Attempts at Honesty

Reflections on the interplay of the Bible and Culture

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Heavenly minded or no good at all

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Heavenly MindedI have heard it said that a person could be so Heavenly minded that he is of no Earthly good. Perhaps it is only me, but I find that I am in greater danger of becoming so Earthly minded that I am no good at all.

I do not how it could be possible to be too Heavenly minded. Paul tells us to “Set [our] mind[s] on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.” (Colossians 3:2). The verb is a present tense command. It carries the idea of continually thinking or considering the things above. It is an ongoing day by day, minute by minute activity.

I suppose the point of the platitude is that some might be so wrapped up in Bible study and “spiritual” activity that they miss opportunities to be of practical help to those around them.

But if we look to Jesus to show us what being Heavenly minded should look like, we see a very different picture. While it is true that Jesus spent hours in prayer with his Father, it must also be noted that he spent more hours in meeting the intellectual, spiritual and physical needs of those who came to him.

Another approach to this question is to examine what Jesus taught. Jesus boiled all of the law into two commands to love. First is love for God; second is love for the people around us. The degree to which I am fulfilling the second command is an indication as to how well I am doing the first. Love of God will result in love for man. Why is this the case? Because God loved us enough to send Jesus, the same Jesus who met the needs of the people around him.

To flip this around, to love our neighbor by meeting his physical needs without addressing his great spiritual one is a shallow and unsatisfactory love. If the greatest need of humanity is to be in relationship with God (as the Bible teaches us), it would be impossible to fully love my neighbor without loving God first.

It is only by being truly Heavenly minded that I can begin to be of real use to those around me. As Jesus reminds us, “what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?” (Matthew 16:26).

Longing for a home I’ve never seen

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CloudsWhat makes a businessman decide to practice insider trading? Why does a successful and well known actor solicit a prostitute when he has a beautiful wife at home? When John D. Rockefeller was asked, “how much is enough?” he responded, “just a little bit more.” Why was he driven to get more when he had so much already?

There is no simple answer to each of these questions. We are complicated creatures and our choices come from a variety of motivations, some of which we may not be conscious as the choice is made.

I suspect that a sense of longing for something that is missing is part of the answer to why these people responded the way they did. A passage from C. S. Lewis’ essay, The Weight of Glory comes to mind:

In speaking of this desire for our own far off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.

I am watching as my world becomes less coherent due to the rejection of the Judeo Christian ethic with nothing of substance to replace it. I see freedom being eroded around the world by the rise of totalitarian governments both atheistic and Islamic. I see much of the church ill-prepared to withstand the challenges of the day. And I get frustrated at my own inability to respond properly to all of this. Within and without I see the effect of sin and I long for something better.

In the Parable of the Virgins (Matthew 25:1 ff) Jesus tells us to be prepared for his return. I suppose that the awareness of how flawed this life is and the longing for something better are part of that preparation.

More thoughts on this longing can be found in the post Longing for a home I’ve never seen, Part 2

No money in the revenge business

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RevengeOne of my all time favorite movies is The Princess Bride, which is listed as an adventure comedy.

One of the sub plots in the movie concerns Inigo Montoya who has spent his life in pursuit of revenge on the man who killed his father. When questioned about his occupation, Inigo mentions that he has to work for Vizzini because there is “not a lot of money in the revenge business.”

These are wise words and we would do well to hear them.

As with Inigo, the pursuit of revenge or the holding of a grudge takes a lot of time and energy that could be channeled into activities that provide a higher return.

In New Testament Greek, the word that is translated forgive in English also carries the idea of letting go or sending away. I think of this process as one of giving up being offended and allowing the issue to be between God and the one I am forgiving. In other words, to forgive means that the offense is no longer something that I think about. The offense is released into the hands of God.

I certainly do not want to make the process sound easy or clean. To understand the depth of the hurt resulting from the offense is sometimes very difficult but this does not diminish the importance of pursuing the goal of forgiveness.

