A Vision for Building

Nehemiah 5

Do you have a Biblical worldview? A few years back, one of the survey’s from Christian pollster George Barna revealed that 49% of pastors did not have a Biblical worldview. This is even more surprising when we see that Barna’s definition of a Biblical worldview only includes the six following beliefs.

·        the accuracy of biblical teaching

·        the sinless nature of Jesus

·        the literal existence of Satan

·        the omnipotence and omniscience of God

·        salvation by grace alone

·        the personal responsibility to evangelize

Only fifty one percent of protestant pastors hold to these basic beliefs. Even more surprising is that, according to this definition, 29% of Southern Baptist pastors did not have a Biblical worldview.[i]

You might be glad to know that by this definition, I have a 100% Biblical worldview. But I took a Biblical worldview test on a different website and received a score of 80%. I have given my life to preaching and teaching the inerrant Word of God, yet I only scored an 80% on a worldview test. If you assigned a grade to my test I would have received a B-!! That gives you a lot of confidence, doesn’t it?!

Why did I do so poorly on a Biblical worldview test? As I looked over the answers it appears that this particular worldview test had a definite political slant to it. In other words, if I did not answer all of the questions in line with their political viewpoint, I would receive a lower score. I am not sure what some of these questions have to do with a Biblical worldview. Here are a few examples.

· The more a government resembles a pure democracy the more disorder and confusion occur.

· Physically and mentally healthy adults that do not work should not be protected from suffering the consequences of their actions.

· Making the incomes of its citizens as equal as possible should be one of the top priorities of any legitimate government.

· The federal government should require students to pass a national test before graduating from high school.

· God is very supportive of an economic system that is based on private property, the work ethic, and personal responsibility.[ii]

Overall, the test is fairly decent and the overwhelming majority of the questions are very good. I would give it a B-! J The problem with this worldview test is what happens when we confuse the kingdom of God with the empire of man.[iii] The empire of man is what we build in order to elevate ourselves and the kingdom of God is what he builds in order to glorify himself. The empire of man has been in conflict with the kingdom of God since the beginning of creation. Adam and Eve chose empire over kingdom. The people built an empire in the form of a tower at Babel, but God put an end to their scheming. When God rescued the Israelites from Egypt he established his kingdom through his people, but within the first few days of their release from captivity, many were choosing the empire of man over the kingdom of God. God anointed his righteous king, David on the throne in order to build the kingdom of God, but David’s son Solomon decided he preferred his own empire better. Fast forward five hundred years after the Babylonian exile. The first group of fifty thousand Jews returned to Jerusalem and Judah. They resettled in the cities and began to farm the land. There were wealthy land owners and subsistence farmers and they all worked together to rebuild the Temple of God and rebuild the kingdom of God. They were God’s people returned to God’s land.

Then, as it always seems to happen, they no longer had a proper fear of the Lord, so the building of their empire began to overshadow the building of the kingdom. This is what we find in Nehemiah chapter five: Israelites enslaving fellow Israelites; the wealthy stealing from the poor; the powerful oppressing the powerless; the empire of man replacing the kingdom of God. As I said last week, we can imagine that the wealthy oppressors easily justified their actions by calling it compassion. Yes, there was massive greed and selfishness, but another way to explain what happened is to say that they abandoned the principles of the kingdom of God for principles of the empire of man. The process described in the first five verses probably did not happen over night but over a period of many years. The mortgages on their land grew greater and greater until they the finally lost their land. The number one, unofficial economic policy in Judah was survival of the fittest. If the poor did not survive then it was obviously their own fault. They obviously were not working hard enough or smart enough, so if the wealthy land owners benefited from their poverty, then so be it. When we read the story, the amazing thing to us is that they could not see this oppression of the poor. The powerful ruled over the powerless. The powerless, poverty stricken people obviously could see it, but the wealthy oppressors could not see it.

As we saw last week—we do not live in a country with a level socioeconomic playing field. I would like to read from a book titled Divided by Faith, which is a powerful parable that describes this disparity.

Both Maridel and Parker were overweight, to the point of being unhealthy. They decided it was time to do something drastic. Responding to an ad for a Fat-Away program, they drove to a rural area in their state, where they were taken to separate areas of the woods. For six weeks, they would be locked into these “compound,” as they were called. In each compound, according to the ad, were the perfect ingredients needed to lose weight. There goal was to each lose forty pounds. What they did not know is that the less than ethical Fat-Away organization was really a research laboratory studying the effects of various diets, exercise programs, and weight loss expectations on people’s weight change. Without a book to Maridel and Parker, they placed Maridel in a compound designed to help her lose weight, but they placed parker in a compound designed for Parker to gain weight.

