Jealousy

A new situation in my life has sparked feelings of jealousy in a way I have not experienced before. From dictionary.com:

Envy and jealousy are very close in meaning. Envy denotes a longing to possess something awarded to or achieved by another: to feel envy when a friend inherits a fortune. Jealousy, on the other hand, denotes a feeling of resentment that another has gained something that one more rightfully deserves: to feel jealousy when a coworker receives a promotion. Jealousy also refers to anguish caused by fear of unfaithfulness.

Retrospectively, I have certainly experienced jealousy, but very seldom. Most of my feelings were really envy since there was not any self-justification involved. However, I'm realizing that the level of pain is definitely intensified by the closeness of the relationship involved.

This blog will explore the concept of jealousy from a Biblical perspective. I see these new feelings as an opportunity to feel some of the things I know that God feels. Yet I also know that while his emotions are completely appropriate, I must necessarily work through my emotions and get over them.

God is a Jealous God
As part of the 10 commandments, Exodus 20:4-7 summarizes how God's rule and what he feels about our loyalty to him.

You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.

Ex. 34:14 expresses a similar sentiment. "Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God."

So what's up with this and how is it even relevant? I know so many of us struggle with bowing down before idols and worshipping Baal :-). In society today, we view jealousy as a negative emotion reserved for those whose lives and feelings are out of control. Marriages are by far the most common scenario for jealousy where the relationship has broken down to the point where one spouse accuses the other of disloyalty and unfaithfulness. Interestingly, scores of TV shows are based largely on emotions related to jealousy.

Relationship with God = Marriage
The truth is that God views our relationship with him precisely as a marriage. Hosea was an old testament prophet whom God commanded to take a wife (Gomer) who lived as a prostitute. God' intent was through Gomer's unfaithfulness, Hosea would understand a fraction of the emotions that God felt toward his people, the Jews.

Jealousy is a funny thing. A jealous spouse expresses great love and depth of feeling for the other. At the same time the jealous spouse also feels outrage, anger, animosity, and a desire to harm or hurt the object of their love. Jealousy is an extremely powerful emotion, as Proverbs 27:4 describes: " Anger is cruel and fury overwhelming, but who can stand before jealousy?."

Hosea 11 is one of my favorite chapters in the Bible because it shows the complete range of God's emotions toward us. At first, God feels tenderness as he remembers raising Israel as a child. Next, there is sudden outrage and vindictive punishment in versus 6 & 7 because of their many sins. Lastly, in v8-11, God relents and decides to have mercy on his people after all.

Ezekiel 16 is a graphic and detailed depiction of how God viewed his relationship with his people. It describes how God found Israel as a pitiful, helpless female baby lying in a field having just been born. God raised this child, bestowing many gifts, and the child became a beautiful woman. God entered into an exclusive covenant relationship of marriage. Yet Israel chose to go after other lovers and use the very gifts God had given to attract new lovers. In fact, she got so bad that she was a "reverse prostitute" and paid others in order to have sex with them. God's jealousy is so aroused that he must punish her violently and then he promises (v42) to be calm and no longer angry. If you read the chapter, you will see that God feels both like a rejected father/benefactor and like a jilted lover--and rightly so!

At the end of the day, God still loves his people and wants to take them back. "So I will establish my covenant with you, and you will know that I am the LORD. Then, when I make atonement for you for all you have done, you will remember and be ashamed and never again open your mouth because of your humiliation, declares the Sovereign LORD" (Ezek 16:62-63). This is entirely consistent with the parable of the prodigal son that Jesus told in Luke 15. The son comes to his senses and returns, yet only through his complete humility and the amazing generosity of the father is he able to yet again enjoy the privileges of being a son.

What is an idol?
In Bible times, idols were easy to spot. They were figurines of various sizes manufactured from wood, stone, and precious metals. Isaiah 44:6-23 contains a humorous comparison between God and idols, outlining the many absurdities of idol worship.

People joke today about idols, golden calves, Baal, and the like. It seems funny and superficially appropriate because our enlightened minds could not possibly worship such objects. But now that we understand the deeper meanings involved, it is most certainly not a joking matter. Imagine that you know a couple whose marriage has gone through the drama of infidelity and has finally been restored. Suppose you knowingly joked that everyone should get together for dinner sometime at the hotel where the husband had often met his lover? Such a remark would show complete insensitivity to the situation and the depth of the wound that had been healed.

