You are not the one to build…

A summary of my calling and life direction. I am becoming comfortable with the idea that most of the positive effect of my life will occur after it is over and that, among humans, I will receive no credit for it.

Go and tell my servant David, “This is what the Lord says: You are not the one to build me a house to dwell in.”

1 Chronicles 17:4

This post will be more personal than most, as it will explain my apparent life direction.  I know that, like everything else I write, few will read it.  In fact, I can be sure that all, and only, those who are supposed to read it will do so. Still, I have had some fear writing it–anticipating negative responses and moral judgments–and have also felt disappointment. There is still a voice within me, reaching out of my past rejections, that had hoped for some measure of recognition, some personal glory, for my my efforts. But the only things in my life that actually work as they should are the things God does through me. And personal glory is not to be. “Should you then seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them. For I will bring disaster on all people, declares the Lord, but wherever you go I will let you escape with your life.” Jeremiah 45:5. This often seems to be my life verse.

As long as I remain in this earthly time zone, only God will know what he has accomplished through me. I will see very little of it here, and should not make plans in my own wisdom based on my visible “fruits” or on making my efforts more visibly “fruitful.” I should also not expect recognition–I will not have it on earth, even posthumously. God will know what we have accomplished, and will show me when I join him in his timeless zone. Then God will know, and I will know–and, for the most part, no one else ever will. That God and I ultimately will both know must be enough!

King David, Solomon’s Temple and God’s Reputation

King David planned to build the temple.  God had shown David the place it was to be built. 1 Chronicles 22:1. The Holy Spirit had also given David the full architectural plans for it and the designs for all of its furnishings. 1 Chronicles 28:11-19.  And David had stored up materials and treasure to build and furnish it.  1 Chronicles 22; 2 Chronicles 5:1.  Yet God sent the prophet Nathan to him to tell him that he was not going to be the one to build it.  Instead, his son Solomon—his son by the wife he stole from Uriah —would build the temple and would receive the promise that David would always have descendants to sit on the throne of Israel, forever. 1 Chronicles 28:6-7 ; 1 Chronicles 17:10-14.  However, Nathan did not explain to David why he was not to be the one to build the Temple, even though God had given him the plans for it. He only told him what was not to be.

David went to God about this himself, and God told him that the reason he was not to build the House himself was that  he was a “man of war” who had “shed blood.” 1 Chronicles 28:3.  God was concerned about the reputation of his Name—he did not want the people to associate the House that bore His Name with violence and conquest.  Instead, Solomon, a “man of peace,” was to build God’s House, using the plans God had given to David. 1 Chronicles 22:8-10.  The complex that was ultimately built and dedicated is to this day known to history as “Solomon’s Temple.”

God is still concerned about his reputation—and for the same reason.  He desires all to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth, a purpose which is enabled when his children live peaceful lives and are known for godliness rather than noisiness and turmoil.  1 Timothy 2:1-4.  He does not want flaws in the reputations of his most visible representatives to turn people away from him.  Ecclesiastes 10:1-3; 1 Timothy 3:7.

In Jesus, God completely forgives sins, never again to be remembered by him against us, and his whole plan for the cosmos depends on this. 1 John 1:8-9; Hebrews 8:11-12 & 10:17-19; Colossians 1:13-14; Ephesians 1:6-10.  His gifts and calling are “without repentance” or “irrevocable”—he does not take them away. Romans 11:29.  In context, this verse is speaking of the Jews, who had, in Paul’s day, already resisted God’s grace and friendship for at least 1,200 years and had just recently crucified his Son, but who were still loved and chosen because of the Patriarchs, and who will yet be brought to Jesus and completely restored. If God did not (and never will) remove his “irrevocable” gifts and calling from the Jews, neither will he rescind my calling because of my sins.

God is not “contaminated” by associating with, or by using the gifts he has given to, people who have committed what are, in the eyes of other people, the gravest of sins.  Moses yielded to his temper and committed a murder in anger. Exodus 2:11-12.  King David committed adultery and murder with malice aforethought and abused his God-given office as king to commit both crimes.  2 Samuel 11.  Saul of Tarsus was a persecutor of the church and responsible, directly or indirectly, for the martyrdom of many believers before Jesus appeared to him.  Acts 7:54-8:3 & 22:3-6.  God made powerful use of the gifts of each of these “very grave” sinners. 

