TRYING TO BRIDGE THE RACIAL DIVIDE

Here in NYC, I’ve read many placards warning, “No justice, no peace” to justify the ongoing terror. However, I have become convinced that these terrorists will never be satisfied with any degree of justice. They will always clutch upon instances of injustice to justify “no peace” along with their acts of violence in their ongoing attempt to prove that they are actually “freedom fighters.” Instead, taking-a-knee to them becomes an encouragement to further terror.

Instead, their narrative of hate and destruction should be challenged, rather than reinforced, especially by the Church. Here is a letter I just wrote to a dear black sister:

“Have you read this post? It is denying any disproportionate killing of blacks. It seems that it is simply a matter of the Leftist media using certain incidents to inflame blacks to divide the church and the nation - a "divide and conquer" strategy.

It is not just me who is saying these things. Many conservative blacks are saying the same thing, but they are vilified by the media and even by their black communities, because rage sells better than repentance, the humbling medicine that we must all must take daily.

Sadly, there is a growing divide within the Body of Christ. This troubles me deeply because I so want to see Jesus' prayer fulfilled for the glory of our God:

• John 17:20-23 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.”

However, the Leftist narrative has become more entrenched in the public thinking – that if you are good person and really care about blacks, you will allow yourselves to be re-educated by them, accept their analysis, and join in their fight. If you do not, then you are an enemy, a white supremacist who is profiting off “white privilege”:

• “White silence is white violence,” is often repeated.

And this narrative has won. To disagree with it is to “prove” that we don’t care. Consequently, people like me are now regarded as the enemy, even though we want the best for our black brethren. However, instead of indulging them, as if they were less than equal, we believe that the Biblical way is to treat all of our brethren as equals in Christ, holding each other to the same Biblical standards with the same Biblical love, without trying to prove our love by imposing racial preferences and quotas within the Church, in opposition to Biblical standards, sowing further discord. (What has happened to MLK’s vision for not discriminating according to the skin color?)

However, the Leftists have succeeded in painting us as racist hypocrites, as they sell their “victim-hood narrative” to the detriment of the Church and of my black brethren, causing all forms of hatred and discord.

As you probably know already, sister, I grew up hating whites. I had experienced a lot of anti-Semitism – so much that I was filled with hatred. It was so powerful that I was convinced that whites had a different odor, and it nauseated me to be in an elevator with them. As a result, I became a Zionist and lived in Israel for three years, without ever planning to return.

Fortunately, after Christ got hold of me, there weren’t any Messianic congregations around to reinforce my Jewish pride, victimization, and resentment of the Church. Thankfully, I had to settle with white gentile believers, even though I didn’t want to be among them and was still convinced that they were hypocrites. But God knows best.

WHO IS GOD?

This is not such an easy question to answer, but the answer is essential. It serves as the foundation of our lives – our hopes, dreams, decisions, ethics, commitments, and understanding of ourselves. He provides the lens through which we can understand all else. God is the Light who sheds light on all else, as C.S. Lewis had famously claimed:

·       I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else. https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/c_s_lewis_162523

How do we know that by this Light, we can see all else? Because, through this Lens, we can observe a coherent worldview, a completed puzzle, where all the pieces fit together, and where a coherent picture emerges. This worldview also serves as a roadmap that has enabled countless millions to navigate their lives profitably.

Of course, the knowledge of God isn’t so simplistic and doesn’t take shape immediately. How then do we know that we simply didn’t impose our own mental image of God upon the puzzle, pieced together by our desires and needs? How then can we be sure that we know the One in whom we have placed our hope?

There is another analogy that might be helpful. I like the books entitled, “Magic Eye.” They contain collections of computer-generated images. They look like a hodge-podge, but if you can allow your eyes to go out of focus, a coherent image, for example, of a horse or unicorn, begins to emerge. I ask myself, “Was it I who created this image of the confused computer mosaic?” No! How do I know this? Simple – in the back of the book the image is provided, and it precisely matches and confirms the image that had emerged for me.

