CLIMBING JACOB'S LADDER
I am the God of your father - the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. - Ex. 3:6
All three of the original fathers of the children of Israel had their problems, and of the three those of Jacob were the most serious. One scholar describes Jacob as "an avaricious cheat," noting that he was born that way, for even when he was delivered he was clutching his brother's heel, as though trying to outdo him. After reviewing Jacob's stormy life, in which he finds little real commitment to God in spite of some awe-inspiring experiences, this scholar concludes that Jacob's problem was that his was an inherited religion. He was the son of Isaac, the grandson of Abraham.. In our parlance he was a third-generation "Christian."
We have to concede that most of us are Christians because our parents were before us, and perhaps our grandparents and even great grandparents. An even more brutal fact is that we are Christians because we were born into a "Christian" culture. We are Christians for the same reason that we are Americans. We may be reluctant to admit it, but we know it would have been different had we been born in Istanbul or Beijing. Had we been born in Istanbul we would not only have been Turks but almost certainly Moslems, and if in Beijing we would have been Chinese and either Buddhists or Confucianists. To this very day there are more adherents to these religions than there are professed Christians. And it is mostly a matter of where one was born, into what culture.
It is a sober question to ponder, are we inclined toward an eternal heaven or hell because of the circumstance of birth? It is a question that should at least make us less severe in our judgments of "the billions who are lost" if they are not Christians, for if the circumstance of birth had been different they would be the saved and we the lost.
It is an equally disturbing question to ask why after all these centuries of Christian missions are these non-Western nations still not Christian. The gospel was taken to Japan four hundred years ago, and all these years immense effort has been made in evangelism, but today hardly 1 % is Christian. The figures are similar in other Asian nations. Korea, where some 25% are professing Christians, is a notable exception. If anything the Arab nations have been even more impenetrable. So, it is not simply a matter of "taking the gospel to them." The history of culture has much to do with it.
My purpose herein is not to deal with the problem of the non-Christian religions, except to say that I think we can be faithful Christians without believing that all these millions and billions are doomed to a devil' s hell because they are not Christians. Even our holy Scriptures assure us that God never leaves himself without witness. They also introduce Jesus Christ to us as the Savior of the whole world.
What concerns me in this piece is whether we Christians in the Western world are not what we are more from cultural influence than by a personal encounter with God. Or to put it another way, whether ours, like Jacob's, is an inherited religion more than one based on our own experience and commitment.
It was not the case with the earliest Christians, for they came out of Judaism, paganism, atheism. Their parents and grandparents were not Christians before them. That ours is an inherited religion gives the modem church a different character. We have accepted our religion — without question? — from our ancestry. I am not implying that there is anything wrong in our Christian faith being inherited. It can indeed, and often is, a beautiful thing to see faith passed along from one generation to another. It is obviously what God intended. But still there is a problem. We must see to it that our religion is more than inherited. Somewhere along the way from childhood — and it may be gradual— we must make our faith our own through personal encounters with God. This appears to have been Jacob's need.
An inherited religion, or what David Hume called "faith engendered by custom," bas at least three serious weaknesses. First, it does not take the gravity of sin seriously. We are not really sinners, it is easy for us to conclude, and never have been since we've been religious all our lives — "taken to church when I was a baby" we sometimes say. Paul could say of the earliest Christians, "We ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, deceived, etc." (Tit. 3:3), but we do not feel that way about it, for we've been Christians all our lives. We did not come out of sin, we suppose, and so we do not know sin like Paul and Augustine did.
Second, those with an inherited religion tend to take it for granted, just as we are inclined to take the blessings of democracy for granted. We've never known anything else. This is why church is often humdrum. It is old bat to us. We get tired of preaching and the services are monotonous. To keep the sacred from becoming commonplace is a real problem. There is no easy solution. It is akin to the problem of satiety. Our kids, saturated by plenty, soon tire of their expensive toys, while a child in the Third World revels in a shoe box or an old tire. We are often finicky about the food set before us, while the destitute relish potato peelings. Inherited religion is subject to the malady of not wanting.
Third, we do not usually make good witnesses to our faith when it is inherited. Paul urged the Roman believers to serve righteousness as they bad served sin (Rom. 6: 19). It is an effective argument for people who have sinned abundantly. Now they can serve God with the same enthusiasm. Such ones will have missionary zeal. But when we are insensitive to the effect of sin in our own lives, we are not likely to feel a sense of urgency about the sins of others. Dr. Menninger's book of a decade ago, which he appropriately titled "Whatever Became of Sin?," applies to the modern church as well as the modern world.
