A few years back, the sports world was subjected to one of the kinds of controversies that now seem so common in modern life. An NBA player named Kyrie Irving posted a link on social media to a movie that many believed to be controversial. I have not seen the film myself, but different news organizations reported that it contains several anti-Semitic tropes. (The film was based on a book that also included those same tropes and several controversial theories.)
As you might expect, just about everybody who knew about that incident had an opinion about it—and chose to express that opinion in as many ways as possible. Many expressed outrage on social media, demanding that Irving be removed from his team at that time, the New Jersey Nets. Crowds protested the games. Some demanded an apology and a retraction, while others were equally adamant that Irving had done nothing wrong.
It wasn’t just laypeople who were interested, of course. The media circus swung into action with various news agencies raining headlines across the internet and entertainment shows venting their anger or frustration nonstop over the airwaves. After several days of this coverage, the Nets decided to suspend Kyrie Irving from playing in games, which of course generated more headlines and more debate. (Somewhat ironically, the movie in question certainly received quite a lot of free publicity because so many people went to such great lengths to express their outrage.)
As I said, all of this has become commonplace in our modern world. It seems like every week is a new opportunity for outrage.
But then something happened that is certainly not commonplace: Kyrie Irving stood up and spoke out. “I am aware of the negative impact of my post towards the Jewish community,” he said, “and I take responsibility. I do not believe everything said in the documentary was true or reflects my morals and principles.”1 In addition, both he and the Nets donated $500,000 to the Anti-Defamation League to show the seriousness of their desire to learn and grow.
“I take responsibility.” You don’t hear those words every day. In fact, it often feels like our culture pushes people to avoid responsibility as much as possible.
This can be a natural reaction for us during difficult seasons—during those times when our world gets turned upside down. It’s easy for us to react to that difficulty by casting blame as far and wide as possible. We look for every possible reason and every potential excuse to explain why things are going wrong.
Except, we rarely look in the mirror.
That’s why I want to look at another gift God uses to bless us and keep us moving forward when we choose to keep the faith as His children. That gift is personal responsibility, and we’re going to explore it through the lens of Ecclesiastes 5.
By the time we get to that section in the book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon had already spent two chapters discussing the emptiness of a life apart from God. Then, in the third chapter, he admitted that even so, the stubborn questions remain. But Solomon stood boldly on the declaration that God has a plan, and that even when it is cloaked in several layers of mystery, it is a good plan—a trustworthy plan.
Author John Killinger tells about the manager of a minor league baseball team who got so frustrated with his center fielder’s performance that he jerked him out of the game and played the position himself. The first hard-hit ball that came to the manager took a bad hop and smashed into his mouth. His next play was a high fly ball that he lost in the sun—until it smacked him in the forehead. The third ball that came his way was a hard line drive that flew between his hands and popped him in the eye.
Furious, the manager ran off the field to the dugout, grabbed the center fielder by the shirt and shouted, “You’ve got center field so messed up, even I can’t play it!”2
When it comes to the difficult seasons of our lives, God is the subject of more than His share of fingerpointing. A seventeen-year-old accused of burning down a church in Nashville, Indiana, explained at his trial that he took a cigarette lighter to the nearly century-old building because, in his words, “I was angry with God.”
One woman, having lost both her husband and son in separate accidents, posted a notice on the internet that declared: “I am ANGRY at God. I am VERY ANGRY!” She dared to say out loud what you and I really feel sometimes. When our world is turned upside down, it’s easy to believe that God is the culprit.
God understands our anger, and when we pray, it’s a good thing to tell Him what we honestly feel. But sustained bitterness toward the Lord who loves us is irrational and unwise.
In fact, in 1999 the Journal of Health Psychology reported an interesting study. Social psychologist Julie Juola-Exline and her team of researchers found a link between anger toward God and anxiety and depression. Those who couldn’t get beyond their resentment toward God were more likely to experience problems with negative emotions. The good news, according to Juola-Exline, was that “those who were able to forgive God for a specific, powerful incident reported lower levels of anxiety and depression.”3
“Forgiving God” is a term I’d rather avoid. It implies that God has done something wrong that requires our pardon. We should underline the statement that by the perfection of His nature, He will not and cannot do wrong. What seems like misdeed is mystery. The important thing to remember is that His love and compassion are perfect, unbroken, and forever.
Just the same, we often blame God for our losses and sorrows. Here in Ecclesiastes 5, Solomon gave us some pointed instruction on how to keep the faith instead.
Walk prudently when you go to the house of God; and draw near to hear rather than to give the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they do evil.
—Ecclesiastes 5:1
Imagine stumbling into the house of God loaded down with a heavy burden. It’s the dead weight of all your sorrows. You’re certainly bringing them to the right place, but you need to bring them in the right way. When you’re overloaded, it’s important to watch your step.
