The End of the Revolving Door

Joel 2:12-13, 28-29

            I just can’t believe in a God who… fill in the blank. We’ve all heard this. Somedays we probably think it. I just can’t believe in a God who…

            Of all the hard questions I get the toughest is the question of God and evil. It comes in many forms—the ones I just mentioned, “I just can’t believe in this kind of God…” or “But what kind of God allows this,” or just “Why?”

This feels apropos for the book of Joel, because Joel begins with lament over the destruction of Jerusalem and it’s fairly clear for Joel, as it was for all the prophets, that the “why?” of death and destruction is the peoples’ sinfulness. The people went astray. God punished them. That is evil explained for the Old Testament. This is the revolving door of history before Christ.

            Joel’s solution is that the people return to the Lord. Once they do that God will pour out his spirit on them and all, apparently, will be well in the world. This sounds great, in theory, but for those of us who’ve read the Old Testament you know it never seems to work out for long. The people chosen by God do eventually repent. They return to the Lord. But, before long, they turn again to their golden calves; they do what is evil in the sight of the Lord; they will forget the one who brought them out of the Promised Land. And so the revolving door continues. Evil, it seems, is very persistent.

            This kind of repentance-blessing, sin-punishment cycle runs its course while the chosen people are in exile. The prophets start to look for a different answer; a more permanent one. The old system just doesn’t work. East of Eden, people do not stay faithful. The expectations of the law are too much; they have short-memories and ravenous appetites. The chosen people and the unchosen people alike seem one and the same—sinful, through and through, capable of repentance, capable of returning to the Lord, their God, but ultimately bound for disappointment. What good is a spirit poured out that is dependent on our response when we inevitably fall short of God’s expectations for us? It is our flaw, born from our freedom that we stole from that tree in the Garden of Eden.

            So, how to make it right? God had a couple of options, really. God could remove our freedom from us. No freedom; no evil. This is what we so-glamorize as the “apocalypse” or the end of the world. It is the moment God completely removes our freedom from us; for most of us it happens in death. Many thought this is what Jesus was bringing; even Jesus hinted as much. But since we’re already in this mess—since the fruit has been eaten and much suffering and death has followed—God decided that there ought to be a greater purpose, a telos for this creation. This is the Christmas promise and the Easter resolution. It is God saying “There’s purpose” where purpose seems not to be.

            The problem of evil is a problem of justice. What do we deserve? And the answer, says the prophets—whether it’s Joel or Isaiah or Amos or whomever—is nothing more or less than death. We deserve death. If we want better we had better return to the Lord and receive God’s spirit. The flaw in the plan is that we never return for long; we just re-enter the revolving door, and before long we are in need of confession once again. This happens on a large scale with the chosen people—the sons and daughters of Abraham—but it happens also to each of us individually. We sin, we fall short, we return to the Lord in confession, the spirit rests itself back upon us, and within a few seconds or minutes or hours or days we are back in need of forgiveness again.

            The flaw in the plan is our innate and unfixable sinfulness. Unfixable, at least, until Christmas; unfixable until a new plan is hatched; a plan that requires not our actions but the will of God to subvert our freedom—that thing we so value—and to say, “No, you cannot choose me. I have chosen you.” That’s the God of the manger. That’s Jesus.

            Now, this doesn’t exactly answer the question of evil, and it doesn’t explain why I find it to be the hardest question. The real problem lies not in the question but in the specific implications behind it. You see, nobody is asking, “Why does evil exist generally?” Instead, they’re always asking, “Why does a two-year-old get cancer?” or “Why does a young mother die in a car accident?” or “Why is there genocide?” or “Why sexual abuse?” or “Why an earthquake or disease?” The problem of evil is specific, because it speaks to the innate unfairness that suggests the universe is not, and never has been, very good. It begs us to say, “How can she have deserved this?” God seems to answer this two ways: On the one hand, we all deserve death. Every baby is born sinful, its first instinct to take everything it sees for itself, seeing itself as the center of the universe. And, yet, on the other hand, God promises not temporary healing but permanent resurrection. The flaw in the plan was our freedom. God promises not to take away freedom but to complete our freedom in the only way that matters: with resurrection.

            The problem of evil is a problem of specificity and perspective. It’s a problem of seeing others as receiving a sentence they didn’t deserve rather than seeing that we-ourselves deserve nothing but what they got. Then, it’s a problem of telos because we see our lives as the ultimate purpose for our universe when our little lives are only a tiny part of Christ’s body; a body that is much bigger, much better, and much more permanent than we give it credit. We matter less than we think on our own, but through Christ we matter more than we could imagine.

            The prophet, Joel, tells us to return to the Lord our God and receive the Spirit, which is wisdom enough, but the question is really why? Why do we need the Spirit in the first place? Will it safeguard us from every evil? No. And that’s why we won’t trust it. If no Christian ever died tragically, if no baby ever got cancer, if there were no car accidents or natural disasters, if every faithful person lived to be one hundred years of age and died comfortably in bed surrounded by those who loved them, it would be better, but it would still not be enough. We would want more—and rightfully so! It’s not enough. None of it is. And it’s not that God is punishing individuals because of the sins of the whole or using them as examples for the rest of us; it’s more like we are punishing ourselves. Every choice we make has implications that lead to suffering; often to the suffering of others; and we are not as distinct from others as we want to believe. When others hurt, we hurt, whether we realize it or not, whether we are empathetic or not. We are all in this together, quite literally, as one body. So what we see as chance God understands as the ramifications of the sin of the body.

            So, then, if sin is still doing its thing what are we to do with Joel’s call to return? Ignore it? Double-down and live as if none of this matters? Absolutely not. In fact, it’s far more important in a world like this to return to the Lord than it would be in a world where karma ruled the day, because in this world it’s easy to believe that the world is nothing but pain, that chance rules the day, and there is no purpose for us. It’s easy to party hard, break as many commandments as possible, and experience all the things your parents warned you about just because you can. It’s easy to ignore God and put your trust in sex, drugs, and money, because, after all, those who spend their lives reveling in their sin don’t seem any more apt to be done in by it than the ones who seek to remain holy. So, why, oh why, return to the Lord?

            Because of God’s spirit.

Joel gives a simple answer to an impossibly difficult question. Return to the Lord because you are in need of something you don’t even know you’re missing. The spirit of the Lord will rest upon you, and finally you’ll realize what you needed could not be found on the other side of the bed, and it couldn’t be found in a pile or money or a kilo of cocaine. Neither could it be found deep inside yourself. No, we need to return to the Lord, again and again—every day, every week—because it is there that actual peace is found. Peace to say, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I fear no evil.” And not because it might not get me; not because I might not die; but because yea though I die, still I will live.

            The only way to trust in that hope is through the work of the Holy Spirit. This is the only way to believe. It’s the only peace we will find. It’s the only love that endures through suffering. Return to the Lord because in him is purpose, in him is meaning, in him is hope, peace, joy, and love.