Advent: Trust and Obey...

When I was little we sang an old hymn called "Trust and Obey." Trust and obey, for there's no other way, to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.

I hear a lot of trust language in the public sphere...but not much obey. Another mass shooting happened yesterday. The one in California got the press, but it was the second of the day. The FBI defines "mass shooting" as four or more people...and there have been 355 mass shootings this year in the US.

And we, the people of God, seem to be hiding behind our "trust" as we send our prayers for the victims and avoid with every fiber of our being anything that would look like obedience to "love God AND love your neighbor as yourself."

This is not a political column, but I don't want anyone to think that the way we are living together right now is "Christian." We don't listen to each other. We don't respect each other. We live in fear and live making a living off that fear. Many of our politicians make statements that, if we heard them from men dressed in black spandex with assault rifles and the ISIS symbol, we would consider terrorist in nature.

Most significantly, we don't work for God's shalom. God's peace and wholeness is for all people, and working primarily for a political party's benefit, or a economic class or a race or a gender ...that's not obedience. 

Are the issues complex? You bet. Will they lead to other massive challenges? No question. But we cannot complain that our problems stem from taking God out of our schools. Our problems stem from the inability to trust and obey that God to whom we give lip service.

The passage from 2 Peter  3:11-18 asks how to live while we wait for God to return to establish God's kingdom again on this earth. Nowhere in the Bible are God's people excused to act however they want because God will win eventually. We are always charged to live lives of holiness and godliness--trusting and obeying if you will. We are looking to an earth where righteousness is at home...not power or suspicion or killing or money or fear of others.

The author of 2 Peter acknowledges there are some thing hard to understand in this life of faith that "the ignorant twist to their own destruction." As I was taught to trust and obey, I was also taught that one sure way to tell if you were "obeying" in the right direction was to watch the fruit of the Spirit... love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Gal. 5:22-23)

Are we the beloved nation of God? Are we the exceptional people of God who live in this wonderful, rich country that has resources that are beyond what we need? Not today we are not. I don't see love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. I see hate, anger, fear, impatience and judgment, meanness, impatience, and actual pride in behaving rashly without self-control. And don't nod your heads here and blame "those people" with whom you disagree. Ask yourself what part you play. Change begins with each one of us trusting and obeying "love God and love neighbor as self."

We are twisting ourselves to our own destruction. And I know because the fruit we are harvesting is not fruit I want to eat, it is not fruit I want to feed to my children or grandchildren, it is not fruit I want to share with the world.

The Advent question is whether or not we can truly trust that God's way is the right way...and then obey God's commands, even at risk of our lives and our power. That will build us into the people we want to be...the people who the world will see as God's people.