Good News, Bad News….
On record for good news in the Book of John—before Jesus gave that mighty shout for Lazarus to come out of the tomb—he told the young man's sister, “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?”
Is it time to spread the bad news? Given the current culture it’s difficult for good news to make its way, including the gospel. Gospel means good news and, as a Christian, I might have been anxious to spread the gospel of the good Lord Jesus Christ’s propitiation for our sins, and the resurrection of the dead accomplished by him. This spreading of the good news to every nation is known as The Great Commission of our resurrected Lord:
“ ‘Ye shall receive power, after the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.’ And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight.”
At Wikipedia you can find out about the mid 1950's martyrdom of five young male missionaries, led by Jim Elliot into Ecuador—trying to meet with and convert an insularly violent tribe of peoples. Instead of discouraging believers in the great commission, these much publicized deaths sparked increased fervor among young evangelical males for mission work. The 2018 missionary martyr for the sake of the good news is John Allen Chau. According to Wikipedia, he went alone, intending to contact and live with natives on the isolated Indian Ocean North Sentinel Island; live with the hostile and insular Sentinelese, hoping to convert them to Christ.
Historically, the good news was good-to-go, but recently not-so-much. So here I’m reconsidering. We may be in desperate need of bad news. In fact, I fear you won’t be able to receive the Good News without receiving the Bad News first.
The Internet is, of course, demonstrably fulfilling half, if not most, of this mission. By demonstrable we writers mean through showing not telling. Mercifully I will resist two mouse holes begging for go-down in the last sentence: 1. The root word demon, and 2. detailed explication of the quaint literary device/advice of show don’t tell. And, I’ll just throw in 3: Writers must try to resist head-hopping. Please note that, while I haven’t shown you, I’ve already told you about the good news in the first paragraph. Since bad news is demonstrable (root word demon) on the Internet, it’s not up to me to show you this bad news.
So, reader, for my first piece of evidence, please turn on your Internet.
Good News, Bad News
What? Oh. Yes, your Internet is already on. Of course. How childlike of me to suppose you would have to click open the Internet in order to follow the show. But, if you would be so kind as to humor me in this little exercise by shifting your gaze just a bit in order carefully to scrutinize the influx of fornication, liar-ship, self- righteous harassment, trolling, foolish minutia and the slough of despond. Yes, that’s it... just for a moment... turn your eyes away, leave off the incredible wisdom of this genuine print journalese high-toned intellectual think-piece to gaze upon the mess made of our culture and our lives. Thank you very much. Consider yourself shown.
Now I turn back to the tell part of my essay in order to move us along just a bit, to think through the reason I’m giving you these extremely important words: THE BAD NEWS.
You, my friend, are going to hell.
Yes.
That’s right. I am telling you in this rigorously toned (also lighthearted and melodramatic) think piece that you... you sitting there reading this... are going to die.
How do I know this? Because—just looking at you—I can tell you were born. That’s all it takes. Not only are you eligible for the abyss, you are going there. I’ve been there. In a disembodied (sorta) way. (The way we actually experience hell.) You don’t want to go.
So, yes, you sitting there reading this... are going to hell when you die. You will die.
Unless....
Yes—in God’s great merciful and Christ’s great painful propitiation—please don’t wail!! —remember there is an UNLESS —.
Unless....
So.... Wait.
—I’m thinking about it (as befits a think-piece) and, so, not sure I actually want you to have this, this particular unless.
You see—I do want you to see and understand my problem with this. In fact—now that I’ve thought for two seconds—I’m perfectly content with your not ever having the bad news. Nor even the good news.
There begins to be a rather thinky problem here. I’m very tempted to tell you to forget what I said about the demonstrable Internet and just go out and play in it. It’s okay if you get your feet muddy. We can always wash off your shoes with the hose and everything will be fine. There is no bad news. Or good news. I’m just making this up. It’s all fake, so don’t worry!
