Stealth Insurgence, page 8
Chapter 6
A dozen young adults, including Izzie, Josh, Todd, and Diego, knocked on our door Friday evening, then cheerfully crammed themselves into our apartment’s miniature living room. All but four of our guests were from Zander’s former young adult group. I hugged Izzie, Nance, Mia, and Cali and said hello to Josh, Todd, Diego, and Felix.
I made a point of having Todd introduce me to Tian, Cesar, Keisha, and Sandra before we got started. The four newcomers, Todd said, were all students at UNM. They were comfortable with the group but, not having met Zander or me, they considered us with interest and curiosity.
We had laid out cans of soda and a spread of chips and different sorts of dips. The young adults fell on the snacks like locusts—but they didn’t hold a candle to us when we were ravenous.
At 7:15, Zander nodded to me. I raised my voice. “Hey, everyone,” I said. “Welcome. We’re about to begin our Bible study for the evening. Do you have the snacks and beverages you’d like to get before we start? Grab what you want, so we can move through our study without interruption.”
There was a general rush to refill plates and grab sodas. Then our guests found places to sit or perch. They sat cross-legged or sprawled on the floor; some leaned against the walls or sat on the ends of the sofa. I sat in a corner on a pillow; Zander, true to form, had turned a dining chair toward the group and straddled it.
Zander opened with, “Before we begin, I want to say that it is a big blessing for us to be back with you, our friends. We have missed you.”
“Yeah, well, we’ve missed you more,” Diego shot back.
Amid the chuckles that followed, I sensed more than humor. They truly had missed us. I thought, too, that I detected a measure of relief as they relaxed in our home. A thought popped into my head: They have been like sheep with no shepherd, and my heart went out to them.
Zander opened in prayer. “Lord God, your word is a light to our path. Your word is strength to our bones. Your word is what we hunger for and crave more than food for our bodies. Feed us this evening on living bread, Lord God, so that by it we are transformed into the image of Jesus. We ask in his name. Amen.”
Shouts of “Amen!” bounced off the walls of our living room, and I smiled, thinking of the young couple who shared a wall with us, wondering what they would think.
Maybe they will hear us discussing your word, Lord, and listen in. I grinned to myself. That would be cool.
Zander waited until he had everyone’s attention. “Have your Bibles and notebooks ready? Yeah? Good. Okay, so this evening I feel led to teach on confusion.”
Heads nodded. I heard Nance mutter, “Good call!” and Josh reply to her, “Right?”
“I take it you’ve been experiencing some confusion in your lives?” Zander asked.
“Yeah, you could say so,” Josh answered. “I mean, I’ve started my master’s at UNM, and every single time I’m on campus, it’s like walking through a minefield with the possibility of getting blown up. I’m almost afraid to open my mouth in class.”
“I get you. Today’s culture only tolerates what we are told is PC, and it’s getting harder to express an honest opinion without groupthink and cancel culture ganging up on us. An experience with that kind of intolerance can even shake us. Make us question what we believe. Create confusion in our hearts. Is that what you guys are experiencing?”
I was saddened when every young adult nodded.
Zander nodded, too. “Let’s get some wisdom from God on this topic, shall we? First, we’ll look up confusion in God’s word and see what he says about it. Then, we’ll study it further to determine how we’re to deal with confusion when it comes our way.” Zander looked them over. “Sound good?”
A chorus of “yes,” “amen,” and one heartfelt “please!” answered him.
Zander chuckled low in his throat, and I smiled. My husband was in his element when he taught the word or shared about Jesus. This was the man I fell in love with.
Zander began. “When doing an in-depth study in Scripture, I’ll usually start with a word search. I have some great Bible apps on my tablet and phone that make searching Scripture a snap.
“I looked up the word ‘confusion’ in the Bible, and I made sure to include several translations in my search so that I didn’t miss any verses where a synonym for confusion is used. I made a list of the verses my searches returned.