Some offenses are easy to forgive. The rude checker at the grocery store or the driver who cuts you off in traffic are examples that come to mind. These types of offenses are not personal in that the checker or the driver is not targeting a particular person. When the checker is rude to me, he has likely been rude to the customers before and after me. I am not the target. This makes is easier to let go.

It is the personal offenses that are not so easily forgiven. When it gets to offenses committed by loved ones, parents or authority figures, the letting go may be a more difficult process. Deep wounds are difficult to heal and a friend or counselor may be a necessary part of the process of forgiveness. But, though difficult, the process is important.

Jesus tells us how important this process is when he teaches us to pray, “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” (Matthew 6:12) He follows this prayer up with the interesting statement,

For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions. (Matthew 6:14-15)

The point is that when we understand how much we’ve been forgiven, that understanding should motivate us to forgive others.

It strikes me that if forgiveness is a letting go, then it takes a measure of trust in God to let it go. If I am confident that God loves me and is in control, I can then be confident that the offense against me will not derail God’s good plan for me.

My experience shows me that this is easier to understand than to do. The concept is not difficult but the process is. I should also point out that there is a large difference between forgiveness and trust. There are people whom I have forgiven for their offenses against me that I do not trust. Forgiveness is granted but trust is earned.

Giving them reason to blaspheme

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BlasphemeIn Romans 2:24, Paul declares that the name of God was blasphemed among the Gentiles because of the behavior of the Jews. I think that the church in America needs to confess that we have done little better. We need to identify and address the reasons we have given for non-believers to blaspheme the name of God.

The problem

How have we caused non-believers to blaspheme? I believe it is because we seem to gravitate to one of three extremes:

  1. The first, and perhaps most damaging, is what I would call the “frozen chosen.” The good news is that these are people who expend great efforts in studying Scripture and understanding it. However, they go wrong when they then become smug in their doctrine and draw a hard boundary around what they consider right belief. Whether it is intentional or not, these folks pronounce judgment against all those who do not agree with their doctrinal stands. As a result, they stand in condemnation of the surrounding culture. Because of their condemnation, the right answers that they may have from Scripture go unheard by those who desperately need to hear them.
  2. The second group is the hyper Pentecostals or others who take an anti-intellectual stand with regard to belief and practice. These are the ones who would claim, “I don’t have to understand it, I just believe it.” Their faith is real but lacks understanding. As a result, they become out of touch with the surrounding culture and are of limited help when the hard questions get asked. Their anti-intellectual stance reinforces the impression of outsiders that faith is a belief in something despite evidence to the contrary.
  3. The third group includes those who have sought to bring more people into the church by blurring the lines of distinction between the church and surrounding culture. These see the message and mission of the church to be fluid and changeable. For these, the Bible becomes a guideline rather than a standard. They succumb to the ethos of the day and seek to reconcile the Bible with that ethos. These are of little help to the surrounding culture because they are part of it. A drowning man needs a lifeguard and will find little comfort in having someone drown along with him.

The solution

For the church to be what she is called to be, each of these groups needs to repent and return to the words and methodology of Jesus.

  1. The frozen chosen need to return to the Gospel and focus upon it. They need to allow freedom of interpretation in areas where the Bible is not clear. For example, eschatology (the study of last things or prophecy) should not be a distinctive over which Christians should divide. It would be much more productive to focus on the things in which we agree. These need to imitate their Lord in his empathy for the hurting and lost. These need to repent of their pride in superior understanding.
  2. The hyper Pentecostals need to move beyond an emotional response and deepen their understanding of how Jesus Christ answers the questions that the world is asking. These will have to repent of their pride in their exercise of “supernatural” gifts and exuberant worship.
  3. The cultural relativists need to repent of their ignorance of Scripture and the pride in refusing to submit to it.

Before we complain about the culture around us, Peter reminds us that “it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God.” (1 Peter 4:17) We need to get our own house in order so that we can be used by God to impact our culture.

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