Does this analogy tell us anything about our knowledge of God? I am confident that it does. How? I have found that the knowledge of God, which had emerged from my experience matches the picture that the Bible presents, even though it is incomplete. And without the missing parts in hand, the two pictures we derive do not perfectly fit together.

We are all faced with this problem. Moses had been crushed by the Israelite sin with the Golden Calf, which had resulted in God striking down thousands of His people. It had been the first time that God had used deadly force against His people, and this left Moses staggering for answers. He, therefore, asked His God to show him His glory, and God granted his request by revealing to Moses His character:

·       The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped. (Exodus 34:6-8 (ESV)

Evidently, God’s Self-disclosure had satisfied Moses, since he bowed and worshipped, even though he hadn’t received a comprehensive revelation of God and His ways, and God had prepared him for the fact that His revelation wouldn’t explain everything. Moses had been shown His backside but not His face, which concealed the secret things of God (Deuteronomy 29:29).

Even now, we do not have all the pieces of the puzzle, even though we have been shown far more of the face of God than Moses. Although our puzzle is not complete, I think it is complete enough for us to proceed confidently with our lives.

I’m sure that Moses had also been left with many questions like, “God, since you are all-powerful, why could You not have taught us a less costly lesson?” However, it seems that he had been satisfied with God’s self-disclosure regarding His righteousness, faithfulness, and love. As a result of what Moses already did understand about his God, He was willing to walk by faith and not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7; Romans 8:24-25).

In the midst of his ongoing suffering, Job had been struggling with the idea of walking by the faith he already had in God. Instead, he brought damning accusations against God. Job thought that he had enough understanding of God to do this. Therefore, God disciplined him with about 60 basic questions to show Job that, if he couldn’t answer any of these, He certainly lacked the necessary understanding to bring his indictments against God. Job got the point and humbly repented of his sin (Job 42:1-5).

This is a lesson that we too must master. Even though far more has been revealed to us than to Moses and Job, there is still so much that we don’t understand. This has become even more obvious to us through the revelations of science. Science cannot even answer the basic question like, “What is light, matter, space, and time?” While it can observe quantum events, science remains clueless about them and even about much more mundane things like gravitational causation or even the workings of any law of science.

Awareness of our lack of understanding should humble us, as it had for Job, but yet we can be confident about our Lord. In fact, we need to be confident:

·       Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. (Hebrews 10:19-23)

How can we be confident about God and His Gospel, even though there remains so many things that we don’t fully understand? Ultimately, it is God who is able to give us this confidence and to enable us to stand in this assurance:

·       Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand. (Romans 14:4)

If God is able to make any of us stand in confidence, we mustn’t despair that we are too sinful (Romans 5:20) or too weak (2 Corinthians 12:7-10) to live for Him. Instead, if God is for us, there is nothing that can disqualify us (Romans 8:31-32) from receiving His gift of assurance and confidence. However, we also have a role to play, as God had instructed Joshua:

·       “Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go. This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.” (Joshua 1:7-8)

In the next chapter, I'd like to take up the question about, "What specifically do we need to know about God from the Bible."

WHAT IS FAITH?

This question might seem elementary. However, the elementary truths serve as the foundation of the entire edifice. Besides, there exists a lot of confusion about the nature of faith. Some wrongly claim that faith is just a matter of a mental assent to a body of truths.

First of all, faith is a gift from God:

·       For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9)

Paul claimed that even faith, at least initially, “is not of your own doing.” If we had produced it, we’d have reason to boast. But since it is given as a gift, we have absolutely no reason to boast about it.

Faith is the outgrowth of a regenerated heart. Unless the heart is renewed, we cannot have any appreciation of the things of God:

·       Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” (John 3:3)

According to Jesus, Nicodemus, the teacher of the Law who had come to visit Him, should have understood this from the OT:

·       “I [God] will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me.” (Jeremiah 32:39-40)

We are incapable of regenerating our heart and mind; God must do it for us. As our heart begins to be renewed, we begin to see what we had long suppressed - the glory of God and His Gospel:

·       “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.” (Ezekiel 36:26-27)

Faith should also be based upon evidence. Even Jesus told His disciples to not listen to Him unless His teachings were based upon the evidences of His miracles:

·       If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” (John 10:37-38; 5:31-38)

Faith should also come from the evidence of creation and our conscience (Romans 1:18-32; 2:14-16).