Hi, we're back. You of course will want to point out all the demonstrable good news on the internet, such as Wikipedia, Ref Desk, demonstrations on how to shoe a horse, embroider pincushions, make strawberry creams, fly twin-engine variable-pitch propeller with retractable gear Pipers; or watch That Darn Cat and Father Knows Best. …I think we just got side-tracked in those last paragraphs —related to showing versus telling? So excuse me.
Re the internet we do have a choice between muddy shoes and clean shoes.
I was trying to get at something. Maybe I had better backup.
... However one is just so reluctant for you to have the news. One regrets starting off with that. The bad news is not what one wants you to have because... it might... so, it might lead you to the good news.
Now I’m being honest. This is very very honest:
I just plain want all this spreading the good news business to stop.
May I share a personal anecdote with you? One from my childhood?
Thank you.
I’m thinking you... presuming you’ve given me the go-ahead, but if you haven’t, feel free to put this think-piece aside. You can always come back to it again... providing this enticement of this successful plea to stop spreading the good news should later compel you to read. I’m not even going to do more than hint here that God is unwilling that any should perish (read, “go to hell”). Will not even hint. Because this desire of God’s to save you may be why we’re having all this trouble, this bad news.
Sodom and Gomorrah afire, by Jacob Jacobsz, c. 1680
Will not even hint because that might thwart my thinky plans.
Honestly. Am really not, here, trying to get you to repent. Believe me when I say I don’t want this to happen. So here’s the deal. I’ve spent maybe 900 words telling you there’s a deal, there’s a point to all this thinking, and now it’s time to lay all my dominoes on the table, stand them on end, knock the first one over and see where their fall leads.
All you evangelicals out there! Knock it off!! Quit trying to convert people. Do you see where all this conversion is leading? Where it’s led for the past 2000+ years?
Think about it.
Here’s my childhood anecdote to help you:
First, I noticed the beatific expression on the face of a devout woman telling a young man of her desire for the return of our victorious Lord Jesus Christ. Yes, she would have used all three of those words. Any other designation, such as His name minus titles, would not have been right to her.
Second, this younger equally devout man, informed her that this prayer leaves out all those who might be saved if the Lord delayed his return. As a girl I was aware of this exchange. I was a child. But I had no idea whatever that he might be thinking her loving wish for Christ’s return was... selfish.
As a child—a rather incipient form wouldn’t you say?—I was not exactly bewildered. Just did not know what to make of this expressed collision of desire. Or if it even was a dilemma. Also, I hadn’t the long view. Children don’t have the long view. This is not an abstract observation, I speak from empirical experience.
It’s almost as though children are set in concrete. Children are like the Ten Commandments. They and nothing around them is ever going to change. They hear rumors that they are going to grow up, and they will use these rumors to fuel daydreams about how great it will be when they can do whatever they want, and don’t have to be told by anyone what to do, and all that. Yes, they know and believe in the Ten Commandments, but what’s that got to do with it?
So I thought about that. And then I forgot. But then, every so often, I’d remember, and so, mostly? —I still didn’t “get it.” Is there some kind of problem here?? If so, what?
I mean, of course, we are hoping our loved ones, friends, and strangers, will “come to Jesus.” (Note the scare quotes.) And... of course we are hoping “Jesus will come again” to us, to transform us.
In old age the formerly young man went with the Lord earlier this year. Here is the quote from a letter received yesterday written to me by his daughter:
“Things in this world are just getting more and more evil. Makes you wonder how much longer God will allow it. As in Noah’s day, and in Sodom, the Lord said ‘enough.’ Perhaps the last soul will be saved today and He will call us HOME. That is a bright thought!! May it encourage you too.”
Second witness, suggested by my editor: “ ‘If God doesn't judge America, he owes Sodom and Gomorrah an apology.’ " This saying has been attributed to Ruth Graham, and/ or her daughter Anne Graham Lotz, but I cannot find the original source for it. Lotz may have been quoting her mother—Billy Graham’s wife.
All this is what it is to be a Christian, is it not?”
Hmmm.
Does anyone else see a problem here?
But for long I did not. I can live with paradox, with contradiction, with lack of understanding. I don’t even need to be a child to do so. I’ve done so every day of my life. I’m told I’m a human being.
