Shooting Ourselves in the Foot:
An Exegesis of 1 Chronicles 7:14
by Michael Crowe
P
eople of faith have often wondered why the world doesn't respond more favorably to their cries regarding the need to give attention to faith and spiritual life and the moral uprightness which is their by-product. Perhaps we've been shooting ourselves in the foot. God has given us a way to influence and affect humanity profoundly, but we often sidestep it. One way we get around His way is to mishandle passages of scripture that, when lifted out of their textual and cultural/historical context, can be used for "inspiration." That is, rhetoric that seems moving and galvanizing, but in reality is not biblical and smacks of triumphalism. Favorite passages are often subjected to the worst exegesis because we've built ideologies around them and don't want anyone messing with our soapboxes.Believers have often cited II Chronicles 7:14, in which God is said to speak these words to Solomon:
...if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
I
wonder if we could have been misinterpreting this passage, confusing "my people" with the general population of one's country-in our case the United States. In one sense, of course, every person is created by God and therefore could be said to belong to Him. But in this passage the people spoken of are the particular people called by God's name, the Jews, the people of Israel, of whom Solomon was king.B
y extension, it would apply to people in our day who continue to be called by His name, people who follow God and take on His name and attempt to base their lives on His words. Thus God's people, God's "country", is an invisible one composed of all those who are specifically and deliberately a part of His family of faith.I
t is these people who are called upon in this passage to turn from their wicked ways and humble themselves and seek his face. It is these people who will be forgiven should they do so, and these people whose land will be healed. Your land is not the United States, nor is it Korea or France or Argentina, because these countries do not correspond to the unique Hebrew state, which was essentially a theocracy, a nation ruled directly by God. The your land that will be healed is the kingdom of God, and perhaps the possessive pronoun even indicates the particular community or fellowship of believers of which you are a part. This does not correspond to any earthly political entity, any world state or country.G
od is here calling us believers to face up to our own corruptions to facilitate the healing of His family. Only as this repentance and healing progresses do His people have an authentic witness of wholeness for those in the world who are as yet unbelieving and unreceptive to His gifts.A
contributing factor to this persistent mistaken emphasis is the concept that this particular country, was founded as a Christian nation, that the founding documents are "Christian", and that we must return to our "Christian" roots. It may well be the best governmental foundation ever devised, but even a cursory study of the founding persons and documents will quickly disclose that the theorists and constitution framers were very far from the puritan pilgrims of the two previous centuries. These were bright and bold men, but the most widely known of them partook of deism, the philosophical rage of continental Europe. This fence-riding posture posited an extant God, but one who had started the fires of creation and walked away. These men had no use for the cross, no use for the biblical doctrine of sin, and no use for the atonement of Jesus. They appreciated the creation, but had no use for redemption. They liked to quote Jesus as a philosopher, but wouldn't have prayed to Him or through Him if their lives depended on it. The documents and governmental system they framed reflects exactly this stance. Yet the idea that this is or was a Christian nation persists among evangelical believers. I suggest that we take the stance I once heard recommended by Jerry Cook, Pentecostal pastor and theologian, who said that countries and bookstores and bumper stickers cannot be Christian-only persons can be Christian.O
nce the intent of II Chronicles 7:14 is clarified, all of us who believe ourselves to be God's people find ourselves faced with this challenge: no longer can we mind the world's business-we can only mind our own. No longer can we squawk at the world because we're too busy humbling ourselves and praying and seeking God's face and turning from our own wicked ways, as God has instructed us. Yes, He may have some of us speak publicly to injustice and evil, but only from a place of obvious and profound humility. This passage squarely confronts us in our propensity to project our own specific culpabilities onto a mythical, generic "secular world" that we have contrived.O
ur business, stated here in II Chronicles 7:14, and reiterated throughout the Old and New Testaments, is to humbly clean up our own act, examine our own souls, and do the hard, vulnerable, honest work of seeking face-to-face intimacy with God and with our circle of relationship. In this way alone can the people of God hope to become a touch-point of salt and light for a desperate and down-spiraling world. This lifestyle of repentance, of quietly taking care of our own spiritual and ethical business, is the Way that issues forth in a humility and mercy that our world cannot fathom, but for which it is desperately hungry. The maintenance and renewal of this internal, spiritual integrity is the biblical means God has given to speak to a world lost in its pain and its atrocities.