We want to lay them carefully at the altar rather than violently at God’s feet. That is, we need to give Him the burden, but not the blame. There’s a difference. That’s why we need to tread carefully in the house of the Lord.
Remember that Solomon was the builder of the temple, the most beautiful building on earth in its day. There had never been such a place to bring God and His children together. It was, in a sense, the one place for heaven on earth. The architects understood that such a place should not be entered carelessly or thoughtlessly—particularly not resentfully.
We must decide which side we’re on: Do we honor God as the Lord of life, or not? Do we trust Him in the rough times, or only when it’s convenient? Our modern expression “Watch your step!” comes from Solomon’s warning: “Walk prudently.” Literally, the Hebrew says, “Keep your foot.”
You may remember a time when you heard that phrase from your parents. You were angry, and your words were approaching the territory known as disrespect, when Mom or Dad said, “Watch your step, young man” or “young lady.”
Due respect for parents and for God is a sufficiently urgent issue to be enshrined in the Ten Commandments. Life without boundaries is chaos, and when we treat God as if He is not in control and not loving—when we cut Him down to our size through a petty approach or when we wander outside of the boundaries—we invite chaos into our lives.
When we come into the house of God, we’re to draw near to hear, to understand, to learn, and to worship. We’re to cultivate an attitude of reverence, expectation, and a holy sense of resignation to His will. Blaming God for our struggles does nothing to alleviate them. But walking carefully before Him will aid our efforts to keep the faith.
Do not be rash with your mouth,
And let not your heart utter anything hastily before God.
For God is in heaven, and you on earth;
Therefore let your words be few.
For a dream comes through much activity,
And a fool’s voice is known by his many words.
—Ecclesiastes 5:2–3
Now that we’ve walked the walk, we have to talk the talk. We must talk cautiously to God as well as walk cautiously before Him—always keeping in mind that we are speaking from a basis of ignorance.
I think often about the terrible fires that have burned a path through our community in Southern California. We often don’t know how such a blaze begins. An electric storm could send a bolt of lightning. Some disturbed individual could engage in a conscious act of arson. A careless person could innocently start a great fire without realizing it.
What about God? Could He start a fire? Of course.
Could He also prevent or suppress one? Yes.
Could it be that He has done so many times in many places without any human being realizing it? Yes! That’s something we seldom consider. We see every fire God allows but none that He prevents.
So when we philosophize about God’s character based upon our limited observations, we speak from ignorance. On a given day, His intervening hand may have prevented some horrendous act of global terrorism—then five minutes later, a single automobile with a drunk driver crashes, and all who knew the victim are giving God a tongue-lashing.
Nothing illustrates this insight more vividly than a widely watched episode of television’s The West Wing in which the fictional president, Josiah Bartlet (played by Martin Sheen) lashes out at God. Bartlet, battling multiple sclerosis, is anguished over the death of his longtime secretary in a drunk-driving accident. After attending her funeral in the National Cathedral, he waits until everyone leaves, then orders the doors sealed so that he is alone. Standing before the altar, Bartlet, a Roman Catholic in the television series, lashes out at God.
“She bought her first car and You hit her with a drunk driver!” shouts Bartlet into the cavernous cathedral. “That’s supposed to be funny? Have I displeased You, You feckless thug?”
The angry president then launches into a tirade in Latin. Translated, his words are: “Am I really to believe that these are the acts of a loving God? A just God? A wise God? To hell with your punishments!” Then, in a gesture of contempt, the fictional president lights a cigarette and crushes it on the cathedral floor.4
The reaction of viewers was predictable. While some were shocked at Bartlet’s anger and blasphemous words, others commended him for his expression of brutal honesty and for representing thousands of people in his anger toward God.
Solomon would feel differently. He reminded us that God knows the time and appointed season of every life. He counts the very hairs on your head, and a sparrow doesn’t plummet to earth without His awareness. As Jesus told us, “You are of more value than many sparrows” (Matthew 10:31). Moreover, God knows every implication of every event: positive, negative, or neutral. We live in the goldfish bowl of time and space with all the limitations imposed by that habitation. God is outside that bowl entirely, and He sees past, present, future, and all across every inch of His creation simultaneously. We can’t wrap our minds around that one any more than a goldfish can understand a map of your county.
Seeing, hearing, knowing, and planning all things, and based upon His own mysterious purposes, God governs the affairs of this planet. There will be a time for intervening and a time to refrain from intervening. To feel angry and frustrated is human; but to chastise God is to make a cosmic spectacle of our own folly in the presence of the Alpha and the Omega, the King of kings who loves us so much that He bears the nail marks in His hands, in the presence of the seraphim and cherubim, and all the heavenly realm.
