Psalm 119:115 Evildoers

The Dark Knight, Warner Brothers, 2008

Joker: Introduce a little anarchy, upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It's fair!

[Still holding the gun, Harvey Dent pauses and takes out his coin]

Harvey Dent: [Showing Joker the good side] You live.

Joker: Mm-hmm.

Harvey Dent: [Showing the scarred side] You die.

Joker: Mmm, now we're talking.

The Dark Knight trilogy, from which the above quote comes, couldn't have been more unlike the Batman series of the 1960s. Instead of over the top camp and primary colors, the newer take on Batman is dark, brooding, and cynical.

Heath Ledger's Joker is cast as the epitome of evil. As Bruce Wayne's butler, Alfred, says, "Some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn."

But this version of the Batman doesn't go for a simple good vs. evil trope. Batman isn't portrayed as the ultimate good hero in contrast to the evildoer. This Dark Knight is fleshed out in darker tones. He's battling his own inner evil.

The film even seems to prop up other heroes as the embodiment of good, only to show their true darkness. Jim Gordon, who becomes police commissioner, is a crusader for justice who uses the most corrupt members of his police force to accomplish his goals. Harvey Dent, whom Bruce Wayne thinks is the hero Gotham needs, becomes unhinged mentally under the pressure of great suffering and loss.

The lesson of the Dark Knight is that we are all evildoers.

Away from me, you evildoers,
that I may keep the commands of my God!

Psalm 119:115

Who are the evildoers, in God's eyes?

The Hebrew word describes people who are actively in opposition to God, to society, or to the norms of society. They might even be chaos engines, introducing a little anarchy in opposition to the way God intended the world to work.

They also might be you and me.

A friend told me recently, "You're a better person than I am."

"No. I'm not," I replied, after getting over my shock. "You don't really want to read my mind or see my heart at its worst."

If the people of God allow ourselves to believe we're better than "those evildoers", we've missed the point of being the people of God.

We're not His people because we're worthy of His name. We belong to Him because the blood of Christ covers our evil and His grace welcomes us home.

Our purpose, as His people, is to walk alongside our fellow evildoers on the 1 road of life, the ones who don't know Him.

If they actively try to pull us aside and join them in their evil plans, we should keep as much distance from them as necessary to keep from being dragged along with them.

And yet, at the same time, our ultimate goal isn't to build walls and isolate ourselves from our fellow evildoers, but to introduce them to Christ and shower them with grace. Because every one of us met a fellow evildoer along the road who welcomed us into fellowship with God.

Psalm 119:114 Armor

The Walking Dead, AMC

The Walking Dead, another guilty pleasure of mine, is a show that can't seem to decide what it wants to be.

Sometimes it's an extended horror show, with gruesome monsters wreaking havoc on the people who remain alive. The fans of horror movies love the episodes that major in monster mayhem.

Other times, the series is an extended sociological study of the many ways people are changed by extreme circumstances. And what could be more extreme that a zombie apocalypse? The horror movie fans get restless when the show dwells on what they call the melodrama.

Personally, my favorite episodes are the character studies. I've always been drawn to stories of people forced to live daily life in the midst of an impossible situation. Books about people forced to live in prison. Movies about soldiers and citizens in the midst of war. TV shows about ordinary people during apocalyptic times.

In season 5, episode 10, the lead character, Rick Grimes, sums up that experience of living through the worst of times, telling a story about his grandfather's way of making it through each day of World War II:

"Every day he woke up and told himself, 'Rest in peace; now get up and go to war,'" says Rick. "After a few years of pretending he was dead, he made it out alive. That's the trick of it, I think. We do what we need to do, and then we get to live. No matter what we find in D.C., I know we'll be okay. This is how we survive: We tell ourselves that we are the walking dead."

Walking Dead fans have their favorite seasons and their least favorite. The horror fans love the seasons filled with bloody battles. The sociology fans love the seasons where the main characters are pushed to their limits by the new world of the walking dead.

The character-developing seasons tend to take place behind walls of some sort. Most of the second season was spent on a farm, with what they thought was the safety of being in a remote location surrounded by forests. It didn't last.

The following season was spent in a prison, where they felt safe behind fences and walls, only to discover they weren't safe there either. Then they moved to a wall town, only to discover they weren't safe from predators among the living. In the most recent season they encounter a group of people who have taken a completely opposite approach to fallen society, living hidden in the middle of the walking dead.

After several seasons, the question still remains unanswered completely: How can people not only survive the worst life has to throw at us, but thrive under the pressure?

You are my refuge and my shield;
I have put my hope in your word.

