We are encouraged to approach every task with humility and open dependence on God. The Lord gets what He wants and no one has standing to object to His wishes. He doesn’t always tell us His plans because our foreknowledge could provoke us to mess it up. Sometimes, the real mission is to demonstrate how a servant of God handles surprises. If you are humble before Him, you are always in a good position to face failures.
His mission for you is to try; success is in His hands. And you make the attempt based on His calling and commission, not your own wisdom. Some may say you look the fool when it fails, but the real folly is thinking that human success matters. The Bible repeatedly warns against trying to help fools understand. It’s fools who always make the most noise about things that don’t matter.
The human lust for control of outcomes is easily the greatest folly of all. Scripture takes pains to make it clear that human outcomes have no value whatsoever. The only thing that matters is what God wants from any situation. We know that it’s all about His glory; it’s not about us at all. Therefore, the focus is always on procedure and process, not product. That’s the focus of divine revelation for mortal humans. We do things the right way, and let God worry about the results.
We must be careful to stay in the role God appoints for us and never presume to be more.
The other day, I ran across this video featuring John Kiriakou. Over the years since he first appeared on my radar (roughly twenty years ago), I’ve come to trust him for what he has to say about government in general. He was a solid CIA spy who drew the line at something that went very wrong at the agency — torture. In the video, he summarizes what happened, the stand he took, and the price he paid. What he reveals about the CIA is consistent with my experience, though I’m not at liberty to discuss all the particulars. When you consider where he’s coming from, there’s no reason to doubt his testimony.
One of the points Kiriakou raises is that torture never works. He’s referring to its use for interrogation. He’s right about that. There is simply too much clinical evidence that backs his contention.
However, we also know that information may not be the point. Kiriakou notes that a good CIA agent has sociopathic tendencies without being a full sociopath. But he doesn’t connect that with another issue we can sense in the furor over torture: Sometimes torture is used simply for the entertainment of the torturers. What happened at Abu Ghraib had little to do with obtaining information and everything to do with spite and the desire to humiliate. That’s what was so nasty about it.
In the full context of Scripture, that kind of motivation is blatantly Satanic. This is not merely the human lust to control the outcomes of interrogation, but a deeply wicked desire to cause suffering for the sheer pleasure of lording it over someone else.
So, what do we make of King David’s actions in 2 Samuel 8:2? His choices were clear and meaningful to Israelis and the surrounding nations. It was not torture, but grisly executions. It was not meant to make them suffer, but to assert a dominance according to God’s calling and commission. The symbolism of his acts won’t mean much to us. Keep in mind that David’s great-grandmother Ruth came from Moab. We know that Saul insanely persecuted David, who left his parents with Moab’s royal family to protect them. Tradition says the Moabites eventually betrayed David and murdered his parents, so this has a lot to do with David’s actions later. You cannot afford to leave out the full context in seeking to understand David’s actions.
Nothing in Scripture or tradition tags David’s actions as out of line. How else could he convince the surrounding kingdoms, not to mention the surviving Moabites, that Jehovah was superior to their filthy deities? It was not about David’s glory, but Jehovah’s. That’s how it was done in those days. How would we do it these days? I don’t believe we would or should operate that way today under Christ.
How many ordinary Americans would say that some people deserve to be humiliated? That some deserve a slow and painful death for their awful crimes? I’m sure you could get most people to offer a list of what crimes warrant such treatment. But I’m equally sure you won’t get nearly as many people who would approve of torment for the sick pleasure of seeing people suffer. That’s not the kind humiliation we would approve of these days, and it certainly should be illegal. Even those guilty of executing such torment deserve better treatment than that.
The real question is not what they deserve, but what we must do in order to avoid falling off the cliff of moral wickedness. Let’s be clear: The American government is irredeemable. That’s part of Kiriakou’s point in that video. For example, his comments about how the US treats China is correct; it’s rooted in sheer stupidity. Nonetheless, there are things my government could ask me to do that I’m still quite willing to do simply because it’s consistent with my calling and commission. During his training, Kiriakou suggested he would be willing to burgle foreign government offices in pursuit of information that might help the US government understand their policies. I see no problem with that.
But this is not a reflection of sociopathic tendencies; it’s recognizing the difference between my tribe versus an outside tribe. The Bible is all about tribalism as part of God’s requirements for humans in this world. America is my tribe in a very limited sense. The average American has little grasp of God’s priorities and doesn’t care; they read their own priorities back into the Bible. Even when you point out the vast difference between traditional American values versus those revealed in the Bible, using a full load of scholarship to prove it, Americans typically insist on clinging to their false image of God.
America was founded on rejecting God’s priorities. In the drift since then, she has gotten only farther from revelation. Today, our US government commits atrocities and supports Israel committing even worse atrocities. Kiriakou protested the shift in government policy that violates his values, but I won’t bother. Protest and activism are pointless, though denunciation is clearly warranted.
It’s not as if I imagine I have standing to reject America’s social and political system, but that I cannot serve God without making some distinctions. America need not worry about me, but must face the humiliation of God’s wrath — coming soon.
I’ve been to some sites where I find out it turned on my camera automatically, without my consent. Not sure how that’s possible without malware, but it happened. Ever since then I keep all my cameras covered unless I’m actually using them. At this point, I’m not sure it matters much, but I’d rather not give any weirdos more ammunition.
Generally, you would have to hunt down the permissions in the browser you use to block that kind of thing.