CHAPTER FOUR
TOUGH LOVE STARTS AT HOME
Why God Sometimes Lets the Bad Guys Win
It was the end of a long day. We were all tired and hungry. My wife, kids, and I settled into the restaurant booth and looked over the menu. We placed our order and soon began to eat.
Then it happened. The kids snapped.
One took a couple of french fries off his brother’s plate. That merited a quick shove, which warranted a return push, a loud yelp, and flailing arms. In a matter of seconds, Coke was spilled everywhere. Then the third one started to cry.
As a dad, I knew what I had to do.
I jumped out of the booth and dragged them outside. I gave the boys a quick and controlled swat to the seat of learning and a stern lecture, and then I informed them that their behavior was unacceptable. They’d blown their opportunity to eat. There would be no more food tonight and maybe not in the morning either.
The fighting stopped.
We went back into the restaurant. I figured I’d done my dad duty.
That is until the cops arrived.
They pulled me aside, questioned me, and then placed me under arrest. I spent the night in jail. You see, the kids weren’t mine. They were seated two booths over.
Apparently you’re not allowed to discipline someone else’s kids.
Now before you stop reading, wondering what kind of jerk I am, I need to let you know that this event never really happened. I can assure you if anything close to it had occurred, my wife would have killed me long before the police arrived.
But it illustrates an important point: A father disciplines his own kids, not someone else’s.
It’s the same in the spiritual realm.
God’s discipline always begins with those he calls his own. It was true of Israel and it’s true of Christians today.1
Yet for many of us that can be confusing. At times, those who mock him, deny him, or high-handedly sin seem to do so with impunity. We assume God’s judgment should begin with those who do the greatest evil. But it doesn’t. It never has. It begins with us. And that’s been perplexing to God’s people throughout the ages.
Habakkuk’s Big Question
Consider the prophet Habakkuk. When God told him that he was going to lift up the Babylonians and allow them to conquer Jerusalem, Habakkuk was shocked. How could that be? The Babylonians were known as a ruthless and impetuous people, a law to themselves, promoting their own honor and worshipping their own strength. They hardly seemed like the kind of nation that a holy and righteous God would grant success to.
So Habakkuk asked why.
Your eyes are too pure to look on evil;
you cannot tolerate wrongdoing.
Why then do you tolerate the treacherous?
Why are you silent while the wicked
swallow up those more righteous than themselves?2
His bewilderment wasn’t over the fact that God was going to judge the sins of the Israelites. He knew they deserved it. In fact, his book begins with a complaint that God seemed to be tolerating the sins of his people.
What threw Habakkuk for a loop was God’s plan to use the wicked to punish the chosen. He couldn’t fathom why they would be allowed to defeat and swallow up those who were far less wicked than they were.
In response to his question, God told him not to worry. The sins of the Babylonians would eventually be dealt with. But it would be later, after he was through using them for his own purposes.
In response, Habakkuk wrote one of the greatest expressions of faith in all of Scripture. He finally grasped what God was up to. He was using the wicked to discipline those who were his own in order to bring about godly sorrow and full repentance.
I heard and my heart pounded,
my lips quivered at the sound;
decay crept into my bones,
and my legs trembled.
Yet I will wait patiently for the day of calamity
to come on the nation invading us.
Though the fig tree does not bud
and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
and no cattle in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the LORD,
I will be joyful in God my Savior.
The Sovereign LORD is my strength;
he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
he enables me to tread on the heights.3
Chad’s Big Question
I remember receiving a note from a guy I’ll call Chad. He was upset about our church and a bit frustrated with God. He wanted to know why we weren’t more aggressively defending biblical values, especially on the political front. He also wondered why God seemed to be standing idly by while the people he saw as sinners prospered.
He was particularly upset by what he saw as the irreversible advance of the gay agenda. He blamed it on churches such as ours that weren’t fighting hard enough to stand up for “biblical values.” He was sure that our failure to speak up enough was the main reason God was letting the “bad guys” win.
His note ended something like this: I have no idea why God allows the wicked to triumph over the godly. But I do know that the moral collapse of our country can be traced to the gutless failure of churches like ours to step up and defend marriage and the basics of biblical morality.
Chad was new to our church. I had no idea who he was. So I asked around. I found out that he was a self-proclaimed longtime Christian who had recently moved into the area. He had attended our church regularly for a couple of months, signed up to join a small group, and put some money in the offering plate.
Oh, and one more thing. He was also living with his girlfriend. Apparently they’d been together for a couple of years.
