Joshua, Slackers, and the Great Theologian Tom Petty

I'm still motoring through the Old Testament book of Joshua. By Joshua chapter 18, a bunch of the tribes (families) of Israel have been given their portion of the promised land and have started to settle it. But seven tribes haven't asserted themselves as of yet.

So in Joshua 18, Joshua gathers these people together and upbraids them: "How long will you put off going in to take possession of the land, which the LORD, the God of your fathers, has given you?"

As I was reading that a couple days ago, I started to ask the same question--why would anyone put off (the NRSV says "be slack in") taking possession of something that has been clearly promised and given to them?

As I thought about this for a while, it became clear that this wasn't a uniquely Old Testament, Israelites settling in the land-type problem. This is my problem, too. There are tons of promises from God in the Scriptures that I simply do not live into, lean into, put my whole life into.

I think there are two main reasons for this.

First, I'm lazy. The reality is that the promises of God are all grace, and at the same time almost all of them are conditional on me stepping into them. The Israelites here aren't just being given land. They've got work to do. Some parts of the land still have indiginous people to be driven out. The land has to be cleared and worked and developed. That's a lot of work.

God promises me presence, some measure of protection, power, forgiveness, a sure hope, life abundantly. But all of these promises require me putting off a way of life that is relatively easy and instead deliberately stepping into a different stream.

The New Testament Scriptures call me to live right-side-up in an upside-down world. That takes deliberate action. Sometimes, it's just easier to live upside-down with the rest of the world than to go against the flow.

The second reason why I don't live into the radical promises of God is that I simply don't believe them. I don't believe that God's going to take care of me if I take a different path than the one the world offers me, the one that I most naturally seem to want to follow. I don't believe the gifts of grace are more valuable than the tangible stuff that I can hold that I'm tempted to put my confidence in.

Many of us have felt disappointed with God. He didn't show up to stop your parents divorce, or to stop your divorce, or to help you overcome that addiction or to get you into the school you wanted or to give you the help you needed. This, of course, undermines our confidence in God to deliver on his promises.

I don't have answers for all of this. Sometimes God seems to act promptly on promises or prayers. Sometimes he seems to ignore stuff that we feel we wouldn't ignore if we were God. Sometimes he seems to tell us to wait, and to quote the great theologian Tom Petty, the waiting is the hardest part.

But I think in the end the bottom line is that my life is much the poorer for not grabbing hold of the promises of God in the Scripture and clinging onto them as if my whole life depended on it. And at the same time, cutting ties with all the other promises that I'm tempted to build my life around: success, or financial security, or people's approval, or...

Maybe it's high time to put all my eggs in the basket of God's promises, to take him up on all his extravagant offers, and let the chips fall where they may. I think this is what he invites me to, has been calling me to all along.