As I read this article about formerly supportive religious leaders now experiencing disappointment with President Barack Obama, I was struck by the similarity of these leaders with the first-century disciples who unknowingly encountered Jesus on the road to Emmaus.

The so-called “religious left” in America is increasingly frustrated that Obama has failed to deliver on the theologically tinged promises of his campaign. The moral outrage he expressed at Guantanamo, the Iraq War, health care, corporate corruption and poverty has become tempered by the seedy reality of the Oval Office. Those who put their faith in him, expecting that he would restore their ideal of morality and justice to America, are seeing that their dreams were as elusive as the clouds of tobacco in the smoke-filled rooms where decisions really get made in Washington.

Similarly, the disciples on the road to Emmaus expressed their disappointment with Jesus to the mysterious Stranger who accompanied them: “We had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel” (Luke 24:21). The mighty warrior on a stallion they were expecting had been a peasant carpenter on a donkey, who couldn’t keep his mouth shut and got himself killed by a religious establishment in league with the Roman government.

Unlike the leaders of our day, with their unrealistic expectations of a human president, the disciples’ expectations were set far too low. This unlikely hero had no intention of meeting their meager demands for national restoration. Instead, he would not be satisfied until he had conquered death and offered salvation to all of humanity.

In regard to Obama, any expectations are probably too high. In regard to Jesus, we cannot set our expectations high enough.

Note: Lest you think I’m just picking on Obama, if the McCain/Palin ticket had won, I predict we would be hearing similar whining from the religious right, as that dynamic duo miserably failed to restore morality and righteousness to this country in its first term.

As you know, I’ve been following the Todd Bentley fiasco and attempting to reconcile the fact that people may be healed and miracles may happen in his services. How can he be a false prophet, if there is positive fruit in his ministry?

One explanation is that God is endlessly compassionate and responds to the sincere faith of His children, even when they are receiving ministry from someone on whom God’s calling and gifting no longer rest, because they have disqualified themselves through immorality or false doctrine.

But I think there’s a better explanation for Todd Bentley. We know that miraculous signs, healings and even professions of faith are very poor indicators of whether someone is a true prophet, because Scripture predicts that in the last days false prophets will perform miracles and deceive even the children of God (Mark 13:22).

Therefore, is it possible that signs, miracles and healings in Bentley’s ministry are being performed by the enemy for the purpose of validating the bad doctrine and lifestyle of a false teacher, so that weak believers may think that God does not care about morality, truth or righteousness?

Satan’s ultimate goal is not the destruction of bodies, so allowing a healing or miracle here and there is no big deal to him. His targets are much larger: the supremacy of God’s word, the sanctity of marriage and family—the building blocks of the church itself and a reflection of God’s own Trinitarian nature. If he can give people the impression that God is not particularly concerned when a man cheats on his wife, leaves his children and marries his girlfriend, he will gladly risk people being saved, delivered and even healed through that man’s ministry.

So, that’s my theory. Any takers?

Monday, I spent the entire day doing a final edit of the revised edition [available soon!] of When God Comes Calling, Pioneers’ founder Ted Fletcher’s biography. In it are many accounts of cross-cultural workers around the world. I couldn’t help thinking of Jesus’ words on the Sabbath in Mark 2:27 when I read this story:

Kyrgyzstan - One Saturday evening, Pioneers team members Kathy and Tom Sansera (not their real names) were working on their language study when there was a knock on their apartment door. One of their neighbors was inviting them to join the yearly clean-up of their apartment grounds—at 9:00 the next morning. Tom explained that they went to church on Sunday morning, so they wouldn’t be able to help. The neighbor woman went away disappointed—and Tom and Kathay wondered if they had made the right decision. Wasn’t God honored by their decision to testify to a stranger on His behalf, especially in this Muslim and secular nation? Then the Lord reminded them of the Good Samaritan, and the Sanseras realized their decision would make them like the priest who hurried to his religious duties instead of helping a needy stranger. The next morning, Tom ran down four flights of stairs to tell their neighbor that they had changed their minds. When she asked, “Why?” Tom had an opportunity to put his language study to good use. He shared the story about how a wounded Jewish traveler was helped by a despised Samaritan. The Kyrgyz woman listened intently to every word and then smiled. Tom and Kathy spent the morning picking up trash and sweeping the grounds with handmade brooms. By the time the finished, they had met every person in their apartment building. It wasn’t the typical Sunday morning church service, but I believe God was very pleased with Tom and Kathy’s decision. The friendships they made will surely help them reach their goal to plant a church in this Muslim country.

It’s only been in the last 200 years or so—and only in the Western world—that natural disasters have been entirely explained as the capricious whims of low pressure systems, the arbitrary shifting of tectonic plates or the random release of lava from volcanic pockets. The Enlightenment disabused the Western world of its archaic notions of divine judgment, along with the outdated mythology of angry river gods who flood villages and beneficent rain gods who water crops.

So, when an aging televangelist like Pat Robertson blames a devastating earthquake on a nation’s apocryphal pact with the devil, both the Christian and secular world recoil in disgust and label him an insensitive and outdated buffoon. But is it possible that there is some proverbial meat left on the bones of Robertson’s misled statement?

If we look at the biblical record, we will be hard pressed to find a natural disaster that does not have some spiritual dimension. Robertson’s error was in his implication that a current crisis was judgment for an incident 200 years ago—and that we as humans are in a place to make these cause and effect connections.

In doing this, he falls into the same error as Jesus’ undiscerning disciples who asked about the man born blind in John 9:2-3, “Who sinned, this man or his parents?” and the followers who inquired about the Galileans Pilate murdered (Luke 13:1-5).

In both incidents, Jesus turned their attention from idle speculation to worship (“Neither,” he said of the blind man. “This happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.”) and repentance (“But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”)

Robertson’s comments were a distraction from the true spiritual reality of earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, famines and floods: The earth is groaning under the weight of a universal curse and waits expectantly for its redemption. Both sinners and saints equally suffer under this judgment—some in despair and others in expectation of creation’s transformation into a new heavens and new earth (Romans 8:18-25).

I hesitate to recommend Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping, because—although it has been almost universally acclaimed as one of the greatest novels of the 20th century since it was published in 1980—I found it difficult to enjoy. It is a story of the generational effects of family dysfunction culminating in the emotional and physical abandonment of two young girls. Robinson’s main character Ruth reflects on the consequences of the narcissism of parents.

“Then there is the matter of my mother’s abandonment of me. Again, this is the common experience. They walk ahead of us, and walk too fast, and forget us, they are so lost in thoughts of their own, and soon or late they disappear. The only mystery is that we expect it to be otherwise.”

Although the discerning reader can sense the underpinnings of a biblical worldview (Robinson is a deacon in her congregational church), any redemptive thread is buried in an overwhelmingly depressing plot. From a literary standpoint, it is a masterpiece. Robinson’s wordplay will leave the aspiring novelist asking, “Why can’t I write like that?” But I found more nuggets of theology in Sheriff Bell’s internal diary entries in Cormac McCarthy’s macabre No Country for Old Men and in the family tragedy of Leif Enger’s transcendent Peace Like a River.