm sorry", and she says, "What for?
I'm yours and that's it, Whatever.
I should not have been gone for so long.
I'm yours and that's it, forever."

You're mine and that's it, forever.

When Jesus is Present

      Jesus is always surprising. There are so many things that he says and does that surprise me and that surprised his audience.  Like when he said "Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother. "  He surprised us by redefining family.  Or when the man asked for the greatest commandment and Jesus gave him two: love God and love your neighbor.  He redefined what it means to love and serve God.  Aside from redefining principal tenets of religion, Jesus just does things differently, surprising us with his unforeseen commentary and arresting us with his visceral humanity.
      When Jesus appears to the disciples as a group after his resurrection, he has already appeared to two of them on the road to Emmaus.  The disciples know that he has risen because the two who met him on the road have reported it to them.  In fact, just as they are sharing about their encounter with Jesus, he shows up in the middle of the room.  As they marvel that he has risen - and we must admit that this was surely an astounding moment - Jesus says something surprising.   He says, "Have you anything to eat?"  Now, I don't know about you, but this is the last thing I would expect the resurrected Messiah to ask three days after his death if he suddenly appeared among me and my friends.  I'm not even sure I would expect that Jesus would need to eat, seeing as how he had, you know, risen from the dead rather miraculously.  But there it is: "Have you anything to eat?"
      I don't know how surprised the disciples were.  They were probably so shocked by his sudden appearance that his asking for food didn't register as the least bit odd.  And to their credit they quickly oblige with some broiled fish, and Jesus readily eats it.  So whether or not it's surprising that he's hungry, it's evidently true that he is, which means that he is still the man Jesus - all God, yes, but also human - because this need to eat and the sensation of hunger have not disappeared.
      Maybe this is one of the really surprising things about Jesus - that he really is human.  In spite of the fact that this is the most important thing about him, that he is God incarnate, we find it difficult to truly grasp.  Sure he may be a man, but he's also completely God (whatever that really means), so I can't possibly relate to him.  I mean, look at the miracles he performed; no one else had ever done what he did, everybody recognized that, from his friends to his mortal enemies.  But at the same time the scripture tells us that Jesus "was tempted in every way," so we know his experience matches our own.  We want so desperately to let ourselves off the hook by taking away the humanity of Jesus, but each time we encounter him he reminds us of how human he is.  "Have you anything to eat?" he says, and not only because he's hungry, but because he wants us to have the chance to offer him something he needs.  He wants us to share in the surprising truth of his humanity.
      What is so surprising about Jesus is that he wants or needs us at all.  In that little room appeared the man who had fed four and five thousand people with a couple of fish asking if he could have supper.  Surely he didn't need someone to give him a broiled fish.  Or maybe he did.  Maybe it wasn't the food that he needed so much as he needed to remind his friends that he too they could provide something necessary from time to time.  And that this would always be the case, and that it would be just what he and his dad wanted.  How is that for surprise, to know that God wants something from us?  Because just as surely as Jesus the man wants our company, our friendship and our aid, so too does the Father want our part in His life.  He wants us to be quick to offer up to Him what so satisfies His heart: praise and honor, love and mercy and glory and all of the beautiful things He's made that get so trampled in our hearts and on this earth.
      I'll bet that if we knew Jesus better we wouldn't be surprised at all when he asks for a piece of fish.  Or a cup of cold water.  We shouldn't be surprised because he told us he would ask, and just as surely as we clothe the naked and visit the prisoners and feed the hungry, there he is in all of his humanity with his hand held up slightly, a surprise in the dark with the word "peace" on his breath. 

The Irrelevant Church

There is so much whining these days that it's hard not to hear it.  Social media, that pair of words that get's thrown around far too much, is mostly responsible for this.  Not only is Facebook an apparently readymade venue for our whining, it is also an echo chamber reverberating our complaints back to us through dozens or hundreds of others who share our view and biases.  And because of the genius of this space - that there are computers and algorithms working constantly to make our echo chambers as efficient as possible - we wind up believing that our gripe is at the center of the information universe in some way.  We see articles, comments, videos, memes and all of our friends reinforcing this sense of centrality through repetition of our viewpoint.  This is not in any way coincidental; the social media machine is made to reinforce our self-centeredness.

What this means for Christians in particular is that we get really tribal.  Maybe a story breaks about a Christian athlete who gets cut off mid-sentence while talking about Jesus.  Or perhaps the media makes a big deal out of a fast food restaurateur who opposes gay marriage.  Whatever occurs, the internet blows up in the face of Christians and suddenly it seems like the world is against us.  Suddenly it's like we're not even supposed to be allowed to espouse views contrary to society at large.  Suddenly it seems like we're not even widely accepted by our own culture.  As if this wasn't a nation founded on Christian values and principles, like prayer in school, heterosexual marriage, and the gospel of health and wealth.