So I moved on.
Until another day. Hence this serious, grim, dour, stony-faced essay.
Decades after the first time I heard the good news/ bad news,, I was listening to a podcast with an evangelical of about the same age as the man who initially brought up the catch-22 with the beatific woman believer looking forward to the Lord’s return. Now an analyst for the Major League Baseball Network, Juan Pierre was an accomplished ball player, who had repented of his sins while still in the game. Yes, he got saved and was no longer going to hell. Listening to CT podcast episode of The Calling, I rediscovered this old conundrum: witness—or Kingdom-come?
It was in fact no dilemma for this young evangelical former ballplayer. He just wanted all his loved ones and friends to come to Jesus. For him, wanting Jesus to come back now is selfish. “I don’t want Jesus to come back now because....” A record-holding big-league baseball player! A black man who gives in voluntary service to people who don’t have anything—the homeless—and teaches his children to do the same. He wants people to receive and act upon the good news!
—Suddenly—I was sick of the good news!!
“Don’t you realize,” I wanted to shout at the demonstrable Internet while listening to this podcast. “—Don’t you realize that if people keep on getting the good news, generation after generation, getting saved from sin and death and hell—that we are never gonna have the kingdom of God on earth!? Millennia have gone by in support of our wicked world because of this Good-News-spreading business!
—The newly saved will be out sowing the good news AGAIN. So there will be more more more, and those will sow more more more! And so on. And on.
This, my friends, is why, after 2000+ years Christ is still delayed in his descent, his mighty shout, the Almighty Advent of His Kingdom.
Now... let’s get on top of this. First, the Lord’s prayer. Nowhere in this prayer are we asking for more people to be saved. Nowhere. The prayer plainly says, Thy kingdom come.... IT DOES NOT SAY, Save my bro, save our brothers and sisters, our friends.
The last quoted words of our Lord Jesus are not, “The days will come, in the which there shall not be left one stone upon another.” — The last quoted words are not even, “It is finished.” Not, “Lovest thou me more than these?” Not, “Ye shall be witnesses unto the uttermost part of the earth.” Not “Saul, Saul, why persecute me?” Not, “Behold I have the keys of hell and of death.” Not, “I am alive for evermore.” These were not His last sentences.
No. And we are not finished. These were not the last recorded words of our Lord. And there are yet stones one atop the other on the Western Wall. Look on the Demonstrable Internet.
Last words? None of the above.
The last recorded words of our Lord are, “Surely I come quickly.”
Because—bad news—in Acts, chapter 17 we see that a day has been appointed for God’s judgment. When He shall judge all things pertaining to you. And to the world. And (shudder) to me.
OTOH, and head-hopping here, you might argue against all this by saying something along the lines of:
—Or else—here, why don’t I just go ahead and say it since you were going to anyway. And of course I do want to be fair to your POV. Even though this is not your essay, and basically you’ve no voice in it just as I had no mechanism for my shout out to be heard on the Christianity Today podcast with the ball- player turned-Christian. (Also—to be fair —podcast listeners were invited to respond in social media.)
We're here today because for thousands of years Christians were not made perfect, did not see Him coming. Reason: They were forever spreading the good news.
So, again, with just a bit more head-hopping—your POV: You’re saying that a prayer for salvation is a prayer for HIS kingdom to come?
—Your POV. Are you satisfied?
If not, just give a shout-out on social media.
Personally. I don’t think it’ll fly. For confirmation you’ll ask the baseball star what he thinks. But watch out. He holds a record for stolen bases.
The stones of the great temple buildings of Herod’s glamorous additions—buildings so admired by the disciples—those stones are not all thrown down yet. The Western Wall still stands. (Check out that foundation.) Perhaps it's that part of the temple built as a monument to Herod the Great during the infanticide of the innocents? —When Herod sought the innocent human infant temple to destroy it ... the infant already escaping with Joseph and Mary to Egypt.
WAILING WALL
—Good news? Bad news?
...Even so, Come, Lord Jesus.
For more bad news:
© S. Dorman 2024