dev183

As I urged you upon my departure for Macedonia, remain on at Ephesus so that you may instruct certain men not to teach strange doctrines, nor to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to mere speculation rather than furthering the administration of God which is by faith.

1 Timothy 1:3-4

On my recent trip to Rome I got the opportunity to visit the Sancta Scala, which is believed by the Roman Catholic Church to be the stairs which Jesus descended before Pilate in Jerusalem on his way to be crucified. I was excited to see these stairs on my trip, as I was not able to see them on my previous voyages to Rome. My desire to see them was not because I believed them in any way authentic or because I believed them to have some sort of redemptive power, but because they are an important landmark in the history of Protestantism and gave me a good reminder of the true nature of God. The story goes like this…

Martin Luther was searching for God. He had become a Catholic monk and was carrying the party line, teaching without reservations the sale of indulgences, which supposedly award people time away from the punishment of purgatory. Indulgences could be gained in all sorts of ways, from paying money to build churches to pilgrimages to relics and holy places. So, for Luther, he was very happy when he was sent to accompany another monk as a representative on a trip to Rome, the center of the Catholic world and a place where he could obtain many indulgences. He spent much time travelling around the ecclesiastical sites in the city, being discouraged by being rushed along by priests.

But alas he came to one of the most important sites, the Sancta Scala. At the time of Luther, the Church was telling the people that this staircase had been transported to Rome from Jerusalem by angels (they are proposing a different story today, of course). The pilgrim was instructed to climb each step on their knees, kiss the steps, and say an “Our Father” each time. After each step they did this they were to have earned themselves 9 years out of purgatory, with some steps earning double because they had crosses carved into them. If the pilgrim made it up every step, they were to be absolved from purgatory.

Luther did this. After kissing his way up the stairs and having reached the top, he looked back down and said, “Who can know whether these things are so.” Far from finding his peace with God performing these rituals, he left Rome with seeds of doubt that eventually grew into the Protestant Reformation and a rediscovery of the Scriptural mandate that the just will live by faith.

On my trip to Rome I decided not to go up the stairs on my knees. Rather, I took the side steps and looked down the steps as I watched many deceived people kissing the stairs that they thought would keep them from burning. It saddened me, because there will be no peace with God found there. These steps are a good representative for me of the religion of man, namely, rituals invented by the minds of prominent men and accepted by the masses because they want to do something to please God and be right with him. This desire is good and natural. This arrogance is evil and reprehensible.

Why is this arrogance? It is arrogance because it is affectively a declaration to God that we want to invent our own ways to Him and reject the one that He made. Jesus is the way to God, and it was through the cross that this way was paved. Yet the religions of the world agree in their denials of the path God showed when He came to us. After all, is there really any difference in a pilgrimage to Mecca, the abstaining from eating cows, or the ascent of holy stairs? They are all simply superstitions that deceive people into to thinking they can get to God some other way of their choosing, making God a liar and telling Him that the cross wasn’t necessary.

Luther found only dead ends when he was chasing relics and following ritual. Yet when he read the scriptures he found directions to the way that Christ had paved. The just will not live by ritual. The just will live by faith.

dev182

Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change

    And though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea;

Psalm 46:2

As I write, it is Monday, September 12, 2011. Yesterday marked the tenth year anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks of 9/11, and our President Barack Obama read the above verse at the memorial event in New York. It was ten years ago when I was walking to class and overheard the news from a conversation going on behind me; ten years since the image of the towers smoking; ten years since the long lines at the gas station; ten years since the range of emotions that assaulted the hearts of Americans on that day where so much changed.

Historically speaking, the 9/11 attacks are probably the most significant event of my lifetime. The feeling of invincibility felt before that by Americans was shattered on that day. No one had any idea what to expect, as suddenly our world that we had for so long been able to control had now been shaken, even if it was for a short time, into chaos. There was a few brief moments of uncertainty about our own borders, and this insecurity was a novelty. I think this chaos produced different things in different people, and I remember clearly what was happening in my heart.

The evening of September 11, 2001, after a day of watching the news and processing with my University, I took my guitar and walked to the opposite side of campus where I could be alone. I still couldn’t see past the vague clouds that had made the immediate direction of the world unclear, but I had a great peace in the fact that I knew the ultimate direction of history. I knew that the world would continue to produce its madness until the return of the Lord, and while I wanted to avoid any end times conspiracy theories, that day more than any other made me realize that we had all just become one day closer to the return of our Lord. So, for me, despite the menaces that seemed to be threatening life as I had known it, fear was not an emotion that I felt after the 9/11 attacks; it was hope that filled my heart. This hope made me want to sing.

September 11 was once a current event. It is now a piece of history. History is safer. If we don’t like history, we “interpret” it in a different way or simply ignore it to protect ourselves. Current events do not give us that luxury. The sacking of the temple in Jerusalem, fall of Rome, the Civil War, and Pearl Harbor are now but pages in our history books, extremely important in the formation of our culture and largely ignored except by students who complain about the pointlessness of having to study history. Yet, if we would’ve been one who lived through such tragedies, the horrors of reality could not have been snubbed. September 11 was the only time in my life where I felt as if I was living in such a time, even though I was sheltered in a more obscure part of America. Yet, it was then where I think I was able to relate to Jeremiah who proclaimed “Great is Thy faithfulness” as the Jewish people were being exiled from Jerusalem. Augustine’s argument for Christians to be confident in the city of God while Rome, the city of man, was burning had a new meaning for me. I began to understand that the people of God should not fear, though the world change and the mountains be thrown into the sea. History belongs to the Lord, and our present sufferings and the world’s current rebellions are merely the part of history that we are experiencing. While it feels uncontrolled and chaotic, the Christians who have gone through such times have understood that there is one who is Sovereign over the events that take place during our days.

It is in this spirit of hope, therefore, that I still sing.