Day 24: Swift to Shed Blood

Welcome to day 24 of my 40 day lenten writing project about blood. No I am not dreaming about blood yet, and yes I realize that people who read this might be thinking that I am a bit strange to be having so much fun dwelling on the topic about blood. April 12 I will go back to the cute baby and vacation pictures and nice little family updates.

A lot of Christians who are appalled by all the "bad" people around them tend to whip out and read Romans 1:18 to the end and talk about how God's wrath is going to come down upon all the ungodly and wicked. A lot of Christians even label certain groups of people like atheists, or homosexuals, or feminists, or gangsters as classic examples of the kind of human that God's wrath is going to get. But then Paul, the writer of Romans, who, as a "best of the best" religious leader, also used to keep himself pure and distinct from bad people and pagans, turns the pointing finger around. Chapter 2 of Romans reminds anyone who tries to help God find the bad people that they are under the same condemnation they are warning others about. He goes further to remind his religious peers that their religion and law and lineage back to the patriarchs which they are using as a safety net is exposing them to the same wrath that they are expecting to come only on the pagans.

By the middle of Romans 3 there shouldn't be anyone left who has the balls to point fingers at others and crow "God's gonna get you for how bad you are." Paul takes a huge chunk of another bad news chapter Isaiah 59, to make his point: "There is no one who is righteous, not even one, there is no one who seeks understanding, there is no one who seeks God. All have turned aside, together they have become worthless; there is no one who shows kindness, there is not even one. . . . .Their feet are swift to shed blood: ruin and misery are in their paths and the way of peace they have not known." This bad news includes everybody, and while it is bad news, there is a relief to it. I remember hearing a Marine being interviewed about how psychologically draining it was to do battle in today's urban warfare environments because "it is almost impossible to tell the bad guys from the good guys. How do we distinguish between the civilians and the insurgents?" A lot of people in regular life too get really anxious as they try to prove "I'm a good person," or try to find a safe neighborhood "far from all the dangerous people," or hope their child makes friends "with the good kids." I think that effort can bring a lot of disappointment and frustration.

But the bad news, when we accept it, prepares us to want to listen to the good news which Isaiah 59 prophesies in verses 15-20 and Paul explains in pretty much the whole rest of the book of Romans: "The Lord saw, it and it displeased him that there was no justice. He saw that there was no one, and was appalled that there was no one to intervene; so his own arm brought him victory, and his righteousness upheld him. . . .And he will come to Zion as a Redeemer, to those in Jacob who turn from transgression, says the Lord."