“Once I had a list of the verses my searches returned, I used a concordance to view those verses in their original language. The original language of the New Testament is Greek, so we’ll look at the Greek words for ‘confusion’ and what they mean.”
“Would you kindly pause, Pastor Zander?” Tian, a Chinese exchange student earning her chemistry degree at UNM, asked. “I have never known how to do what you describe. I want to write it down.”
When she finished scribbling in her notebook, she nodded to Zander, and he continued.
“For the purposes of our study tonight, we’ll look at three verses from the list I compiled. The first verse we’ll look at is 1 Corinthians, chapter 14, verse 33. Full disclosure: We’re jumping into a larger conversation around this verse, but the truth it states is universally applicable.” He waited for everyone to find the verse in their Bibles before he read it aloud.
“For God is not
the author of confusion,
but of peace,
as in all churches
of the saints.
“That’s the King James Version of this verse. Let’s read it in the NIV before we check the concordance.
“For God is not a God
of disorder but of peace—
as in all the congregations
of the Lord’s people.
“The words ‘in all the churches of the saints’ and ‘in all the congregations of the Lord’s people’ mean pretty much the same thing, so we don’t need to go deeper on them. What is different between these two translation is that the word ‘confusion’ in the King James is rendered as ‘disorder’ in the NIV. That’s where looking up the word in its original Greek and studying it out adds to our perspective.”
He glanced up. “One of the Bible apps on my phone includes a Strong’s concordance that tells us which Greek word is used and then defines that word. I’m reading from this concordance. It tells us that the word ‘confusion’ or ‘disorder’ found in 1 Corinthians 14:33 is akatastasia in the Greek. Yeah, I know. Akatastasia is a mouthful. We may not master its pronunciation, but we can focus on its meaning. According to the Strong’s definition, akatastasia means ‘instability, i.e. disorder: commotion, confusion, or tumult.’
“If we plug this expanded definition into both translations, we get a fuller picture. And, since ‘i.e.’ means ‘that is,’ we’ll swap in the phrase ‘that is’ in place of ‘i.e.’
“For God is not
the author of confusion,
(instability, that is, disorder,
commotion, confusion, or tumult,)
but of peace, as in all churches
of the saints.
“So we see that the words used in either translation, confusion in the KJV and disorder in the NIV, are both correct, but the expanded definition of the word provides us with a broader understanding.”
The young adults nodded and scribbled furiously.
Zander added, “I like how the King James Version tells us For God is not the author of confusion, ‘author’ meaning God is not the source or cause of confusion. The NIV says For God is not a God of confusion. I also like that our God is not a God of confusion, don’t you?”
Diego’s hand shot up. “So, is this verse saying that confusion, instability, disorder, commotion, and tumult don’t come from God?”
“That’s precisely what it is saying, Diego. So far so good? Let’s dig deeper, shall we? Turn next to Galatians, chapter 1. I’m going to read verses 6-8 in the NIV.
“I am astonished that you are
so quickly deserting the one
who called you to live in the grace
of Christ and are turning
to a different gospel
—which is really no gospel at all.
Evidently some people are
throwing you into confusion
and are trying to pervert
the gospel of Christ.
But even if we
or an angel from heaven
should preach a gospel other
than the one we preached to you,
let them be under God’s curse!”
Zander looked up. “Pretty strong words. We should note that the word ‘confusion’ used here is not the Greek word used in the last verse we dissected. However, this Greek word, tarasso, has elements similar to akatastasia. Tarasso means ‘to stir or agitate’ and ‘to roil water.’”
“Roil?” someone asked.
“Roil means to shake or churn. Think of white-water rafting or kayaking—that kind of dangerous, roiling water, able to suck you under. I think ‘churn’ is a great descriptor of the kind of confusion that throws us for a loop. But the kind of confusion that causes our hearts and minds to churn should not be muddled with how we feel when we try to, say, navigate an upgraded app.”
“You mean there’s a difference between spiritual confusion and, what? Ordinary confusion?”
