Attempts at Honesty

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Mr. Miyagi’s Little Trees

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This article is a guest post by Joshua Richards. If you are interested in submitting a guest post, please see our guidelines and contact me to let me know.

Tree RootsWhen I was younger, I remember watching the original Karate Kid movies. Please tell me I’m not the only one but I didn’t realize at the time how those tiny little Bonsai trees worked. I assumed they were a special kind of tree. The reality of a Bonsai, like the one pictured above, is that they are just trees that are kept small by growing them in a shallow pot. Mr. Miyagi’s Little Trees stay little because of the limitations placed on the roots. (I still think it was a bad business model, Daniel-san. Trees take a long time to grow; how much do you think he can sell those things for?)

Jesus has something interesting to say about little trees.

“Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil,  but when the sun rose they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away.” (Matthew 13:5–6, ESV)

When we look at trees, we think about how tall they are and how they grow above the surface. In reality, trees don’t grow up so much as they grow down. It is considered a “golden rule” among people who are really into trees that the root system will grow to the size of the canopy of the tree and sometimes even bigger. Downward growth provides two things. It provides a sturdy anchor in the ground that can support a tree without falling and it offers enough root with enough reach to pull water and nutrients in to feed the tree. The plant without the root withers. It doesn’t last and it doesn’t produce fruit.

Sadly, I think we look at Jesus’ parable and think He is talking about three kinds of lost people and one type of “good soil” people who are the Christians. Truthfully, churches contain all four types of people from the parable. Just because one has trusted in Jesus for forgiveness and life doesn’t mean he or she isn’t dried up, choked out, and occasionally the victim of having their truth stolen. We’re Christians, we just aren’t producing any good fruit.

This tree with no depth for it’s roots is interesting because I think we have actually built a church culture that looks like that. It would be nice to think that all those people “out there in the world” are the subject of this story but maybe we have made our organized Christian practice into a shallow pot for growing little trees. We tend to hand people a list of thing to do and not do as soon as they join the church (we have an unwritten list of things they must stop doing before we even let them feel welcome visiting the church). This list is essentially our expectations for how tall they should grow. Deep spirituality and communion with Almighty God, on the other hand, seems like something we expect from experienced older believers. We expect growth and fruit without making a priority of growing down. We start with the fruit and we will add the roots later. It’s as if we plan to build a tall building and just slide the foundation under it once we’re done building.

Can you feel truth in that?

This is why so many Christians feel withered. This is why so many Christians are stunted. This is why so many young believers leave churches and feel unsatisfied with the lecture/performance worship model. It is simply not sustainable to act like a tree on the surface without having deep roots that grow down into the Spirit of God, anchored in Him and finding their nourishment from Him. When our praxis is based on a laundry list of “do nots” rather than an organic outgrowth of being connected to the source of life and love for others, we wither…. we stop growing, or even shrink… we fall down.

But we can change this.

It starts with seeking God in the deep places and growing down. The upward growth will happen almost on its own. We need to seek deeper roots in our own lives, in small clusters of believers who want more, and little by little in the way we think and talk and value things as entire congregations and as the global Church. I’m not always sure how to wrap up these thoughts but I hope these words have mattered to you as you read them and will impact your life. There is more. It’s down there.

Before you accuse me, take a look at yourself

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Finger PointI borrowed the title of this post from a song written by Bo Diddley and also recorded by Eric Clapton, but it seemed appropriate for my topic.

In responding to the cultural climate, unfortunately large segments of the church fall prey to one of two errors. One extreme is to acquiesce to the culture and thus ignore scriptural mandates and prohibitions. The other extreme is to loudly denounce those who refuse to acknowledge the authority of Scripture. Instead of these extremes, we need to allow Scripture to contend with the parts of our culture with which it disagrees and validate the parts of culture with which it agrees.

I take Scripture very seriously and where the author intended it to be taken literally, I seek to do so. But there is a danger of becoming like the Pharisees in that we can miss the work of God in another person’s life because of our prideful grandstanding on hot issues of the day. When we take scripture and use it to point the finger at others, we are in grave danger of misrepresenting both God and Scripture.

