Blooming where you are planted

                        

Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease.  But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. Jeremiah 29:5-7

We think of Jeremiah as an angry, or at least pretty intense, prophet. The word "Jeremiad," meaning, you know, more or less, an intense rant, is even named after him. And then we get this:

Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce.  Take wives and have sons and daughters...

Jeremiah! Is this really you? What happened? Did you write this, like, right after you just fell in love with your wife or something?  You seem so--serene, I guess is the word I want here.

I mean, don't get me wrong--this seems like the right advice at the right time. And you do preface it by saying it is coming straight from the Lord, so I guess the Lord is pretty multi-faceted. 

I guess I should explain what this is about. It is pretty good general advice about how to have a contented life, but the actual context is the Babylonian exile, specifically the third Babylonian exile, during which people from Jerusalem have been displaced to Babylonia (which is mostly modern-day Iraq) after the total destruction of the city. God advises the people to,

...seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

This does seem kind of weird coming from you, Jeremiah, if it is true, as legend has it, that you also wrote Psalm 137, which has this to say about the same Babylonian exile:

O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us!  Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!

I guess you and God are having different emotional reactions to the whole destruction of Jerusalem and subsequent exile from it. At least it isn't affecting your working relationship at all. Or maybe being so spiritual and so close to God for so many years is enabling you to be a less angry prophet. 

But this is good advice--let go of the hurt and anger and desire for revenge. It's kind of a spooky coincidence that this is the reading that comes up this week, the week that Elizabeth Smart's biography is released. Elizabeth Smart knows a thing or two about suffering. She was kidnapped by a crazy guy and his wife for nine months, and tortured every day. She even almost starved to death at one point. In spite of all that she went through, today Elizabeth is fine, thanks to advice her mother gave her.

 "Elizabeth, what this man has done to you is terrible. He has stolen nine months of your life that you will never get back.  But the best punishment you could ever give him is to be happy.”

This may be the motivation behind the advice that Jeremiah gives to the displaced in Babylon. It is possible to heal and move on, but it isn't easy. Sometimes the healing takes more than just one generation. Whatever it takes, healing is a worthy goal, and it can't be accomplished by sabotaging the place where you make your home. Wherever you are, God seems to be saying, and no matter how you came to be there, seek to bring something good and useful to that situation. That's just good old-fashioned solid advice. It was good advice almost three thousand years ago, and it's good advice today.

Who Do You Think You Are?

What wrong did your ancestors find in me that they went far from me, and went after worthless things, and became worthless themselves?...Therefore once more I accuse you, says the Lord, and I accuse your children’s children.- from Jeremiah, Chapter 2.

TV shows that feature celebrities tracing their ancestry (such as TLC's Who Do You Think You Are and PBS's Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.) finally tempted me to adopt a habit that (almost) grew into an addiction: tracing my own roots. It's fascinating. My great-great-great-great grandfather fought in the Revolutionary war. This is supposed to be a badge of honor, and to be perfectly honest, I am proud of this, though I'm not sure why. Other ancestors owned slaves, and of that I am ashamed, though again, it happened long before I was born, so I am not sure why this embarrasses me. 

God takes the long view about human values and human behavior. Real change in a culture can take a long time. Big changes can be generations in the making. We don't tend to think this is the case so much anymore, because we have seen revolutionary changes in our lifetime. For example, I learned to type on a typewriter. My kids learned that same skill on a computer. Their children may not even need to learn how to type--modern technology may enable a new way of communicating that will render the skill of typing completely obsolete. Even now, there is voice recognition software that can type for people as they speak. However, in spite of the rate of change, human nature remains the same. Twitter changes the way revolutionaries communicate with one another, but the underlying conditions that lead to revolutions have not changed much since Jeremiah's time. 

It doesn't seem fair that my grandchildren may be held accountable for some mistake I made, but that's not what Jeremiah is talking about. He is talking about the need for Israel to make big changes in ways that the changes can be sustained for generations. My 4-times great grandfather's wartime service might have been for nothing had the new nation not carefully hammered out a Constitution to help succeeding generations continue to build on the great deeds of their ancestors. That's what God is talking about--the importance of changing for the better and instilling these improved values in our children so they will pass them onto their children.

What does that mean for us today? What changes is God calling our generation to make and pass on to our children's children? In America it seems that there isn't much consensus on "what ails us," but I also think that a growing number of individuals are putting increasing pressure on leaders in the government to work toward consensus when possible. In the meantime, what changes is God calling us to make as individuals and as the church? In the past year or two I have heard more and more voices talking about this, and I think that is a good thing. I have my own ideas, of course, but the point of this blog post is not to push for my own agenda, but rather to stimulate thinking and conversation about where you think God is calling the people of God to be in a couple of generations.

Who do you think you are? Who do you think God wants you to become? What do you think God wants you to pass on to your children and grandchildren, or if you are not a parent, to the next two generations to come?

catfish: THE PROPHETS

"I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy lies in my name..." from Jeremiah, Chapter 23, verse 25

I'm obsessed with the MTV show Catfish. The premise is pretty simple: co-hosts Max and Nev agree to help some poor person who has fallen in love with a stranger they have met online. In every case the object of their affection has refused to meet in person or to even participate in face-to-face video encounters. In spite of all the red flags, these poor victims of obvious romantic deception hope against hope for a real-life love connection to come out of this. It almost never happens, of course, but like all good narratives, catfish: THE TV SHOW is about the journey more than the destination. Every episode asks, and answers, the question, "How could they be so stupid?"

The answer is always complicated, but it boils down to the fact that as humans we are prone to wishful thinking, romantic idealization, and hope against hope. This human trait works in our favor when we are fighting a virulent form of cancer or avoiding shark attack while awaiting rescue from a boating accident, but it also makes us prone to becoming a victim of fraud from time to time. 

This is the issue that Jeremiah seeks to address head-on. Because he understands human nature the way the producers of Catfish do, Jeremiah knows that he is not likely to make much headway trying to convince the victims of false prophets that they have been victims. Instead, he tries to put the fear of God into the ones who are perpetrating the fraud: "Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them? says the LORD. Do I not fill heaven and earth?"

Sooner or later, fraudsters can expect to be found out. That is a truth that false prophets in Jeremiah's day had to face, and it is the same truth that modern-day liars and fraudsters face. It is best for liars to change their ways before they find themselves facing an angry victim with a broken heart, empty pockets and and a weapon in hand.  On catfish: THE TV SHOW, the hosts make like Jeremiah and attempt to persuade the romantic deceivers to give up their lying ways. Sometimes they are gentle, but sometimes they pour on the guilt and condemnation. Usually they succeed, in part because they understand that the lies tend to start out for an understandable (if usually somewhat selfish) reason. They appeal to the fraudster's sense of justice and fairness. 

Almost all of us are guilty of overdoing the charm and exaggerating or distorting the truth in some situation or other. Usually we are acting out of temporary feelings of desperation. It doesn't necessarily make us evil people, but it's not okay, and we need to heed Jeremiah and just cut it out.