100 Prison Meditations: Cries of Truth from Behind the Iron Curtain (12 page)

God’s Thankfulness to You

Cleanse yourself within and God will be thankful to you. God thankful! Such an idea may never have occurred to you, but it is implied in the Sermon on the Mount: “If ye love them which love you, what thank have ye?” (Luke 6:32, KJV). Now, thanks from whom? Evidently from God. He thanks you if you can love those who do not love you.

The ear of wheat and the flower bow in gratitude toward the earth from whence came the water and minerals they needed in order to grow. And through Christ’s descent to earth, God Himself bowed in thanks to all those like Abraham, Joseph, Moses, and innumerable others, who overcame human attachments, lust, greed, and selfishness, who loved those unworthy of love, who did good to those who had given them evil, and who lent without hope of receiving.

Jesus bowed gratefully before the apostles who gave up everything for Him, and washed their feet. He knew that all these apostles had tragic lives and dramatic deaths ahead of them because of their love for Him, and so He bowed before them like a servant and washed their feet.

Cultivate good thoughts toward your fellow men. If they have wronged you, remember that all their evil is “such stuff as dreams are made of.” After a few years, you yourself will not remember it. Evil works die as men die and as dreams vanish. The Bible speaks about “dead works” (Hebrews 6:1). A man’s evil toward you will have passed away but your good thoughts about him will remain. If good thoughts do not arise spontaneously in you, will to have them even though your heart still harbors resentment or hatred. God does not judge the surface of your heart, but looks to your deeper regret that such voices remain inside you.

Take special advantage of the moments immediately after communion. Remember then that the King is within you as surely as He was in the womb of the virgin Mary. This is the time for inner communion with the inner King.

We often act like madmen. When He is outside, surrounding us, we chatter within ourselves; when He is inside, we are busy gossiping outside. Do not fear the ugly voices that speak within you. God knows what to do about them.

The Rabbi of Berditschev once prayed: “Lord of the universe, the people of Israel are the phylacteries of thy forehead. When a Jew drops his phylacteries, he lifts them up with loving care, cleanses them of every stain and then, with a kiss, makes amends for their abasement. Lord of the world, the phylacteries are fallen to the ground.”

God is closer to you than you are to yourself; He feels your griefs and your joy more keenly than you do. Your evil thoughts stain His holy name more deeply than your own, so He will be sure to free you of them, to keep you holy in spite of them or even to bring some good out of them.

A mother’s love for her child is more tender than the child’s self-love. Rely on Christ for this too. Think about Him as you would think about a loving mother.

In Hebrew the word for “Holy Spirit” is a female noun. Catherine of Sienna might not have known Hebrew but she had the right intuition, for whenever she went to communion she considered herself as a child sucking the breast of her mother.

Your wrongful inner talks are forgiven even before you utter them. It is only righteous that it should be so. Before we are born, before we have done the slightest evil, we are already sentenced to death because of offenses committed by others. Before the Jewish people existed and could offend God in any way, God told Abraham that his descendants would be enslaved in a foreign country for four centuries (Genesis 15:13). It is only fair that we be forgiven, because of what the “new Adam” did for us on the cross.

You think forgiven evil thoughts, you speak forgiven inner words. You hear inner voices today which in the spiritual reality have long since been erased. Time is a confusion in your mind. You hear today what belongs to your past. Your present is intimate communion with Him.

You can make God rejoice over you with singing (Zephaniah 3:17). Do not miss the opportunity.

The Lord of Hosts

Theologians speak about the attributes of God. The Bible never mentions such a thing. The very word “attributes” implies qualities that are assigned to Him by men.

Touch the wing of a butterfly and you destroy the splendor of its colors. The holy contents of the notion “Godhead” are desecrated through investigation. The biblical names of God must be accepted with caution. Divine, mysterious existence is encased in the words of a fallen race whose language cannot possibly express the reality of God.

