2 War
On the glorious splendor of your majesty, and on your wondrous works, I will meditate.
PSALM 145:5
When you see or hear the word war, what comes to mind? Perhaps you think of the great world wars that changed the course of human history. Or maybe you think of the seemingly endless conflicts that plague the Middle East. Or maybe you live in the inner city and think of the gang and drug wars that turn once-safe communities into battle zones. Perhaps you think of the domestic wars that trouble marriages and families and often lead to divorce or the political wars that rob the government of its ability to secure the welfare of its citizens. All these wars are real and important, but none of them rises to the level of significance of another war that has determined the course of human history and the lives of every individual who has ever lived. What is that war? It’s the war of awe, the war that is fought on the turf of every human being’s heart.
Between the “already” of the sin of Adam and Eve and the “not yet” of the final redemption, a war wages over who or what will rule and control the awe capacity that God has established within the heart of every human being. As we have already seen, since every person is created with a capacity for awe, everyone is searching for a way to exercise that capacity. This awe capacity was meant to drive us to God in wonder and worship, but since sin separates us from him, our capacity for awe gets kidnapped by things other than God. So in grace, God does battle for the awe of our hearts. You could argue that one of the fundamental purposes of the great redemptive story and the person and work of Jesus is to recapture our hearts for the awe of God and God alone.
This brings us to the subject of this chapter. Because the Bible is essentially the telling of the grand redemptive story, accompanied by God’s necessary explanatory notes, it also tells the story of this war of awe. Scripture brilliantly depicts for us the nature and results of what I will call in this chapter awe wrongedness (AWN). The biblical retelling of AWN is written for our instruction and our rescue, helping us recognize the deep danger of sin in our hearts and hunger for the rescue that only Jesus can provide. I want to trace this AWN theme throughout Scripture so you can be wise to the war that rages in your heart too.
I wish I could say that this war doesn’t rage in my heart, but I can’t. Sadly, AWN themes are still active in my life as well. Sometimes that means physical things rule my heart more than they should. Sometimes that means I am full of myself and act more out of pride than confidence in God. Sometimes that means I care more about the appreciations and respect of others than I do about bringing glory to God. I don’t have to reflect long on my daily living to see how much the war described in this chapter and so graphically depicted in Scripture is still being fought on the battleground of my heart.
It has to be without debate the saddest story ever told. Not a day in your life or mine passes without us dealing with the results of this story. This single event has made everything since harder, more dangerous, and more painful than God designed it to be. Its results bring trouble into your private life. It wreaks havoc on your marriage and relationships. It makes parenting arduous. It lies at the bottom of human conflict and global war. It makes the delight of food, money, and sex dangerous. This story captures the moment when the war of awe began.
Clearly, we can find no more powerful, graphic, and helpful portrayal of AWN than in the very moment it began in the garden of Eden as captured in Genesis 3:
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made.
He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. (Gen. 3:1–7)
This is a shocking story. It is tragically true, but I’m afraid that we are so completely familiar with it that it doesn’t shock us anymore. Adam and Eve had it all. Every need was supplied. There was no sin, sickness, or suffering of any kind. Everything in creation did what it was supposed to do. God was in his rightful place and willingly descended to earth to enjoy the perfect communion he had with the people he had made. Yes, there’s no doubt about it: it was paradise.
But that paradise was soon to be shattered like fine china dropped on concrete. Adam and Eve were discontented with everything; they wanted more. And at the bottom of their insane quest for more was AWN. The Serpent held out to them the one thing they didn’t have, shouldn’t have, and could never have—God’s position. He told them that all they had to do was step over God’s clear boundaries, and they would become like God. This dangerous fantasy now lurks in the heart of every sinner. We want godlike recognition, godlike control, godlike power, and godlike centrality. This was the initial moment when awe of self overrode awe of God and set the agenda for every person’s thoughts, desires, choices, and behavior. For billions of people ever since, awe of self has literally driven every selfish, antisocial, and immoral thing we do.
In surprising and tragic AWN, Adam and Eve ate the prohibited fruit, and the glorious shalom that enveloped all creation was smashed into history-altering pieces. No brain is big enough to calculate the damage that moment did. But one thing we can know for sure: at that moment, AWN was unleashed on earth and with it a war for the heart of every human being. The Bible could not comprehensively recount the true devastation of sin nor fully chronicle this war so central to the Bible’s main theme—the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus Christ. So, in the midst of its central story, the Bible graphically tells and retells the story of AWN. It is the stain splashed on every page of God’s Word.