“Good way to put it. The ‘ordinary’ challenges of life, of what you might call ‘adulting,’ generally shouldn’t cause ulcers or keep us up at night. Those challenges usually resolve as we walk through the unfamiliar and figure out how they work. Not like a churn in our gut. And maybe we should reread the verse and identify what was causing this kind of agitating confusion in the Galatian church. Anyone want to give it a go?”
Josh’s hand shot into the air. “It’s all through this passage. Paul says they were deserting the grace of Christ and turning to a different gospel—which, he says, is not actually ‘good news’ at all.”
“Why wasn’t it?” Zander probed. “What was wrong with this different gospel?”
Josh struggled to put his thoughts into words. “Maybe we can’t know the specifics from this passage, but we can know that it was tossing the church into the churn you talked about.”
“Good eye, Josh. The fruit of this different teaching was confusion—a roiling churn—and that type of confusion is not of God. Let’s tease out more of the specifics.
“First, Paul alludes to what was being taught as pulling the church away from the grace of Christ. We know we are saved by Jesus, we are cleansed by his blood, and we are redeemed by his suffering, death, and resurrection—nothing else and no one else. We know Jesus is God’s gift to us, a gift we do not deserve: That’s grace.
“If I began teaching you that you must study the Bible two full hours every day, spend two hours in prayer each day, and give all of your money to the poor in order to be saved, you would know in a hot second that I had departed from the grace of Christ. Why? Because Scripture teaches us that we are to study, pray, and give out of our gratitude to the Lord as the Holy Spirit leads us.
“Second, whatever the Galatians were being taught, it was different than the gospel Paul preached, so much so that he called it a perversion—so beware. If what you are being taught differs from how Paul, Peter, James, John, or any of the early apostles taught the churches, you’ll know it a) by how it differs and b) by its nasty fruit: confusion, turmoil, instability, and agitation.”
“Wow,” someone breathed.
“Let’s move on to our third verse, James, chapter 3. I’m reading verses 14-18 in the New King James.
“But if you have
bitter envy and self-seeking
in your hearts, do not boast and lie
against the truth. This wisdom
does not descend from above,
but is earthly, sensual, demonic.
For where envy and
self-seeking exist,
confusion and every evil thing
are there.”
Zander paused in his reading. “The King James rendering is more succinct and powerful.
“For where envying and
strife is, there is confusion
and every evil work.
“Do you see how envying and strife relate to confusion and every evil work? Motives matter. James even says that such so-called ‘wisdom’ is actually earthly, sensual, and demonic. Demonic? Sheesh!”
“Pastor Zander?” Felix asked, “Can you explain the word ‘strife’?”
“Sure. Let’s picture two gladiators in the arena, fighting each other to the death, with the winner being crowned the victor. Strife isn’t merely conflict, because everyone has conflicts—and yes, I mean everyone. Hopefully, as people committed to Christ, we work out our conflicts with humility, grace, consideration, and mutual forgiveness.
“However, because strife is rooted in bitter envy and a self-seeking heart, it is more like those two gladiators fighting to the death. It is rivalry of the most wicked kind, the kind that causes permanent division between brothers and sisters and destroys the sweetness and beauty of our fellowship in Christ. Why? Because envy will always fight to get what it wants, to prove its superiority.”
He looked around. “Guess who did ‘strife’ first? Who instigated it and caused division long before we came along, all in order to obtain what he wanted?”
Our living room dropped into a holy stillness, and no one answered Zander. I had never heard him speak with such passion and power. I might be less than a year old in Jesus, but I recognized the anointing of the Holy Spirit when I heard and felt it.
Into the silence a small voice spoke. Little Cali.
“Um, was it Lucifer? Like, when he tried to take over heaven?”
Zander nodded. “On the nose, Cali. Lucifer, one of God’s archangels, was thrown out of heaven for his rebellion. He will spend eternity in hell—the eternal fire that Jesus in Matthew 25:41 said God prepared specifically for the devil and his angels. In the here and now, Satan’s sole desire is to take you with him into his eternal torment.
