Scapegoat

capegoat: a person who is blamed for the wrongdoings, mistakes, or faults of others, especially for reasons of expediency.

 “Aaron shall offer the bull as a sin offering for himself and shall make atonement for himself and for his house.  Then he shall take the two goats and set them before the Lord at the entrance of the tent of meeting.  And Aaron shall cast lots over the two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other lot for Azazel.  And Aaron shall present the goat on which the lot fell for the Lord and use it as a sin offering, but the goat on which the lot fell for Azazel shall be presented alive before the Lord to make atonement over it, that it may be sent away into the wilderness to Azazel.

Leviticus 16:6-10 ESV

   The first Monday after the NFL Season ends is known as Black Monday, because this is when a number of head coaches and general managers are fired for their team’s performance.  One of the reasons they are fired or let go is because the owner can’t get rid of the whole team, so the coach and or general manager becomes the scapegoat for the team’s bad record and or performance.  This just isn’t the case for football, but this will happen to just about every coach in every team sport at every level.  In essence coaches, especially head coaches are hired to be fired.  Coach Dean Smith is a rarity to coach the University of North Carolina Men’s Basketball Team for decades and retire on his own terms.  Scapegoats just don’t happen in sports, but they also happen at jobs, within churches, and even within friends and families.  So lets explore how a Scapegoat ties into the Lenten Season and Easter. 

    The first concept is that when there is a Scapegoat, there is a guilty conscience.  Guilt means that we realize that responsible for the mess we are due to our actions, words, attitudes and even our lack of action.   This means that we realize that there are consequences for our actions and that relationships are, at best damaged, to broken beyond repair.  I think guilt can cause that famous fight or flight response.  Whether we stick our head in the sand and pretend nothing is wrong, or we it forces us into action.  In essence we play the blame game or scapegoat someone into the responsibilities and consequences of our poor decisions.  I think there is a third option for guilt, but more on that later.

 To expound on the blame game, why should we take responsibilities for our actions when we can make someone else responsible for them and we can make them face the music.  How often do we blame a sitting president for an economy or blaming the pastor of a church for the church not growing and for younger families moving to the bigger church down the road? It is never our fault because it is always someone else’s actions, attitudes or words that causes the problems or not finding the right solutions to fix all of our problems.  Blame always tries to minimize our guilt if not get rid of it completely. 

    The second concept of a scapegoat is this idea of alienation.  When we blame or scapegoat someone, we are termination the relationship somehow.  I think one of the reasons we do this is that we feel guilt in what we have done or said to that person so we alienate them so that we don’t have so see them and either face the music and or be awkward in their presence.  I think the biggest reason why we alienate people and send them of off to the relational desert is that they are paying the price for our guilt and for our actions.  Guilt needs to be atoned for, and scapegoating someone means the debt, guilt and consequences are being placed on that person or group of people.  How many of our relationships have died because we blamed people for our bad decisions or for our lot in life.  Killing a relationship is sometimes easier or more convenient than actually doing the hard work and taking the responsibilities for our actions.

    The third concept of scapegoating is this idea of peace.  In his book, The Mosiac Atonement Josh McNall makes two great statements and the first one is.  

The scapegoat succeeds in delivering a measure of peace.

In essence this statement is right, the reason we scapegoat is to appease our guilty conscience.  We often will try to do anything and everything, except the right thing.  We will even throw  people under the bus if it makes us feel better.   As I wrestled with this section of Josh’s book, I came to realize that this peace is only temporary.  When it starts to fade, we try to find other ways to sooth our soul and to clear our conscience.  I think this view of peace is not only means a lack of strife and conflict, but it also means that we are happy.  True peace means doesn’t always mean we are happy and that conflict is always absent or minimal.  True peace is our response to when things are not going well.  Josh’s second observation is this

First we lynch our scapegoats, then we worship them

We are all created to worship something and we tend to worship what makes us feel better.  We worship scapegoats we are placing the guilt and consequences that belong to us on them and we think we have skirted around the consequences, guilt and responsibilities of our action or inactions. This is me thinking out loud, I think we scapegoat and worship anything that absolves us of any responsibility to grow up and that masks our guilt and shame. This form of worship often leads to unhealthy relationships and even addictions to various things, such as food, alcohol, technology.  When we mask our guilt an shame, it takes us down some really dark roads and have some ugly consequences until it we grow up and deal with them. 

