Let's take some time out
"... you will enlarge my heart."
—Ps.119:32
There are a series of homilies given by Walter J. Burghardt that have been gathered together in a book entitled To Christ I Look. Inside this book, Burghardt retells a story by Canon Barcus where he reports of a Life magazine story published in 1944.
In this issue was a photo essay of a foxhunt in
Sometimes, the photo showed, the other foxes would stop and stay with their own wounded and dying. Finally, as the circle came closer together, down to a few yards across, the remaining foxes went to the center and lay down inside, not knowing what else to do. They hit these dying wounded with their clubs until they were dead, or they showed their children how to do it.
This is a true story. Life reported and photographed it. It happened for years in
Today we cringe at such cruelty, yet we have a foxhunt of our own . . . just ask those who are afflicted with AIDS. Sadly, too many with AIDS have wondered if they had any alternative but to go to the center of the circle and lie down and die.
Where are we in that circle? Where are you? Where would Christ be? You see, our hearts of stone become hearts of flesh only when we learn where the outcast weeps.
Typically, the Evangelical approach to those afflicted with this deadly modern disease has been along the same lines as Eliphaz's: "They created the problem by their lifestyle, so they are simply receiving their due."
We, in essence, stand next to their deathbed, cluck our tongues, and shake our heads in disapproval of their lifestyle but never offer any mercy.
AIDS may very well be the "reaping" of one’s own sin. Homosexuality is sin, as well as the promiscuous lifestyles that accompany it. God's judgment may very well settle the matter, but still the Christian viewpoint should be one of compassion for those who are suffering.
It is not condoning their sin! It is offering them real love and compassion. It's so easy to wash away our responsibility of giving aid and comfort to the suffering and take on the Pharisaic attitude that says, "Keep away; don't come near me, for I am too sacred for you" (Isa. 65:5).
We cannot ignore the fact that the verse above goes on to declare that, as far as the Lord is concerned, "such people are smoke in my nostrils, a fire that keeps burning all day." The issue is compassion. Many are afraid, just as Job's friends, to help the afflicted because they are afraid to be seen associating with them.
When the gospel is invoked to diminish the dignity of any of God’s children, then it is time to get rid of the so-called gospel in order that we may experience the gospel. Whenever God is invoked to justify prejudice, contempt, and hostility within the Body of Christ, then it is time to heed the words of Meister Eckhardt: “I pray that I may be quit of God and find God.” Our closed human concepts of gospel and God can prevent us from fully experiencing both.
AIDS patients could very easily be compared to the leper. They are outcasts, confined to their own little colony. Whether this treatment is justified is not my point. My concern is for the suffering, emptiness, and loneliness they are forced to endure when we could, instead, be offering Jesus to them while we soothe their pain.
We are not here "to condemn the world but to save the world" through Christ. "They are already condemned because they don't believe."
I have had several people look me very sternly in the eyes and tell me in no uncertain terms that anyone with AIDS is getting "exactly what they deserve." Maybe it is true. I am only surprised that none of us has received exactly what we deserve. Every one of us has failed and sinned against God. It is by His grace alone that we still stand and take a breath of air.
In his book Abba’s Child, Brennan Manning told of his outreach to AIDS patients. They provided practical and spiritual care to people living with AIDS, as well as their families and friends.
They assisted with transportation, visiting, light housekeeping and laundry, social outings and other services. One patient’s comment said it all: “My best friend for the last twelve years said to me, ‘I just can’t go through this with you. The grief is unbearable. I’m really frightened.’ To him, I wasn’t Gerald anymore. I wasn’t his best friend. I was Gerald who has AIDS.” He added, “You folks didn’t even know me but you still want to be around me. I like that a lot.”
As Steve Camp has said, "If someone admits to embezzling or adultery, Christians will say, 'God bless you. Thank you for confessing.' But if someone says, 'I've been a practicing homosexual, but I want to be free from it,' you'll see people grab their children and run the other way. Certainly, God's Holiness can not be compromised, but his mercy shouldn't be restrained."
As I see it, the Holy Spirit is the bond of tenderness between the Father and the Son. So, the indwelling Spirit bears the indelible stamp of the compassion of God, and the heart of the Spirit-filled person overflows with tenderness. Remember what Paul said in Romans 5:5? “The love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.”
As partakers of the divine nature, the noblest aspiration and the most demanding task of our lives is to become like Christ. In this context, Ireneuus wrote that God took on our humanness so that we might become like God. Granted, across the centuries this has meant different things to many different people. If God is viewed primarily as omniscient, growth in wisdom and knowledge becomes the foremost priority of human existence. If God is envisioned as all-powerful, seeking authority in order to influence others is the way to become like God. If God is perceived as immutable and invulnerable, granite-like consistency and a high threshold for pain is the way of godliness.
The life of Jesus suggests that to be like Abba is to show compassion. Donald Gray expresses this: “Jesus reveals in an exceptionally human life what it is to live a divine life, a compassionate life.”
So what should the Christian viewpoint be? What would be the antithesis of the "Eliphaz Syndrome"?
In one Jesus’ parables, he told us to let the wheat and the weeds grow together. Paul caught this spirit when he wrote in I Corinthians, “Stop passing judgement and wait upon the Lord’s return.” The sons and daughters of Abba are to be the most nonjudgmental people. They are to get along famously with sinners. Remember the passage in Matthew where Jesus says, “Be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect?” In Luke, the same verse is translated, “Be compassionate as your heavenly father is compassionate.” Some believe that the two words, perfect and compassionate, can be reduced to the same reality. In other words, to follow Jesus in His ministry of compassion precisely defines the biblical meaning of being perfect as the heavenly father is perfect.
I think the answer could not be better illustrated than by this account from Charles Colson's book Who Speaks for God?