But what is an idol? Do they exist today? Ezek. 14:1-7 explains that we can set up idols in our hearts. An idol is anything in our lives that takes the #1 place of importance that God deserves. While we may not bow down to anything physical, we show what matters most to us by how we spend our time, what we talk about, and areas we would not be willing to sacrifice in order to follow Jesus as his disciple. The range of idols can be tremendous and society actually approves of many of these idols:

• Our (grand)children, a relationship, or a spouse (always a challenge to avoid)
  
• Sports (football is notorously common)
• Our own beliefs and opinions and ideas about life and morality (this was a big one for me)
  
• Entertainment (actors, musicians, movies, video games, TV shows)
• Jobs
  
• Well-meaning projects to help others (e.g., ending pollution or homelessness)
• Our church or organization: events, special beliefs, special practices, etc.
  

It's certainly not hard to have an idol (or 2 or 3!). In fact, without conscious effort we always will have an idol in our hearts other than God.

Conclusion
I know God wants all of me (Luke 14:25-34). All of me is all I have to give. It only seems fair since God gave his only son Jesus for me. God married me at my baptism into Christ on December 15, 1999. Now that I understand God's jealousy more deeply, I am even more determined to maintain a big difference between God and anything else that can arise in my heart.

Today, society likes to make fun and mock the jealous God of the Old Testament. I hope you can understand along with me how appropriate God's feeling of jealous emotion really is. Proverbs 1:7 explains, " The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline." It is not a bad thing to fear a God who loves you so much that he is jealous and crazy and vengeful toward you when you are not putting him in that #1 spot!

The 11th Hour

We got licensed as foster parents with the intent to "foster to adopt" a child. Rather than go overseas, we wanted to help children in our backyard. When we brought Ar'Mircle home from the hospital on May 8, 2008, we had high hopes of adopting her within a year. Since then a lot has changed and her situation is much more complex. Her birth mother has made tremendous progress and has successfully fulfilled on her social programs for the last six months. In the coming months, she hopes to have overnight visitations with Ar'Mircle, leading up to reunification with Ar'Mircle.

Ar'Mircle's birth mother wants to reunify with all her children and so the family got into a special program. The new social worker will visit us on Monday 9/14/09. I will post a status update then for what is appropriate to disclose. However, our previous social worker had a "final chat" with us and impressed upon us the very strong likelihood that Ar'Mircle will return to her birth family and that we will not be able to adopt her. We have been aware of this possibility for about six months and have cried and prayed and gone through the emotional roller coaster.

God has always been in control of Ar'Mircle's situation, but this is particularly evident now as we try to surrender her daily into her true Father's hands who loves her more than we do. Tom Jones' weekly Mind Change email a few weeks ago pointed out that oftentimes God waits until the 11th hour to act. This idea seemed particularly applicable to our situation, so I wanted to explore this idea more deeply.

Abraham
The first obvious example in the Bible is Abraham, the father of faith. God promised Abraham a son in his old age (Genesis 15:1-6). Abraham took things into his own hands by siring Ishmael at age 86 with his slave girl (Gen 16:16). God's promise was not fulfilled until 14 years later with the birth of Isaac at age 100 (Gen 21:1-7). Over those 15-20 years, I wonder how often Abraham felt that God's promise was empty words? How often did he get frustrated with the age and decay in both Sarah and his own bodies? Yet at the last possible moment, God delivered on his promise.

Gen. 22:1-19 is one of the most challenging passages in the Bible. After Abraham waited so many years for Isaac, God audaciously commands Abraham to literally sacrifice his son, just like the pagans commonly sacrificed their children to false gods. Many struggle with this apparently callous, unreasonable, and cruel request (forgetting that God sacrificed his own Son 2000 years later). Yet Abraham did not waiver in his faith, for he explained to Isaac in v. 8, "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering." Abraham made it into the "Faith Hall of Fame" of Hebrews 11, which explains that "Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead" (Heb 11:19). Abraham's faith carried him through the actions of trudging up the mountain with his son, preparing the altar, tying up his son, putting him on the altar, and getting out the knife. Again, at the last possible moment, God intervened and told him not to sacrifice his son. Instead, God provided a ram and commended Abraham for not withholding his son.

This story is gruesome to our 21st century minds, yet the lesson is clear. God expects us to put him as #1, even above our kids. By this example of Abraham's faith, I am able to put God above Jade, Ar'Mircle and River, even though I adore them. It puts children in an awkward situation of too much power when the children are a parent's top priority, even above the marriage. God's priority list of God, Spouse, Children has worked well for us as we discipline and train our kids.

Joseph
Joseph was the great-grandson of Abraham. As a young man (17?), Joseph's step-brothers sold him into slavery in Egypt. Rather than renouncing his faith in God in a strange country, Joseph served his master Potiphar with excellence, leading to his promotion to steward. His faith even enabled him to resist the sexual advances of his Potiphar's wife and then kept him going as he was thrown into prison. In prison, Joseph served with excellence and eventually God brought him out and made him second in command to Pharoah as he implented a plan to save all the people from an impending famine. We don't know exactly how long this process took, but could easily have been 15 or 20 years. I find Joseph's example of perseverance inspiring, and I take note that God acted at seemingly the last moment in Joseph's life.