Interestingly this nation was not founded on those things, and if America is a Christian nation, those of us who bear the name of Christ should be pretty embarrassed.  The thing is we Christians were so used to being the privileged and accepted class that we get our feelings hurt the moment the world dared remind us that we're not really welcome here.  We Christians are so used to churches on every corner and Bibles in every hotel that as soon as the culture exposes itself to be not at all Christlike, we act like it's a surprise.  But isn't this the same world which we are in but not of?  Isn't this the same world which Jesus said would not accept us?  Isn't this the very same fallen world that was given over to the Enemy when humankind screwed up, and which God himself came to redeem through Jesus, knowing good and well that it would still widely reject His love?

Hell yes it is!  Did we think that just because we found a land where the government wouldn't harrass us that we had it made?  Why did we ever get to a point where the Church was less the hands and feet of God and basically just a public institution?  Why did we willingly trade Power in the Holy Spirit for the political power of man?  And even though we look back on the reign of "Christian values" in the wider culture for so many decades, why are we lamenting the illusion that we were ever better off as the completely negligible mainstream practitioners of a mostly dead religion?  My profound question is this: why did we ever think that we were off the hook for the hard life that Jesus promised we would have?

The truth is, we were promised hardship.  We were promised persecution.  We were promised a poor reception in the world if we came in the name of Jesus Christ.  But you know what we believers have gotten in American for the last couple of centuries, especially the last 100 years?  Not hardship, not in the name of Jesus.  Not persecution, not really.  And did we get a poor reception?  I would say not, especially not since by and large it's still virtually impossible for a non-Christian to be elected president of this country.

So what does it mean if we were promised to be persecuted if we came in the name of Jesus and what really happened was we became the dominant cultural force in the nation?  Well one conclusion is that we have not come in the name of Jesus Christ.  That's my conclusion.  We are not a Church that by and large moves in this society, in this world, with the good news of the Gospel of Jesus.  That's why we don't know persecution.  Do you think that if we lived and loved and moved and worshipped like Jesus did that we would be as comfortable as we are?  Do you know anyone who has been martyred for their faith, the way Peter was?  Do you know anyone who has been imprisoned for preaching the Gospel of Jesus like Paul was?  Have you ever met anyone who could stir up the kind of hatred and vehemence among religious folks the way Jesus did?  So much hatred that the most important religious figures of the day plotted to get him arrested and killed by the government?

I can tell you that I don't know many people that are persecuted for being Christians, but I know a lot of people who have gotten rich.  If you travel to just about any major city in America you will find churches the size of universities.  You will find churches with so many attendees on a Sunday morning that people are turned away at the doors and the local police direct traffic when the preaching is done.  You'll find churches of such size and magnitude and income that the pastors have bodyguards and there are more programs for the congregants than there are outreach ministries for the poor, widows and orphans.  In this great nation of ours you will find churches of such astounding wealth that you would probably be shocked to learn how much poverty there is in the same city, perhaps even blocks away, perhaps even right next door.

Perhaps there is poverty even inside the doors.

That's what I think about the American Church, our national arm of the Body of Christ.  I think that despite our wealth and attendance that we are a body beset with poverty.  We have money but we don't have power.  We can clean up after tornadoes but our prayers don't heal the sick or broken-hearted.  We love to serve but we can't figure out how to love.  We worship at the feet of the whore Ministry while the man Jesus beckons us for our attention.  The American Church has come to embody so much division, exclusion, privilege, haughtiness, arrogance and willful ignorance that we have the nerve to be annoyed at people who have decided they want nothing to do with us.  We are so blind to our state of affairs that we can't understand why people don't want to attend.  If the internet is awash with our gripes and complaints about our failing significance, it's equally awash with tips and instructions for how lure back the "Dones" and the "Millennials", as if the only thing we need to get people back into the pews is a more attractive offering.

My fellow believers, people aren't leaving the Church because they reject the Gospel of Jesus.  They're leaving the Church because they're looking for God and they can't find Him there.  We have spent the last few decades sanitizing the Gospel by making Jesus into Ghandi, outfitting him with soft robes and a sanguine disposition.  We have consistently turned the church experience into a social regime where nobody is supposed to be uncomfortable and only the paid staff is supposed to do any spiritual work.  My fellow believers, the Church in this nation is not being persecuted, the Church in America is becoming completely irrelevant, and that's why people are leaving.

