Isaiah — Chapter 24
"Earth is polluted by its very own people,
who have broken its laws,
Disrupted its order,
violated the sacred and eternal covenant.
Therefore a curse, like a cancer,
ravages the earth." Isaiah 24: 5-6
I feel the need to remind you (and myself) that these passages I quote are always from The Message version of the Bible, unless otherwise noted. If you don't know what that means, check out this link:
http://www.biblegateway.com/versions/index.php?action=getVersionInfo&vid=65&lang=2
To paraphrase the paraphrase, essentially, the author of The Message went to the Greek or Hebrew or whichever original language the particular text was written in, and instead of trying to translate all the words verbatim, he tried to translate the meaning. So he took colloquialisms and adapted words which don't carry the intended meaning when literally translated and substituted them with modern equivalents. There's a fair amount of discussion in the world of biblical scholarship about whether or not this is a good idea. I don't know...but I like it. It helps me to see the Bible afresh. Maybe I'll switch back to the King James, after I get accustomed to this.
This preamble is merely to point out that, in the original text, the word "polluted" was probably not used. I don't think they had much issue with pollution back then. But it conveys a strong meaning to us in the here and now, doesn't it?
A little less than a year ago, I stared out a 19th floor window in the Bentley Hotel, Manhattan. Taxi cabs were the size of sleeping pills and watching the people run around, well, it made me sleepy. They all looked so busy and tired. The trash on the streets was as plentiful as sand on the beach. The whole scene was like a huge ant farm. I wasn't in the best of moods that day, and I remember thinking that people were like bacteria, or more like a virus that was infecting the earth. A cancer. A curse. The above passage reminds me of that day.
Some think that people are inherently good. Others tote the yin/yang theory. Personally, I think people are amazing things, with a capacity to imagine and create for good and ill that is unparalleled. Whether or not you believe in literal original sin, though, the average person has to see we are all stunted, either on a personal or societal level. Humanity and our whole planet can be healthy, but it's not. They're both being attacked at a molecular level. Call it cancer, a virus, bacteria, bad genes, bad guacamole...whatever. The bottom line is that, in general, we're like "an olive tree shaken clean of its olives, a grapevine picked clean of its grapes" (Isaiah 24: 13).
Wow. What a downer.
The good news is that there is hope. Tons of it, actually. One day, the cancer-code will be totally cracked. Most viruses are easily cured these days, and bacteria can be quashed with some polysporin and alcohol. Al Gore's working on the whole "pollution" thing. These similes, for the most part, have answers. And so does the object being compared: our humanity. What is the answer? Any guesses? Anyone???
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Hey, as an aside, do you think perhaps Isaiah ever grew weary of being Mr Doom 'n Gloom? Check out verse 16:
"That's all well and good for somebody,
but all I can see is doom, doom, and more doom."
Or, enjoy the poetic rendition from the New International Version:
"I waste away, I waste away!
Woe to me!
The treacherous betray!
With treachery the treacherous betray!"
Yeah, probably. Here's to positivity!
Isaiah — Chapter 23
"Everything (Tyre) gets, all the money she takes in, will be turned over to God. It will not be put in banks. Her profits will be put to the use of God-Aware, God-Serving-People, providing plenty of food and the best of clothing." Isaiah 23: 18
Apparently, Tyre was an economic whore, sleeping around Wall Street style, and God didn't care much for that.
When I was younger, one of my favorite bands was a trio by the name of "Pray For Rain" (shortened to "PFR" after a BushX-type lawsuit threat). They were a Christian band that, at times, sounded so much like The Beatles that they could have been threatened with a second lawsuit in the opinions of many. I never really listened to The Beatles back then, but it's clear that PFR did. Now, I knew a lot of people in those days (and in these days) who were okay with me listening to PFR but not to The Beatles. Or, as another example, it would be cool for me to listen to DC Talk but not to a secular artist like, say, Run DMC. I always thought that was crazy. If you're brewing coffee with sewer water, I ain't drinking the coffee. Somewhere along the way, someone was misjudging something.
You know what? The above statement is a tangent that is unfortunately not totally pertinent to the passage in question. My apologies. Let's get back on track...
