The Olive Branch or the Rod

In 1978, Norman Grubb's youngest son, Daniel, wrote the following article called "Cause and Effect God: the Olive Branch or the Rod." In it he challenges us to look beyond unpleasant appearances to the reality of God who is all in all:

"This has been my happiest Christmas, and I think I know why. I have begun to see below the appearance to the reality. It has taken fifty years to learn that lesson, but if I have really learned it, I consider it fifty years well spent. King Lear's Kent had learned an acute lesson while sitting in the stocks; he was able to say, 'Nothing almost sees miracles but misery' (II, ii, 172). I believe there has to be a stripping away before there can be a finding.

"The difference between appearance and reality has always bothered mankind, and it is about that I wish to write. The appearance is the Christmas tree, the babe in the manger, the star, and the wisemen; the reality is the cross in our lives, the Christ within us, and the light we bring to others. Again, the appearance is the discomfort of suffering, the trauma of spiritual maturation, and the stigmatism of the spoken word; but the reality is the joy, the enlightenment, and the fulfillment.

"As a logician, I have always sought for a logical explanation of things. We are all made differently, of course, but I have never been content with mere sentimentality or the effluvia of the moment. What I have sought for in Scripture is a logical explanation of God's dealings with men, and I have always found it. That is why I have entitled this article: 'Cause and Effect God: The Olive Branch or the Rod,' because when a biblical character has walked in the Spirit, he has walked in the light, and found the peace of God which 'passeth all understanding.' Only when he has forsaken the true and living Way has he become confused and his understanding darkened. When we find the lights suddenly go out in a room, we immediately seek the source of the trouble, perhaps replace a burned out fuse or repair a shorted light cord. Then immediately the light has been restored. So David, entering into darkness because of the Bathsheba affair, has light shed on his actions by Nathan, the prophet of the Lord, and repents. It is true the rod is applied in his case, and God kills the child, but once fellowship is restored, God gives him another child whose descendent on the mother's side is Christ our Lord. This does not mean God condones the sin, but he blesses the 'saint' when he acknowledges his sin, and in spite of it. David further reaps the effect of his action (which is the cause) through the division that accompanies all of his actions for the rest of his life. God does not promise to prevent consequences taking their natural course, but he does promise to bless in spite of them, 'to restore the years the locust hath eaten' (Joel 2:25).

"It was many years ago I learned the lesson that I have nothing of my own. All has been lent me. When I was an undergraduate at The King's College, then located in Delaware, a Christian friend had given me sixty dollars with which I had bought a much needed Omega watch, my pride and joy. I had intended to have 'God's Gift' engraved on its back, but before getting around to taking it to the jeweler's, my watch was stolen. Belatedly I learned that God's gifts could be taken away. Years later as a graduate student at Duke University, God had to repeat this lesson. My faith had been shaken by an atheistic psychology professor and I had found my ship becalmed like the Ancient Mariner's in the middle of a desolate ocean, without living water, not knowing that all the time that Water was within me. First my wallet was stolen, then my health broken. Like Jonah, I ran away to hide, only my whale's belly was Caney College, Kentucky, from where I wrote cancelling my registration at Fuller Theological Seminary for the fall. But even in the midst of the sea, His hand upheld me (Ps. 109), and a stone intended for me crashed through my bedroom window onto an empty pillow, and a few weeks later God again preserved my life when an attempt was made to lynch me.

"I have found there is a voice within that says, 'This is the way, walk ye in it' (Is. 30:21). It is a small insistent voice, but it is there. Jesus, united to my spirit, guides my way and makes even my enemies to be at peace with me. I have also begun to see material things as merely adjuncts to His purpose. That is why it doesn't matter whether we have one arm, leg, or eye. God is concerned with the spirit of man, and his body, clothes, food, comfort, are only to be used to the one end of proclaiming Christ as Lord to the glory of God the Father. So Moses' stutter (I find it impossible to accede to Moses' belief in his elocutionary inadequacy after reading Deuteronomy) is of no significance as an impediment to God, because Moses' spirit was right. So Miss Francis Ridley Havergal could minister from her bed because her spirit was united to Christ's. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel would all be considered 'kooks' by psychologists, but a fire burned within their bones that made their inadequacies flames for God. As God says, he has confounded the wise through the foolish and taken the despised and debased and made them mighty (I Cor. 1).

"When Isaiah beheld the glory of God, he cried out: 'Woe is me . . . because I am a man of unclean lips.' But God touched his lips with fire from the altar. Thus enabled, this prophet responded to God's challenge: 'Who will go for us?', with, 'Here am I; send me' (Is. 6). Thus centuries later T. S. Eliot can write in The Four Quartets, 'We only live, only suspire, / consumed by either fire or fire" ("Little Gidding," IV, 144). That fire can be--should be--the Spirit of God igniting us to His service; on the other hand it can be the self-motivating anguish of the materialist, who builds barns which remain empty and whose epitaph is Christ's cryptic remark: 'So is he that layeth up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God' (Luke 12:21). Or as T.S. Eliot puts it in his 'Choruses from the Rock': 'his only monument the asphalt road, and a thousand lost golf balls' (III, 103).

"In The Winter's Tale, Shakespeare tells of how Hermione is recalled to life after sixteen years. Standing as a statue surrounded by friends and relatives, Pauline tells her:

'Tis time to descend, be stone no more . . . . Strike all that look upon you with marvel Come, I'll fill your grave up. Stir-- nay, come away, Bequeath to death your numbness, for from him Dear life redeems you. (V, iii, 99-103)

"In Shakespeare's last plays particularly, Christian themes, as here, are evident to all but the most obtuse reader. 'Dear life' for the Christian must mean our Lord Jesus Christ, who overcame death and the grave both physically and spiritually. He alone can recall to life. That life is ours through the atonement of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. But so often, I think, we remain as statues, beautiful to look at, touch, and even hold, but without the fire that warms others around us with the sense of that Presence we claim to have within, the fire of love, of compassion, of a sound mind. His wholeness is our wholeness as we speak, touch, and minister to others. It is His love that Christ would have us share.

"Dr. Manette, in Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, is unjustly imprisoned for eighteen years in the Bastille by a malicious nobleman in pre-revolutionary France. Unexpectedly, 'recalled to life,' he is able years later to minister to others in the same condition during the terror that accompanied the French Revolution. One of these is his own son-in-law, who, ironically, is the nephew of the marquis who had incarcerated Dr. Manette. But the good doctor sees only that his old pain and suffering have given him the strength and power to help. Out of what dungeons have you and I been called, united with the Spirit of life, to go forth, flames of fire, ministering to others in our different ways?"