On the Sin of Inversion

“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil… who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” Isaiah

Every day it seems that big character ideas like holiness, humility and moderation are being diminished, while small offenses of speech are magnified. In turn, everyone is afraid of giving offense, and no one is afraid of sin. God, it seems, is the only one who won’t judge us. This is a strange inversion. Jesus was pretty clear that we ought not to fear human beings, only God (Matthew 10:28). Instead, we fear each other and suffer very little concern for the judgment (thoughts, consideration, opinion) of God. Jesus said, do not judge each other, not because God was not a judge, but because he was. It is because God is a fierce, fair and (in Christ) merciful judge that we should stay out of that game altogether. We are not as good at it as we think.

Not long ago I was at a stop light with some of the family in the car and we saw a man ride past on a bike with another (considerably older man) running after him. We assumed we were witnessing a bicycle theft. Being none other than who I am, I made a u-turn, pulling up beside the aggrieved old man, inciting him,

“Did he just steal your bike?!”

Breathless and incredulous, he emphatically shouted, “Yes!”

“Stay here,” I assured him with steely eyed confidence, “We will get it back.”

Now, out of the corner of my eye, I can see my 17 year old son with his hand on the door handle. Poised and ready to rumble. He is always spoiling for a fight. And it is actually the mirror of his intensity that gives me pause about my own. I am ready to rumble too. Whoever this thief is, he is going to wish he hadn’t stolen this bike, or at least he is going to regret doing it in front of me. So, we tear off after him. Without a plan. Just a car full of self-righteousness.

It takes us a few minutes to find the guy, but when we do, I pull him over with my car, shouting, “Hey, did you steal that bike?!”

To which he replies, “He stole it from me first!” followed by, something about “street justice” and “you can call my uncle, he will tell you.”

And just like that, all the air is out of my balloon. I realize I am not really equipped for all this. I am not prepared to adjudicate this dispute at all. And my rush to judgment has only placed me in a seat, I neither own nor deserve. Human beings are not good at being judges, not really.

And so it is that we imagine ourselves as judges and God as indifferent, ourselves as guardians of the truth and God the protector of ambiguity.

And we are just always getting it exactly wrong. Juxtaposing and then wrongly inverting things. I can’t stop thinking about these words from Isaiah 5;

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight.

And it is not just good and evil, it is small and big. We could add, “Woe to those who call small things big and big things small.”

I feel like I am forever struggling to get this right. Small things that loom so large in my mind and my prayers with God. Relational breakdowns, public approval and momentary pressures threaten to monopolize my mental margins, while the grand yearning of God for lost people, for the relief of justice and for love to finally reign, fades.

I started watching a documentary on Bill Gates, who has become the world’s leading philanthropist, called The Brain of Bill. He has taken his considerable accumulation of intellect, wealth and influence and in the second half of his life applied it to some of the world’s most daunting problems. This struck me as especially meaningful because I can remember when I was a young crusader for the poor, I would often use Bill Gates as an example of wealth inequality and indifference. The wealth was there to address child starvation, water borne diseases and so many other preventable problems the poor face. The will just wasn’t there. I would actually use him as an example, if Bill Gates choose to give away even half his wealth, we could eradicate many of these problems.

And then he did just that.

Touché Bill, touché.

I realize I have never really stopped to appreciate that. To give credit to him, or God, or human progress or anything. Something just 25 years ago that seemed unthinkable is happening. Worldwide poverty statistics are drastically down. Disease is down. income per capita is up and I don’t hear many people talking about it. In the early 90’s we talked about the 33,000 children who would die daily from preventable, poverty related factors. It was a breathtaking reality. Today that number has been more than halved and that with the population increasing by 2 billion people since 1990. 15,000 is still 15,000 too many, and so we should not slow down the work; but this kind of change also should not be ignored for the sake of vigilance. We dreamed and prayed and challenged and taught so that we might face and change these demonic inequities, and in many ways, God has delivered on those prayers.

As a social activist, what do I do with that?

I used to talk specifically about the thousands of children who die from something as preventable as diarrhea. The first episode of The Brain of Bill documentary is actually about the moment in 2008 when Bill and his wife Melinda read an article written about children dying from diarrhea which sent them on what has been an almost decade long quest, costing $200 million, to stop just that problem.

In this same time period since I entered college violent crime in the United States is down 71%. And not just in some cities, everywhere. Despite not agreeing with his overall worldview, it is hard not to be somewhat speechless from the conclusions of someone like Steven Pinker, and his recent book Enlightenment Now, which argues that in almost every meaningful measure, good is prevailing. And that might be part of the problem, to think again about “meaningful” measurements.

I don’t really mean to comment here on these trends per se, only my own propensity to ignore them, to resist cause for optimism and embrace only the darker and smaller trends of my own indignities. So here I am, on any particular day, possibly racked with anxiety about a friend who has become an enemy, who now speaks poorly and publicly about me, while these miracles are happening around me.

What do we do when our biggest prayers are answered? We forget them.

What do we do when our smallest fears are realized? We magnify them.

This too is the sin of inversion. The important things are made insignificant and the insignificant things loom large. I know the apostle Paul wrestled with this, because I can hear him preaching to himself as he preaches to the Corinthians, about our “light and momentary troubles”.

Therefore, we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:16–18)

I posted something on social media the other day, that when I feel criticized, discouraged and regretful, I often feel compelled to go outside. Perhaps it is the vastness of the world outside the four walls I live in that remind me to consider the big picture. The wider world and the work of God over time.

The world is old, and I am young. The world is vast, and I am small. This is a great comfort for the anxious, but also an unwelcome reality for the self-involved. And sadly, this is what some of our inversion and misrepresentation comes down to. We get it so wrong, take small things and make them big, because they have to do with me. And if I am the center of the world then they are a big deal. If on the other hand, God is the center of my world, then I can see the small slights and even big failures for what they are, grains of sand on his sovereign seashore.