But in none of these examples did God do his great work without making provision for his own reputation. Moses was exiled to Midian for 40 years, until his people in Egypt had forgotten his crime and, just as importantly until he had learned to be humblest man on Earth, not given to anger even when directly challenged. Numbers 12:1-4. God continued the service of the repentant David as king, continued to call David a man after his own heart, continued to give him Scripture, and did not revoke the promise to raise up the Messiah from among his descendants. But David had severe trouble within his family for the rest of his life, which continued to all of his descendants–including Jesus, who died for his ancestor David’s sins.

What of Saul of Tarsus? After Jesus appeared to him in brilliant glory on the road to Damascus and told him the next thing to do, he struck Paul temporarily blind. Acts 9:1-8. He then sent Ananias, a disciple in Damascus, to heal Paul’s eyes and impart the Holy Spirit to him. But Ananias reminded God how much harm Saul had done to the disciples in Jerusalem and that he had been sent to Damascus to do the same thing there. Acts 9:10-14. What was God’s answer to Ananias’ objections?

Go! This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel.  I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.

Acts 9:15b-16

God did not withdraw Paul’s calling because of the violence he had previously done to the Church. But he attended to his own reputation among his people by showing Paul how much he had to suffer to fulfill his calling.

Ananias of Damascus was an obedient disciple, who followed God’s Spirit. God’s answer was sufficient for him. He went and did what God had told him to do. Later, with the aid of Barnabas, Saul was accepted by the other Apostles. But these were all people who were intently following Jesus.

The world, and even most Christians in it, are not like this. A bad reputation, even one resulting from acts repented of decades ago, clings for a lifetime. Because of changes in human institutions since Bible days, this is much more true now than it was in the past. Moses’ crime would not have been forgotten a mere forty years later in any modern state!

Technology and the general approach to past indicia of bad reputation have also changed in modern times. In a past millennium, Solomon could write “through love and faithfulness sin is atoned for” (Proverbs 16:6), and this still holds among voluntary communities that have chosen to live as friends. It should also hold true in the Body of Christ. But it is no longer true at all in the world at large. Society as a whole, and its institutions that govern our lives, are now thoroughly dominated by the concept of risk management. Risk management, as applied to human “risks,” means every human is a potential threat that poses quantifiable risks that must be “managed.” Quantification of risk, in turn, is based strictly on impersonal, objective data. Every transgression is recorded, entered in databases, and available to any decision-maker–and nearly any other person on earth who wishes to make hostile use of it–in milliseconds, forever. The same is true of even unfounded accusations of transgression, recorded expressions of unusual opinions or abnormal aesthetic choices, illnesses, and anything else thought by risk managers to indicate an increase in any category of “risk” it is their job to”manage.” And the computers that record our transgressions and risky abnormalities are not programmed to record, or even to notice, contrary evidence of acts of love and faithfulness, or anything else that might be thought to reduce the risk. Only the transgressions count as showing the degree of risk we pose, risk which must be managed impartially. Effective public atonement has become impossible. Thus, it has become impossible for anyone who has any significant past transgression, even a very long time ago, to have the “good reputation with outsiders” required by 1 Timothy 3:6.

And even God has to take this into account, in determining how to use the gifts and callings he has graciously given to “horribly unworthy” people. He still doesn’t revoke gifts. But he has to take the absolute unwashability of all public stains into account in making use of gifts he has given to people who are “damaged merchandise.”

It is only those who are empowered by the Holy Spirit who can truly forgive.

And God usually will not simply force others to change their opinions, as this would violate the freedom of their wills.  It is still true that “[w]hen the Lord takes pleasure in anyone’s way, he causes their enemies to make peace with them” (Proverbs 16:7), but he does not do this by forcing their enemies’ wills.

Humans repent, inanimate record keeping systems do not. And the pool of strangers who might potentially be frightened by what is in my records and cause trouble for a church organization now holds more than six billion individuals.

I have finally learned all of this. It has now taken me almost forty years to learn it. I have never taken “no” easily.

How this applies to me and Jesus’ work through me

Okay, now–it’s time to “come clean” about my gifts and about the things that disable me from manifesting them “effectively” and “fruitfully,” as the world and Church at large generally define these terms.