“Lord of hosts,” one of God’s names, is how some men thought of Him during a certain period. Once they called Him Lord of hosts, certain conclusions followed. He ordered Joshua to set an ambush for the enemy (Joshua 8:1,2). “[Joshua] utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord God of Israel had commanded” (10:40). By the same command, he “set the city on fire” (8:8). Joshua offered burnt offerings to the Lord (8:31) after having killed all the inhabitants of Ai because of such an order.

Calvin believed all these things literally. He wrote, “The literal sense of Scripture is the whole essence of faith and Christian theology. It is better to confess ignorance than to play with frivolous guesses. Allegories are the scum of the Holy Spirit, they are harlots seducing me.”

I am a disciple of what is called the typological school. I believe that the accounts of the wars in the Bible can also be symbols of our own spiritual battles.

The assembling of armies is always a bad sign. Even victorious armies have no real splendor, and to find them glorious implies delight in the slaughter of men. It is said that victories should be treated as funeral rites. A man of God exercises quiet restraint and avoids using weapons whenever possible.

The many accounts of war in the Bible are of great value to us in a negative sense.

Indries Shah tells a Sufite story of a man who got lost in a forest. He wandered for several days unable to find a way out. Then he met a wild, unkempt-looking man whom he assumed to be an inhabitant of the wood. He asked the man for directions. “I myself have been lost in this forest for 10 years,” replied the man. “Then you cannot help me,” the first said. “On the contrary,” said the other. “I can show you hundreds of paths that do not lead out of the wood.” Negative experiences have exceptional value. The many histories of war in the Bible teach that little lasting good is achieved by war.

Jesus is the Prince of Peace. Seek the ways of peace.

What is Abraham’s Greatness?

Why does Abraham play such a prominent role throughout the Bible? Why are all nations blessed in his seed? Why can no one be saved except through becoming an heir of Abraham and entering into the covenant God made with him? He was far from always being a good man. Why did God choose him?

God does not choose the best, but those whom He intends to make best.

God’s first lesson for Abraham was to be ready, for his faith, to reject his civilization and form a minority of one. The Midrash (a Rabbinical commentary of the Old Testament) tells a story of Abraham’s father, Terah, who was a builder of idols. As a boy Abraham wished to test them. He prepared food, put it before the biggest idol and waited to see if it would eat. When it did not, he chopped up all the idols with an axe and put the axe in the hand of the largest. When his father returned home, he found the havoc and asked for an explanation. Abraham said, “I brought food to the gods. They quarreled over who should have the most, and the big one smashed the heads of the others.” The father replied, “Don’t be silly. These gods cannot move. Tell me what really happened…”

Then Abraham said, “Well, if they cannot move, they are not gods,” and he chopped off the head of the last idol and ran away from home. At first he worshiped the moon, but when he realized it faded before the sun, he adored the sun. But the sun too was transitory, so he came to believe in the one unseen God who had made sun, moon, and all other things. When this faith of Abraham’s was rejected by all his people, he left them, preferring to be with God, even if alone.

Next God taught Abraham obedience. Although Abraham had treated Hagar and Ishmael harshly, he could also be softhearted. When God told him He would destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, he pleaded for them.

When he was commanded to bring his only beloved son, Isaac, as a sacrifice, he did not pray for the son to be spared.

We do not know why God asked for Isaac’s sacrifice.

In Romania, an officer was suspected of treason during wartime. His father, a general, asked the king for permission to preside over the military tribunal which would sentence his son to death. Abraham might have had to show that he was willing to sacrifice affection for the sake of obedience.

In any case, when God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, He seemed to contradict His own law forbidding killing, as well as His promise to establish an everlasting covenant with Isaac and his descendants (Genesis 17:19). Of course, at that time Isaac had no children. With his death, everything would be finished. But Abraham, by fulfilling a commandment that contradicted the law and the promise, revealed that he loved God more than his own son, and for that, God richly blessed him.

Although Abraham might not always have been good, there was surely greatness in him.

Why Is God Harsh Against Some?

Before the settlement of the state of Massachusetts, God wiped out the Indians by plague. John Winthrop, who was its governor at that time, said, “If we have no right to this land, yet our God has right to it. If He be pleased to give it to us taking it from people who have so long usured upon Him and abused His creature, who shall control Him on His terms?”

