I John 5:1-6
World conquest isn’t something I
have thought much about since the occasional Saturday afternoons I spent
playing “Risk” when I was in high school.
In fact, we tend to make fun of anyone who gets it into their head. Maybe you never saw the cartoon series “Pinky
and the Brain”, where the typical opening showed two mice, Pinky and the Brain,
sitting around and Pinky says, “Gee, Brain, what are we going to do tonight?”
and the Brain answers, “The same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try to take over the world.” Of course, his schemes always go off course
in a big way.
The Romans, on the other hand, at
least those who have left a record of themselves, took the idea of world
conquest seriously. The Emperor
Augustus, who ruled at the time of Jesus’ birth, left behind a summary of his
accomplishments where, like any good megalomaniac, he refers to himself in the
third person and as a god. It begins,
“Below is a copy of the achievements of the
deified Augustus whereby he subjected the world to the empire of the Roman
people, and of the expenditures he made on behalf of the country and the Roman
people.”[1]
He speaks very highly
of himself. He notes,
“I often waged wars on land and sea, both
civil and foreign, in the whole world, and as victor I spared all the citizens
who asked pardon. Those foreign people
who could safely be pardoned I preferred to preserve rather than exterminate.”[2]
I guess he was just a
big softy inside. I’ll spare you the
endless recitation of his honors and achievements, the list of offices he held
and buildings he put up, and how many times the Senate sent him a vote of
thanks. I only want to emphasize the
difference between the official and public outlook of the Romans and the thought
of the upstart Christians, whose views and attitudes the Romans and their
successors have never been able to comprehend.
Christianity even means something
different when it speaks of “the world”.
To Augustus, conquering the world meant expanding his territory.
“I enlarged the territory of all the provinces
of the Roman people that neighbored upon people that were not subject to our
empire. …At my order and under my auspices two armies were led almost at the
same time into Ethiopia and Arabia… I annexed Egypt to the empire of the Roman
people.”[3]
To the Christians,
“the world”, as John wrote about it in his letters to the believers, was not a
geographical term but referred to a mindset and the actions that flow from it,
the mindset and deeds of people like Augustus and his successors, but also
anyone who gets caught up in the cycle of power games and pride. The poet William Butler Yeats spoke of
“The noisy set of schoolmasters, bankers, and
clergymen
The martyrs call the world.”[4]
John’s notion of
success was not the same as Caesar’s. In
fact, to John, success meant finding a way out of that endless cycle and
stepping away from the game of gimme-gimme, I-me-mine.
He wasn’t alone in that. Christians in general saw that to be puffed-up
and jealous and ego-driven set the course for great troubles. Jesus’ own brother, James, wrote to the
Church, which has never been immune to the world’s ways:
“Those
conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are
at war within you? You want something
and do not have it; so you commit murder.
And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes
and conflicts.” [James 4:1-2]
How many arguments and
even fights, maybe, have you seen because somebody who is eager to let everyone
else know how important they are comes up against someone else who is just as
self-important? How much time and money
and energy are wasted in a group where everybody has to do everybody else one
better?
But if your worth is not connected
to things of no ultimate value, if your success is not measured by the clothes
you wear or whom you know or where you vacation or how often your name is
spoken, or anything like that, then you have begun to step outside the arena
where the silly and dangerous games are being fought. In fact, if your dignity and honor are tied
not to what you’ve done but to what God has done for you, then you are in a
good place. If you have placed your
entire trust in Jesus, so that you know your place in the universe and in
eternity is secure, then you don’t need to play any of those games at all, and
the amazing thing is that means you win.
“And
this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. Who is it that
conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” [I John 5:4-5]
I learned a lot from people I have
worked with while they were in prison. Some
had learned to use a kind of religious slang to describe themselves, and that
was never very convincing. Others,
though, would tell their stories with real conviction (pun intended), able to
say what it was within themselves that had drawn them into trouble, and they
would say it not in a way that sounded like an excuse, but that was more of an
explanation. It wasn’t: “I stabbed the
guy because I was on drugs and not thinking clearly,” but more like, “I thought
I could get away from my pain by using the drugs, and next thing I knew, I was
inflicting my pain on everyone around me.”
Then they would say how they had found someone whose love and caring was
able to address the deepest hurts, and his name was Jesus. And sometimes the group would start singing,
“What a friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry everything to God in
prayer!
O what peace we often forfeit,
O what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry everything to God
in prayer!”
And there would be a
time of prayer, of course. Then at the
end, somebody would start a little song that’s really a great song,
“for whatever is born of God conquers the
world.” [I John 5:4]
The song says,
“In the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus,
We have the victory.
In the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus,
Demons will have to flee.
Tell me, who can stand before us
When we call on that great name?
Jesus, Jesus, blessed Jesus,
We have the victory.”
[1]
Augustus, “Res Gestae” in Meyer
Reinhold, The Golden Age of Augustus
(Sarasota: Samuel Stevens & Co., 1978), 92-93.
[2] Ibid., 93.
[3] Ibid., 99-100.
[4]
from “Adam’s Curse”.
No comments:
Post a Comment