In Maridel’s compound, there were running trails, a swimming pool, state of the art exercise equipment, a basketball court and a sauna. In her cabin were magazines on proper nutrition, instructional videos on how to lose weight, an abundance of natural, healthy, low-fat, low-calorie foods, and no sweets. Each day she was greeted early by fit and trim people who asked Maridel to go on a run with them, talked about how much they loved being thin, and encouraged her that she too can be thin—wonderful conditions for losing weight.

In Parker’s compound was only a tiny cabin. No exercise equipment was available whatsoever, but there were plenty of videos and movies that showed high-calorie foods looking sumptuous, more high-calorie foods than even a sumo wrestler could desire, and just a few fruits and vegetables. The only other people Parker saw were also obese, and though they talked about losing weight, they seemed not to rally care about their weight—not good conditions for losing weight.

The program called for each participant to weight in at the start, and then every two weeks thereafter. At the end of two weeks, with neither aware of what was inside the other’s compound, Maridel and parker were taken to the weighing room. They each took their turn on the scale. Maridel stepped on the scale first. She has lost nineteen pounds! Parker’s turn produced far less excitement. He actually gained two pounds.

Maridel, who assumed that both she and Parker had the same kind of compound, was irritated with Parker. “We paid good money to be here, Parker. How can you waste it? You have to exercise. You have to eat right!” Parker tried to make his case, but it only made Maridel more irritated. Maridel told Parker he needed to try harder. Parker, though he was depressed about his weight gain and the difficulty in exercising adequately and eating right, resolved to do so.

But try as he may, Parker kept eating too many bad foods. And he exercised very little. He became depressed, and his depression only made him eat more and exercise less. After another two weeks, back he and Maridel went to the scales. Maridel, with wonderful weight-loss opportunities, and taking full advantage of them, lost another fifteen pounds. Parker, however, actually gained more weight than he had the first two weeks. Maridel could not believe hat he was doing to himself. “Don’t you know why we are here? Parker, this place is designed for us ot lose weight. If you can’t do it here, where can you?”

“I don’t think this is all that great a place to lose weight,” Parker sniped. “The food here is fatty and the exercising is near to impossible.” Maridel was taken aback. Finally she replied, “It wouldn’t matter of that were true, Parker. When we get home, the food can be fatty and the exercise difficult, but you must learn to eat and exercise right, regardless.” Parker, increasingly frustrated by Maridel’s comments, retorted, “No way is it as easy as you’re making it seem. I think the Fat-Away is treating me unfairly. I’m not even sure I want to lose weight.”

With that Maridel was dumbfounded. If Parker was not even going to try, if he was going to blame others, perhaps he deserved to be obese. But she also thought that if only Parker could have a vision of what he could look like, he would take advantage of Fat-Away and lose weight. She encouraged Parker to imagine being thin, toned and healthy. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful, Parker? If only you would try.”

Back they went for another two weeks. At the final weigh-in, with the predictable result of Parker not having lost weight, Maridel simply resigned herself o the idea that Parker wanted to be overweight. Why parker would want this, she was not sure, but of one thing she was sure—until Parker decided he wanted to lose weight, he would not.

Maridel is partially correct in her final assessment. Parker will not lose weight unless he tries. His “attitude will have to improve. He needs a vision, a goal and the motivation to get there.

But she misses the vast difference in environments that render the correlation between individual initiative and outcome far less than perfect. Due to structural differences, only a very few with incredible will power could possibly lose weight in an environment like Parker’s. And likewise, in an environment like Maridel’s, only a very few could possibly gain weight.[iv]

What does all of this have to do with that Biblical worldview test? Although it’s not nearly so obvious or so egregious as what happened in this story, I believe the people who wrote that worldview test have very subtly began to favor principles of the empire over principles of the kingdom. Let’s look at that one question again.

· God is very supportive of an economic system that is based on private property, the work ethic, and personal responsibility.

Is this more of a Biblical statement or a political statement? I think it is more of a political statement than it is a Biblical statement. The people who wrote this worldview test are promoting a particular economic policy and they put the Bible’s stamp of approval on it. This sentence is a classic conservative economic policy. You could call it Republican, Libertarian, free market or whatever, but it is a conservative economic policy dressed up in Biblical clothes.