In the unveiling of the AWN drama in Scripture, it doesn’t take long for it to explode into the unthinkable—fratricide (see Gen. 4:1–16). Cain brought a sacrifice, but it was not a sacrifice of true, selfless worship of God, or else what happened next would never have occured. This story confronts us with the cruelest of ironies: one of the places where we most powerfully see AWN is in supposed acts of worship. If Cain’s heart was really motivated by awe of God, then when his sacrifice was rejected, he would have grieved over it, confessed to the inadequacy of his offering, and joyfully presented a more acceptable sacrifice to God. But instead, he violently envied his brother and, in an act of jealous rage, ended his brother’s life. This too is a shocking and unsettling story. It’s the kind of story in the local paper that would make you sick to your stomach: brother kills brother. Cain didn’t have a sibling problem, a sacrifice problem, or a religious ceremony problem. No, Cain had an awe problem, and the blood of Abel cries out as a result of his AWN.
We find a principle here, one displayed in a myriad of biblical stories: in the heart of a sinner, awe of God is very quickly replaced by awe of self. This is the great war of wars.
God’s summary of this war inside humanity in Genesis 6:5–6 should send chills down your spine: “The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the LORD regretted that he made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.” It should scare you to death when you read that God is sorry or grieved for something that he created. You know immediately that this is very, very serious, to say the least. God’s indictment of humanity is comprehensive and inescapably dark. Everything people think and want is wrong. Every motivation is evil. Every viewpoint and craving is tainted with iniquity. What’s the bottom line here? What humans desire violates God’s desires for them. The boundaries that man sets for himself go past the boundaries that God has ordained. Everything you think, desire, and say offends God because you don’t care about God anymore. You don’t care what pleases him. You don’t care about his ownership and rulership of your life. You don’t care about his holy will and his eternal glory. No, all you care about is you and what you want. Your problem is not environmental. It’s not relational. No, your problem is deeply spiritual. In your God-forgetfulness, you’ve put yourself in the center. And the evil that has swallowed your life is but a symptom of the AWN that has swallowed your heart.
You see AWN in a completely different context in the calling of Moses. We find him in Exodus 3 as a man in exile, having fled for his life. God comes to draft him to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt, but Moses is afraid, paralytically afraid. He cannot think of taking one step toward what God is calling him to do. God meets Moses in his fear and in Exodus 4 displays to him his awesome glory. We would expect that Moses would be blown away with awe and ready to represent this awesome One before Pharaoh, but that’s not what happens. At the end of God’s glorious display of power, Moses begs God to send someone else. It’s as if the fear of personal inadequacy and political danger has completely blinded his eyes to the awesome glory of the One sending him. Moses is not in awe of God. No, the awe capacity of his heart has been captured by fear of the Egyptians, and all he can think of is being released from the task to which God has appointed him.
Later in Moses’s life, he grew in his awe of God, but the people he was leading through the wilderness were not getting it. At Mount Sinai, in a moment of miraculous divine love, God gave Moses his laws for the people he held dear. But at the very same time, the children of Israel at the base of the mountain were melting gold to create a visible idol to worship. The juxtaposition between these two things is almost too much to take in. As God was on the mountain proving himself to be God, Israel was at the base of the mountain working to replace him. Again, we must note carefully the words they used. The people said of the golden calf that they made, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” (Ex. 32:4).
Is not this one of the constant, destructive, and delusional functions of AWN? AWN is all about attributing to something in physical creation—yes, even the work of your hands—what only God could do. It’s failing to give praise where praise is actually due and giving praise to something that could not have produced the thing that has caused you to give praise. You will live in awe of what you credit with the blessing in your life. You will worship whatever it is that you think has produced what you celebrate. The molding and worship of the golden calf stand as powerful physical examples of awe gone horribly wrong.
Perhaps one of the clearest portrayals of AWN is what we see in the Valley of Elah in 1 Samuel 17. For forty days the army of the Most High God in fear had refused to face the giant warrior Goliath in battle. For forty days they had listened to his vile taunt, “I defy the ranks of Israel this day. Give me a man, that we may fight together” (v. 10). Their reticence to go down into that valley and face this enemy resulted not from military posturing or tactical maneuvering. No, it resulted directly from awe amnesia. Because they failed to carry into that valley a life-shaping, courage-imparting awe of God, they based their assessment of the situation on a false spiritual equation. For forty days they compared their size and ability to the size and ability of Goliath and therefore concluded that he would defeat them.