To a modern Christian reader it might seem strange that I wrote, “God wiped out the Indians by plague.” Well, if not He, then who? I wrote in biblical language. Except for what is written in the Bible, we know about the essence of God as much as a fly knows about the nature of a king.

God says, “I plagued Egypt” (Joshua 24:5). God wiped out the Canaanite nations—women, children, and all.

Some ask whether this was ethical, but how ethical is ethics when it judges God? God is sovereign.

If the word “morality”can be applied to God, He must be said to employ a different morality from ours. A general remains well-protected in the rear while he commands his soldiers forward into enemy fire. Is this ethical? A ruler may sentence a citizen to death, although the citizens are forbidden to kill. As social life differs from private life, even less is the behavior of God meant to resemble ours.

At first glance it might seem unreasonable that the One who condemns us for killing even a single person should lawfully destroy whole populations. But all laws are based only on the will of God. He changes them when He likes. They are not necessary in themselves. Reason and faith are two separate conditions that do not harmonize in all things. There are even two separate logics, the physical one and that of faith. Aristotelian logic does not apply to religion in which 1 is equal to 3, one God a trinity.

The life of believers defies ordinary logic. Every believer should hate war, the killing of God’s creatures whom we are taught to love; but we also remember, “Machir…was a man of war; therefore he was given Gilead and Bashan” (Joshua 17:1). Though it is important for a believer not to fight, it is also important that Gilead should be possessed by him and not by people full of hatred. While we must loathe war, we also had to defeat Hitler, the lover of war. The logic of faith solves such problems.

Implications of Our Prayers

The Lord’s Prayer is given us as a warning against using too many words in prayer. Every request of God has many implications.

When we say, “Your kingdom come,” we should not use these words without knowing their consequences.

We say, “Come, Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22:20) but it is written, “Let no man deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first” (2 Thessalonians 2:3). In the great apostasy, whole nations will forsake the Christian faith; Christians will be hated by all nations for Christ’s name’s sake. “And then many will be offended, [and] will betray one another” (Matthew 24:1–10). You wish for the Lord’s coming. But have you made your decision? Will you be among the traitors or among the betrayed?

The coming of Christ brings eternal, definitive doom for unbelievers, among whom will be many of your cherished friends. It is written, “Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord! For what good is the day of the Lord to you? It will be darkness and not light” (Amos 5:18).

Do you wish Jesus to come? On that day the believers “shall go forth and look upon the corpses of the men who have transgressed against [God]. For their worm does not die, and their fire is not quenched” (Isaiah 66:24). Perhaps among these corpses will be members of your own family.

The Jews cannot bear to read this as the last verse of Isaiah and in their synagogues. In public readings, they repeat after this verse the comforting one that precedes it. They also do this after the last verse of Malachi, which concludes the Old Testament with the words of God: “Lest I come and strike the earth with a curse” (4:6).

But however you read it, the situation will be the same. When the Lord comes, all His opponents shall perish.

Although this wrath is beneficent, although their being consumed will show them “that God rules in Jacob to the ends of the earth” (Psalm 59:13), nonetheless it will be a difficult day to bear. Are you prepared to bear it?

The answer depends on whether you are born again. For those who have passed through new birth, the sight of hell will be a source of joy. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote that the tortures of the damned will be one of the delights of heaven. This is because we will be changed in a manner which we cannot now imagine. “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him” (1 Corinthians 2:9).

After conversion, the things that made you happy before become abhorrent and the things that displeased you become your joy. So, in the glorified body, we will appreciate the righteousness and the wrath of God in a manner incomprehensible for us now. Can an alcoholic believe that he will ever come to hate alcohol? So we cannot fathom that we will ever rejoice at seeing hell. It must be enough for us that it seems good in His sight (Matthew 11:26).

It is written that it pleased God to bruise Jesus (Isaiah 53:10). In our present stage of development, this is unimaginable. But if God can find pleasure in the innocent suffering of His Son, knowing the purpose it accomplishes, it might easily be that we will find pleasure in the righteous punishment of the wicked.

“Your kingdom come.” Do not speak these words lightly.