Redeeming a Nation (Timeless Teaching)

by Philip Quenby

  Charles Gordon ploughed a lonely furrow. He was not a clubbable man, nor was he easy company. He hated dinner parties and fled attempts to fete him when he became famous. He was more comfortable in lonely overseas postings than in England. Disdainful of all material rewards, he was utterly incorruptible. Single-minded and brave to the point of foolhardiness, he was at the same time cussed and unpredictable. Through the many contradictions of his personality, the constant trait was integrity. Integrity involves probity, rectitude and high principle. Gordon had these qualities in spades. One of the first things he did on being appointed governor of the Sudan was to suggest a reduction in his salary. On arrival in Khartoum, he made strenuous and repeated (but in the event unsuccessful) attempts to stamp out the extensive regional slave trade, though all advisers urged that the task was impossible and it transpired that high officials were heavily implicated in it. Gordon could with justice have said: “I know, my God, that you test the heart and are pleased with integrity.” (1 Chronicles 29:17).

  In many ways, Gordon was an outsider, an outcast from society by reason of his own character and sensibilities. There is a sense in which every Christian must also be an outsider and an outcast. The Bible consistently talks about the people of God as being strangers in a sinful world, sojourners or temporary residents whose real country and allegiance lie elsewhere: “I am a stranger on earth; do not hide your commands from me” (Psalm 119:19). Jesus said of his disciples: “you do not belong to the world” (John 15:19) and “[you] are not of the world any more than I am of the world.” (John 17:14). The contrast with the ungodly could not be greater: “Their mind is on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven.” (Philippians 3:19-20).

  King David acknowledged that human sin and weakness might be said to make us outcasts in the sight of God: “We are aliens and strangers in your sight, as were all our forefathers. Our days on earth are like a shadow, without hope.” (1 Chronicles 29:15). All the more remarkable, then, that the death of Jesus on the cross enables us to be treated as righteous in God’s sight so that we can come before him with confidence and be adopted into his family. Through the resurrection, the shadow and the hopelessness that David saw are transformed into the light of God’s presence and the firm assurance of life everlasting. We are no longer cast out from God, although we remain outcasts in a sinful world.

  To be an outcast is not easy. It often involves giving up the pleasurable sensation of being approved by others and being part of the crowd. It involves living in the world but being neither swayed, compromised nor consumed by it. The key to this is integrity. If we are to keep our integrity, we must steer clear of the world’s entanglements. Hence the apostle Peter counsels his readers to reject the things of the world: “I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul.” (1 Peter 2:11). However, this is no excuse for failing to engage with the world. We must obey the command to “go and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19) and we must “Remember that [we] were slaves in Egypt.” (Deuteronomy 5:15). That is to say, we should never lose sight of the fact that once we were dead in our sins and that millions upon millions need the saving light of Jesus Christ in their lives. There are practical steps that it is our duty to undertake, too, so as to alleviate the suffering that comes through living in a broken world. St Paul reminds us, for example, that “We should continue to remember the poor.” (Galatians 2:10).

  Cast off.

  Integrity is central to striking the balance between engaging with the world and at the same time distancing ourselves from it. Integrity requires that we cast off the things that belong to our former lives and clothe ourselves with the garments that God wishes us to wear. The former will include those “acts of the sinful nature” that St Paul lists in Galatians 5:19-21 and the latter will include “the fruit of the Spirit” that he describes in Galatians 5:22-23. As he goes on to say, “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.” (Galatians 5:24-25).

  To act with integrity requires that we give generously, not only with material things but with the greatest gift that is ours to bestow: ourselves. Generous giving should be motivated, stimulated and characterised by:

  • A correct appreciation that the source of what we have is God: “But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand.” (1 Chronicles 29:14).

  • A recognition that, as a result, all that we possess is for God to use and dispose of as he wishes: “O LORD our God, as for all this abundance that we have provided for building a temple for your Holy Name, it comes from your hand, and all of it belongs to you.” (1 Chronicles 29:16).

  • A consequent readiness to place ourselves at God’s command without quibble or reserve: “All these things I have given willingly and with honest intent.” (1 Chronicles 29:17).

  • An expectation that others can and should be similarly motivated: “And now I have seen how willingly your people who are here have given to you.” (1 Chronicles 29:17).

  • A level of giving that is at one and the same time unstinting yet realistic, and which does not hold back for selfish motives: “Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” (2 Corinthians 9:7).

  In all that he did, Gordon gave wholeheartedly of himself. With hindsight, we may disagree with his methods and perhaps even with his opinions, but there can be no questioning his commitment. Whether he was leading from the front in time of war, seeking freedom for the slaves of the Sudan, confronting what he regarded as the malign pretensions of Muhammad Ahmed or bringing help and opportunity to underprivileged youngsters at home he was unsparing of himself and disdainful of personal reward or safety.

  Cast aside.