Psalm 119:114

I've often tried to figure out why I like the stories of people dealing with impossible situations. My two brothers both admitted, as adults, that they also liked those stories.

It's possible we gravitated toward such tales because we were raised being told both at home and at church that as Christians we were unlike everyone else in The World (always in capital letters). We are the believers, they are the unbelievers. We are alive in Christ, they are dead in their sins. We are God's chosen people, they are children of darkness.

The thing is, all of those descriptions and contrasts come straight from the Bible. Throughout the scriptures there is a thread of tension between Us and Them. As it was summarized frequently in the churches where I grew up, we can't avoid being IN the world, but we aren't to be OF the World.

So how do we respond to that tension? The pressure of being part of a community of life amid a world of death will change each of us.

Some Christians do everything they can to not mix with the world at all. They build metaphorical walls around themselves to protect their way of life from the sinful world.

Others choose the opposite approach, blending in among the people who are slaves to sin. They learn to blend in, walking among the dead as though they were part of the world themselves.

I don't think either of those approaches is what God tells us to do.

He promises that He will be our refuge. Rather than building up false walls and completely separating ourselves from the world, he invites us to build a life centered in him. Put down roots in him. Life in him. Roots in him. Be the branches on the vine that is Christ.

If we do that, he will be our shield, our refuge. He will protect us.

If we were intended to hide from the world, he wouldn't have given us the full armor of God (Ephesians 6:13-17). Soldiers don't wear their full armor when they're sitting at their headquarters enjoying the company of their friends. Armor is worn when they go out into a potentially hostile world.

By living in Him among the world, wearing the full armor of God, we become walking and talking examples of his life.

We are not the walking dead. We are walking among the dead, filled with abundant life.

Psalm 119:113 Dilemma

The Good Place, NBC

Pardon me while I indulge my guilty pleasures with this quote from The Good Place, which is either a sacrilegious NBC sitcom or a parable about the doctrine of works vs. grace.

Chidi: So, making decisions isn't exactly my strong suit.

Michael: I know that, buddy. You once had a panic attack at a make-your-own sundae bar.

Chidi: There were too many toppings. And very early in the process you had to commit to a chocolate palate or a fruit palate and if you couldn't decide you wound up with kiwi, junior mint, raisin, and it just ruins everybody's night.

And now back to our regularly scheduled snippet from Psalm 119.

I hate double-minded people,
but I love your law.

Psalm 119:113

The Hebrew word translated as double-minded comes from a root word meaning a cleft or a branch. What was once a single thing has suddenly split into two optional directions. It also sometimes carried the meaning of a dilemma, a choice between options.

The word people doesn't actually appear in the original Hebrew text for this verse. The translators inserted it, as they often do, in order to try to make sense out of the sentence.

But David is saying he hates double-mindedness. Or double-minded fill in the blank, if you will. Double-minded people, double-minded situations, double-minded governments. Or maybe he just hates double-minded  choices, like poor Chidi faced.

I can relate. I grew up in a right vs. wrong culture. It's either this or it's that. Yes or No. Us or Them. Make up your mind, because you can't have it both ways.

As I grew older I faced a real dilemma, as do many people. My life experiences didn't always align well with an either/or approach to life.

Can divorce really be a bad thing if two people who are clearly bad for one another finally improve their lives by splitting up? If I have friends who are gay, how can I possibly tell them their way of life is sinful? If I encounter someone whose spirit was wounded by their extremely negative experiences in the church of their childhood, can I really blame them for turning their back on church?

As difficult as those dilemmas are - and I've experienced every one of them - what resonates most in me when I read David's statement that he hates double-minded people is my disdain for people who don't actually make a choice when faced with those dilemmas.

Instead of going deep in the Word to understand Jesus' teachings about divorce, and thinking long and hard about how the clear biblical teaching should be applied to the reality of toxic marriages, double-minded people just decide to go with the flow and have it both ways. Sure, divorce is bad. But it can be good sometimes, right?

Trying to have your cake and eat it too means going out of your way to re-interpret the scriptures that talk about homosexuality in order to build a castle of cards that says the greatest display of holiness is to accept each person for who they identify themselves as. Have your scriptures, but cover them with a frosting that makes it all taste better to the 21st century palate.

The double-minded people I encounter most often walking along beside me on the one road of life fall into two groups. There's the ones who want to craft their own version of spirituality while pursuing a lifestyle contrary to God's righteousness. And then there are the others who cling to a more traditional "Christian" lifestyle in many ways, claiming to live and believe according to the Word - except when they find it more convenient to follow along with the ways of the popular culture.

Why does this bother me so greatly? Because the double-minded Christians who are willing to bend their beliefs for the sake of their un-churched friends are actually doing those friends a great disservice.