Full disclosure: if you didn’t already know it, I am a Republican, so as I begin to talk about politics, please do not think that I am a card carrying Democrat who is just taking another opportunity to bash the Republicans. My desire is always to elevate Scripture as absolute and I always get a little nervous when I see Scripture being twisted or even bent slightly to suit their own end. Why don’t we evaluate this statement to see if it is Biblical or not.

The folks who wrote this Biblical worldview test expect that you answer this question with the answer of “strongly agree”. If you only answered “agree.” Then you would only have a 97% Biblical worldview. Moreover, I am guessing that the vast majority of evangelical Christians would answer this question with “agree” or “strongly agree”. Let’s break it apart and evaluate its Biblical foundation. Is God supportive of private property? I would say that this is definitely true. What did God give to the nation of Israel? The Promised Land—a promise that had been made six hundred years earlier. And when Israel finally took possession of the land the first thing they did was divide up the land into twelve tribes, which was no doubt further divided by clans and possibly families. Even this chapter in Nehemiah seems to describe the concept of what we call private property.

Next we would ask, is God supportive of a good work ethic and personal responsibility? A classic text that supports this is 2 Thes. 3:10, “For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “If a man will not work, he shall not eat.” We see the work ethic and personal responsibility all throughout the Bible. We see it in the Proverbs 30 wife who is so diligent and hard working. We see it in the apostles who worked so hard for the sake of the gospel that nearly all of them were killed due to their bold faith. A strong work ethic and personal responsibility are all over the pages of Scripture. Moreover, who would want to argue the opposite—for a poor work ethic and no personal responsibility, right?!

So I think we can rightly conclude that God is supportive of private property, a good work ethic and personal responsibility. But do you still see the problem with this statement? It says, “God is very supportive of an economic system that is based on private property, the work ethic, and personal responsibility.” These two words tell me that these otherwise Biblical principles have been turned into a political statement. I also know this because I am familiar with the organization who wrote this survey and I know that they promote a very conservative political platform. I will say again that I also generally support conservative politics, usually as the lesser of two evils, but we must be very careful when we move from Biblical principles into the political arena. Let me put in terms of empire and kingdom. The realm of politics is the realm of the empire of man. Some of the empires are better than others but good or bad, politics is the realm of empire. Biblical principles are obviously the realm of the kingdom of God. Now here is where it gets really tricky and sticky. For the believer, one of the reasons that politics can be so difficult is because we are taking principles from the kingdom of God and applying them to the empire of man.

Should we do this? Absolutely! To be a good citizen, to be a good Christian, to love the righteousness of God means that we must work hard at applying kingdom principles to the empire of man, but my point is that it is not always as easy as we might think. As with our example, we can start with sound kingdom principles but when we apply these principles to the empire of man it doesn’t necessarily mean that the final outcome will be fully kingdom minded. I basically support this statement because I know at its core, they are arguing against a socialistic or communistic economic system. China is racking up a bunch of gold medals at the Olympics, but I don’t think they are going to convince the world abut the benefits of communism. But what happens to your level of compassion for the poor when you have an economic policy like this one? It can cause us to ignore the poor and needy. It can blind us to the inequities in our nation. It can trap us in the illusion that we have a level socioeconomic playing field in our country. It can cause us to think that most poor people are poor because they have a terrible work ethic and little personal responsibility. Do you see, economic policies and blind political alliances can wreak havoc with our gospel-motivated sense of compassion. We may not end up like the wealthy land owners in Nehemiah’s day, but we can begin to slip down that slippery slope.

Let me show you another example of the difficulty of applying kingdom principles to the empire of man. Did you notice what Nehemiah did when he realized the severity of the problem? Verse nine: “What you are doing is not right. Shouldn’t you walk in the fear of our God to avoid the reproach of our Gentile enemies? ^10 I and my brothers and my men are also lending the people money and grain. But let the exacting of usury stop! ^11 Give back to them immediately their fields, vineyards, olive groves and houses…” What did Nehemiah do? He commanded the wealthy land owners to give everything back to poor Jews. He took the land from the rich and gave it to the poor. In essence, what he ordered was a redistribution of wealth. You could argue that Nehemiah was the Robin Hood of the Old Testament—he took from the rich and gave it to the poor. In theory I could use this passage and create the following question on a Biblical worldview test.

· God is very supportive of an economic system that is based on an equalization of incomes by redistributing wealth from the rich and giving it to the poor.

