Rain Falls
“and sends rain on the just and the unjust” Matthew 5:45
I have a hard time understanding God’s battle plan. If I were running the cosmic war, I would make it as difficult as possible on my enemies and as wonderful as I could for my allies. I’d be sure that my troops got the best of everything. Good food, great jobs, wonderful children, pleasant neighborhoods, peaceful communities. The list would go on and on about all the marvelous treasures in life if you joined my team. At the same time, I’d make sure that the plagues of Egypt fell on the unrighteous. They would be the sad recipients of hell on earth. Famine, disease, destruction, sorrow, defeat. I’d throw it all at them until they capitulated. That’s a battle plan I could understand.
But God doesn’t listen to my clever strategy. He sends the rain on the just and the unjust. What kind of tactic is that? How can I ever conduct recruiting or hope to encourage desertion from the enemy ranks if God pours out favors on those who oppose Him? It’s just plain insanity. What’s worse is that God doesn’t seem to protect His own troops from evil treatment. His children experience sorrow and grief, affliction and destruction, loss and labor. Of course, they do have the power of the Spirit but they don’t seem to be immune from the trials and tribulations of the world. In fact, they might even get more than their fair share. It’s hard to imagine a more upside-down strategy than this!
Maybe you’ve never thought about the big battle plan. Maybe you’ve only recognized the disparity in your own little corner of the war. But my guess is that there have been times when you said, “God, what are you doing? Those people across the street don’t believe in You at all and I do. But they get all the breaks. They have plenty of money. Their kids go to private school. They just went on vacation – again. I’m following you as best as I can and I just lost my job, my children are in bad schools and the car needs repairs. How can this be fair?”
We need a cosmic view.
Jesus gives us an insight into the cosmic plan when he says that the Father causes the sun to shine and the rain to fall on the good, the bad and the ugly. Actually, he didn’t say “ugly”. That was Clint Eastwood. But the insight Jesus gives is astounding. God’s game plan in the cosmic battle of truth and justice is blessing. And God’s blessing plan is distributed across His entire creation. So, God blesses His enemies because God loves them, even when they are fighting against Him.
The plan is radical – and crazy. But it is absolutely consistent with the character of God. God does not fight fire with fire. He does not wreak havoc on those who oppose Him. He is compassionate. He applies the blessing strategy over and over, year after year, century after century because He wishes to woo the rebels back to His arms, not drive them to surrender to His might. His strategy is vulnerability, not fortification. He goes to battle with love, not power. No wonder we don’t understand Him.
We are far more inclined to the strategy of the evil one. Why shouldn’t we be? Every battle plan in human experience, every movie, every comic book story operates on the basis of overwhelming power. The arms race is all about fearing the power of the antagonist. I can’t send my missiles to destroy your cities because you would send your missiles to destroy mine. Defense in the world’s system is a matter of having more power than the enemy. God’s plan calls for total vulnerability. The world wants total control.
There is a great irony here. God, the Creator of the universe, the God who lacks no power at all and who could, with a single word, eliminate all His enemies, comes to battle armed with only compassion. All of the rest of us, including the evil one, who are severely limited in power compared to God All Mighty, gobble up as much power as we possibly can in order to ensure our victory. How strange is that? If the God of creation enters the battle unarmed, don’t you think He understands the true nature of combat?
We reflect a different reality. Our thinking has been infected with the addiction to control. We think that the answer to threat is force. We are a world that firmly believes in shock and awe warfare. What a tragic mistake. There is no end to that strategy. Power always begets the need for more power. Force always produces more resistance. A battle plan based on total control can only finally succeed when everyone is dead. But, of course, that really is the cosmic objective. The evil one gladly lends his support to our misguided versions of battle strategy because they all serve his plan. He is not interested in victory. He knows that he has already lost. His strategy is to destroy the image of God found in all of God’s creation. That means that he is more than willing to destroy everything that he can get his hands on before his final defeat. Every battle plan except compassion is equally useful to him because every other plan leads to more annihilation of God’s image. So, cut the rain forest because we need furniture. Drill the wilderness because we need fuel. Exploit the poor because we need silk shirts. Blow up a bus because we want recognition. Open the killing fields because we want power. Manufacture excess because we want affluence. It all fits the destruction strategy. Erase God from the earth, no matter what the cost.
So God send the rain. A gentle reminder of another battle strategy. A remembrance of His character. Cosmic victory in a drop of water.
