On Purpose

The scriptures referred to are Jeremiah 18:1-11, Psalm 139: 1-5, 12-17, Philemon 1-21, and Luke 14:25-33.

Science fiction writer Isaac Asimov hated the Frankenstein trope: the creature that turns on and destroys its creator. He really didn't like it in stories about artificially intelligent robots. Because, he said, we would program the robots not to do such things. His ideas eventually became codified in the 1940s as “Asimov's 3 Laws of Robotics.” The first is that a robot may not injure a human being, nor through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. The second law is that a robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except when those orders would conflict with the first law. So you can't order a robot to harm someone. And the third law was that a robot must protect its existence, except when doing so would conflict with the first or second laws. This last one exists because an artificially intelligent robot would be expensive to replace. All in all, it is a pretty neat moral code—for robots. And unlike human laws, these couldn't be violated because they were part of the robot's basic programming. There would be a limit on their free will. (The word “robot,” by the way, comes from the Czech word for “forced labor” which comes from the Slavic root word for “slave.”)

Asimov's laws would not work for humans, because they essentially force the person to obey the orders given by another human being. Dictatorships would love that. But not free societies. So while the Uniform Code of Military Justice says it is a duty for a member of the military to obey “the lawful orders of his/her superior,” that implies there are also unlawful orders. And, indeed, a soldier can refuse to carry out orders to, say, murder civilians, or willfully cause great suffering or serious bodily injury to a prisoner or war, or conduct medical experiments on them. This is to prevent atrocities such as those committed by the Nazis or the Soviet Union or or by Americans at My Lai or those which are being perpetrated in certain countries today. Even police officers have some discretion as to whether to arrest someone or not depending on the seriousness of the crime. That's why sometimes you get a warning.

Unlike preprogrammed robots we have free will. God did not engrave the laws he wants us to obey in our brains. He tells us what they are and we are free to obey them or not...and to suffer the consequences. When it comes to human laws, sometimes the consequences are natural, such as when you don't obey laws intended to protect you. If you don't wear seat belts, the consequences could be injury or even death. Sometimes the consequences are not natural but legal, such as being arrested for speeding. Even so, such an law is based on protecting both you and others. Speeding can also result in injury or death. Admittedly some consequences are arbitrary, like the exact amounts of the different fines for speeding. This is not to say it's unfair, just that there is no deeply rooted reason why the fine should be, say, $286 as opposed to $285 or $287.

While people often think God's laws are like legal ones, and the consequences arbitrary, most are actually akin to natural laws. They are built into the universe he created and are similar to the ones that govern our physical health. By now we all know that if you want to be healthy, you should cut out smoking, drinking alcohol, abusing drugs and overeating. If you don't, you may not suffer serious injury or death immediately but the consequences will add up over time. But if you stop soon enough, your body should recover.

For instance, when you quit smoking your heart rate and blood pressure begin to drop after 20 minutes. After 12 hours, your body cleanses itself of the excess carbon monoxide. After just 1 day, your risk of heart attack starts to go down. After 2 days, the nerve damage that dulls your sense of taste and smell begins to heal. After a month, lung function improves. After a year, the risk of heart disease is cut in half. After 5 years, the risk of stroke from blood clots decreases. After 10 years, the risk of lung cancer is cut in half and the risks of developing mouth, throat and pancreatic cancer go down significantly. After 20 years, your risk of death from these things is the same as someone who never smoked.

When you quit drinking, the first 72 hours can be the worst in terms of withdrawal. But after a week, your sleep should start improving. After 2 weeks, if your liver has become fatty but is not too damaged, it will start recovering. In addition, you start losing the weight alcohol packs on. After 3 to 4 weeks, your blood pressure should start lowering. After 3 months you should have more energy and feel healthier. After a year, you are almost back to normal. And of course, not drinking dramatically reduces your chances of accidental death from falls, burns, drownings, and traffic accidents. It also reduces your risk of dying by either homicide or suicide. And because alcohol dulls your immune system and your body's ability to repair itself, quitting means you'll get sick less often.

