Change Brings Good Things - Vol 1 No 13

Winds of Change

The winds of COVID19 have certainly brought great change to Mike's college experience as a freshman. He initially thought his purpose for God was to interact with students directly, being a voice in the wilderness, bringing a Biblical worldview to their otherwise bereft assessments of life and learning, but God had other plans.  With all classes now online as we shelter-in-place, most interactions are with the professor.  In the analogy of the old Chinese proverb, as the winds of change blow, it has proven to be the opportunity to build a windmill.

Earth-shaking

     Mike’s relationships with his professors have blossomed.  He especially enjoys the relationship with the professor of his WWII History class.  He is a kind and wonderful man who studies and truly grieves about the Holocaust.  His stated purpose for developing and teaching on the Holocaust is to do his part in preventing its ever happening again by helping people see the horrors of it.  That is one of his biggest fears, that it would be repeated. You can imagine then that he has been rocked by the truth that it IS happening again, here and now, and right in our very own culture.  Mike has challenged him to consider that we are in the midst of our own holocaust in America with 60+million babies having been ruthlessly tortured, maimed, murdered and their body parts marketed.  The common denominator between the Jewish Holocaust and the American Preborn Holocaust is that both are perpetrated by humans acting from the human heart.  "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked;  who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9)  Men do what comes out of the heart.  Men haven't changed since the Holocaust. They can’t.  Enslavement to sin is a real thing.  We are all enslaved to sin, and we like to exercise its evil effects in varying degrees.  For this professor, this revelation about the depravity of all mankind has not just been disconcerting, it has been earth-shaking. 

A love for the Jews    

While not a Jew himself, the professor grew up in a Jewish community and has pleasant memories of and good relationships with the Jewish people.  He has had a first hand view of their persecutions, even here in America within the past few decades.  He loves them, and wants to know more about the dynamic of their being consistently persecuted and mistreated.  Mike has brought a consistently biblical worldview and theology to bear on the analysis, and this has forged a mutual respect and interest in discussing this outside of class.

If we are the chosen people, where is God?

Recently they read Holocaust Theology:  A Reader.  This book revealed that the Holocaust understandably caused a crisis of faith in most Jewish leaders as well as the Jewish people.  They wrestled with questions like, "If we are God's chosen people, why are we suffering in this way?"  "Where is our deliverance?"  "Where is God in my suffering?" "Has God turned His back on us?"  Sadly, the book reveals that a large majority of rabbis were reduced to thinking that God was dead or had forsaken them.  Their persecution caused theological challenges and philosophical/emotional crises that left most in despondency and despair, their faith in God eviscerated. God had not lived up to their expectations.

Final paper

Building on this theme, Mike has asked to write his final paper from the perspective of a fictional rabbi in the prison camps experiencing the full onslaught of evil.  This rabbi, however, would be thoroughly versed in the ancient Hebrew Old Testament Scriptures and would rightly apply them to his experience.  This would personify the situation of a Jew thinking biblically about the problem of evil, the presence of God in suffering, and answer from the Ancient Hebrew (Old Testament) Scriptures the question of "Why?"  He wrote to his professor that his goal is to "fill in theological gaps and explain points of Biblical revelation found in the Hebrew Scriptures should have been applied to the situation. The Scriptures rightly understood would have shed light on what they should have expected from God and given wisdom and comfort in the midst of their suffering."  

Let's chat about theology

The professor is eagerly anticipating Mike’s final paper. (Read the paper in Vol 1 No 14). They talk a good bit as friends in addition to their professor/student relationship, and he has asked that they get together after the semester ends and "chat about theology."  

Windmills

This is not what we thought God was doing with us. We thought we were there for the students, but as it is, He has plans that are even greater than we can ask or think.  The winds of change have blown. The truth is, we know Whose breath is the Source, and we rejoice to build windmills to make His will and wisdom known and loved to those to Whom He directs us.  

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