    The fourth concept of being scapegoat is the idea that the scapegoat is innocent of what the are being blamed for.  The only way they could bear the transgression and the blame is if they were innocent of said action or words.  Biblically speaking, the only way for guilt to be taken care of and dealt with is by the sacrifice of an animal with no blemishes.  Within the Old Testament, t here was a \yearly feast where the High Priest would sacrifice a perfect lamb for the sins for the nation of Israel and the blood is what allowed the people to go before God.  All the sins of the nation were placed on the other lamb and sent off into the wilderness.  In essence the only way for our guilt to be properly taken care of is for it to be placed on someone or something that has not sinned

   \To finish up this blog, the passage that we started off with foreshadows Jesus.  Jesus is the ultimate scapegoat, to where He bore our sins and guilt so that we may be forgiven.  Jesus was alienated to a hill outside of the city limits of Jerusalem and died a brutal death on the cross.  His death took  care of our guilt and shame issue once and for all.  As the author of Hebrews puts it, Jesus sacrifice is the sacrifice to end all sacrifices.  In essence, Christ death, paid the price for our guilt and His resurrection made sure that we can over come our sin and guilt and that we don’t have to continuously live in it. 

Waiting

Waiting: the action of staying where one is or delaying action until a particular time or until something else happens

²⁷  Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel,

^h“My way is hidden from the Lord,

ⁱand my right is disregarded by my God”?

²⁸  Have you not known? Have you not heard?

The Lord is ^jthe everlasting God,

the Creator of the ends of the earth.

He does not faint or grow weary;

^khis understanding is unsearchable.

²⁹  He gives power to the faint,

and to him who has no might he increases strength.

³⁰  Even youths shall faint and be weary,

                                                 and young men shall fall exhausted;                                                

³¹  but ^lthey who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;

they shall mount up with wings ^mlike eagles;

they shall run and not be weary;

they shall walk and not faint.

Isiah 40:27-31 ESV

   When we live in a society that has microwave dinners, instant coffee, Insta Pots, and drive throughs, we have come to embrace the mantra of waiting stinks.  Especially when we are waiting for an important answer or test result, waiting can be painful, heart wrenching and it just plain painful.  I would place a bet that we are all waiting on something, whether it is for a pandemic to be over, being able to gather with friends and family, a job that pays that actually pays the bills, or for a child to come out of a tough phase.  When we are in this stage of life, we often have a hard time seeing the big picture.  We are either so focused in the day to day or the moment to moment that we often become reactionary.  In essence we are responding instead of being proactive.  In essence we are to busy cleaning up messes instead of preventing them.  I think there could be a space and time between moving from being reactionary to being proactive and its called waiting.  Here are some ideas to remind ourselves when we are waiting.

   The first idea is our posture.  When I think of posture, I think about how we sit and our body language.  Body language is a big deal in non verbal communication and how people perceive us and how we interpret things.  If a friend is talking to us about something important and we are sitting on the couch, with our head down and our body slouched, we are portraying that we don’t care.  We also probably miss what is being said misinterpret what is being said on what we do hear.  Posture is about anticipation, and if we are not anticipating, we are likely to miss the opportunity, or to mess it up.  Just like an Olympic runner gets into their running stance in anticipation for the starter gun to go off for their race, we should be the same way.  Proper posture is preparing ourselves for the moment, so when it does come and the starter gun sounds, we can take off running.  The Apostle Paul tells is in 1 Corinthians 9 that we are to run the race with purpose and for things that are eternal.  The only way to do this is to be ready for what God has called us to do. 

    The second idea is laziness.  In essence holy waiting is not laziness is based on apathy or down right sin.  The apathy part comes in is that we know the right thing to do, but we don’t have the motivation or desire to do what is right. We would either have someone else do it for us, or we don’t care enough and if it does get done, oh well, because it was important.  In essence we would rather take a pill or have surgery to lose weight without doing the hard work of exercising and diet change.  This has disastrous consequences, because we ae digging ourselves a deeper hole and has serious consequences.  Those consequences keep compounding when we do not deal with them. 