My point is that while the consequences of ignoring or following the rules of good health are not always immediate, they are real. And the rules of spiritual health work much the same way. Changing your behavior will change your life.

In today's passage from Jeremiah the prophet is instructed to go to the house of a potter and learn a lesson. The potter is working with clay and you would think that he could make it into anything he pleased. But in fact he has trouble making it into the vessel he had intended and so he reworks it into another. God turns this into a parable. Israel is compared to the clay. But just as the potter could not make what he initially wanted to out of the clay, God cannot always make his people into what he wishes. Unlike clay, we have free will. The nation God is trying to shape can do “evil in my sight, not listening to my voice....” And the consequences? “...then I will change my mind about the good that I had intended to do to it.” It works the other way too. If a nation “turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it.”

Some people are bothered by the idea that God changes his mind. But you will notice he doesn't change it about his goals and purposes. He wants people to be good, to love him and to love their neighbors as themselves, to practice justice and mercy. That never changes. But, depending on whether we are working with him or against him, God does change how he will achieve that. If we persist in doing evil, he will let us suffer the consequences. But if we change our minds and turn from evil to him, he will change his mind about letting us suffer the full consequences, or as our passage reads, the disaster.

Because God will not suspend the laws of the physical universe if what the person has done is already well underway. A bullet fired at someone in a flash of anger will not mysteriously change its trajectory. Money stolen and spent will not magically reappear when the thief repents. An abusive word hurled at a child will not be suddenly unheard when the parent sobers up. But if we truly change our ways, the healing will begin. Our past need not determine our future. If we change our response to God, he will change his response to us.

But some wonder that if God is in control, if he will accomplish his purposes no matter what we do, do we really have the power to do anything for ourselves? I think the problem is we overstate the amount of control, not that God has, but that he chooses to exercise. God can do anything. But when he created us and gave us the freedom to choose, he limited what he would do, the way a parent does when she lets her child learn how to feed himself. Were she to jump in and spoonfeed him forever, the kid would not learn how to scoop up things with a spoon and not drop them or how to stab them with a fork and get them into his mouth. Every parent knows the hardest thing to do is, after learning to take total responsibility for a helpless baby, to then gradually relinquish your control and let your child learn how to do things for themselves. So while nothing can limit God, he can and does limit himself in order to let us grow and learn.

But doesn't the fact that he knows the future, as it implies in our Psalm, mean it is fixed and cannot be changed? It might if God existed in time, like us. But God dwells in eternity. (Isaiah 57:15) He is outside the flow of time the way a videographer in a helicopter is outside a marathon run. He can visit and revisit any segment of a marathon. He can hover over one part and know what is going on without changing it. Now let's say he sees a water main has busted and is flooding the road the marathon was supposed to take. He can use a megaphone to warn the people to turn at a different street and detour around it. It is then up to each person in the marathon whether to change course or not. Those who listen and follow his directions will be able to get to the finish line by a different route. Those who don't will face the consequences. The man in the helicopter can see ahead but that does not determine who will listen to him and who will plunge ahead into the flood of troubles.

Or have you ever seen a chess grandmaster play a large number of players lined up at their own chessboards. He goes from board to board, assessing the situation and making his next move. No matter what move his challengers come up with, he has a counter-move. They have the freedom to play however they want but he will win every match.

Proverbs says, “Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will prevail.” (Proverbs 19:21) God's purpose is to re-create the earth and transform its people into new creations in Christ. (2 Corinthians 5:17) That will not change. And he will accomplish his purpose in the end, but we can choose to be a part of it or not. If we choose him, we are told “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)

We see this at work in today's epistle. Paul had a problem. Onesimus, a slave of a church leader named Philemon, had run away and apparently stolen some money too. Onesimus encounters Paul and becomes a Christian. He helps Paul in his ministry. But unlike the law of Moses (Deuteronomy 23:15-16), Roman law required that any runaway slave must be returned. And his master can punish him by branding him on the face or he can even have him executed—by crucifixion! What is Paul to do?

