WATER OF LIFE

We can have a righteous anger at injustice and immoral conduct and speak out against it through constructive criticism or a word of warning but if the situation still goes on it may cause us to get into a fleshly (unspiritual, unholy, selfish) anger and end up like Moses when he slammed his staff against the rock out of frustration over the Israelite’s behavior. Pastor Steve Mays points out that this wasn’t okay because Moses was mad at the people but God wasn’t. Moses had put up with a lot of bad behavior for a long time but that still wasn’t an excuse to disobey and dishonor God.

Then the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, Because you had not enough faith in me to keep my name holy before the children of Israel, you will not take this people into the land which I have given them.
Numbers 20:12

It was a pretty big punishment for slipping into a fleshly anger but Moses was leader over all the Israelites so the punishment fit the misuse of position. He also dishonored God in the face of all the people by taking the credit for the miracle: “Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?” (Numbers 20:10). In expressing our anger we have be careful not to slip into self-power (instead of relying on the Holy Spirits power working through us). Anger is a powerful emotion and it can also bring out pride, and self-confidence, which leads to a lack of acknowledgment for what God has done in our lives. This is again what Paul was warning about when he said to be angry but not sin.

My new book, Discovering the Water of Life, is available on Amazon — just in time for Christmas;)

Here is the book description:

One man steps into a victorious life in Christ and experiences a transformation and renewal through baptism of the Holy Spirit. He describes God’s inner work, Christian dream interpretation, and God’s refining fire.

This book includes his observations on spiritual gifts, and comparisons of Christianity, personality type (Myers-Briggs), and culture types. It also contains inspiring articles on faith and revival in Hawaii and other countries.

“The water of life is the Holy Spirit in our lives. One of the reasons I moved to Hawaii is that the ocean is a spiritual experience or spiritually renewing for me. The water of life is not a physical drink—it’s spiritual—something that fills our spirit; heals our soul and body; and flows out of our heart to those around us.”

There are endless forms of injustice in society but God has burdened me with the injustice of economic inequality. God has given me a burden not for charity but for justice and Nicholas Wolterstorff in his essay Justice, Not Charity clarifies exactly what this means. (I haven’t read it but Wolterstorff goes even deeper into the meaning of justice in his book called Justice.) The spiritual gift of wisdom is the ability to apply Biblical principles to real life situations, and Wolterstorff, through his gift of wisdom, articulates God’s truth of our Christian (and non-Christian) responsibility for justice along with charity. We should not use one to excuse the other. We must seek justice for the downtrodden and misfortunate. We are called not only to do acts of charity but also to work to remove the injustice that caused them to need charity.

Is this not the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
(Isaiah 58:6-7).

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me:
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners;
(Isaiah 61:1).

“The passage in Isaiah which Jesus read or referred to spoke not only of sharing one’s bread with the hungry, bringing the homeless poor into one’s house, and clothing the naked, but also of loosing the bonds of injustice, undoing the thongs of the yoke, letting the oppressed go free, and breaking every yoke. One not only tends to the victims of injustice but looses the bonds that make them victims” (Justice, Not Charity).

Christians must understand that charity doesn’t let them off the hook of fighting injustice. “Rendering justice to the victims of injustice requires going beyond aiding victims; it requires attacking the victimizers—be they individual persons, social organizations and institutions, or whatever.” “Christians should not only alleviate the distress of the downtrodden, but become their advocates against those who oppress them” (Justice, Not Charity).

Justice for me is about applying universal truths (from God) to real life situations. Social Justice is about getting together various groups that are all working towards some piece of universal truth. I suppose we all believe our own personal tuning into universal truth is the best avenue for social change. I personally believe that equality (social, economic, and recognizing and rewarding individuals, etc.) is the master key that will bring about a lot of other universal truths (clean environment, end of violence, etc.).

The most successful social change movement has a spiritual base. Social change occurs by God’s grace, his divine supernatural power, moving within each individual and society and spiritually transforming everyone. “Great men…all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven…we shall never save civilisation as long as civilisation is our main object” (Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis).

What’s important to social change is not a self-empowered movement but a spiritual empowerment by God. The closest thing to an embodiment of God’s supernatural power is the church. There certainly aren’t any super-heroes in the church but the power that flows through the body of the church is super-powered by God’s grace and Holy Spirit. Philip Yancey writes, “For all its flaws the church at times has, fitfully and imperfectly to be sure, dispensed Jesus’ message of grace to the world. It was Christianity, and only Christianity, that brought the end to slavery, and Christianity that inspired the first hospitals and hospices to treat the sick. The same energy drove the early labor movement, women’s suffrage, prohibition, human rights campaigns, and civil rights” (What’s so Amazing About Grace).

The Salvation Army was also started as a Christian mission. “They feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, treat addicts and alcoholics, and show up first at disaster scenes. The movement has continued to grow so that today these soldiers of grace number a million–one of the world’s largest standing armies—and serve in a hundred countries” (What’s so Amazing About Grace). Maybe the Christian character is what is needed for movements like the environment. “Our culture says, ‘If you don’t own it, you won’t take care of it.’ But Christians live by a higher standard: Because God owns it, I must take the best care of it that I can” (The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren).

I’ve got a particular calling towards righting the inequality in society, however C.S. Lewis explains my conundrum: “There is a paradox about tribulation in Christianity. Blessed are the poor, but by ‘judgment’ (i.e. Social Justice) and alms we are to remove poverty wherever possible” (The Problem of Pain). The poor have more of a reason to be dependent on God and as a result it is easier for them to receive God’s grace and blessings. I feel a calling to right the injustice of inequality in the U.S. and the world but by doing so am I giving people less of a reason to turn to God?

Is social change more effective through changing lives instead of changing laws? Yancey points out how unpolitical Jesus was. “Jesus’ images portray the kingdom as a kind of secret force. Sheep among wolves, treasure hidden in a field, the tiniest seed in the garden, wheat growing among weeds, a pinch of yeast worked into bread dough, a sprinkling of salt on meat—all these hint at a movement that works within society, changing it from the inside out” (What’s so Amazing About Grace). Yancey gives the fall of the Roman Empire and the crumbling of Communism as evidence that Christianity is more powerful and lasting than any national power or political movement. Should we concentrate our social change on people (and as result society) instead of laws?

Christianity is not “salvation from this earthly existence, but a religion of salvation from injustice in this earthly existence”. Matthew 25:31-46 “is about justice. It says that to alleviate the condition of the social least is to render them what justice requires. It is not to go beyond justice into the realm of charity and benevolence; it is to render to them what justice requires. To fail to come to their aid is not simply to fail in charity or to be less than fully righteous. It is to wrong them. And the passage gives a truly awesome significance to wronging them: to wrong the social least is, whether one realizes it or not, to wrong Jesus Christ himself” (Justice, Not Charity: Social Work through the Eyes of Faith by Nicholas Wolterstorff).