St. Augustine made an interesting point in his defense of using rhetoric in the presentation of the Gospel. It's often quoted as the concept of "Egyptian Gold", and it's lifted from the 12th chapter of Exodus when the Israelites are fleeing Egypt and they take a whack of gold and silver from the Egyptians on the way. The argument is that this wealth was probably at one point dedicated to a false god, or in the service of a godless nation, at least. There were probably even little idols in the mix. But God told them to take this stuff, 'cause they were gonna need it. It didn't matter who owned it or what it was for. They were just things. Things are only as good or as bad as their current use or as the people using them.
Hmm...I'm having a hard-go at connecting all the dots here. One more try...
His eye is one the sparrow?
Okay.
Bottomline: God provides for our needs, but don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Rather, don't look any gift in the past. After all, "The earth is God's, and everything in it." (I Corinthians 10: 26)
Isaiah — Chapter 22
"'On that Day I'll replace Shebna. I will call my servant Eliakim son of Hilkiah...I'll give him your authority...I'll give him the key of the Davidic heritage. He'll have the run of the place—open any door and keep it open, lock any door and keep it locked. I'll pound him like a nail into a solid wall. He'll secure the Davidic tradition. Everything will hang on him...And then the Day will come...when that nail will come loose and fall out, break loose from that solid wall—and everything hanging on it will go with it.' That's what will happen. God says so." Isaiah 22: 20-25
While I was first reading through this passage, I remember thinking "Wow, that Shebna guy really screwed up. Thank goodness for Eliakim; he'll get the job done." But when I got to the end of the passage, I remember thinking "Wow, I really don't get God."
I mean, Eliakim was supposed to be the answer to most of Israel's leadership problems. He was gonna replace corruption and pride with nobility and humility, and he was gonna "secure the Davidic tradition". If that's the case, why was God then going to allow him to "come loose and fall out" so that "everything hanging" on him will fall too? Isaiah said that God would pound him "like a nail into a solid wall". I imagine that wouldn't have felt too good, having God sledgehammer you into gyprock or cement of society, but you'd think it'd be fairly effective, wouldn't you? I just didn't get it.
I'm still not sure that I have gotten it, but my perspective has changed slightly. He's only human. Not God, but the other guy, Eliakim. I'm sure that God drove him far into the political and social bedrock of the day, and I'm sure that a lot of weight rested on his head for a long time, but eventually, Eliakim had to die. Die or screw up or retire, or some combination thereof. See, everything that involves humans can only be temporary, because we're all temporary. So while we're unaware of the details that wiggled this nail loose from the wall, there could be a few dozen at least that don't implicate God as faithless.
Life is short. So are finishing nails.
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At this point I'd be tempted to throw in an "eat, drink, and be merry" straight out of Ecclesiastes (one of my favorite books, to be sure), but I've found a divergent take on the quote in this chapter suggesting that this enjoyment of life can't come at the cost of avoiding God's truth but must be coupled with embracing it, instead (v 12-14). Still, enjoy yourself. Just keep in mind the source of all pleasure.
The Away Mission
Everyone loves a good confession. We love to be the catholic priests of the day to day, being shot with excitement from the guilt or shame of others, amidst the mundanity. That is the only reason we know the names "Ricki Lake", "Jerry Springer", or "Montel". Well, here's a little something for you which you may not believe, given my abnormally high level of coolness, but I, Marc Jolicoeur***, was once a Trekkie. For the uninitiated, this means that in my younger years, I was a die-hard fan of a television show called "Star Trek: The Next Generation". I briefly flirted with the original series, as well as with "Deep Space Nine", but STTNG was definitely the one for me. I loved it so much that I had a big book (dubbed "The Starfleet Manual") full of schematics of phasers and starships. My passwords for a long time involved some form of the word "Enterprise". I even learned a couple words in Klingon. My geeky friends and I would regularly stay up all night and watch a marathon of all the movies. I actually read one of the novels once, too. I hated to read; I liked Star Trek.
Why am I telling you this? It's not actually that I feel any kind of weight on my shoulders that needs rid. I'm comfortable. I'm sharing this with you to establish myself as an authority for the starting point of this discussion: the away mission.