For example, in Romans 1:18, Paul writes,

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.” (ESV)

Paul tells us that God’s wrath is upon those who suppress the truth.

The word suppress is in the present tense, it is an ongoing suppression of the truth. The problem is that we all suppress the truth to one extent or another. Because of this, we should be wary of denouncing other people who are openly hostile to God. In our rush to separate ourselves from a particular viewpoint, my may become angry and judgmental and as a result misrepresent the Jesus we worship.

The Gospel tells us that we are all tainted by sin and every part of us displays this taint. There is nothing that I do from completely pure motives. There is nothing that I do that is not alloyed with selfishness and pride. When I am giving ground to my selfishness and pride, I am actively suppressing the truth about myself and my God. Therefore, I should be reluctant to accuse anyone else.

In support of this idea, I would point to two places later on in Paul’s letter to the Romans. Romans 2:1 encourages us to stay away from judging others because we are prone to the same corruption that is displayed by those we would like to condemn. In Chapter 12 of Romans, Paul tells us that we are in need of transformation by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:1-2). In other words, we are not thinking straight and need to have our minds reprogrammed.

Yes, in the United States, our culture is moving away from a Judeo/Christian ethic. There are decisions being made on moral issues that are contrary to Scripture. My intention is not to soft sell this or to make it seem like rebellion against God’s laws is acceptable or good. We need to live by and be open about God’s standards for human behavior.

That being said, we need to be careful in our denunciation because we are made of the same stuff. I know for a fact that I am no less a sinner than one who is openly hostile to Christ or Scripture.

What is interesting to me is that in the preaching of Jesus, I don’t see him denouncing anyone other than the hypocritical religious leaders. He simply offered them something better than what they already had. He offered them himself.

A man convinced against his will . . .

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Saint Augustine“Always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.” (2 Timothy 3:7, ESV)

One of the things that cannot be ignored when making a case for the truth of Christianity is the role of the will in recognizing the truth. I am reminded of the phrase that I learned a long time ago, “A man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still.”

In support of this idea, I ran across this passage from St. Augustine in The City of God:

For those who are either unable to understand our arguments, or are so hardened by the habit of contradiction, that though they understand they cannot yield to them, reply to us, and, as it is written, “speak hard things,” and are incorrigibly vain. Now, if we were to propose to confute their objections as often as they with brazen face chose to disregard our arguments, and as often as they could by any means contradict our statements, you see how endless, and fruitless, and painful a task we should be undertaking.

When we are dealing with people who have questions, we have to discern the motive behind the questions. Is the questioner merely using questions as a means of avoiding the truth?

Keep in mind that we all have blind spots. We all have parts of us that are resistant to the truth. We are all a work in progress. The Apostle Paul tells us that we are all in need of transformation as a result of having our minds renewed (Romans 12:2). We are all imperfect examples of living out the truth.

The point is that we cannot bring anyone along faster than they are willing to go. We may be able to argue them into a corner. But we have limited, if any, influence over the will of another. It is the will that

Patience and prayer are needed in dealing with those who have not yet come to believe in The Truth.

Os Guinness – In the World but not of the World

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RenaissanceWhen the church goes to either of two extremes, and is so ‘in the world’ that it is of the world and worldly, or so ‘not of the world’ that it is otherworldly and might as well be out of the world altogether, it is powerless and utterly irrelevant. But when the church, through its faithfulness and its discernment of the times, lives truly ‘in’ but ‘not of’ the world, and is therefore the City of God engaging the City of Man, it touches off the secret of its culture-shaping power. For the intellectual and social tension of being ‘in’ but ‘not of’ the world provides the engagement-with-critical-distance that is the source of the church’s culture-shaping power.

Os Guinness in Renaissance: The Power of the Gospel However Dark the Times

This is a tough balance to maintain, but an important one. We need to be diligent in figuring out what parts of the culture are validated by Scripture and what parts of culture are challenged by Scripture.

Perhaps we can raise up a generation of church leaders that will do a much better job of this than we have.

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