   The second part is laziness as sin.  We know what we need to do, but we do something else.  If God commands us to wait, we get tired of waiting and then we come up with some thing to do that looks Godly but its not what God has called us to do.  The story of Abraham and Sarah come to mind.  God promises them a child in their old age and they get tired of waiting.  So Sarah told Abraham to sleep with her slave so that they could have their child.  This was culturally acceptable when the wife could not bear children, but this is not what God had in mind.  Gods plan was to use Sarah, not her slave and there were consequences for said action.  How much of our laziness is based on not wanting to take risk and wanting to be comfortable?  During times of waiting God is calling us out of our comfort zone and to take risk Godly and appropriate risk. In essence laziness is the antithesis of holy waiting

   The third idea is that waiting is preparedness.  What I mean by this is that during this time, God is preparing us for what is next.  This often means character refinement, whether it is removing something that is ungodly or installing something that is Godly or what is needed in the next phase of life.  This also could mean a time of healing and or rest.  There are times when as people, we need a break, not to do nothing, but to refuel and to recharge.  God knows our specific needs and to use a tech term, during this time, God is providing an update on us, and holy waiting is taking this update and putting it into practice.  Even the Apostle Paul did some holy waiting.  After his conversion in Acts 9, he disappeared for about three years, before he began his public ministry and missionary trips.  God was preparing him during this time to boldly proclaim the Gospel.

   The fourth idea of waiting is alienation.  During this time of waiting, we often feel that we are in the valley and God is nowhere to be found.  There are two truths I think we need to remember.  The first one is that God does not abandoned us.  Our faith is like a tree, the only way for it to grow and for the roots to grow deeper is for a dry season to come.  The lack of rain forces the roots to dig deeper to find water, and when it is found, the tree will grow.  The deeper the roots, the more sturdy the tree is and less likely it is to be blown over in a storm.  That’s the same way with our faith, the more sturdy or mature our faith is, the less likely we are fall to heresy and things that are false.  In essence, we learn who we are and what our purpose is.  The second part of this is that the valley provides grass and nourishment.  We all love the mountain top experiences, but here is the thing, the nutrition and air is rather thin up there.  If we stay up there to long, we will either suffocate or starve to death.  Basketball players like Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan are known for being two of the best and most decorated basketball players of all time with a work ethic that was really hard to match.  What got them there is spending time in the gym putting up the countless shots, running the countless drills, and spending time in the weight room.  What got them their awards, praises, and endorsement deals was during their time of waiting during the offseason was spent working on becoming better.  Our relationship with God and our growth and maturity is more important than any job.  This doesn’t mean we all should go live in a monastery and pray all day because our emotional, spiritual, and physical growth and maturity will affect who we become and how we live our life on a daily basis and how we interact with others and perform our duties. 

    The fourth idea is focus.  It allows us to find out what is important and what is enjoyable and needs to go away.  In essence, holy waiting is spring cleaning for our lives.  It is allowing God to find those things that are not so attractive or down right ugly in our lives and either remove them or do a total makeover.  When this happens, we tend to become focused on what is important.  This is where we start to develop a plan and how we are going to execute it.  It is learning to to thirst for righteousness and learning to seek God with everything we have. My hope and prayer is that our holy waiting can be summed up in the third verse of Matt Redman’s song Better is One Day

My heart and flesh cry out
For You, the living God
Your Spirit's water to my soul
I've tasted and I've seen
Come once again to me
I will draw near to You
I will draw near to You

    To finish up this blog, I will end with the passage I started with. For those who wait on God, our strength will be renewed and we will not grow weary or fain of doing good.  This time of waiting, we learn not to rely on ourselves but to rely on God.  To quote John the Baptist, He must increase and I must decrease.

Temptation

Temptation: the desire to do something, especially something wrong or unwise

And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” ⁴ But he answered, “It is written,

“‘Man shall not live by bread alone,
    but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

⁵ Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple ⁶ and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written,

“‘He will command his angels concerning you,’

and

“‘On their hands they will bear you up,
    lest you strike your foot against a stone.’”

⁷ Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” ⁸ Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. ⁹ And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” ¹⁰ Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written,

“‘You shall worship the Lord your God
    and him only shall you serve.’”

Mathew 4:3-10 ESV

  Temptation is something we all face and it is part of living in a world that is fallen and having a free will to make our own decisions.  Temptation has often been displayed by having an angel on wone shoulder and the devil on the other pleading their cases on the decision we should make and how we should move forward.  The Bible passage above comes right after Jesus baptism.  I consider this Jesus coming out party.  The Holy Spirit comes down in the form of a Dove and the heavens open up and God proclaims that Jesus is His Son with whom He is well pleased.  Before we dive into the issue of temptation, we have to look at something that is important.  How do we balance this idea that Jesus was fully man and yet He was fully God.  So here is the rhetorical question that books could be written about, did Jesus divineness prevent Him from sinning, or since He had the power of God in Him, He was able to say no to the temptation so sin?  At the end of the day, this is one of those mysteries that we will not fully comprehend until heaven, but it is still something we need to wrestle with because it has implications of how we do life and how we read, interpret the Bible and how we view God and others.