If any of you have ever watched an episode of Star Trek, you'll know that they spend most of their time on a space ship, wearing clothes that look like 1970's pajamas. Often, however, a designated group of officers will leave the ship to accomplish a set purpose, which is generally dangerous. When they compile these groups of about 4-6 people, which are comprised mainly of the chief characters on the show, they usually tend to include 1 or 2 "unknowns" as well. "Unknowns", of course, are characters that you've never seen before, and chances are, will never see again. They leave the ship and beam into enemy territory, only to be shot at on arrival. If this doesn't happen, the situation will at least grow tense, and the leisure-suited unknown will become nervous and draw his weapon. In any case, the result is the same; the guy you didn't recognize gets shot.
Even if you've never seen any such episode (or if you're too cool to admit it), you'll have plenty of experience with this sorta thing. Remember "Braveheart"? Countless Scottish rebels were mowed down by the poor-toothed English, but not many with speaking parts. This is pretty much the case in any action film. We only have 2 hours with these people, and their deaths are hardly worth noticing if they didn't even have a morsel of sparkling dialogue. Unknowns are unmissed.
I was a weird kid. Rather, I am a weird kid, though I'm now only a child of the mind. When my body was little, I spent the vast majority of my free time with the TV. It wasn't that my parents didn't love me, and I certainly had friends. I think I was just lazy. Regardless of the reason, I'd spend my prime time on Prime Time all the time. My favorite things to watch were sitcoms and sci-fi. This caused me to have an adult's vocabulary of words I didn't understand, just like many adults. It also enabled me (primarily through the sci-fi) to witness hundreds of these "Deaths of the Unknown". The weird thing? I always felt kinda bad. I always wondered what their life was like and what happened after they were shot. Why didn't they have a witty remark? Would their parents cry that they were gone? Even the bad guys; I recall wondering what the face of the Storm Troopers looked like after they'd been shot...or if they even had faces. As I got older, I started watching more epic movies, and the thoughts faded but didn't disappear. When Neo's fighting for his freedom from The Matrix, he kills dozens of innocent bystanders without concern. Did they have backstories? Is lack of character development a good enough reason for cold blooded killing? The guard who just got stabbed by the hero...did he really have a choice? Was this what he was born for? How can I take no notice of his death and cry for the loss of the protagonist's love? How can I not value the unknowns?
Before you call the Drama Police, I told you; I was a weird kid. I do realize that the people inside the little box aren't real. But they seem real sometimes, don't they? Don't they represent reality, in some way? Life imitating fiction imitating life. A room full of mirrors.
While watching the 6 o'clock news last week, I stumbled on a story about a young man stabbing his grandparents to death. One was stabbed 27 times, while the other was only stabbed 12 times. I imagine the deaths would have been quite painful and horribly slow. They would have heard each other screaming, as well, which would have compounded emotional pain for their loved one onto the physical. They never mentioned their names. Upon hearing this report, I finished my Kraft dinner, went on Facebook for a few minutes, then went out to the movies. I saw a comedy that night. I laughed. They were unknowns.
If my grandparents suffered a fate even remotely close to the one mentioned above, I'm fairly certain I'd be broken in two from the grief. Yet for these 2 poor souls, who could have been angels or devils for all I know, I won't even shrug. How? A Canadian soldier is killed in combat (I don't approve of the war), an African mother dies of AIDS (we don't even speak the same language), a British tourist is shot in Brazil (I bet it's warm in Brazil), and to me they are all unknowns. We may be living in a global village, but our huts are getting further and further apart everyday. The space between us is the value of life.
We see it all around us. We see it in video games. We see it in the abortion rate. We see it in the school system. We watch it in movies and read about it in the newspapers. On the world market, the value of life is plummeting. The decisions of businessmen and politicians everywhere have been lowering people's perspective of what human life is, and the end result can only be a world where life is as disposable as a paper plate.