If we want relevance and significance in this world then the only way to get there is through the Good News of Jesus Christ.  But it's not enough for us to want the Church to be relevant within the context of society.  What we need is to yearn for the healing and salvation of our fellow human beings.  We have to be able to look into the eyes of anyone we encounter and earnestly desire to see what God sees.  And what He sees is someone of inestimable value whom He loves; loves so much in fact that He turned the universe around for the very purpose of having a relationship with each one of us.  This is the Gospel: that the God of all Creation loves us as sons and daughters.  Do not seek to find validation in being rejected for a message of any less significance than this.

The time is come to stop whining.  We are not moving heaven and earth by complaining about our irrelevance.  Salvation is just as powerful and pertinent today as it was two thousand years ago, and don't believe for a second the lie of the Enemy that you need anything more than the simple good news of the man Jesus, the man who defeated Death and Sin.  Believe that the Gospel is worth dying for, but more than that believe that it is worth truly Living for, and accept nothing less than the honest, full, complex, confusing, wonderful and life changing FREE Gospel of Jesus.

What Will Make You Righteous

What will make you righteous?

Will the Bible make you righteous?  No it will not.  It's not a bad place to start, but the Bible will not make you righteous, even if you have the right translation.

Will deep study make you righteous?  No it will not.  If the Bible can't make you righteous, then studying it deeper will not either.  Knowing the original Hebrew or Aramaic or Greek won't help.  Memorizing scripture will not make you righteous.

Will ritual make you righteous?  No it will not.  Baptism will not make you righteous, nor will circumcision.  Observing Passover will not make you righteous, nor will observing any of a litany of Jewish traditions and holidays.  Observing communion, reciting the Doxology or avoiding bacon will not make you righteous.

Will prayer make you righteous?  No, I'm afraid it will not.  Your quiet time won't help.  Neither will your devotional.  Praying the scriptures won't get you there either.  Simply talking to God, or talking at God, will not make you righteous.

Will knowledge make you righteous?  No.

How about fasting, will that do it?  No.

What about a killer ministry, surely that will?  No.

But what if...what if...what if...

No.  None of that.  Nothing that you can take credit for will make you righteous.

So what will make you righteous?

Jesus.  Jesus will make you righteous.  In him you become his righteousness; you become the very righteousness of Jesus Christ.  There is no other path to righteousness, no other way to be right in the sight of God.  It is not enough to do right, you have to be right.  That is what righteousness is.

The Year of Jubilee

And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants...each of you shall return to his property...The land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill and dwell in it securely. (Leviticus 25:10, 13, 19)

     The Year of Jubilee fell on each fiftieth year for the Israelites.  It followed the sabbatical year, the 49th year, a fallow year as each seventh year was a fallow year.  So in the Year of Jubilee the Israelites would be into their second straight fallow year - no planting of crops, hence no reaping of crops (except whatever the land produced of its own accord).  Not only that, but in this year those who had sold land and moved away were able to return to their land, the land of their fathers and grandfathers, and reclaim it.  There was payment, yes; but it was required to be fair payment.  No man in the nation of Israel was allowed to make another man destitute, to gobble up real estate at the expense of his brothers.  And God also promised that no one would starve, even if they didn't plant and harvest for two straight years.
     What a mind-blowing idea is the Year of Jubilee.  For so many reasons, it is an alien and objectionable thing.  From the perspective of a 21st century American, it is repugnant.  Grossly anti-capitalistic - nay, communistic!  Socialistic!  It smacks of Karl Marx and the grand Soviet experiment, with the bewildering caveat that it was commanded by God.
     But still, it is a strange and beautiful thing.  It is beautiful to me because of the picture of redemption and renewal.  This picture of redemption is already present in the fallow seventh year.  The seventh year is the year of rest, just as the seventh day was the day of rest for God, just as the seventh day of the week was the day of rest for the Israelites.  That command to rest, it's difficult.  It is hard because, though we want rest, we want it on our terms.  The problem of course is that when we seek rest on our own terms we simply overlook it and run ourselves into the ground.  God commanded rest not because it was an easy task, but because it was a difficult and foreign one.
    And so the Year of Jubilee is a gigantic rest.  It is rest upon rest; and not only that, it is liberty unwarranted.  Undeserved freedom: from indentured servitude, from poverty, from want.  The Year of Jubilee, even though it was relatively rare (50 years does not pass quickly), was an enormous promise.  An almost unbelievable promise for a destitute man.  A promise for freedom, liberty, redemption and reconciliation.  What an incredible picture of the Father's love.  What a difficult thing for us to grasp.  What a vital thing in which we must participate.

