Who Is Responsible?

By Audrey Stallsmith 

I made the mistake of clicking on a recently produced unrated western for Dad the other night, assuming it probably was a TV movie which would be the equivalent of PG. However, this one literally was awash in gore. Somebody apparently had a large store of fake blood that they wanted to use, since it sprayed up from every unfortunate who got shot—and there were plenty of them. 

Oddly enough, though, Righteous Blood seemed to be trying to be a Christian film, in between all of the gratuitous violence, suggestive talk, and brief nudity which probably would have gotten it rated R if it had been rated. Even though the protagonist called Jericho violated one of the cardinal rules for western heroes by shooting an already downed and disarmed enemy. 

(Note to producers: A gut-shot man is not like a horse with a broken leg which needs to be put out of its misery. If that man really is dying, he needs to be given time to make his peace with God first, which is much more important than his not suffering.) 

I have to admit that the part of the storyline about Jericho being hired to shoot a woman’s mentally handicapped little boy for her was compelling. Even he, a former hired gun for the railroad who now had a bounty on his head, wasn’t quite calloused enough to do that. 

Fortunately, he recently had encountered a priest who had challenged him about the course his life was taking. Anybody who knows how these plots go probably could predict that the priest would end up dead and Jericho end up reformed with a handicapped kid in tow. So, my final reaction to the movie was mixed. 

It did have its excellent parts in between unlikely ones and all that blood spraying which came across as farcical. It also got me thinking about why so many people have to have the decision to change forced upon them by someone else. 

That reminded me of a couple YouTube sermons I’d recently watched, in which both Timothy Keller and the late Dallas Willard seemed to be saying the same thing. We all know right from wrong and most of us want to be good people. But, somehow, on our own we seem incapable of putting into action what we know. Like Jericho, we are aware of what we should do. We just don’t do it. 

Keller gave as an illustration a chapter from Deuteronomy where God warned the Israelites of the curses which would rain down on them if they forsook him for other gods. But He already knew that, as soon as their strong leaders such as Moses and Joshua died, His chosen people were going to be in the wind. Any of us readers who had followed their journeys up to that point could have predicted that too.

In later books, such as Judges and the Kings and Chronicles, strong leaders might again whip the Israelites into shape for a while, though many seemed inclined to lead them in the wrong direction instead. But, whenever the stabilizing influence of a good judge or king disappeared with his death or when a bad one came on the scene, the people drifted before whatever breeze was blowing at the time. 

They resemble my guinea fowl, who often flock to me when I go outside and accompany me for a while. Although I’d like to think they are happy to see me, they do the same with any other person who shows up—and some vehicles! Guineas, after all, are accustomed to following whoever takes the lead. In that way, they are much like humans. 

Not all humans, of course. God told Elijah at one point that He still had 7,000 who hadn’t bowed to Baal. But that would have been a minority. 

I suspect the Israelites problem was that they wanted their leaders and priests to do the religious stuff—the relationship with God—for them. Moses, after all, was their intermediary with the Almighty. But, when he came down from the mountain with a shining face, the rest of them kept their distance. They didn’t want to risk getting too close to God themselves. 

And, in some ways, they weren’t allowed to. Even the chosen people required a priest to make their sacrifices, their atonement for sin, for them. But it does seem as if individuals such as the prophets who wanted a closer relationship with God could have one. Just not very many of them actually wanted it! 

They preferred to have deniability, after all, to be able to claim that their fickleness wasn’t their fault but that of their leaders. However, as Willard pointed out in his sermon, the word “dominion” which sounds pleasantly like power, actually means responsibility. 

When God gave us dominion over the earth, he made us responsible for it. And he also gave us dominion over our souls, so I am responsible for what happens to mine, just as you are for what happens to yours. Therefore, as someone has pointed out, God doesn’t send anyone to hell. We send ourselves if we choose to be separate from Him. 

Although we may feel superior to the Israelites, we actually do the same thing they did in different ways. Our own leaders may be our pastors or our favorite authors, some of whom aren’t even alive anymore. Once I’d finished all the books I could find by the likes of C. S. Lewis and G. K. Chesterton, I turned to more modern authors like Keller and Willard who actually use their first names! 

But am I not, in a sense, wanting them to do the whole talking with God thing and then tell me what they’ve learned from it? Unfortunately, that only lasts as long as they live or as long as it takes me to read all they have written or listen to all they have said. And Willard already is deceased, while Keller has cancer. 

So, I continue to try to carry on sometimes difficult conversations with God myself. Of course, they aren’t so difficult when prayers have been answered and all of nature seems to be singing. But too often they seem to occur in the dead hours of early morning when I wake up and begin to worry. Then prayer can feel like pushing a heavy rock uphill. 

In those times, I suspect what we are pushing against really isn’t God’s obduracy, but the temptation to let everything slide. To turn over and go back to sleep. 

I often tell myself that prayer should be an easy and enjoyable thing. It should be like having an imaginary friend to whom you can talk at any time and on any subject. But an imaginary friend is much more comfortable than an all-too-real God Who can read my mind and tell when I am lying—or maybe just fudging! (Some of us who believe outright lying to be wrong do more fudging than a candymaker does.) 

So, it would be less scary to have God at one remove, so to speak. But that is an option we aren’t allowed anymore. When that veil in the temple split during Christ’s crucifixion, the meaning was obvious. We no longer required an intermediary to approach God for us. We could walk right in to the Holiest of Holies ourselves. Keller notes that, though Abel’s innocent blood cried out for justice and vengeance, Christ’s cried out for forgiveness instead. The final Lamb had been slain. 

But did the worshippers who were on hand at the time actually walk in? I suspect most of them probably beat a hasty retreat instead and somebody swiftly stitched that curtain back together again. For the best of reasons, of course. They had already seen what they weren’t supposed to see. 

Since the Ark of the Covenant which contained the Ten Commandments seems to have disappeared around the time of the Babylonian captivity, it probably wasn’t there, but I imagine the Israelites still envisioned it there. They had learned from Old Testament stories that the presence of God contained in that could kill whoever got too close to it. And then there was all that fire and smoke on the untouchable mountain at the time Moses went up to receive those commandments. 

Fortunately, as Keller points out, since the rest of us can never claw our way up to God, He always comes down to us. And the cloud or smoke in which he obscured Himself even for his chosen intermediaries was for their protection. If they had ever once gotten a searing look at how bad they were in comparison with God, how little they really had to offer Him, it probably would have killed them. 

In the end, I believe that most of our problems with God come down to fear. In his sermon Willard alludes briefly to that which caused Peter to deny Christ but doesn’t have time to finish his thought. I’ve often suspected that the gregarious Peter’s fear may not have been the obvious one, fear for his own safety, but rather fear of being different. Of being on the outside, of being the “one of them” mentioned by his accusers. 

With us loners who already are a bit odd and on the outside, the fear is more focused on the idea that, if God gets to know us better, He isn’t going to like us any more than the popular kids did back in our schooldays. A ridiculous assumption, of course, because our Creator already knows everything there is to know about us and didn’t give up on pursing the Israelites just because they also were fearful, foolish, and flighty. 

As Keller reminds us, we obey “not to get things from God, but to get God.” And Willard gently suggests that, if we are going to spend eternity with our Deity, it’s our responsibility to get better acquainted with Him now. How, otherwise, is heaven going to be heaven for us?