   The first observation about temptation is that is not a complete falsehood or lie, because if it was, our chances to be swayed by such an idea would be zero.  It is like someone trying to get us to believe the sun rises in the west and sets in the east.  We all know that this is not the case and we can easily refute this lie and temptation.  Why temptation is so appealing is because it takes the  half truth and either twist it to make it look like the real deal with all the bells and whistles, and it mysteriously leaves out a portion of facts that are essential.  In the passage above Jesus uses the phrase “it is written” three different times.  Jesus realized that Satan was either taking the Bible out of context, or just omitting things.  Temptation sets out to distort the truth to make something look different than what it really is.  Temptation is all about manipulation.  It takes the truth and distorts it in such a way that it makes it false. 

   My second observation about temptation is this idea that it challenges who or what we value.  Yes, the core of temptation is challenging who and how we worship.  Temptation moves our focus from what we are currently focused on to something else.  No matter how cool the bells and whistles are, how often is the temptation leave us feeling empty in the long run.  In essence, temptation over promises and under delivers.  This is where the fear of missing out (FOMO) really comes in.  Temptation comes in and convinces us that if we don’t take this particular opportunity, we will miss out on a great opportunity.  Or it drives our fear of commitment because we fear if we commit to something, we can not do something else that comes along that is either greater or cooler.  Temptation and FOMO is often based on deception and not complete reality.  I call this the social media effect.  The whole picture is not being presented and often only the side that gets the most likes or support gets shared.  The hard work or the consequences are never shared or blown out of proportion. 

    My third observation with temptation is that it often takes us farther than we want to go, keeps us longer than we want to stay, and has a price we don’t want to pay.  How often does one night or a stretch of giving into temptation and bad decisions leads to horrible consequences.  Whether it is a night of heavy drinking that leads to a DWI or something worse, to saying or something that isn’t nice or correct to a significant person in our lives.  These things could and often do cost us misery, along with time, and we could lose money, respect, a job, or even a relationship.  Here is the thing, when we give into temptation, we can’t snap our fingers and things will be back to normal and everything will be fixed and back to normal.  If things are to be fixed, it will take time and a lot of hard work, which we have to be willing to do.  More importantly, we need to seek forgiveness from God and those who we offended and afflicted pain to.  Hard work doesn’t matter if forgiveness and turning from our ways is not involved.

   My fourth observation on temptation is that temptation is all about our ego and it destroys our perspective of who we are and especially who we are in God.  Temptation either inflates our ego and tells us that we are better than we really are and gives us a sense of false confidence. It is thinking that we don’t need God and that we have the talents and goodness to do what we need to do.  The flip side of the coin is that we are unworthy and that we do not deserve love, respect and that others are better than us.  Both sides of this coin often lead to some form of addiction to power, greed, self loathing and other things.  In essence, temptation seeks to destroy us and everybody around us, no matter the cost.

    My fifth observation is that temptation is not sin.  Temptation does not become sin till we act on it.  One can try and live their lives without facing temptation, but this mean we won’t be getting out of bed in the morning and even then I am not sure it will work.  In essence temptation is asking us to embrace the half truths and lies that this world has to offer and make them our own.  I am not sure where to pout this, so I am going to put it here, In the Bible, the Epistle James (1:13-18) tells us that God does not tempt us, but those temptations come from our sinful desires.  When temptation does show up and tries to bring us away from God, God does provide a way for us to overcome this temptation and not fall to it.  When we face temptation is a chance for us to say no to the temptation for us to draw closer to God and submit to His love and goodness instead of going down the path of pain and self-destruction.  We really can not talk about temptation without talking about Satan.  Whether it is the story of Job or the passage above, Satan is the driving force behind temptation.  Satan whole goal is not for us to follow Him, but it to make sure that we do not follow God and not have Him the Lord and Savior of our lives.  Satan has received his punishment and his goal is to bring everyone down with him. 

    There is a discussion of free will when it comes to temptation and I will save that for another blog.  To finish this out, temptation challenges us to hit the easy button and take the easy way out. Whether is fulfilling a need for self-reliance, authority, or worship of self in some way, its goal is to tear down and destroy.  In John 10:10, Jesus tells us that the thief (Satan) comes and uses temptation, seek, destroy and to kill, and that He Himself comes to not only give life but to give it abundantly.  In all reality, it’s a choice of two paths, and which one are we going to travel?  I am not sure if Kenny Rogers was referring to temptation when he sang this, but it applies, we have to know when to hold them, when to fold them, and when to walk away and when to run