The only way to rise above these weaknesses in our inherited religion is a personal encounter with the Lord. There is a private door through which God enters into every person's life. It is the picture we have in Rev. 3:20 where Jesus stands knocking at the door. The faith of our fathers should lead us to open the door and invite Jesus into our hearts. When that happens faith is no longer only inherited, for it is now our own.
This is what happened to Jacob, sort of, for it can be questioned whether he ever had more than an inherited faith, which did little for his selfish, conniving way of life. But there was clearly the knock at the door. We are sometimes hesitant to open the door, for when the Lord enters selfish pride has to leave. This was Jacob's problem. He was never quite ready to forget Jacob.
That night at Bethel when a stone served as his pillow he had a "knock at the door" dream. A ladder was set up on the earth and it reached into heaven. He saw angels scurrying up and down the ladder! That was almost too much for mortal man to behold, but that was not all. God himself stood above the ladder and spoke to Jacob, telling him that he was Yahweh, the God of his fathers. The Lord renewed both the land and the seed promises that he had made to Abraham and Isaac. The Lord told Jacob he would be with him and protect him wherever he went.
Jacob's response to all this was less than heroic. He did say, "Surely the Lord is in this place; and I did not know it," which figures, for he had not been seeking the Lord all that much anyway. There is no evidence of his ever seeking God or praying to Him up to this time, and even here he continues with his bargaining ways. He makes an altar of his stone pillow and makes a vow that if God does for him all that He promised, and "will give me bread to eat and clothes to wear," then "the Lord shall be my God."
Even if some commentators would have it so, there is hardly a conversion experience here on the part of Jacob. No repentance of his deceptive way of life. God could have had a better subject for one of the most dramatic moments in biblical history! But therein may be the lesson of the story. Jacob was chosen because of God's grace, not because of his goodness or his suitability. And God was faithful all the way to the covenant of grace he made with Abraham and Isaac. No matter if Jacob was a scoundrel. It was all God's grace - the ladder, the angels, the theophany. Even to a cheat who never quite overcame being one.
Even if Jacob was not repentant, he was awed, and that too is part of its meaning to us. It is a crucial step in overcoming an inherited religion. "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven (Gen. 28:17). Jacob had never talked that way before. It was an encounter with God. He named the place Bethel, the house of God. But he still had to be Jacob the supplanter who went on to bargain even with God.
In an unmistakable reference to this story in Jn. 1:51, Jesus gives the meaning of Jacob's ladder to us. And it would be in reference to one of his disciples, Nathaniel, "an Israelite indeed in whom is no guile," who was opposite in character to Jacob. When Nathaniel was awed that Jesus had seen him in his mind's eye before they had seen each other face to face, the Lord said to him, "You will see greater things than these."
Then Jesus made this astounding statement to Nathaniel: "Most assuredly, I say to you, hereafter you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man."
Jesus is Jacob's ladder! He is the gate of heaven. Wherever the presence of Christ is there's the ladder that reaches to heaven. Nathaniel was to see what Jacob saw: an open heaven, angels, the whole show with one super added attraction. The Son of Man would be the ladder. Did our Lord select Nathaniel for this special blessing because he was a searching, sincere man who hungered for righteousness, traits lacking in Jacob?
Would not such an encounter with God transform our inherited religion, more than it did Jacob's? We can see the "ladder" in our fervent prayers for more Christlikeness, when we invite Jesus into our hearts, over and over again. We see it when we reach out to our suffering world, for where suffering is there is the Son of Man. We can see the "ladder" in our corporate worship with our sisters and brothers, loving each other even as Christ loves us. We see it as we become one with all God's people the world over, united in one Spirit.
For our inherited religion to become a vital relationship with God through Christ we must become sincere seekers after truth. We must face the fact that it is an uphill struggle. Most people in the church have only an inherited religion and they don't want to be bothered with change. If it is in our hearts to see heaven open and to experience deeper and deeper encounters with God, His grace will be there to make it so. - the Editor
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The Christian faith issues in new understandings and dogmatic formulations, in ethical response and liturgical devotion, to be sure, but the final basis of all of these, and the center out of which they grow, is the story of what God has said and done in the human realm of time and space. Apart from that story, that holy history, there is no Christian faith. It stands or falls by its telling and retelling of the "old, old story." Elizabeth Achtemeier