David showed up to deliver a lunch to his brothers and was confused as to why the army of Israel had failed to rise to Goliath’s challenge. And then he shockingly said that he would fight Goliath. Was he that arrogant? Was he delusional? Did he not understand the impossible odds? No. Listen to what David said: “The LORD who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine” (v. 37). Because David was not suffering from AWN, he made the right spiritual assessment and was therefore unafraid. It was not puny little David against this awesome giant. No, it was this puny little giant against the God who is the sum and definition of all that is awesome. Now, who do you think would win? With the boldness and confidence that only the awe of God can produce, David walked into what had been for forty days a valley of fear and defeated Goliath, leading the army of Israel to rout the Philistines.
AWN causes you to feel unable, alone, unprepared, and afraid, while awe of God produces, courage, hope, and forthright action. This really is the war of wars. Too many of us, no matter what our theological persuasion, live in a functional state of AWN, and so we are timid, anxious, defeated, and struggling to hold onto the shreds of hope that we have left. Our problem is not the size or difficulty of the things we face. No, our problem is AWN and the havoc it wreaks on our daily living. AWN will cause you to fear things that you need to defeat. AWN will cause you to deny reality because you are afraid to face what is true. AWN will cause you to fret over people and situations. AWN will cause you to attempt to control what you cannot control because you think it is out of control. AWN will never lead you anywhere good.
After Genesis 3, there’s no more powerful portrayal of AWN in the Bible than the story of Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel. The central theme of Daniel is the awesome and unstoppable sovereignty of God over the life of every human being and over the movement of history. You conclude your reading of Daniel assured that God really does have “the whole world in his hands.” It is particularly interesting, then, that the book of Daniel also puts before us one of the Bible’s most dramatic examples of AWN. The contrast between Daniel’s overall theme and the story of Nebuchadnezzar should not be missed (see Daniel 3–4.)
Nebuchadnezzar had reached a height of unparalleled greatness and power. He was godlike in his own eyes and in the way that he wielded his power. So in an act of stark self-sovereignty, he created a huge golden image and commanded everyone under his power to bow down and worship his idol. It was an act of pure glory thievery. This was not about worship per se; it was AWN, that is, a leader stealing from God the awe due to him and him alone. Nebuchadnezzar reveals his AWN when he asks this rhetorical question in Daniel 4:30: “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?”
Here is a king confronting the awesome glory of God with a declaration of his own glory in the form of a perverse command for all his subjects to worship an idol. This episode really captures the core of AWN. The war that rages in all our hearts is a war between the awe of God and the awe of self. The war really does somehow turn all of us into glory thieves. Perhaps we commit vertical larceny much more than we realize. Perhaps we quest for personal glory more than we think. Perhaps we take credit for what only God can do more often than we think we do. Perhaps, in subtle idolatry, we give credit to places and things when it really belongs to God. Perhaps we’re not too far from Nebuchadnezzar’s sin.
So in a real demonstration of his incalculable power and grace, God showed Nebuchadnezzar who was actually sovereign over all things, even over him. God brought Nebuchadnezzar low, so low that he ate grass like a bovine, reduced to animal instincts and behavior. God’s goal was to deliver Nebuchadnezzar from his AWN. Listen to Nebuchadnezzar’s response after the One who is sovereign had restored him:
for his dominion is an everlasting dominion,
and his kingdom endures from generation to generation;
all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing,
and he does according to his will among the host of heaven
and among the inhabitants of the earth;
and none can stay his hand
or say to him, “What have you done?” (Dan. 4:34b–35)
Nebuchadnezzar’s declaration of the awesome rulership of God over a kingdom that will never end represents a confession that all of us should make daily. It would be worth printing out this confession and sticking it to the mirror that you gaze at every morning. This declaration not only reminds you of who God is but points you once again to who you are and, in so doing, protects you from the glory-stealing AWN that constantly threatens you and me this side of eternity.
The grand redemptive story, which stands as the central theme of the Bible, is dotted with portrayal after portrayal of AWN. You see it in King Saul’s disobedience to God’s commands to utterly destroy the Amalekite nation and everything in it (1 Samuel 15). Saul acted like he was in charge and had the right to set his own rules, and because he did, he took plunder for himself rather than destroying it all as God had commanded. To make matters worse, rather than admit his AWN-induced disobedience, he blamed the people of Israel. The prophet Samuel uncovered Saul’s actual motives: “For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry” (v. 23). You see, Saul’s problem was not that he disagreed with God’s strategy for dealing with the Amalekites. No, Saul had a heart problem. His heart was captured more by the awe of physical things than by God. AWN caused him to crave what God had forbidden and to rebel against God’s clear commands. So God, in a clear display of who was in charge and who had the authority to set the rules, turned his back on Saul and his reign. AWN is not just shockingly blind and morally wrong, it is also inescapably self-destructive.
