Sunday Morning Meds--"the wicked"

“But to the wicked, God says, 

'What right have you to recite my laws or take my covenant on your lips? 

You hate my instruction and cast my words behind you.'" 

Psalm 50:16-17

My mother used to tell me I was too cozy with worldliness.  Perhaps she was right.  I know this much:  she would have far less trouble negotiating the radical turn which occurs here, suddenly, in Psalm 50.  All that honor and glory that came earlier in the poem would make both of us smile, I’m sure; but things change hugely in verse 16 as God almighty turns to face “the wicked.” 

Mom was more sure of who "the wicked" are or were than I ever was—and am.  Seriously, today, who are they anyway?

On the basis of what is to come in this psalm, this is what we know.  “The wicked” are those who claim to belong to God’s covenant tribe, but are, as my mother would say, “wolves in sheep’s clothing.”  The wicked are those who cry, “Lord, Lord,” as sheer selfish spectacle--two-faced shams, spiritual snake-oil peddlers. (There's quite a bit of hissing in that sentence, but that's okay.)

           

My mother was like Dante. Were I to try to write a contemporary Inferno, I would need to people the levels of hell with individuals recognizable to readers, a museum of miscreant sinners. My mother would not have had any trouble with that job, but I can’t do it, even though Dante could and did. 

I can think of one off hand—but only reluctantly. Marjoe Gortner, the one-time child evangelist, who wanted a Hollywood career so badly he could took his Spirit-filled preaching to the bank, staged religious revivals for a show, an early ‘70s documentary titled, simply, Marjoe. 

Marjoe won all kinds of awards, but it was not a pleasant experience for a believer because Marjoe the huckster creates and then manipulates spiritual experience.  “It was my duty,” he told interviewers, “to give [those who heard him preach] the best show possible.”

           

Marjoe fits.  He was a liar and a fraud.  He preached things he didn’t believe and did so for his own ends.  In the language of my people, he was a “covenant-breaker,” someone who’d been given the blessing of faith but rejected it and, worse, used those who’d come to him for hope in his deceitful game.  In the language of some, he committed the unpardonable sin.

Marjoe fits, but I’m uncomfortable calling him “the wicked.” That treachery of his took place forty years ago or more.  Google him today and you’ll find very little.  We know the early chapters of Marjoe’s life, but we don’t know how the story draws to a close.

Maybe he’s different today.  Maybe the man stood himself before God at some time in his life and got the tongue-lashing the Lord is about to deliver in Psalm 50.  Maybe he stopped using people.  Maybe slain by the Spirit himself, he fell victim to the Truth.  Who knows?  Stranger things have happened.

Maybe it’s just me.  Maybe my mother is right.  I’ve been reading the Inferno and finding it amazing, mesmerizing.  But I can’t do that job myself, can’t create a torturous hall of infamy, a gallery of despicable sinners.  I just don’t want to judge.

After all, Marjoe, despite its horrifying manipulation, offered some truth, didn’t it?  And God is always bigger than our dreams.

Once I met a woman who told me she’d been converted to the Christian faith by Tammy Fae Bakker, the fraud evangelist with the leaky eye-liner.  That woman giggled about her conversion and said she’d come a long, long ways. 

Fraud kindle some anger in me, some of which I might even dare to consider "righteous." But I can’t put Marjoe or Tammy Fae into the pit of “the wicked.” What do I know? 

I do know the God I worship knows more and loves better than I do. Besides, it's his job to judge--not mine. 

Sorry, Mom.