The Problem With Ministry

Ministry is a whore.

This is what Jake Hamilton said last year when he came to my church in Amarillo to lead our annual Kingdom Conference, a kind of multi-day revival Messiah's House holds each year.  He said this because at the time his own ministry, which takes him all over the world singing, playing and preaching, was killing his marriage.  He had become so focused on his ministry that he was alienating his family.  He had been working hard for God (or so he probably thought) at the expense of his relationship with his wife.  He had found a harlot to take her place.  Ministry had become his whore.

I'd like to make a distinction right now between a ministry and ministry in general.  The problem in Jake's life last year was not a product of his focus on ministering generally.  He did not get to a place in his marriage where his wife was ready to check out by building up other believers, speaking into people's lives, and preaching the Gospel.  No doubt these things occurred while he was traveling and preaching and playing music, but it would be akin to blaming God for his (then) failing marriage if we just said he was working hard for the Gospel and couldn't pay attention to his family.  No, what happened was his Flesh got carried away.  That part of him that has a name and two hands and the energy and talent and wherewithal to grow his calling into something bigger, busier and more significant than it was when God called him to it, that was what was wrecking his home.  That was the whore.  His ministry had become his new love.

This is a tricky thing to speak to.  Culturally we are conditioned to be impressed by someone as popular, successful and hard-working as Jake Hamilton.  We are Americans and we value the bootstrap-pulling, dedicated, all-out types of people who make things happen.  We can appreciate when someone creates an organization or effort out of nothing and grows it into something that changes lives.  We seem to have a simple equation about such things: The ends justify the means.  If the end product is successful enough, powerful enough, big enough, then it may not even matter if God is still behind it.

Not that I think our view is so crass or cynical as that.  I doubt if any of the believers I know would be gung-ho for a ministry they knew had outpaced God.  But then again, most of us don't know.  Back to that cultural conditioning - we have a very different definition of success than God does.  We look at a man like Jake Hamilton as he was a year ago and our view is that God had blessed him and his ministry.  He was successful, impacting hearts and lives all over the place, taking the message of the Gospel everywhere he went.  But of course his marriage was falling apart; surely that wasn't God's will, right?  You see, we couldn't see what God could see; we couldn't see Jake's heart.  And we fail in this: we do not define success as obedience.  But God does.  An obedient man with an apparently tiny impact is of more value to the Kingdom of God than an arrogant man with an enormous ministry.

Lest we forget, God is not after big ministries; He is after our hearts.  The Maker of the universe can handle it if we don't have a huge ministry with a catchy name, website and mission statement.  His Gospel will change the world and it doesn't have to cost us our marriages or our families or our dearest relationships.  We don't have to travel to fulfill the Great Commission, or write books to sway hearts to the Lord's salvation, or be the best musician to make a joyful noise unto the Lord.  Just like it was for Samuel, our first inclination is to look at the outward appearance and make the judgment.  But God looks at the heart, where the motives and the passions lie regardless of what is produced outwardly.  God looks at the heart because he cares about motives and sincerity, and because he wants us to love him with the whole of our hearts.

The problem with ministry as we usually deliver it is that we are far too concerned with the outward appearances.  I think we need to remember that ministry happens all the time everywhere - or at least it can and should.  Jesus shows us a great model for ministry.  It should be noted that his ministry was the greatest one of all, the reconciliation of mankind to God.  He was the Messiah finally come to earth, but he didn't come with banners and slogans and mission statements and great PR.  In fact, his ministry was pretty much the opposite of what our ministries usually are.  He shunned large gatherings, even though the crowds kept following him.  He stayed out of the big city as long as he could.  He defied the conventions of his culture and time to carry out his ministry.  Most importantly is this: he did what the Father said without fail.  That was his heart and that was his ministry.

The problem with ministry is not a problem with ministry, it's a problem with us as people, as fallible victims of our flesh who want to make a name for ourselves.  The world doesn't need another Ministry, and I'm sure the world doesn't even want another one.  What the world needs and wants desperately is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Now that is a ministry.

The Words of God

     Have you heard of the Oaks of Righteousness?  You may not have if you haven't read Isaiah 61; or if you have read it but in a translation that differs from mine.  The NIV, ESV, NASB and many other fairly contemporary translations read something like this:

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion— to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor. (Isaiah 61:1-3 NIV)

     The New King James and some other translations read "trees of righteousness."  So instead of translating the Hebrew word 'ayil as "trees" as is done in the King James, the NIV scholars chose "oaks."  Get it?  It's a different translation of the same word.

