Monday, January 19, 2015

PSALM 149 - Musings on Martin Luther King Day

To execute vengeance on the nations and punishments on the peoples, to bind their kings with chains and their nobles with fetters of iron, to execute on them the judgment written! This is honor for all His godly ones. Praise the Lord!  (Verses 7-9)

The battle is always about the heart. Wars are fought because the heart of some man or woman has been given over to the destruction of other peoples or nations. Hitler, Stalin, Nero...something went terribly wrong. Pol Pot and the killing fields, and, yes, the Crusades. A demonic tweaking of  the mind that made a person or group of people decide everyone has to agree with them or die. The power of being right and gaining absolute control overwhelming any sense of compassion for those who disagree or don't fit the mold. Hearts that can kill their progeny and call it expedience. Hearts that can judge others by their own biases. We've got to fix the heart. And war against the proper powers. Unseen and violent, seeking destruction. Since the beginning. Offering up the pride of being godlike, making us buy into our own demise. Our real enemy: Satan.

The battlefields are real enough. Worldwide. Beheadings in the name of righteousness. Missile attacks, aggressor against aggressor. Mass executions in retribution for a drug deal gone wrong. Families wiped out by a spurned husband or wife. Our own infanticide pervading our country in the name of expedience and quality of life. And we all feel good about our particular war. We have the right to it. And in this way we are able to make wrong right. Celebrate it, in fact. Someone somewhere was whooping and hollering when the twin towers went down in flames and smoke as somebody's mother jumped out a window and landed on the pavement and somebody's father choked to death in an effort to save those trapped. Some several million people breathed a sigh of relief last year when a baby was taken, alive and well, and thrown into the garbage heap behind the doctor's office. What is wrong with us?

No tyrant thinks of himself as tyrannical. There is a certain altruism about making others do what you want. We seem to have infinite capacity, even the best of us, to create for ourselves a scenario that justifies our actions. There is some good and some evil in all of us. The question is, which will win? Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., put it this way: "There is some good in the worst of us; some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies." Evil always justifies itself.

Dr. King went on to say, "Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that." Agape love. Which we can't manufacture alone. God is love. And unless we are saturated in it, driven by it, changed by it, committed to it, we are bait for the enemy of our souls, who desires to turn us sour and use us for his purposes.

This love that armors us for battle (Ephesians 5) isn't a weapon of mass destruction, but of daily victories that come about by attacking the real enemy circumstance by circumstance. The sword of the spirit taking down principalities and powers (2 Corinthians 10) in order to destroy "strongholds and arguments" of the enemy. Because all evil starts in the heart and distills into the mind. The way we think is how we act. And if the love of God hasn't affected our minds, changed our hearts, and made us want to war for the same deliverance for others, we will fall in battle, too. We might not be in Iraq fighting ISIS, but we are at war just the same. Our battlefields are closer to home. Most of the time, the fighting is one on one. We don't win with great arguments and cutting language. We win, as Dr. King did, with the desire to love our enemies. By bringing light into darkness. Love where there is hate. Aiming right for the heart. Devastating it with the retribution of forgiveness and love.

Satan finally loses. I know the end of the book. But in the meantime, he will take hostages and execute the godly. This is war. And some, like Martin Luther King, Jr., will physically fall in the battle. This world isn't where we belong forever. But every single day we have the opportunity to bring light onto the battlefield, exposing the dark, making it flee. Every day we have the choice to love instead of hate, to forgive instead of hold a grudge. With the sword of the Spirit (God's Word) and the shield of faith, we are ready for battle, knowing that Love ultimately triumphs over evil. The cross provided our victory; the resurrection guaranteed our safe travel home. Let's have the courage to combat our enemies in the same spirit Dr. King did in the successful war he was called to wage against the prejudice and hate that divided this nation. Let us be willing, as he was, and the Savior before him, to "lay down our lives for our friends (John 15)."

"Now there is a final reason why I think Jesus says, 'Love your enemies.'" It is this: that love has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals. Just keep being friendly to that person. Just keep loving them, and they can't stand it too long...and by the power of your love they will break down under the load. That's love, you see. It's redemptive, and this is why Jesus says love. There's something about love that builds up and is creative. There's something about hate that tears down and is destructive. So love your enemies." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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