Solomon counseled us to be men and women of few words, for the mark of a fool is his airy gust of reckless speech. Verse 3 is difficult to translate, but Solomon seemed to say that a fool babbles on relentlessly, like a man who has had a busy day and experiences dream after dream all night long. And we do sleep better when we don’t dwell on our shortsighted grievances against a loving Father.
When you make a vow to God, do not delay to pay it;
For He has no pleasure in fools.
Pay what you have vowed—
Better not to vow than to vow and not pay.
Do not let your mouth cause your flesh to sin, nor say before the messenger of God that it was an error. Why should God be angry at your excuse and destroy the work of your hands? For in the multitude of dreams and many words there is also vanity. But fear God.
—Ecclesiastes 5:4–7
As a troubled young man walked through a field in Germany, a terrible electrical storm filled the sky. A lightning bolt struck a nearby tree, and he instantly took it as a sign from God. “Help me,” cried the young man, “and I will become a monk.” That sudden vow changed the life of Martin Luther.
As mentioned in a previous chapter, another young man, a disreputable character named John Newton, made a similar promise to God in the middle of a deadly storm at sea. “Help me,” he prayed, “and I will change my life.” Out of that prayer came a gradual transformation that led Newton into the ministry and made him a world-class hymnist, the author of “Amazing Grace.”
There are times when God uses a storm or crisis to awaken us, and we make life-changing vows and commitments to Him. The problem is that most of us are quicker to make a commitment than we are to keep it. We live in an age of halfhearted vows and ill-kept promises. If every single person kept the promises they made to God in a pinch, then the world would be swarming with millions of missionaries.
We sometimes call this “foxhole Christianity.” It’s the ultimate expression of using God. Bargaining with God is an extremely questionable activity, generally one to be avoided. But if you do put yourself on the line, don’t even think about not making good, for God is not mocked. What is vowed before Him is binding, just as He is bound by His many promises in the Scriptures.
Solomon taught us that vows are serious. They are lasting and, in the eyes of God, not subject to “on second thought” revocations.
I love what David said in the psalms as he thought about a vow he had made to God. “I will go into Your house with burnt offerings; I will pay You my vows, which my lips have uttered and my mouth has spoken when I was in trouble” (Psalm 66:13–14).
We don’t know exactly what kind of trouble David was in, but whatever it was, God apparently got him out of it. And in the process, David made a vow to God. Vows were not uncommon in the Old Testament, nor was breaking them. Otherwise, Solomon wouldn’t have warned against it, nor would Jesus have commented on it when bringing a spiritual perspective to what had become pharisaical traditions surrounding the Mosaic law (Matthew 5:33–37). But David kept the vow he made to God.
Eva J. Alexander was born to believing parents in Chennai, India, and was born again at age twelve during a Billy Graham meeting. In 1963, she married R. D. Alexander, and the two took positions with the government of India. Eva’s job exposed her to the plight of women in her country, and she began speaking out about their status and suffering. For a while, she became so socially active that her spiritual life suffered. Politics became more important than her faith.
But the Lord sent a serious illness that brought her to her knees, where she made a solemn vow before the Lord. As she hovered near death in the hospital, she prayed, “God, if You’re real, do not allow me to die. I will serve You.”
Eva ultimately recovered from her illness. When she returned home, she began reading her Bible again. Two words in Matthew 21:31 tore through her mind like torpedoes: the words “and harlots.” Jesus said, “Tax collectors and harlots enter the kingdom of God before you” (emphasis added). Our Lord wants to bring harlots into His kingdom.
A week later, a nearby pastor told Eva of a prostitute who had run away from the brothels, and he asked Eva to provide a room for her. “I can’t,” Eva said. “You keep her.” Eva had a husband and four children at home, including two teenage sons. But once again the Lord brought Matthew 21:31 to mind, and Eva relented.
Her family was aghast: “What is this? You’re turning our house into a brothel!” But their attitudes soon changed, and they accepted this ministry as coming from God. Other girls began showing up, and the Alexander home became a rehabilitation center. Police officers and prisons referred troubled women to Eva, with up to fifteen women living in the Alexander home at any one time. The Alexanders provided medical treatment, job training, and a strong gospel witness.
As a result of her vow made to God when she was near death, Eva started a home for the children of prostitutes. In this home, countless children—ages twelve months to thirteen years—have found refuge. Her husband and children joined her work and, spurred on by that passage in Matthew, they have brought many souls into God’s kingdom.5
We’ve seen it throughout church history. A promise to God, honored by the one who made it, can lead to a touch of heaven on earth. But a vow in danger of being broken is an idea that should make us shudder with fear. At this moment, when the flames are at the door, a vow comes easily to the lips; but tomorrow, when a cool rain drives calamity from memory, it’s too easy to double-cross God. The soul implications could be far worse than the original danger that brought about the vow.
My recommendation? Keep your mouth shut when your back is to the wall, and keep the faith with God. Then keep on keeping on. That’s the only vow He’s really looking for.