“ I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:9-10)
A college friend of mine posted the news this morning that the church he pastors was burglarized and vandalized last night. Rooms were ransacked, sound equipment was stolen, and thousands of dollars of damage was done. The church also has two minority congregations that use the building as well. It’s a light and a place of hope that is now grieving the callousness of a few.
My church has had scaffolding in place for several weeks to fix some structural problems on our bell tower. The scaffolding has fencing around it for the protection of pedestrians who walk by the front of the building, as well as a deterrent to anyone who might consider climbing on it. A couple of weeks ago, someone (or more than one) climbed over the fence, up the scaffolding, and painted graffiti on the tower a good thirty to forty feet up from the ground.
A skate park in Pueblo West, Colorado, in recent days has been graffittied so much that the hours that the public can use the park have been significantly reduced, and police drive-bys have been increased.
We are shocked by things like this, and yet we shouldn’t be. In our physical world, we become blind to the spiritual conflict between good and bad, the ways of God versus the work of the Deceiver. We blame it on bad kids, insensitive adults, and out-of-control hooligans. If there were simply more police, we theorize, problems like this wouldn’t happen. We fool ourselves into thinking that would be the solution for justice and getting back to a world that is good and civil.
Let’s not sound like religious crackpots and suggest it’s spiritual warfare.
And so we had Bob Vylan leading a crowd of thousands of music festival attenders in England in chanting “death, death to the IDF (Israel Defense Forces). Whatever your stance on the Gaza situation, promoting hatred in such a way is another sign of the chaos and distortion promoted by the forces of darkness.
An organization that tracks the number of church vandalisms has reported that there have been over 30,000 incidents in the United States in the last four years. An estimated $75 million in damage occurs annually as a result of church fires.
We have a tendency to categorize the crimes as a ripple effect of societal problems and even political differences. Whereas, there is truth in that we are prone to brush to the side the spiritual warfare that is happening. Perhaps our minds have become so removed from the spiritual dimension of life that it’s like “out of sight, out of mind.”
There is a vendetta against good, against wholesomeness, against the ways of peace. The media is very good at putting the chaos of our culture in front of us and keeping us informed about how out-of-control the world has gotten. And so a church in California is cleaning up the mess, mourning for the wounds to its faith community, and trying to figure out why it happened.
To put a positive spin on it, scripture tells us that things like this will happen. Followers of Jesus will deal with the consequences of following Jesus. It will not always be understandable and will bring us to tears and leave us with unanswerable questions. In the end, our faithfulness, grace, and mercy will bring glory to the One we serve. In many ways, that goes against our culture’s solutions but points us towards hope and peace.
The goodness of God will one day triumph over the hatred of darkness.
Words from WW Blog 