Because there is a third way.

Be rooted firmly in the Word, refusing to water it down for the sake of expedience. Be focused mightily on the Mission, approaching each life experience as a God-sent opportunity to win people to Christ. Be single-minded in expressing both the Word and the Mission through Love, rather than through judgment or co-dependent faux grace..

Writer's Notebook: Greentree Christian Church

As part of Christian Standard's annual listing of attendance and growth statistics for Christian Churches, the editors asked me to choose from a short list of growing congregations in Missouri to do an interview and write a short ministry highlight piece.

I chose Greentree Christian Church in Rolla because I had already heard many good things about the congregation, and because the senior minister is Tim Cook, a fellow graduate of Central Christian College in Moberly. He and his brother, J Allan, were a few years ahead of me, attending at the same time as my older brother, Scott.

It was great to get in touch with Tim Cook and talk with him about the long and steady growth of Greentree Christian Church. Much of what we talked about made it into the published piece in the May 2019 issue of Christian Standard. But there were other aspects of the itnerview that didn't make the final cut. Here are a few quotes:


"Our adult ministries guy does a great job, trying to keep things going every week, running special adult education programs at all times of the week. I’m a strong believer in really good children’s ministry and youth ministry programs
. . .
We emphasize missions. This is a very generous congregation. We have an annual offering that goes to some mission endeavor someplace. With matching funds we reached up to $400,000 one year, for safe houses in the persecuted church. We do that every year. One year it will be stateside or even local here, and the next year it will be international.
. . .
We work hard on outreach we run Awana and Upward and annual programs that the community looks forward to. We host Food Bank distribution, kindergarten registration, and other community events.
. . .
A year ago we hired a women’s minister and that’s had a solid impact.

I believe the Sunday morning worship service is the driver of the church and it has to be healthy and it has to be inspiring. Pretty much steady growth.

The old building we were in had 25 parking spaces. We got up to 500 in three services. Had already purchased land before I came, with nothing done with it. We built a gymnasium and started having church functions. We added on some education space and saw an immediate 30% increase from that. When we went to our third phase and went to our big worship area on Greentree, again we saw 30% growth
. . .
We go out to Bennett Springs, which is a beautiful park, on the first Sunday of every June, a Baptism Sunday. We match it with a big church picnic and people are already putting their names on a list. We have a baptistery in the church and will baptize them at any time they desire. Most of our baptisms are private. They want a few family and friends to be there for that.
. . .
Volunteer opportunities include a hospitality team, missions committee, and bereavement ministry, to name a few.
. . .
Extracurricular activities take place seasonally, including co-ed volleyball and men’s basketball open gyms, and church league softball."

Psalm 119:113-120 Samekh

I hate double-minded people,
but I love your law.
You are my refuge and my shield;
I have put my hope in your word.
Away from me, you evildoers,
that I may keep the commands of my God!
Sustain me, my God, according to your promise, and I will live;
do not let my hopes be dashed.
Uphold me, and I will be delivered;
I will always have regard for your decrees.
You reject all who stray from your decrees,
for their delusions come to nothing.
All the wicked of the earth you discard like dross;
therefore I love your statutes.
My flesh trembles in fear of you;
I stand in awe of your laws.

Psalm 119:113-120

Look at Samekh. Isn't it cute?

The 15th letter of the Hebrew alphabet looks like an earnest 12-year old boy, hair combed over nicely, with a curl and a wave. Maybe even one of those Bieber flops.

The kind of boy who grows up to know his right from wrong. Good from evil. Them from us.

That's the kind of 12 year old I was. Ready to take my place on the right side of things, confident of  the unwavering line between right and not-right.

This entire set of eight verses seems to be about black and white, the divisions between good and evil. I've no doubt that's pretty much how the world looked from David's point of view.

But 21st century America is overdosing on POVs. Our culture is gorging itself on opinions. Instead of building walls to divide ourselves into opposing camps, we charge headlong into the internet of arguments. We've elevated squabbling and quibbling and shaming to preferred status as our National Pastime.

As I heard a co-worker exclaim just this morning, "Oh, I love it when people argue on Facebook!"

Some of those Facebook fighters and POV-pushers are also claiming to be people of God.

Who are the double-minded people David talks about? Are they "those sinners"? Or are they people who love the Lord their God with half of their heart and some of their soul and the part of their mind they can spare when they're not arguing online about walls and guns?

Who are the evildoers? Who is straying from the decrees of God? Who are the ones with delusions? Who is wickedly discarding his truth?

Could it be me? Could it be you?

Are we focusing on being the best of God's soldiers? Or is our engagement in the anti-social media turning us into weakened warriors?