He writes this letter and sends it along with Onesimus. We have 88% of the letter in our lectionary reading today. It is short but powerful. He begins by thanking God for what Philemon and his house-church have done for the faith and for him, Paul. Then he mentions Onesimus and how Paul sees him as his spiritual child. He says Onesimus is now Philemon's brother in Christ. He asks Philemon to treat the slave as he would Paul. Paul says he will repay Philemon for anything he is owed, and then mentions that Philemon owes Paul his life. Without asking him in so many words, Paul is obviously saying he wants Philemon to free Onesimus and send him back to Paul to serve in his ministry. And Philemon must have done it because why else would he have let this letter be copied and sent to all the churches? And we do have evidence of an Onesimus who was consecrated bishop of Ephesus, where Paul once stayed for 2 years. If it is the same person, then God took a runaway slave and not only saved him from execution but raised him to be a bishop, showing how in all things God works for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose.

Of course, that doesn't mean everything will look great from a human perspective. Onesimus, according to Ignatius of Antioch, was martyred in 95 AD, 40 years after being made bishop. But as Jesus says in today's gospel, “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” Just as a soldier upon taking his oath is essentially signing over his life to his country, we as Christians are giving our lives to Jesus, who first gave his life for us. And because he doesn't want any half-hearted followers, Jesus says “count the cost.” While he doesn't want us to literally hate our “father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters” because that would go against the second greatest commandment, he knows that it will look that way to others. And indeed the second century Roman historian Tacitus called Christians “haters of humanity” (Tacitus, Annals 15:44) because they worshiped Jesus and not the Roman gods, supposedly provoking their displeasure on the empire and endangering the welfare of their fellow man. Even the religious leaders of his own people saw Jesus' claim to be the son of God and to forgive sins as blasphemous (John 10:36; Matthew 9:2-3) and they would expel anyone who followed him. (John 9:22) To non-Christians choosing to follow Jesus seemed like a slap in the face to those who didn't, especially loved ones. But Jesus said we have to make the choice, despite the consequences.

Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23) Jesus has a mission for us and that means, like a soldier, we must be willing to give up everything for the sake of Jesus and the gospel. (Mark 8:35) He knows that's a lot to ask which is why he tells us to count the cost before committing.

Of course, at the present time, and where we live, we may not have to literally die for our faith. But there are other things which can impair our following Jesus wholeheartedly. We have accumulated a lot of possessions that make our lives easier and more comfortable. Would we be willing to give them up? Do we possess them or do they possess us? If aliens came to earth, they might think that we are slaves to the little devices we carry with us everywhere, looking at them in a trance-like state, listening to and believing everything they tell us and making our decisions accordingly. They set our values: wealth and power and entertainment and looking sexy and always being happy. Those priorities are not healthy. Small wonder that studies have found a link between overuse of social media and depression. Or that children have been driven to suicide not by physical bullying but cyberbullying. The idols of the past were often little statues of gods. Ours apparently are little screens. Could you give them up? I know I would have trouble doing so. And not just because I have several good Bible apps on them.

Which brings us back to the fact that God did not make us robots. He has given us his laws, to love him and to love other people as we love ourselves, but he did not program us to follow them involuntarily. We can choose to obey him or not. And, really, it only makes sense that we follow the instructions of the one who created us and knows what is best for us and loves us. But we don't always do what makes good sense for us, do we?

We can choose to do evil, to harm others or ourselves. Or we can choose to love God and love those he created in his image. Love is why God gave us free will. A robot can be programmed to simulate love but since it can't choose otherwise, it isn't really love. God chose to give us the freedom to choose to love. He took a big risk doing that. We could and often do choose not to. And he took the consequences of his decision, letting those who chose harm rather than love crucify him.

But he wasn't defeated. He rose again. He will not fail to achieve his purpose, to make the world a paradise again, populated by those who voluntarily choose to be citizens of the kingdom of the God who is love. Does that sound good to you? Then stop fighting him. Start trusting him. Disown all that holds you back, take up your cross and follow Jesus. Nobody's forcing you. It's your choice.