“Everyone loves a test!”
If that were a true or false question, the correct answer would be easy.
I’ve spent the last few days marking exams for the course on Revelation I’ve been teaching at seminary this summer. It was nice to be on the judging side, rather than the student side. I can’t remember how many hundreds of tests and exams I wrote, but I wish I’d had a party after the last one.
Politics is one big nuclear hot potato zone into which preachers enter at their peril. And Jesus’ enemies knew that.
They were plotting, Matthew tells us, how to “entangle Jesus in his words.” And how better to do that than by getting him to make a political comment? Many preachers since have indeed been entangled in the political web by their ill-spoken words. And so they asked Jesus whether or not it was lawful to pay taxes to Caesar. They thought they had this one wrapped up. If he endorsed Caesar, he would be a traitor to the Jews. And if he defied Caesar, they could head straight to Pilate with the evidence.
As it turned out, Jesus was a little smarter than them. He asked them to provide a coin, and pointed out Caesar’s image on the coin. Then he simply said, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” And they walked away.
One of the biggest reasons people give up is unrealistic expectations.
And there are all kinds of these. Some of them are even reasonable. For instance, my wife has a number of quite understandable expectations of me that for various mysterious reasons may never be met. At least not this side of heaven!
All joking aside, though, unrealistic expectations can be an absolute killer. When I met with people coming into our church, I always made a point of saying they probably had some expectations that would never be fulfilled, if only because no church is perfect.
It was very early on a wintry Saturday morning about three years ago. I had set off for an event I was speaking at. I had driven for about twenty minutes without passing a single vehicle.
Often I use time alone in the car to pray. As I was praying, and without any warning, I heard a voice speaking to me. The words were clear as crystal: “Danger ahead, slow down.” If it wasn’t audible to my ears, it was sharply audible to my spirit.
I have learned not to analyze words God speaks. If you analyze, you place your own reasoning above God’s, and you’ll miss it. My instant mental reaction was to question. After all, with no one out and a clear road, what could the danger be? But I obeyed.
This summer I’ve been teaching a post-graduate course on Revelation. My students are great learners and hopefully will be great teachers. Each of them in their own way is getting it.
But this thought has often come to me: why is it that so many Christians badly misunderstand the last book of the Bible?
And if it doesn’t make sense to us, what do we do? We throw our hands up in the air, make a joke of it (uneasily perhaps), and walk away.
What if we tried that with the Gospels or Romans? It wouldn’t leave us with much understanding of our faith, would it? What we need to understand is that our lack of understanding of Revelation affects our ability to understand the Christian faith far more deeply than we think.
