Resist Hate

On my way home on Friday, I saw a car with the following bumper sticker.

I am struck by the combination of these two words. They don't go together. Kind of like "gorge slower" or "crawl faster". There is no way to resist hate. Hate is a raging fire that consumes everything in its path. Do you really think we can reason out of hate? Did the suicide bomber who targeted teenagers wake up that morning and try to reason his way out of the despicable act?

There is natural evil in that heart of ours. The separation between me and the terrorist is not that great. I blogged about this when Osama Bin Laden was killed. As an example, when I drive behind a person driving slowly and my "righteous" anger seethes and I curse at them. I have read many books on the Rwanda genocide as I have visited Rwanda twice. How could people kill their neighbor - people they had known for years? The answer is simple - they saw them, not as friends and neighbors, but as objects of the enemy. People when asked why they killed simply expressed it as a "job to be done". Just like the terrorist.

Hate needs to be transformed, not resisted. Hate must be transformed by love. We must see people the same way God sees them - in His image.We must empathize with them. We realize that they are not objects of God's wrath, but troubled recipients of His grace just like me. The love must be seated in that perspective, not some sappy man-made emotional reaction. This kind of transformation is 100% supernatural. I cannot will myself out of this deep-seated hate in my heart. God must do that. Hate is still there but it is crowded out by love.

James 4:7 is a great verse for this - "Submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you."  This verse, at first blush, almost seems to support my friend's bumper sticker. In fact, it is the opposite. We are to submit to God first. Second, the resisting is against the author of hate, not the hate itself. The resistance must come supernaturally from God through his changing grace. 

Handcrafted

McDonald's latest advertising campaign uses the phrase "signature crafted" to describe it's new sandwiches. At this time, I am also reading the book "Simplify" which is a book that describes how companies have succeeded through what the author calls "price-simplification" or "proposition-simplification". In price-simplification, the goal is to continuously drop your price to a point where it is almost a no-brainer to purchase. One of the examples in the book is the original McDonalds business formula which is to produce acceptable quality but fast, consistent, and cheap.

One of my management team in a previous company once coined a phrase that has stuck with me over the years. He said, "Dan there is fast, cheap, and great - pick two". I have nothing against McDonalds (I actually like their breakfast sandwiches), but crafted is not a term I would use for their sandwiches. It is not like Morton's or Ruth Chris where there is a cook to order and I wait for my meal. If I wait more than two minutes for my sandwich, I am disillusioned. That is why they still call it fast food.

As I think about the beauty of God's creation, I think of this word "handcrafted". The psalmist contemplates this "When I consider your heavens, the work of your hands, the moon and the stars which you have created, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him" (Psalm 8:3-4). I read the Genesis account and you see creativity and thought interwoven through the creative process.

Further, today is Mother's Day, a day we reach out to those that gave us birth and those that raised us. My mother did not craft me in my mother's womb and it is ludicrous to think that Deb that with our kids. No, God did that. Not one of our kids called Deb and said - "thanks Mom for making me". The perfect creator of the heavens fashioned a new human being using human agents, intimacy of human relationship, time, and process. It shouldn't get old to amaze at the wonder of God. As our kids get older, this realization that they are in God's hands gets easier and easier as I think the same God handcrafted them from the beginning and calls them by name.

The Science Guy

A few months back, I attended the Tableau conference where the keynote speaker was Bill Nye, the Science Guy. Bill Nye is a very popular science educator and known for his wit and high energy presentation. Nye said a lot of very interesting things - watch the first four minutes of the following video from this conference. He said something like "we are a speck that is standing with a bunch of other specks surrounded by a bunch of other specks that orbits around a speck among other specks in the middle of specklessness. In other words, we suck. Yet you can know your place in space and with your brain you can change the world." Earlier in the speech, he talked about finding how he came to be through water they found with life in it on Mars.

Nye, who is very entertaining, got a standing ovation. I found myself with a deep sense of sadness that this man, brilliant as he was, could view his origin and his significance through the lens of himself. In my wildest imagination and as someone who did not always have a personal faith,  I could not even possibly imagine the complexity of space and of humans just coming to be from nothing. Nothing I observe points to that. I see a great designer who fashioned the vastness of the universe and then fashioned human beings in His image. I saw that even before coming to a personal faith.

I am humbled that the creator of the heavens and the earth has desired a personal relationship with me. I look into the vastness of space and I do see how seemingly insignificant we are. Yet I contemplate the infinite worth that God my creator gave to me. I imagine the ultimate cost that God paid to redeem me from the bondage of my sin through His son Jesus. I think it takes far less faith to believe that a personal God created man in His own image and bought a relationship with him than my origins are from water on Mars.

Every rejection of a creator God ultimately comes back to pride. We want to be the captain of our ship, to control our own destiny. We hate the thought of being accountable to someone. So we fashion ourselves as our own god. So when we hear this kind of thing, it actually sounds good to us. Paul says we worship the creation rather than the creator (Rom 1:16). I am reminded by his words to the Corinthian church - "But a natural man doe not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised".  A creator God who loves you longs for you to come to Him.