I thought for a very long time that my primary gift was teaching, even though I am certainly not a pastor. Others have told me that I “teach” well, in the modern Western understanding of what it means to “teach”–that is, studying and analyzing Scripture, coming to correct conclusions from it, and explaining what I’ve learned in such a way that my hearer(s) or reader(s) say they intellectually understand it better because of what I said. And God has also seemed to confirm this for me. So, in this limited sense, I do, indeed, have a gift of teaching. And I also definitely suffer from the vocational bane of all those God has called to teach–I am, and always have been, judged more severely than those around me. James 3:1-2. The “rules” really are stricter for me.

As I have said in testimonies more than once, God, in his severe mercy, has never, even once, let me “succeed” at anything while going my own way.

On the other hand, I seem to have the spiritual gift of teaching only in the very limited sense indicated above. I do not seem to have a teaching gift in the more complete sense exemplified by Jesus himself. Jesus didn’t expound on Scripture very much. Jesus seems to have written on only one occasion while he was bodily present with us, and those words were written in the dust on the ground! John 8:6-9. He never made any presentation that sounded anything like a college professor’s lecture. Instead, he “taught” his disciples by inviting them to follow him and live with him for three years. Yes, they would have heard what he said. But they also saw how he lived and what he did–and learned to say, do and live the same things he did.

When I try to lead, people yawn, laugh or become angry. No one follows. So I plainly do not have the gift of teaching in this broader and more important sense. I have never had any natural leadership skills, and God does not seem to have given me any supernaturally, either,

Instead, the way I am actually being used seems closer to prophecy, in its primary sense of telling forth what God is saying whether anyone listens or not. Some of my experiences seem to confirm this, as do also the things I have written and the responses to them (or immediate lack thereof). Old Testament prophets very often declared things that the people of their own day refused to hear. Usually they were simply ignored, or, at best, treated as a form of entertainment whose words affected the way the people lived about as much as the words of a pop song do today. “And behold, you are to them like a love song by one who has a beautiful voice and plays well on an instrument; for they hear your words but they do not practice them.” Ezekiel 33:32. At the worst, they were denounced, persecuted or killed.

I do not anticipate persecution. I anticipate that I will simply continue to be ignored by all but a few during the remainder of my earthly lifetime. As I have come to recognize recently, God has reasons for this that involve his reputation in the world–the concept I explained in the last section (which is really very new to me). Almost forty years ago, I did some things (explained in an attachment here) that were regarded as relatively minor transgressions at the time, but which the world has since decided are categorically of a type it will never forgive. This is not said to minimize the seriousness of what I did or the injury it caused others, but only to state as a historical matter that public perception of it changed after-the-fact, and this change in perceptions has become a major involuntary determinant of my life course. God has forgiven, but the world never will. God took all of this into account before the creation of the world. So I have the gifts and calling he always planned to give me–he has not taken them away–but they have always been required to operate under the weight of my formal reputation.

What this means is that, during my lifetime, only a few will listen. I will never be recognized on earth as being “effective” or “successful” at anything in his work, or as having any generally-recognized official position. Thus, those who pay me any attention will always have to overcome my lack of recognized formal qualifications in addition to my reputation in order to continue listening to me. After my departure from this world, I will cease to be an active “risk” to anyone’s person or career, so my reputation will no longer be an issue, and the results of what I have been doing will blossom through the few who have been listening. But my name will not be associated with the much greater things God does with my work after my departure, likely not even so much as in a footnote in an obscure history text. The “credit” will go entirely to my listeners/readers, and to those that follow them, as I am unworthy of it. God knows what the “fruit” of my life is, and I will know when I go to be with him without earthly hindrances, but nearly everyone else will think my life was wasted.

God’s acknowledgement must be enough for me.

Some areas in which I have been working and expect, God willing, to do more after my impending retirement are:

In my Immediate Family

I have lost a lot of time–much more than I can ever make up–chasing recognition, seeking “numbers” that would compare well with those of others, trying to do good in my own wisdom, and letting the self-declared “needs” of other people control the time my family needed. I am beginning to change that.