     Why am I making a point of this?  Because I think it's less important than many other Believers probably do.  You see, I was thinking about this verse while riding my bike, and it came to mind because I had just passed an oak tree.  This particular oak is a bur oak maybe 25 feet tall, and right now (in September) it's covered in bright green acorns that seem to glow amid the dense, dark green leaves.  The trunk is perhaps 20 inches in diameter and straight, and the branches grown virtually straight out from the trunk all the way up to the rounded crown.  In the short time I beheld this oak tree as I rode by, Isaiah 61:3 occured to me and I began to think of what it means to be an "oak of righteousness;" how majestic a thing an oak tree is; how slowly and strongly it grows; how it beautifies the landscape, provides shade, shelter and food, and lends an atmosphere of grandiosity to the place where it is planted.

     Now consider what might have occurred to me had I only known this verse with the phrase "trees of righteousness."  I would probably not have been impressed with the same sense of what the Lord says about us.  At least not with the impressions of grandeur, majesty and strength that the oak inspires.  The English word "trees" falls rather lamely in this passage compared to "oaks," laden as the latter word is with so much cultural significance.  A tree can be any kind of tree.  It can be an oak, of course, but it can also be a cottonwood, which leaves its own distinct impressions far different from oaks.

     The reason I think this quirk between or among translations of the Bible is not important is because these are words on a page.  The Bible as I know it is a pretty huge collection of words on pages, all of which could mean one thing or another depending on my mood, religious background, geographic region, ethnicity, political ideology or relative intelligence.  The words on these pages bear revelation and significance not because they are translated without error, but because God speaks in them.  God speaks in oaks and he speaks in trees.  To me He spoke revelation in the word oak, and I don't doubt that on another day, another bike ride, He may speak revelation in the word tree.  Truthfully the words of God as we envision them, captured by so many men over the course of centuries, are far less important than the voice of God that speaks in these words for those who have ears to hear.

     I hope that last statement caught you off guard.  In fact, I think I can already hear many of you formulating your arguments and mounting your defenses.  Some of you are raising your favorite translation into the air in triumph.  Perhaps you have Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek translations laid out on a table.  Your concordance is worn and heavily marked, as are your dictionaries and commentaries.  You have encountered arguments against the Bible and you're prepared to believe that this is another one, and you have your retort ready.  I'm also pretty sure you have a go to translation, the RIGHT one, the BEST one, the one you believe is the only version through which one hears the pure and unadulterated words of God.

     Personally I have no beef with deep study of the Bible.  I would be a fool to say there is no merit in studying this wonderful book, in delving into the ins and outs of the various languages in which it was written.  I have on my own gained a great deal of revelation from studying individual words, short enigmatic passages, deep and confusing biblical teachings.  I've also gained a great deal of revelation from misrememberings of certain scriptures.  The Lord has spoken to me in verses I couldn't even find when I went back to look.  Sometimes He encourages me with a scripture that, once I do find it and read it again, is far less impressive on the page than it was in my heart when He spoke it to me.  The reason that this occurs is because the voice of God is always more powerful, more significant and more revelatory than the simple words.  It's what's behind the words that touches my heart.  It's Him - He is behind the words, whatever they may be.

     Jesus often said this to those who gathered to hear him teach: "He who has ears, let him hear."  I find that to be a peculiar phrase, mostly because it is so simplistic.  Hearing is exactly what ears are for, so the directive sounds rather obvious - unless, of course, it is possible to have ears and NOT hear.  As we all know, it is not only possible to have ears and not to hear, more often than not this is just what we do.  Many who heard Jesus preach had ears, but very few heard just what he was saying about himself and he came to do.  The same is very much true today, and Jesus has not ceased speaking and teaching.  An ear is a rather useless appendage if it isn't used for hearing.  The fact remains that there are a lot of useless ears in the worlds, both inner and outer.  But even if you listen attentively with your outer ear, there is so much you will never hear, because the Father is speaking not to your human ear and mind but right to your spirit through His own Holy Spirit.

     This then is what makes the Bible worth reading.  This is what makes the words of God come alive as His very voice, regardless of how precise or perfect the translation is.  When we let the Holy Spirit speak and do what is his ministry - to teach, to exhort, to encourage, to lift up and inform - when we let God speak behind the words on the page then there is life in those words.  When the Holy Spirit is our guide and we know the sweet melody of his whispering voice, there is life in oaks and there is life in trees.  There is revelation all around, in fact, when we walk in step with the Holy Spirit.  We don't even have to be literate to find it.