The Christian faith consists of a body of truths. Jesus warned His opponents:

·       …“You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins.” (John 8:23-24; 6:24)

What we believe is so important that Paul had warned:

·       But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. (Galatians 1:8-9)

However, there is more to faith than just a prescribed set of beliefs.

·       You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! (James 2:19; Mark 1:24)

Having the right beliefs by themselves will not save; nor is this a Biblical faith. A real faith will eventually produce the fruit of obedience, something absent in the “faith” of demons:

·       What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. (James 2:14-17)

Faith also contains repentance. Consequently, these two terms are often used interchangeably as a requirement for salvation. In both of Peter’s evangelistic sermons, Peter specified repentance in place of faith:

·       And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 2:38)

·       “Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus,” (Acts 3:19-20)

Jesus also insisted on the requirement of repentance for salvation, without any mention of faith, as if they are so closely associated that to mention the one is also to assume the other:

·       and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” (Luke 24:46-47)

Paul also preached a message of salvation by repentance:

·       For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. (2 Corinthians 7:10)

These verses point to the fact that faith and repentance are as inseparable as the two sides of one coin. There are many reasons to acknowledge their inseparable interconnectedness. They both:

·       Arise from a regenerated heart.

·       Represent only one turn to the new life from the old (repentance), a turn to God away from sin.

·       Are sometimes mentioned together as a single requirement (Mark 1:15).

·       Are given as a gift (2 Timothy 2:24-26; Acts 5:31;11:18).

However, some argue that repentance cannot be part of faith, since repentance is a work, which cannot be part of a free gift from God (Ephesians 2:8-9; Romans 3:27-28). However, as there is a distinction between faith and the fruits of faith (obedience), we find the same distinction between repentance and the fruits or the evidences of repentance:

·       “Therefore, O King Agrippa, I [Paul] was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, but declared first to those in Damascus, then in Jerusalem and throughout all the region of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds in keeping with their repentance.” (Acts 26:19-20; Matthew 3:8)

In light of this, both faith and repentance represent a change of heart and mind and not good works, which we can boast about.

Faith is also a matter of trusting or hoping (both derived from the Greek “elpizo”) in the Lord. It is equated with faith:

·       Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1)

Trust/hope seems also have been equated with faith in the mind of Jesus. A roman centurion requested and trusted that Jesus heal his servant and said that he was not worthy that Jesus even come to His home. Instead, he understood that Jesus would only have to speak the Word and his servant would be healed:

·       When Jesus heard this, he marveled and said to those who followed him, “Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith.” (Matthew 8:10)

Jesus had seen the centurion’s trust in Him and called it “faith.” There are also other indications that faith includes a trusting in Him for forgiveness and salvation. If it didn’t, no one would come to Jesus.

Usually, we read that salvation is through faith or believing. However, several verse state that salvation is a matter of believing in Jesus. This suggests that believing is more than just believing in a set of truths but a Person and in His forgiveness:. In these verses, Jesus equates “believing in Him” with “trusting in Him.”

·       “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:14-16; 3:36; 11:25-26; 1 John 5:10-13)

It seems that to believe in Jesus is also to trust and to hope in Him for salvation. There are other verses that require us to trust in Christ. However, it is often unclear whether the trust is saving faith itself or the result of saving faith.

In light of the above, it seems that we should withhold baptism from those who claim to merely believe in Jesus but refuse to repent and to place their trust in Jesus. To show the folly of this, just consider baptizing the unrepentant, thereby welcoming him into fellowship. If he refuses to repent of his sins, the church would immediately have to withdraw their right-hand-of-fellowship and replace it with a left-hand of discipline and possible excommunication. This argues that we must consider faith as more than just a mere mental assent to a body of truths.