On the positive side, all of my sons know Jesus, and my grandchildren are learning of him as well. But I can take very little credit for this. It was largely the work of others–my wife, her family (see this tribute), friends, and some good pastors and churches. Much of the time my most important role was merely to stay around the right people and not run away from them and to stay mostly out of the way. I praise and thank God for the outcome. He was faithful, even when I was not.

My writings—the book and the blog.

Ever since ninth grade, writing has been an important part of my life. It was in that year that I learned that I could write well in response to academic assignments and obtain praise for doing it. For many years thereafter, academics was the ONLY area of my life I thought I could do well, so I was hooked!

Nearly all of my earliest publications were radical political letters to the editor. Otherwise, my writing was all for myself, written to friends (or, occasionally, enemies), or written in school. I remained in college and graduate school for 13 years, total, and obtained five degrees which have brought me very little of the reward I expected. The way of earthly reward–a respected position with some real control over my life, a good salary, etc.–was not God’s way for me. There was still too much resistance in me to his moving.

I started writing Christian articles for websites, and, later, blogs, in 1995. Much of the early material has completely disappeared now. The oldest remaining portions can be found in a form edited by my friend Jonathan Brickman on various parts of the Christian-Oneness.org website, which is now managed and mostly written by Jonathan.

I have also joined in writing and publishing one book: Ian Johnson & Lauston Stephens, Our Oneness in Christ (Baltimore: PublishAmerica 2006, ISBN-10 1424160359). As you might have expected, it made the worst-seller list. It has been out of print for over a decade except as an e-book on Amazon, and Google Books. Even as an e-book, it remains on the worst-seller list!

My writing since 1995, on the Web or otherwise, has always been directed more at myself than at others. God has been guiding me to write, and even–I believe–to publish. But the most direct purpose of all of this study and writing has been to learn to yield my intellect to his control. That was the one thing I thought I could do well on my own, remember?

The result is that God works on the questions and problems that come between us in my writings, and my few readers get to come along for the ride. This explains the strange course of this blog, for instance–including spending a whole year on repentance (which was a rethinking and expansion of an earlier blog that disappeared years ago), and after that bouncing between loosely related topics.

But, in the process, God is also speaking to my few readers and the many others who will listen to them after my demise. So he is working out his gifts in me, in a way that does not damage his reputation.

I will continue to strive to let him do so in coming days, and will expand my writing time, as he directs.

Family history and family re-connection as outreach for Christ

I had a passing interest in both genealogy and the history of my family before 2015–as a part of broader, mostly American, history (one of my five degrees was an M.A. in History, in 1983). So I had done a little work with it before then. But I only acquired a serious interest in these subjects at a presentation of the Perspectives course on Christian mission in 2015. The interest arose from a minor emphasis of the course–finding commonalities with those in other cultures as a means of approaching those cultures with appreciation. God took this minor emphasis and converted it into something the authors and sponsors of the Perspectives course probably wouldn’t recognize!

For the first few years, my efforts in this area were limited to learning what I was doing and slowly contacting a few of the closer relatives I either had not previously known about at all or knew very little about. In the process I’ve made some good friends and found quite a few followers of Jesus in the various branches of my family.

More recently, though, I’ve been coming to understand why I have been led to do these things. Families, extended families, and kindreds–units larger than the modern ideal isolated “nuclear” family–have always been the most natural units of human society. And, as I developed recently in another post (the discussion of kindreds is about a third of the way down the page), God still works with and through them, whether we believe them to be important or not. So, I am beginning to make these contacts, and to set up for the possibility of making others (as on the Lost Cousins website) as a means of slow and inoffensive outreach, approaching through the most natural connection and awaiting opportunity once the contact is made.

But like all of the other parts of the exercise of my gifts, most of the visible results are not to be expected until I’m gone and my person and reputation are no longer live issues. So the contacts I am able to make now, or to identify for later (there being no response now), and my posting of long-deceased relatives’ Census information on Lost Cousins inviting living people who share the same deceased relatives to contact me, really partake more of the nature of prayers and prophetic pronouncements than they do of immediate evangelism. Each of them represents a branch of my kindred that WILL BE reached and in each of which many WILL ultimately respond, though most of this will occur after I’m gone.