“One of his methods is to entice believers into envy and strife, and he passes down his demonic ‘wisdom’ to those who fall into his trap. The end result is confusion and every evil work. Pay close attention here: Envy and strife always result in evil works. Knowing this, be on your guard, and don’t allow Satan to snare you in either envy or strife!”
I swallowed at Zander’s warning. It felt . . . prescient. Prophetic even.
Zander said, “Okay, that’s the bad news concerning confusion. Let’s talk about the good news the Lord has for us.” He continued reading the rest of the verses in the passage from James 3.
“But the wisdom that is from above
is first pure, then peaceable,
gentle, willing to yield,
full of mercy and good fruits,
without partiality
and without hypocrisy.
Now the fruit of righteousness
is sown in peace
by those who make peace.
“The companion of confusion is strife. Guess what? The opposite of strife is peace. Colossians 3:15 says, Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. The Amplified version refers to peace as our ‘umpire.’ We can know we are operating in grace when we have and hold to the opposite of strife—peace.”
Zander smiled, and I felt the atmosphere lighten.
“Okay, we’ve spent forty minutes studying confusion. Before we break up, let’s bottom-line our study, shall we? The Bible tells us that confusion is not a good thing, as evidenced by the fruit it produces. What kinds of fruit does confusion create?”
“Instability,” Todd said.
“And disorder,” Diego added.
“Agitation,” another offered.
“Commotion and tumult,” Tian said, reading from her notes. “Please, what is ‘tumult’?”
Zander nodded. “Tumult isn’t a word we use much in the English language any more. When we look in a thesaurus for synonyms to tumult, we find uproar, chaos, and upheaval—as well as disorder and commotion. But the synonym that strikes home for me is turmoil. Confusion brings turmoil, both between us and other believers and in our own hearts and minds.”
He sighed a little. “We all know the feeling of turmoil, don’t we? How would you describe what it’s like when your heart and mind are in turmoil? Anyone?”
Nance whispered, “Horrid. Hard to eat or sleep. Can’t work. Can’t stop thinking . . .”
Keisha picked up where Nance’s voice tapered off. “Yes, when I’m in turmoil, I can’t stop mulling the situation over and over without getting anywhere. But it’s more like when I have a sore in my mouth and I can’t leave it alone, you know? My mouth hurts so bad, yet I can’t stop touching my tongue to the sore, the source of my pain! And touching the sore over and over only makes it hurt worse.”
“When I’m in turmoil like that, I don’t make good decisions,” Josh admitted.
“I agree,” Zander said. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t think turmoil is what Jesus died to give us. So, turmoil, aka confusion. What do we do when we find ourselves in either?”
“Well, confusion isn’t from God,” Todd declared, “so we should get out of it as soon as we recognize it.”
“Sure, but how?” Zander pressed. “If we don’t know how to remove confusion from our minds, we may find ourselves susceptible to deception—and that’s another word we should study.”
“We can turn to the word,” Diego said. “If we’re confused, we know something is probably wrong, too. We can ask the Holy Spirit to show us what’s wrong.”
Zander nodded. “I like that, Diego—confusion tells us something is wrong. I should add that it’s also possible to find ourselves confused and frustrated because we are trying to do what the Lord has asked us to do, but we are doing it in our own strength—without prayer or without allowing him to lead us. Conversely, confusion can result when we are trying to do something the Lord has not told us to do.
“See, the Lord isn’t obligated to help us do what he’s not ‘in,’ that is, what he’s not spoken to us to do—even if whatever ‘it’ is sounds like a great idea. It’s even easy to get worn out doing a good thing without him. The Bible calls either situation ‘a work of the flesh.’ Psalm 127:1 reads, Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain. The Hebrew word for vain in this verse means emptiness, nothingness, worthlessness, and vanity. Why spend our time and effort on what produces nothing of value?
