When Waves Collide

Photo: ScottyCarterFineArt.com

"You are the world's seasoning, to make it tolerable. If you lose your flavor, what will happen to the world? And you yourselves will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as worthless. You are the world's light—a city on a hill, glowing in the night for all to see. Don't hide your light! Let it shine for all; let your good deeds glow for all to see, so that they will praise your heavenly Father."—Matthew 5:13-16, Living

Just about everyone warms to the upside-down Kingdom, be-attitude "blessed are..." opening verses of Matthew 5. Such comforting news and inspiration for living in this dark world. And then, like a movie with a surprise ending that leaves you puzzled as the credits roll by, along comes this above-mentioned exhortation to Jesus' first disciples about being salt and light in a world that, in many ways, doesn’t think like them or act like them, and increasingly turns against virtues of goodness and love that are at the heart of the Kingdom of God.

It’s easy to relegate images of salt shakers and little old men carrying candlesticks to a childhood Sunday School lesson, understand the larger point of it all, and move on. But once again, in times like these, we can see that the Gospel is cutting edge and entirely relevant, and that there's really nothing odd at all about this salt and light exhortation.

The tidal wave of worldwide negativity, spawned by the earthquake that is fallen humanity colliding with social media and everything-Internet, seems to be swallowing every bit of decency, respect, and human dignity in its sight. Consider, as a temperature of our day, this online headline: “The Most Hated People, Places, and Things In the NFL.”

Our senses may be awakened to it all by the recent horrific happenings in a Virginia college town, but among weapons of mass destruction, the human tongue overflowing with hate and anger from a broken heart may be the worst of the bunch. And it may be in its worst condition yet. Created to praise, in its fallen state, the tongue indeed is “a restless evil, full of deadly poison.”

How then shall we live? Yelling at and demanding that the darkness of society's tone of voice disappear does no good. And the options of hiding what we've got to share under the proverbial bushel basket, running away from it all, pretending the problem isn’t there, or leaving it up to someone else, are all off the table. Above all else, it's good (and humbling) to remember this: The tidal wave really isn't about people as much as it is about dark principalities, and for which...

We have been given good Kingdom "weapons" at our disposal

(2 Corinthians 10:4-5)...

• Truth, to see the world through God's eyes, and pray and respond accordingly
• Love, from knowing the One who is the perfect definition of the word
• Faith, that this is still My Father's World and He's got a plan, and especially...
• The unsurpassed, supernatural, all-things-are-possible power of personal and united prayer.

I was reminded/convicted of all of this, of a good and right way to respond to evil and hatred of every kind in the day-to-day, while coming across these words this week from the late Ray Stedman. These excerpts were penned in 2006 (here's the whole piece) but are as timeless as the Be-attitudes and the spiritual weapons of our warfare in times like these...

"What does the world use to try to solve the problems it recognizes in society?...Coercion, manipulation, pressure groups, compromises, or demonstrations that ultimately result in raised voices, clenched fists, and outbreak of conflicts. But the universal testimony of history is that these do not work. We have other weapons. They are mighty, they are powerful, and they accomplish something."

It starts with one. And along with others, we can heed Jesus' words by countering the tidal wave of negativity with a slowly-building and ultimately more powerful one—a wave that celebrates the far-surpassing acts of goodness and Light in our world, that salts the disease with words from tongues that go out of their way to see and speak goodness in others, that respects others whose opinions are different from ours, that doesn't get sucked into an online yelling match*, that decries every form of evil and hatred simply because Jesus' most prominent command is "Love one another," and that chooses to cut off gossip with the fruit of lips that give thanks instead of criticism.

Lord, release the good "weapons" within us this week, and may they be contagious... loosen our tongues, hands, and feet with Your goodness attached, let the waves of Light and dark collide through us willingly, and in the words of Francis Chan:  

“God, interrupt whatever we are doing so that we can join You in what You're doing.”

[UPDATED FROM JULY 26, 2015]
* Thanks to fellow New England worshiper Joshua Ray for allowing the share