  Integrity necessarily involves loyalty: to truth, justice and other high ideals, and above all to God. King David prays: “O LORD, God of our fathers Abraham, Isaac and Israel, keep this desire [to give willingly] in the hearts of your people for ever, and keep their hearts loyal to you.” (1 Chronicles 29:18). Sadly we live in a land where loyalty is a coinage that seems much debased. We too readily cast aside things of real value in favour of worthless baubles. We fail to keep alive the remembrance of what God has done, we fail to acknowledge our dependence on him and we fail to do what he asks of us. We treat those who act with integrity as though they are simply too foolish to look to their own self-interest.

  The irony is that, by casting aside God, it is we who end up being cast aside. When God is rejected, we are set adrift from the moorings of his laws and his plan for our lives. Harsh winds drive us from the safe haven of his love into a world that is brutal and uncaring. We lose the secure anchorage of being part of his family and can no longer find the way to the place of our salvation. Loyalty and integrity are not just desirable, therefore. They are essential.

  If we are to live with integrity towards God and our fellow men, our faith cannot be something that is practised alone or kept to ourselves. Our duty to engage with the world and to act with integrity brings with it obligations not just to those on earth today, but also to succeeding generations. King David was conscious of this when he prayed: “And give my son Solomon the wholehearted devotion to keep your commands, requirements and decrees and to do everything to build the palatial structure for which I have provided.” (1 Chronicles 29:19). It would be the height of cruelty to cast our children and our children’s children adrift into the world without giving them guidance for the journey ahead. Yet that is precisely what we are doing at present. In pursuit of what we call fairness and equality we are sending them out like “lamb[s] to the slaughter” (Isaiah 53:7). That is not integrity. It is its opposite.

  Conclusion.

  It is easy to mock the Victorians for their manifest faults
and their blindness to unconscious motivation. Many of those who were used by God then and beforehand were not easy characters, nor were they necessarily even nice people. Charles Gordon and Florence Nightingale were unlikely to have been soothing company. In an earlier era, Robert Clive was a depressive, James Wolfe and Horatio Nelson sickly. Yet that is precisely the point. Flawed characters and weak bodies were enabled to do great things because God worked through them. Thus were they able to outface the opposition that often threatened to overwhelm them. They had something that by and large we lack. They did their best to do the right thing. Although they fell short of perfection, as any human being must, still in the effort they reached higher than we even begin to attempt. At the deepest level, they possessed integrity of a kind that we no longer seem to value.

  General Gordon was besieged in Khartoum for nigh on a year. We act as though we were besieged and escape impossible. This just is not so. Once we start to practice integrity on a national level we will see falsehoods of this kind for what they are and break free of them. We should thus do all in our power to hasten the day when God can “test the heart and [be pleased with our] integrity.” (1 Chronicles 29:17).

  43. Hubris

  Obadiah 1-21.

  Key word: pride.

  The SS Titanic was the pride of the White Star Line. She was one of the largest ships of her time, a passenger liner specially built for the transatlantic route, of a construction that was unique in its day. Her double-bottomed hull and series of sixteen watertight compartments, four of which could be flooded without endangering the buoyancy of the vessel, led her makers and owners to claim that she was unsinkable.

  On 14 April 1912 the vessel, fitted with every modern luxury and convenience, left Southampton on her maiden voyage to New York. There was every expectation that she might claim the coveted Blue Riband for the fastest transatlantic crossing. It was not to be. In the north Atlantic she struck an iceberg that ripped a long gash in her side beneath the waterline, allowing many of her watertight compartments to be flooded simultaneously. It took hours for the stricken vessel to sink, but unaccountably there was delay in alerting passengers to the danger and in lowering lifeboats. Her band famously played on as the vessel listed ever more alarmingly. When she finally went down, she took some 1,500 passengers and crew with her. Less than half that number survived.

  Captain Smith, one of the most experienced of the White Star Line’s Master Mariners, subsequently faced criticism of his conduct in sailing too far north and hence too close to seas in which icebergs might be expected, and of failing to keep a proper lookout. Damningly, it was found that insufficient lifeboats had been provided, since they cluttered the deck and spoilt the clean lines of the ship – and anyway, it was never expected that lifeboats might be needed.[102]

  Amongst the dead was the campaigning journalist W.T. Stead. It was a melodramatic end to a sensational life. This was a man of whom it might have been said: “We have heard a message from the Lord: an envoy was sent to the nations to say, ‘Rise, and let us go against her for battle’” (Obadiah :1), for he brought to England news of dark deeds and of the need to confront an evil at her heart. As editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, he worked with Josephine Butler to publicise the extent of child prostitution in late nineteenth century England. To that end, in 1885 he arranged for a child called Eliza Armstrong to be bought for £5 by Rebecca Jarrett, a reformed brothel-keeper, and smuggled out of England. His subsequent article The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon proved to a shocked public that it was possible to procure a child in London for sex.[103] Further horrific revelations followed. In response, Parliament swiftly raised the age of consent from twelve to sixteen and enacted heavy penalties for those guilty of child abuse.

  Report.

