Be the change by Jason Valendy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Why God Will Not Rid The World Of The Devil
Stanley Hauerwas (Source)
As previously stated at the end of the last post, Stanley Hauerwas wrote in his book Matthew, “That is why the devil is at once crafty but self-destructively mad, for the devil cannot help but be angry, recognizing as he must that he does not exist.”
The point being that the devil does not exist apart from other systems, structures and people. The devil does not exist outside of that which it is attached to. Like a parasite, the devil does not have the capacity to live outside of a host body. Thus, Hauerwas makes the case, this is maddening for the devil because the devil knows just how powerless the devil is.
The devil may not exist on its' own, but the presence and influence of the devil is felt. Which is why so many of us desire the end of the devil, but when we begin that work the tragic irony is revealed.
Even God will not rid the world of the devil.
The reason God will not eliminate the devil is because the force we call the devil, that does not exist without the life energy of other beings, is interwoven within humanity. It is like a tumor that has become entangled with vital organs. To remove the tumor the vital organs would be destroyed and the body would die. Given the option of killing the body or allowing the cancer to exist, God chooses not to kill the body but hold that body in God’s hands through the difficult times of life.
Because to destroy the a parasite so interwoven with creation, God would destroy the very creation God loves. The devil is crafty in so much that the devil figured out, even as a being that does not exist, how to survive.
Even Satan Knows He Does Not Exist
Pastor Brian Zahnd was explaining Satan to those of us who do not take the Satanvery seriously. Generally those are the people who are in the west, highly educated, wealthy, “rational” and suspicious of those things that are unscientific. A decent sized group of people.
In his efforts to explain the Devil, Zahnd described the way meteorologists would describe a hurricane. Hurricanes are powerful, destructive and are even given anthropomorphic names. But even as we name a hurricane, we know that the hurricane is the result of complex systems intermingling and colliding with each other. The hurricane cannot exist on its own.
Likewise Satan is powerful, destructive and given a name. We know that Satan is the result of complex systems intermingling and colliding with each other. As such, Satan cannot exist on its own. Satan is the result of the most complicated systems interconnected with the most complex animal on the planet.
Those of us who have read Stanley Hauerwas may recall how he wrote in his book Matthew, “That is why the devil is at once crafty but self-destructively mad, for the devil cannot help but be angry, recognizing as he must that he does not exist.”
The #1 Obstacle To Discipleship Making
One of the underlying conditions of the UMC is that there are fewer and fewer people in the USA who attend a Christian worshiping community. It may even be said that if the UMC were not in decline then the current conversations about ministry with LGBTQIA persons would be much less hostile. Like in sports, if we felt like we were “winning” or being “successful” then we would not be too worried about many things we are worried about now (rightly or wrongly).
There are many reasons why we no longer attend worship in the numbers we once did and I do not have to belabor those points we hear all “know.” However, of all the reasons I have heard there is one that is perhaps the most subtle and perhaps the most nefarious: People are already disciples.
Word of Life Church founder and lead pastor Brian Zahnd recently said the number one obstacle to making disciples of Jesus Christ in America is people are already discipled as Americans.
Many of us as pastors are more willing to talk about the evils within racism than we are to talk about the evils within patriotism. Many preachers would rather preach on peace and the end of war-making than how it is our churches (and salaries) are wrapped up in the military complex machine that is the USA.
I can honestly say the number one reason that I fail at being a disciple of Jesus is because I have been and continue to be discipled by the American myths. The Church is the last best place that I know that can help provide a space for me to unlearn from my teacher in order to become like the Master.