Since Chad’s big concern was the growing acceptance of gay marriage in our culture, I decided to send him some verses that spoke to the issue. I also suggested that he read each verse slowly and carefully. And just in case he was a bit dyslexic, I underlined a few key phrases—especially those that clearly condemned the sexual relationship he was having with his girlfriend.
Apparently Chad thought Jesus’s statement about choosing a life of celibacy and becoming a eunuch for the sake of the kingdom applied to non-Christian gays, but it was too much to ask of heterosexual believers like him and his girlfriend.
Unfortunately, Chad misunderstood how God’s judgment works. He thought it begins with non-Christians. He figured his self-proclaimed faith in Christ should give him a little extra leeway, a free pass for living like a Babylonian with his girlfriend as long as he had a fish on his truck and followed Jesus in most other areas of his life.
But that’s not how it works. God’s judgment always begins with his own. Which is why he raised up the Babylonians and allowed them to sack Jerusalem, and maybe why he’s allowed the modern-day sacking of American Christianity.
By the way, I never heard from Chad again. I don’t think he appreciated the mirror I sent him. He preferred binoculars.
How It Got This Way
Let’s be honest. Chad is not an exception.
Our churches have long been filled with people who claim to be Christ followers but who live like pagans. Our lives have not been all that different when it comes to things such as divorce, sexual purity, forgiving those who wrong us, loving our enemies, slander, gossip, and the harder things of discipleship.
Perhaps we’re experiencing something similar to what the Israelites experienced when they cried out for an earthly king. They didn’t mind having God around. But they wanted to be like all the other nations. They wanted a physical and earthly king instead of a spiritual and heavenly king. Eventually, they whined enough that God let them have the king they wanted. His name was Saul. He didn’t work out too well.4
Like Chad, many Christians seem to think that our rapidly declining cultural influence (and the outright disdain with which some of us are now viewed) is due to our lack of commitment to the so-called culture wars. They believe the tide would have been stemmed if only we had been more savvy or had more intensity and stomach for the battle.
But I think not. I believe the primary reason for our long run of spiritual and cultural setbacks is something else. It’s sin in the camp.
Just as Achan’s high-handed sin led to Ai’s shocking victory over Joshua and the Israelites, our pattern of pick-and-choose morality has led to a series of equally shocking losses for the church in America.5
God loves us too much to let us stray for long. He’ll do whatever it takes to ensure that we bear the fruit of righteousness. If it means pruning, he’ll prune. If it means using his enemies to teach us a lesson, he’ll use his enemies. If it takes letting the “bad guys” win to bring us to our knees, he’ll let the “bad guys” win.
Which is why I wonder if many of the things we are most prone to wring our hands over may be God’s doing? Perhaps it’s his way of purifying his church, bringing us to our knees, turning our hearts back to him.
I don’t know for sure. He hasn’t told me. Only time will tell.
But ultimately, it doesn’t matter.
If we’re caught in the backwash of someone else’s sin, experiencing God’s correcting discipline, or simply suffering from the natural consequences of living in a fallen world, the proper response is still the same. We’re called to live a life of hope, humility, and wisdom.
Now I admit, those are hardly our most natural responses when under attack. In most cases, we quickly go to fight or flight. But the good news is that God doesn’t just tell us what to do and leave it at that. He provides us with everything we need. He prepares us for battle before he sends us into battle. He gives us the Holy Spirit. He provides us with motivation and power. And he gives us the wisdom of Scripture to provide us with the game plan and instructions we need.6
The Training We’d All Like To Avoid
Unfortunately, he also uses hardships and trials to prepare us for battle.
In the school of life, Trials, Hardship, and Suffering are three classes no one wants to take. Only a masochist signs up for them. They can be excruciating. But they’re necessary. Consider the old axiom: No pain, no gain. It’s not only true in the athletic realm; it’s also true in the spiritual realm. There’s no strength without suffering.
Frankly, trials, hardship, and suffering weren’t always necessary. They weren’t part of life’s original curriculum. But a couple of students named Adam and Eve failed a major exam, and ever since then they’ve been part of the core curriculum we all have to take.
So before we go any further, let’s step back and take a deep dive into the important role that hardships and trials play in preparing us for spiritual battle. As we’ll see, they serve many purposes. God uses them to thin the herd, to separate the genuine from the counterfeit, to expose our hidden spiritual weaknesses, and to awaken our dormant strengths.
They are the foundation upon which hope, humility, and wisdom rise. And they provide the spiritual boot camp experiences that turn raw recruits into fully mature men and women of God.7