  The prophet Obadiah similarly brings a message “about Edom” (Obadiah :1), a nation that has grown proud and has gloated over Israel’s misfortunes at the hands of foreign powers. The envoy to which he refers is unidentified, perhaps being Obadiah himself or perhaps another. An envoy is one who is sent: a messenger, a diplomatic agent, a representative from one government to another. His job is to relay words that have been given him by a higher power and to discharge faithfully a trust that has been placed in him. To be an envoy has traditionally been a dangerous job, for foreign rulers might readily hold hostage, mistreat and even kill those who brought ill tidings. Such has often been the fate of God’s prophets.

  In this case, the envoy comes from the High King of Heaven, for he is sent at the instance of “the Sovereign LORD” (Obadiah :1). The call that he relays to “the nations” (Obadiah :1) is to: “Rise, and let us go against her [Edom] for battle” (Obadiah :1). An alliance is to be forged against Edom, which will involve even those she had thought to be on her side. In the face of this confederation she will be impotent and helpless. Before it she will be rendered prostrate: “All your allies will force you to the border; your friends will deceive and overpower you; those who eat your bread will set a trap for you, but you will not detect it.” (Obadiah :7). Her fate will take her by surprise. Likewise we can often be taken by surprise by the Lord’s activity. God’s envoys are not always the people we might expect. W.T. Stead is regarded by some as a humbug and a relentless self-publicist, more interested in increasing newspaper circulation than in the justice of the causes he espoused. The Eliza Armstrong case, however, was undoubtedly a call to arms. We must not let our pride stand in the way of heeding similar calls when they come, from however unlikely or unprepossessing a source. We must make sure that we respond as those calls demand.

  Representation.

  Obadiah’s call is to earthly nations for an earthly battle: “Your warriors, O Teman, will be terrified, and everyone in Esau’s mountains will be cut down in the slaughter.” (Obadiah :9). Yet there is also a spiritual dimension. The relationship between Israel and Edom is a family one, the Israelites being descended from the patriarch Jacob and the Edomites from his twin brother Esau: see Genesis 25:21-34. Despite the close bond of blood and the eventual reconciliation between Jacob and Esau described in Genesis 33:4, Edom consistently and from the very first showed hostility to Israel. She is therefore a symbol of those who stand in opposition to God and a representative of the dark forces that must be fought in each age and every place. The charges against her are:

  • Pride: “The pride of your heart has deceived you, you who live in the clefts of the rocks and make your home on the heights, you who say to yourself, ‘Who can bring me down to the ground?’” (Obadiah :3).

  • Collaboration with evil: “On the day you stood aloof while strangers carried off his wealth and foreigners entered his gates and cast lots for Jerusalem, you were like one of them.” (Obadiah :11).

  • Gloating: “You should not look down on your brother in the day of his misfortune, nor rejoice over the people of Judah in the day of their destruction.” (Obadiah :12).

  • Violence: “Because of the violence against your brother Jacob, you will be covered with shame; you will be destroyed for ever.” (Obadiah :10).

  • Treachery: “You should not march through the gates of my people in the day of their disaster, nor look down on them in their calamity in the day of their disaster, nor seize their wealth in the day of their disaster. You should not wait at the crossroads to cut down their fugitives, nor hand over their survivors in the day of their trouble.” (Obadiah :13-14).

  These are indictments that might equally be laid against us: pride in our own cleverness and resources, supine acceptance of what is wrong, pleasure in the misfortune of others, violence and double-dealing. We are no longer on the right side in the battle between good and evil.

  Reliance.

  Like us, Edom has relied upon her own strength rather than on God, but all sources of false security will be stripped away in turn:

  • Natural defences will prove inadequate: “The pride of your heart has deceived you, you who live in the clefts of the rocks and make your home on the heights, you who say t
o yourself, ‘Who can bring me down to the ground?’” (Obadiah :3).

  • Accumulated wealth will prove worthless: “But how Esau will be ransacked, his hidden treasures pillaged!” (Obadiah :6).

  • Allies will prove false: “All your allies will force you to the border; your friends will deceive and overpower you; those who eat your bread will set a trap for you, but you will not detect it.” (Obadiah :7).

  • Human wisdom will prove illusory: “’In that day,’ declares the Lord, ‘will I not destroy the wise men of Edom, men of understanding in the mountains of Esau?’” (Obadiah :8).

  • Armed strength will prove insufficient: “Your warriors, O Teman, will be terrified, and everyone in Esau’s mountains will be cut down in the slaughter.” (Obadiah :9).

  In the end, nothing will be left: “People from the Negev will occupy the mountains of Esau, and people from the foothills will possess the land of the Philistines. They will occupy the fields of Ephraim and Samaria, and Benjamin will possess Gilead. This company of Israelite exiles who are in Canaan will possess the land as far as Zarephath; the exiles from Jerusalem who are in Sepharad will possess the towns of the Negev.” (Obadiah :19-20). The land of the ungodly will be turned over to those who recognise and rely upon the Lord. If we do not wish the same fate to befall us, it is time that we started to learn from the past.