Or what of the sad theme of the book of Judges, where the people of God, who were commissioned to worship and obey the Lord and stay willingly inside his moral boundaries, again and again did what was right in their own eyes and again and again faced the consequences of doing so? Judges recounts the sad AWN cycle of disobedience, God’s discipline, his gracious rescue, and more disobedience to follow.
Then there are the wayward, arrogant, and self-celebrating leaders of Israel depicted by the prophet Amos. In clear AWN, they were moved more by their own power and affluence than by the power and glory of the God they had been called to worship and serve. And because they had forgotten God, they cared little for the people whose welfare had been placed in their hands. Read Amos’s description:
Woe to those who lie on beds of ivory
and stretch themselves out on their couches,
and eat lambs from the flock
and calves from the midst of the stall,
who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp
and like David invent for themselves instruments of music,
who drink wine in bowls
and anoint themselves with the finest oils,
but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph! (Amos 6:4–6)
How much of leadership today, whether in the political or ecclesiastical arenas, is shaped by leaders who suffer from AWN and are consequently more concerned about their own power and position than they are about the people they are called to lead? Maybe it’s a pastor who lives outside of or above the body of Christ, as if he is essentially different from the people he leads and not one with them in both need and ministry. Or maybe it’s the politician who uses his elected position more to consolidate personal power than to secure the good of those who elected him. We really do live in a leadership culture that is often not far from the AWN of the leaders in Amos’s day.
Or how about the horrible New Testament story of King Herod’s jealous infanticide at the time of Christ’s birth? Did a more tragic and unthinkable event occur in biblical history that side of the crucifixion? Here’s the brief but shocking account. “Then Herod . . . became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old and under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men” (Matt. 2:16).
The brevity of this account should not distract us from its utter and unthinkable horror. Imagine the wails of unbridled grief from distraught mothers that echoed down every street in Bethlehem and its surrounds. Could there be any worse act of AWN than this? Why did Herod do such a thing? He did it because he would not allow another king to challenge his sovereign reign. He did it because nothing held more sway over his heart than his own power and glory. He did it because he despised loss of power more than the slaughter of countless infant boys.
You could argue that every horrible act of man’s inhumanity is rooted in AWN. Every moment of murder has its source in AWN. Every act of physical or sexual abuse arises from AWN. Every moment of family violence has its roots in AWN. Every act of terrorism or needless political violence is unleashed AWN. It’s AWN that makes us willing to destroy the reputation of another person. AWN causes us to respond to one another in bitterness, envy, and vengeance. AWN lies at the heart of racism and makes human culture a battleground rather than a community. When AWN rules our hearts, we harm one another.
Consider even the disciples, who were more captivated by their quest for position in the kingdom than they were grieved by the suffering and loss of their Master. After Jesus revealed his coming death and resurrection more clearly than he ever had, the very next conversation was not a discussion about the seeming impossibility of the death of the Messiah but an argument over who was or would be greatest in the kingdom (see Mark 9:30–37). The disciples had little time to contemplate the humiliation of Jesus because they were too consumed with their own greatness. Once again, these guys were not just theologically confused. No, they were trapped in the cul-de-sac of their own grandeur. They were followers of the Messiah, but they placed themselves at the center of the story. Here the agenda of the cross collided with the agenda of AWN, demonstrating how the cross was absolutely necessary.
Perhaps we can find no more powerful summary of AWN and its results than in Romans 1:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. (vv. 18–32)
This passage argues that we can in no way overstate the power and significance of AWN. It really is the battle of battles. It really is the root and source of every evil thing that we think, desire, choose, say, and do. It is the reason for all our personal, relational, and societal dysfunction. In awe wrongedness we put ourselves or the creation in the place where God alone is to be, and when we do, an endless catalog of bad things happen.
AWN is why Jesus had to come. It is the core spiritual disease from which none of us can escape. It is the war of wars that none of us has the power to win. Why? Because that war rages and that disease lives in our hearts. Our only hope is for a rescuer to come and free us from ourselves. Thankfully, God, in awesome grace, commanded the forces of nature and ruled the events of human history so that at a certain time his Son, the Savior, the Messiah, the Lamb, the King, would come and live the way we should have lived and die the death we should have died. In doing so, God made it possible for us not only to be rescued from our AWN and accepted into his presence but also to become people who live in moment-by-moment awe of him.
Here’s the good news: God’s forgiving, rescuing grace is infinitely more powerful than the AWN that kidnaps the heart of every sinner. And that really is the best of news!