"At a time when most Americans were panic stricken over the contagious disease or snickering at snide AIDS jokes, Christy [a young woman on his staff] and her prayer group were visiting terminally ill AIDS patients at a
"None of the men had families in the area, and certainly no visitors. So Christy's group brought them postage stamps, stationary, books, tapes, and cookies. In a prayer memo Christy explained why she visited AIDS victims: 'They are socially unacceptable because of their lifestyle and medically unacceptable because of their disease. They are scared. They are dying. They are unsaved.'
"... was she afraid? 'No,' Christy responded. 'We believe we are doing the will of God.'
"And of that Christy can be sure. For while the Word doesn't tell us whether AIDS is a judgment of God, it does demand we care for the sick and have compassion for the suffering. The AIDS sufferers who are waiting to die alone, feared, ostracized, of all people need to hear the Good News of the Gospel."
Brennan Manning puts this so clearly: “My identity as a child of God is not an abstraction or a tap dance into religiosity. It is the core truth of my existence. Living in the wisdom of accepted tenderness profoundly affects my perception of reality, the way I respond to people and their life situations. How I treat my brothers and sisters from day-to-day, whether they be Caucasian, African, Asian, or Hispanic; how I react to the sin-scarred wino on the street, how I respond to interruptions from people I dislike; how I deal with ordinary people in their ordinary unbelief on an ordinary day will speak the truth of who I am more poignantly than a pro-life sticker on the bumper of my car.
“This is the unceasing struggle of a lifetime. It is the long and painful process of becoming like Christ in the way I choose to think, speak, and live each day. Henri Nouwen’s words are incisive here: “What is required is to become the Beloved in the common places of my daily existence and, bit by bit, to close the gap that exists between what I know myself to be and the countless specific realities of everyday life. Becoming the Beloved is pulling the truth revealed to me from above down into the ordinaries of what I am, in fact, thinking of, talking about, and dong from hour to hour.
“Out of all honesty, the betrayals and infidelities in my life are too numerous to count. I still cling to the illusion that I must be morally impeccable, other people must be sinless, and the one I love must be without human weakness. But whenever I allow anything but tenderness and compassion to dictate my response to life—be it self-righteous anger, moralizing, defensiveness, the pressing need to change others, carping criticism, frustration at others’ blindness, a sense of spiritual superiority, a gnawing hunger of vindication—I am alienated from my true self. My identity as Abba’s child becomes ambiguous, tentative and confused.
“Our way of being in the world is to be the way of tenderness. Everything else is illusion, misperception, falsehood.
“The compassionate life is neither sloppy goodwill toward the world nor the plague of what Robert Wicks calls “chronic niceness.” It does not insist that a widow become friendly with her husband’s murderer. It does not demand that we like everyone. It does not wink at sin and injustice. It does not accept reality indiscriminately—love and lust, Christianity and atheism, Marxism and capitalism.
“The way of tenderness avoids blind fanaticism. Instead, it seeks to see with penetrating clarity. The compassion of God in our hearts opens our eyes to the unique worth of each person. Or as Robert Wicks said: The other is ‘ourself’: and we must love him in his sin as we were loved in our sin.””
Job's Appeal
As disappointed as Job was in those who should have understood and had real compassion and sympathy in his time of trial, he reminds Eliphaz that he had noted ask anything of him or those with him! Despite the fact he had lost everything, he never asked for a gift from their substance,. Job never cried to them to deliver him from the enemy (actually, he didn't even ask for their advice). He is quite willing to be taught and to be made to understand where he has been wrong, if they are able to do that.
It is wonderful to be able to speak the truth. It carries force and weight; but the arguing of Eliphaz had no power. What is he arguing about? What is he trying to prove? Do they intend to correct whatever Job says? "Are you going to condemn me just because I impulsively cried out in desperation?" They should not judge his character, nor should his friends charge him in his bitter anguish with reaping what he has sown.
"Phaz you're so hardhearted, you would even cast lots for an orphan. Anyone who could deal with someone in my condition as you have with me would be capable of selling a friend."
Job's Condition
Job's condition was sufficient to melt the hardest heart. However, Eliphaz and his companions had settled that Job must be dealt with as a transgressor, and to give him sympathy when it was obvious he had sinned would only injure him more and make them partakers of his sins.
Eliphaz had told him to "seek God," yet he was in the hand of God already! "Isn't there a warfare against man on the earth? Are not his days like those of a hired hand?" Job is under authority and had to accept all that is appointed for him. There is a time of service for every man when he has to learn obedience to the will of God, regardless of the cost, before he can ever be trusted with authority in the
If we could learn just those two truths, we could avoid all of our striving, worrying, and complaining!
There is indeed a warfare raging against us each day of our lives! You can either be a contender in the battle or you can be a victim, but there are no "innocent bystanders" or casual observers.
Job's Complaint
"I'm in that warfare," Job says, "I've been suffering with nights of misery, tossing back and forth, wondering 'How long before I get up?' The night drags on and I toss until dawn. Months of weary waiting instead of happy service. My skin is broken and festering."
He goes on with his complaints, but his terrible nights of suffering seem to be the main point of his complaint. He speaks of awful nights where he was tossing back and forth until daybreak. After which he goes to his couch in hope of some relief from his pain. There, instead of rest he is scared by dreams and fearful visions. This entire crisis he wrongly charges God with instead of recognizing the nights of unrest as another tactic of His enemy.
Those awful nights made him feel that strangling would be a mercy. He could not help but despise his life. If this is what he was going to be stuck with he did not want to fight in this war!
"Leave me alone," Job cries to God. "If I have sinned, what can I do? What is it that I have done? Why don't you pardon my sin, because soon I will lie down in the dust, and you will search for me and I'll be gone."
