Coexist?
Several years ago a bumper sticker started popping up on the back of Prius’ everywhere. It said “COEXIST” and featured all manner of symbols representing various religious traditions and non-religious traditions. On that bumper sticker was an entire worldview. A worldview utterly at war with the hope of Advent and the surprise of Christmas. Here was something more than a simple plea that people of different faiths and non-faiths should stop killing each other. It was the assumption that God should be happy to just exist alongside the other gods or the varying implicit claims to godhood in our world. It was also a claim that God is largely irrelevant for the everyday life of the world. This is not simply a statement about pluralism, it is an attempt to put God and the whole of Christianity in a particular place, namely just deep down in your heart. In this view of things, God has no place in the public square or in politics or in our social life. The gods are there to make you feel better, make you feel loved, help you deal with your anxiety or shame, but they aren’t there to tell us how to do anything in the real world. The problem is that there is nothing in the Bible to indicate that God is happy to just coexist and to just sit peaceably deep down in your heart.
Isaiah 44:6-8 stands in stark contrast to the spirit of our age. It poses a fatal risk to the spirit of secularism exemplified by these stickers and the limitations put upon where God is allowed to speak and act. God is having none of it. And Isaiah 44 sits in the center of the promises of Isaiah 40-66 and thus the promises we are called to glory in during Advent in anticipation of Christmas. In other words, Isaiah 44 helps us to understand the spirit of Advent and Christmas and it isn’t very warm and fuzzy. We here find God himself speaking in the midst of the nations, declaring things, and showing us something of what he’s like. He instructs us with regards to how we’re supposed to think about the gods of our nation and how we’re supposed to behave in relation to the gods of our nation - well, the gods of all the nations but we should think particularly with regard to the gods wooing us into compromise and calling for a kind of false peace.
After promising to pour out his Spirit on his people (like water on thirsty ground), he says:
“I am the first, and I am the last; besides me there is no God.”
In other words, He isn’t running for election to the office of God. He isn’t trying to earn your vote. He’s not wanting you to consider the advantages of His particular policies and then give him your support over against the other potential gods. He is declaring something about his own unique supremacy. Besides him, there are no gods at all. No one else to consider at all. Then, He starts to get a little spicy:
“Who is like me? Let him proclaim it. Let him declare and set it before me…”
It’s important to hear the spirit of these words. God doesn’t gently woo here. He defies someone saying otherwise. If there is someone like Him, anyone who has a claim to god-ness, let them stand in front of Him and declare it to his face. Prove yourself. If you believe you are a God if you believe your own god can stand before the face of the God of all the earth, say so. If the secularist god of Demos can stand before the God of Israel, the God of the Bible, then declare it to God’s face. Here is a UFC fighter standing in the middle of the ring and calling everyone out at the same time. If you think your god or version of God can stand before Him, God is more than happy to hear your claims. He goes on in vv. 9-20 to make fun of all the other supposed gods and the inherent nature of idolatry. He mocks your secular, individualistic self-realization. He mocks your government-as-savior confusion. He laughs at your attempts to embrace your inner deity and to presume to remake the world as you see fit. Do you believe yourself to be a god? You can’t even feed yourself. Do you think yourself a bold, unique counter-cultural icon? You do the same dances as everybody else on Tic-Toc. You get tired. You bought your Che Gueverra shirt from Amazon. You get terribly confused. You believe the will of the people can save you? Have you seen how much time the will of the people spent scrolling photos on Instagram last week? You guys spent hours looking at pictures of latte art and looking at pictures of women in bikinis. You aren’t gods. Your gods aren’t gods. You still can’t make stars appear or move the planets or invent cool animals like crocodiles. And then He goes on:
“Since I appointed an ancient people. Let them declare what is to come, and what will happen.”
This bit gets spelled out a bit further on in verse 25 where He says: “…who frustrates the signs of liars and makes fools of diviners, who turns wise men back and makes their knowledge foolish….” In other words, our God is the God who runs the world on behalf of His people and loves to do so in a way that makes fools out of those who do not heed His words. To the self-appointed diviners and wise men, God says, “Let them declare what is to come and what will happen.” He will act in history in such a way as to make their supposed expertise foolish and will frustrate their intentions for the world. Again, hear the spirit of these words. He not only defies the supposed gods of our age but dares those who follow them to tell us what they think the world should be like and how history ought to go. He loves it when they put their cards on the table because it shows them to be fools as He subverts their great wisdom. He continues, now turning to us, his people, and instructing us on how we ought to live in a moment where everything seems to have gone mad:
“Fear not, nor be afraid; have I not told you from of old and declared it? And you are my witnesses! Is there a God besides me? There is no Rock; I know not any.”
What does this all mean for the people whose God is the Lord? Do not be afraid of anything. Do not be afraid of what your neighbor will think of you. Do not be afraid of being called a bigot. Do not be afraid of the stock market. Do not be afraid of insane government policies. We are to live as witnesses to the utterly unique supremacy of our God. Step one in such a vocation: Don’t be afraid of anything. There is nothing that can challenge His plans. There is no one to thwart his purposes. There is no new secret insight into how the world ought to be. There is no other Rock but him. There is no God besides Him. Bear witness in the first place by not being afraid.
What does this mean for those of you who do not worship the God of the Bible? Come and worship. Forsake weak gods, forsake pretended atheism or agnosticism. There is one God, and He can be known, and He is strong. Your gods cannot save, be they from the religious traditions or our more sophisticated secular sort. Come and worship the God who is good and strong, so He is capable of saving. Forsake that which, in the end, will make a fool of you and your children. Instead, turn to the only God who is, worship, and be saved.
This is the glory of Advent. In the midst of what seems to be growing darkness and madness - confidently let your hope rest in the God who has not gone to sleep, hasn’t abandoned his people nor his promises. He is the Lord of heaven and earth, of all of history, and all the nations. He cannot be thwarted. The spirit of Advent and the surprise of Christmas go hand-in-hand. It is the end of fear and the ground of a courageous and defiant confidence. All these seemingly gigantic gods that surround us are nothing. The god of sexual and gender madness? Nothing. The god of secular humanism and endless self-actualization? Dust. The god of communitarian and socialist ambitions? Powerless. Islam? Incapable of saving. Buddha? Too fat to stand up. The pantheon of Hindu gods? Pathetic. The God, the Father of us all, King Jesus our Redeemer, and the Spirit of Holiness defy the gods and are the permanent ground of our hope and confidence. We are His witnesses. The witnesses of the God who will not simply Coexist but will and does Reign over everything that is and defies all the gods to say otherwise.