Whether God accomplishes any of this through direct contact with me or reading of what I have written is his business. It is not my place to press for results that are visible to me or to place my deadlines on it.

To this end, I plan to leave my sons access to web the genealogy accounts on which I have done my work and my notes–the means to continue the work, if they are so led. But I know that, even if they are not the ones to carry it on, God will complete it.

Also to this end, I am embarking on writing about some of the more interesting stories from my ancestors:

Serious history and historical fiction writing, based around family history

I am already discovering that my family is full of interesting stories, from pretty much all parts of United States and American Colonial history and some important parts of Canadian, English, Scottish, possibly Irish and German-speaking European history. Much can be illustrated using these stories, whether written strictly as history or as historic-based fiction using real people and events with details filled in realistically but fictionally.

It was my high school history teacher, Mr. Hildebrandt, who gave me an interest in history at a time circa 1970 when most students–and their parents–were declaring that the study of history was irrelevant to “real” life “today” and should no longer be taught. But that was also the time period when the teaching of history had, for the most part, degenerated into what was becoming known as “social studies”–boring memorization of carefully-selected facts about history designed only to “teach” the basis for “acceptable” social attitudes. Students were to learn the “correct” thoughts to think, and certainly not to think for themselves!

This was not the way Mr. Hildebrandt taught. He was always trying to get us to look behind the facts and see the causes–the forces that made events move. His theory of what made wars and other large-scale geopolitical events happen, in the absence of famines, plagues or other major natural disasters, was pretty simple: to see what was really happening, look to see who got richer as a result of the events. Then look again to see if anyone was positioned to make a killing no matter who won the war or how the events played out. Those were the people who made the things happen, no matter what the masses thought was the real reason for taking part in them. Ideology doesn’t drive events; money does. His theory made sense of a lot of things, and sounded curiously like 1 Timothy 6:10. And looking for the causal mechanisms in events, a narrative to fit them together, makes history fun, at least for people of my personality type.

I plan, God willing, to pass along some of these stories, along with an invitation to think about my causal worldview embedded in the accounts, at least to my family–both immediate and broader. Whether it ever goes beyond that scope is God’s call. I understand its effect will likely mostly occur after I’m gone.

Recovery

For some years now I have participated regularly in Celebrate Recovery, a Bible-based twelve step program. I plan to continue and expand that participation now that I’m about to have more time available.

Music

I have always had an unusual relationship with the music in my life.

Music–at least the right music–moves me to great thoughts, clearer thinking, and, often, into God’s conscious presence. Now that I am able to do so–as I was hindered by the social setting of my own family at many earlier stages of it–I fill my life with it.

But even before I could do this, I could often hear music on one “track” of my mind. Sometimes it is music I have heard before, with or without variations, other times it is music that is new to me. I also fairly frequently have vivid dreams that have colors, some semblance of a plot, and music. I have been known to wake out of a dream singing. And even more frequently, I wake up thinking of the last song or musical piece in my dream. This happens quite a bit.

Now I have a theory that musicians–not musical technicians, but true creators of music–are all closet prophets. That is, they have already been given the potential for this gift, though it will be used for evil if they reject God. I base this theory, which I may defend later but not in this post, mostly on my observations concerning the amount of prophecy in the Psalms and the tendency of the Old Testament prophets to speak in poetry that could be sung–and sometimes, maybe often, was sung. But, at this point, this is just a personal theory.

However, based on this theory and my long and unusual relationship with music, I intend, God willing, to learn to let the music in my mind come out into the open, more likely by notating it than by performing it (recalling the reputation issue).

Volunteering–at Church, Possibly Other Places

Little more needs to be said about this one. The pastors I work with know my abilities, my weaknesses and my disqualifications. They know what I can do well, what I simply can do but not so well, and what I should not be given to do. If that means research and writing, wonderful. If it means janitorial work, that’s okay, too, though it is not one of my strengths. From experience, I know that I should probably not be made treasurer, as I have no natural talent for accounting. I should also likely not be placed in the children’s program. But, within my known limitations, I am available.

I intend also to volunteer in some settings where I have more contact with history and historians–a community of interests.

Next: Encouragement, Good and Bad, and the Importance of Today

Next in the Repentance Series: Jesus Came to Give Israel Repentance and Remission, Acts 5:31.

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