The Israelites
Joseph moved his family down to Egypt to escape the famine. After they multiplied, the Egyptians enslaved them. 400 years after the move to Egypt, God explains, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt.... So I have come down to rescue them... and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey" (Exodus 3:7-8). God raised up Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. I wonder how many Israelites even remembered God's promise after so many generations? How many of them wondered if God would really rescue them? Yet after 400 years, at the 11th hour, God brought the Israelites out of Egypt. He even arranged things with the 10 plagues so that the Egyptians wanted the Israelites to leave and gave them many gifts on their way out.

If that weren't dramatic enough, three after they left, the Egyptian army pursued the Israelites, trapping them against the Red Sea. God waited until the army was nearly upon them before opening the Red Sea for them to pass through, then closing it back over the Egyptians, destroying their entire army in the process. It was yet another last-minute deliverance by God!

Daniel
This is one of the most famous stories in the Bible. As one of the Jews in captivity in Babylon, Daniel rose up to prime minister, just under the king. The king's jealous advisers tricked him into creating a law that for 30 days, everyone must pray exclusively to the king. By faith, Daniel did not alter his practice of praying in his window facing Jerusalem. Consequently, the king regretfully ordered him thrown into the den of lions. The next morning after a sleepless night, the king asked, "Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to rescue you from the lions?" to which Daniel responds, "O king, live forever! My God sent his angel, and he shut the mouths of the lions" (Daniel 6:20-22).

Daniel certainly believed God would rescue him. But at what point and in what manner? By the king revoking the law? By the king sending Daniel away for 30 days on a special mission? By killing the lions? Yet God chose not to rescue Daniel until he was literally in the lions' den for 8-10 hours.

Peter
The rapid growth of the early Christian church caused the Jewish population to panic as many converted to follow Jesus. King Herod arrested Peter and put him in jail as a ringleader of this new cult. Acts 12:1-19 describes how the night before his trial, an angel rescues him from four squads of soldiers and leads him out of jail. Peter knocks on the door where the disciples are praying for him and there is a humorous exchange where the girl leaves him outside still knocking in order to tell the good news to the others (v.14-15). Again, God chose to rescue Peter at the last possible moment and apparently he never was brought to trial.

Jesus
The Jews anticipated the coming of the Messiah for centuries. The Dead Sea Scrolls contain the prophecies of Isaiah that describe the Messiah's roles of king and suffering servant in amazing detail. The Jews looked forward to the coming of the Messiah, and perhaps many had even given up hope. Galatians 4:4 explains that God waited until the right time: "But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons."

The idea of the 11th Hour is not that God always does what we want at the last minute. Instead, by faith we are given the strength to persevere to the 11th hour and then by faith to make it to through the crisis, if that is what God wants. Nowhere is that more evident than the example of Jesus.

Jesus knew he must fulfill the prophecy to suffer for the sins of the world in Isaiah 53. He spent time educating his disciples that "The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life" (Luke 9:22). Yet when the moment came for his suffering, Jesus said, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death" (Matthew 26:38). At this point, he prayed this prayer many times, "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will."

Jesus surrendered his life to God to the point that when Peter tried to fight off the soldiers coming to arrest him, Jesus told him, "Put your sword back.... Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than 12 legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?" (Matt 26:52-54) Jesus could have been rescued at the 11th Hour, but instead he chose to suffer for my sins so that I could be forgiven and have a relationship with God. Sometimes an 11th Hour rescue is too short-sighted. The Faith Hall of Fame in Hebrews 11:39 states, "These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect." Sometimes God has a greater plan, a bigger game afoot that may require deep sacrifice for even greater gain.

The disciples were thoroughly disappointed and disillusioned when Jesus died. As they explained in Luke 24:17-24, "Jesus of Nazareth was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place. In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning but didn't find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see."

But it was not yet midnight on God's clock. Jesus had in fact risen from the dead, proving that even when it appears that the "fat lady has sung," God can do absolutely anything!

Conclusion
There are many more examples of God's last-minute rescues, including Samson (Judges 16:23-30) and Hezekiah (Isaiah 38). They remind me that not only can God act even at the 11th hour, he often (but not always) chooses to do it this way. Why? I'm not sure, but I know that last-minute rescues make it obvious that God has done it. When God averts a crisis that has almost occurred, it is clear to all that we need God, not only in crises, but every moment of every day.

I don't know how things will turn out with Ar'Mircle. I surrender her to God every day. He really does know best and he loves her most of anyone. And yet I maintain hope that God will pull out another 11th Hour rescue and our family will praise him because of it for the rest of our days.