By no means am I saying that no one is helping. Right now, throughout the planet, there are thousands of organizations trying to preserve health and human dignity by feeding the poor and caring for the sick. Many of these organizations are doing tremendous work infusing worth into the people they deal with. Others are also doing a lot of work to restore people's wellness, but to feed and clothe someone so that they can continue to be taught that humans are nothing but chemical accidents without a future or a meaning is putting a bandaid on a shotgun wound. The trouble is that all these things (education, entertainment, social conditions, etc) combine to create an atmosphere where an individual can too easily see other individuals as unimportant. Worthless. And if this becomes a person's prevailing view of humanity, it won't take too long for that person to figure out that they are, in fact, human as well. What if this individual comes to the conclusion that, in the story of life, they're just one of the unknowns? How will they choose to treat the other characters in the story? How will their story end?
The fact of the matter is that we are not worthless. Regardless of what you believe about creation or God, just look around at what humans are able to do, able to be. Look past the horrible things that we've done and see our creativity and our capacity for love. We're coming into an age where we might no longer be able to own slaves, but we might soon be able to buy fetuses, and life could too easily come to be viewed as just another product if we don't take care as to our view of it.
As someone who claims to follow the ways of Christ, my job is to think of others more highly than I think of myself. But that wouldn't mean much if I considered myself worthless, would it? Even religious selflessness is at least partially reliant on a worth of humanity.
Now, we live in a beautiful but broken world, so if we truly esteemed every single person so highly, we'd die on a daily basis. What with the reports of war and famine, the rape and murder and general disregard for our fellow man, our tears would run us dry. To be honest, I don't know how we could practically live in the balance between that theoretical world and the one we now occupy. But I, for one, think we need to try.
I don't watch Star Trek that much anymore. I still catch the odd rerun here and there, and when a movie comes out, I'll make an appearance, but I am a little out of touch with that whole scene now. I do still understand the away mission very well, though. They don't kill off the captain because Trekkies know him. They care about him. They knock out the unknowns because they're just that; unknown. The real world isn't scripted, but the writers of chance and circumstance might be less inclined to wreak so much havoc on unknowns if they knew that people cared for them too. For TV, we vote with our ratings. For the real world, we vote by how we treat people everyday. Today, let's cast our ballots for worth.
***If you're in the majority of people and don't know who "Marc Jolicoeur" is, then you might miss the inherent sarcasm in the proclamation of how cool he is. Allow me to reassure you: sarcasm intended.
Isaiah — Chapter 21
"'Night watchman! How long till daybreak?
How long will this night last?'
The night watchman calls back,
'Morning's coming,
But for now it's still night.
If you ask me again, I'll give the same answer.'" Isaiah 21: 11-12
When I was a kid, I went on plenty of long car rides with my folks. Quebec, Saskatchewan, Rhode Island. As I got older, I didn't mind traveling, but you know what it's like cooping up young children for hours at a time. I remember driving all the way to Atlanta once when I was probably only 10 or so. Long before the highway litter of giant peaches and cheap fireworks signaled our arrival, I'd already been jackhammering the familiar "Are we there yet?" to my parents for hours. The thing was, no matter how many times I asked, the answer was the same. "No". It didn't matter how patient or impatient I was. We weren't there yet. Eventually we would be, but as of yet, we weren't. No amount of pleading or wishing would make it happen any faster. Along with that, no amount of wishing or pleading or patience or impatience would stop us from getting there. The destination was sure. My parents said so.
I love my parents.
I trust my parents.
Should a conflict arise, I'd take God's word over theirs.
What I'm saying is that if God promises us something, we can be 100% sure that it will come to pass. We couldn't stop it from happening if we tried. But if we're impatient and annoying, well, that won't make it get here any faster. The term "God's timing" may seem abstract or cliche, but it's really the most succinct way of describing the inexplicable timetable by which He tends to operate. Time is a human condition.
The passage from Isaiah quoted above is concerning Edom, and it gives no detail as to what the morning will hold and who it's held for. But the section directly follows a passage where Isaiah gets to finally deliver a piece of good news to a people that he loves and is no doubt tired of hearing doom 'n gloom messages only from the prophet. The truth presented to me is one of patience. Not a patience advocated as to bring a different result, but this patience will simply change our point of view. It will make the journey much more pleasant, and the destination easier to identify.
Patience isn't a road map; it's the ability to sleep in the back seat, smile on your face.