Us and Them

"Assemble, all of you, and hear! 

Who among them has declared these things?

The Lord loves him; 

he shall perform his purpose on Babylon, 

and his arm shall be against the Chaldeans.

I, even I, have spoken and called him, 

I have brought him, and he will prosper in his way;" 

- Isaiah 48:14-15

Well, the grand daddy of American Sports is coming this Sunday, and the festivities have already begun. Television crews were there the moment the players from both teams (Pittsburgh and Arizona) arrived in Tampa Bay, and are continuing around the clock coverage as they prepare for Super Bowl XLIII. 

To be honest, the Super Bowl is often a disappointment for the most diehard football fans. Games with more drama can almost always be found earlier in the playoffs or regular season, with the Super Bowl ending up a letdown. Often the cause for this lack of drama has to do with the fact that the two teams playing each other really have little history with one another (Case in point: the Minnesota Vikings and the Green Bay Packers, border rivals for nearly 50 years, will never play in a Super Bowl against each other because of the way that it is set up). In short, the two teams that play in the Super Bowl often don't have any "beef" with one another. 

This "Us versus Them" is what makes sports fun to watch, but it's also what some people find childish about sports. This is understandable: grown adults wearing styrofoam cheese on their heads, yelling at other grown adults who have painted their bodies purple and gold is ridiculous. Sadly, sometimes this attitude isn't limited to the sports arena. Just this past week, Serbian tennis fans chanted "Die, Croats, die" at Croatian fans attending the Australian Open, inciting a massive brawl involving 150 people. 

So what do we do, then, with verses like this one in Isaiah? It seems that God is clearly taking an "us versus them" attitude here, siding with Jacob (Israel) over the Babylonians (Chaldeans), promising that his arm will be against them. Reading verses like this, it's not hard to see why even a religion of peace seems to be the catalyst for violence. 

Yet what is God really saying here through Isaiah? Is he inciting the Israelites to take up arms against their captors? This wouldn't make much sense considering what God tells them elsewhere through Jeremiah. As I mentioned in my previous post, God actually commands the Israelites earlier to pray for the welfare of the Babylonians. This is a far cry from "us versus them." 

The answer lies in understanding the character of God, and the purpose of these kinds of promises in the context of the people being told them. You see, in their captivity, the Israelites began to lose hope that God was still in control. Every day away from their homes and in the hands of the Babylonians, it got harder and harder to believe that their God was "the first...and the last", that "[his] hand laid the foundation of the earth." These verses were spoken to them not to incite the Israelites, but to encourage them. They needed to hear the truth that not only did God rule over even the most intimidating kingdoms, but that those oppressors would not remain in power forever. 

God does not take sides among us, except for the weak and against the oppressor. In fact, you could say it is the oppressor that chooses sides first, as every act of oppression is against God's character, against God's command to love our neighbor as ourselves. Yet, even then, this character (which we see displayed in the Cross, his decision to sacrifice all on our behalf, not in order to condemn the world, but to save it) is so wide that there is hope even for the oppressor. Even the oppressor, when they see the nature of God's love, can repent and turn from their ways. 

This is not an "Us versus Them" kind of deity, but an "I am for Them" God.