Moreover, I could use the O.T. year of Jubilee to bolster my case. In the Jubilee, all of the property was taken from the current land owners and returned to original land owners. Many see this as a type of redistribution of wealth. Would it be right for me to take these principles from the kingdom of God and apply them to the empire of man? Some would say yes, but I disagree. Do you see my point? The kingdom principle in this passage is not that God is in favor of a policy that redistributes wealth any more than he supports a free market policy. The kingdom principle in this chapter is best seen in verse nine. “What you are doing is not right. Shouldn’t you walk in the fear of our God to avoid the reproach of our Gentile enemies? What did the one thief on the cross say to the other? “Don’t you fear God?” The Jews were acting as if God did not exist. They were acting like practical atheists. They were acting like the godless thief on the cross who mocked the Savior and who did not have a fear of God.

Therefore, the primary kingdom principle here is not a redistribution of wealth or hard work and personal responsibility. The primary kingdom principle is a compassion for the poor motivated by a genuine fear of the Lord. For believers under the new covenant we could say that the perfect love of Christ in the gospel should help us to cultivate a compassion for the poor. In light of this kingdom principle, how about this for a test question?

· God is very supportive of an economic system that is based on a genuine fear of the Lord and compassion for the poor and weak.

Now we are starting to get somewhere. This is a kingdom principle that I would love to see carried into the empire of man and the realm of politics. I’m not sure what this economic system would look like, but I am certain it would not look like our present economic system.

Let me give you an example of an issue of social justice upon which we all agree. A few years ago, I argued in a sermon that abortion and race are inexorably linked. African American women have abortions at a rate three times higher than Caucasian women. That means that African American babies are killed at a rate three times greater than Caucasian babies. African American’s have been highlighting this disparity for many years and it’s no surprise that some are calling it a “black genocide.”[v] I would agree that it is. Abortion clinics are intentionally placed in the poorest neighborhoods, which also tend to have the highest percentages of African Americans.

The issues of abortion and race are most definitely linked, but so are abortion and economics. Here is a quote from a study on abortion done by the Alan Guttmacher Institute. Just so you know, the Alan Guttmacher Institute is the research arm of Planned Parenthood, so I am not using research from some right-winged fringe group.

In 1994…women with incomes below 200% of poverty had higher abortion rates than higher-income women. However, between 1994 and 2000, rates decreased among middle- and higher-income women, whereas they increased among poor and low-income women.[vi]

Abortion has always been more concentrated among poor and low income women, but now Planned Parenthood’s own research shows that the abortion rates among these women are continuing to increase. If you believe that poor people are poor due to their own bad choices and stupidity, then you won’t see any real link between abortion and economics, but if you understand that many people living in poverty are largely powerless and often trapped by economic injustice, then you will be able to see this link between abortion and economics. Here is the obvious conclusion: if you care about abortion, you should also care about economic justice.

Here is the inconsistency and incongruity of the average evangelical Christian. Conservatives argue for government restraint on issues of social justice with issues like abortion and gay marriage, but we argue for governmental hands off in regard to economic justice. In other words, in regard to social issues we want big government but in regard to economic issues we want a libertarian government. Yet another way of stating this principle is: do everything you can to keep our babies alive but do all you can to leave our money alone.

I say it is time to take back the issue of economic justice. When I say let us take it back, I don’t mean Republicans or conservatives, but Biblically sound, gospel-motivated compassion for the poor and needy. Like last week, however, I am not trying to tell you how t vote and I am not standing here with all of the answers to this complicated problem. But I do know this—the place to begin is always with compassion. In that light, let me give you a few possible ways to apply these truths.

First, an example from our own elder board. This past week we had an opportunity to address an issue of economic justice. I can’t give you the details and we are still somewhat in the fact finding stage, but I am proud to say that our elders did not choose the expedient thing, they did not choose the easy way, but the chose the right thing.

Second, I would recommend our church’s benevolent fund as a small way to express compassion for the poor. About 70% of the money in this fund is used for individuals outside of our church. And please know that this fund is stewarded with great responsibility.

Finally I would recommend attending the upcoming corm boil for the Door of Hope ministry. No one else is on the front lines of helping young pregnant moms with their needs, while at the same time strongly discouraging abortion. They work against abortion and practice economic justice.

May we all be Biblical, discerning thinkers in this area, where we cannot merely cut and paste a kingdom idea into the empire of man. May God grant us this compassion.

Rich Maurer

August 18, 2008