Attempts at Honesty

Reflections on the interplay of the Bible and Culture

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On the source of your passion

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The source of passionIn 2 Corinthians 5:14, the Apostle Paul tells us that it is the “love of God that controls us.” The love of God was the source of Paul’s passion in ministry and it is to be the source of all that we do in the church.

Our passion cannot come from love of correct doctrine. We are not to be motivated by obligation. A desire for societal reform (however necessary) is not to control us. Our actions cannot be fueled by a desire to be seen doing the right thing. The one and only correct source of passion for ministry is the love of God.

There is something to be said in support of being obedient, even when I don’t feel like it. But, that obedience must be fueled by love that has been poured into my heart by God. Otherwise, that obedience will end in resentment or Pharisaic pride.

Anything other than God’s love, if given control of us, will feed our inner Pharisee and the result will be legalism and bondage. Why is this the case? It is so because any  motivation other than a response to the love of God will become idolatry.

If you have been in church for any length of time, you’ve heard the pleas regarding staffing of various church programs, using guilt to motivate people into service. Or, perhaps you have run into self appointed doctrine police who are ready, willing and able to make sure that you are completely correct in your interpretation of Scripture. At the other extreme are those who make an idol out of inclusiveness and ignore the bits of Scripture that confront society in a quest to be relevant to the surrounding culture.

But, we are not called to worship doctrine. We are not called to worship church organization or programs. We are not called to embrace the norms of society.

We are called to the mission of loving God and loving our neighbors. But as John reminds us in 1 John 4:19, our love for God and neighbor is in response to the love that God has demonstrated to us.

The love of God is the only proper source of passion for ministry.

Whence the lack of peace?

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Peace sign“And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”” (Luke 7:50, ESV)

Peace is the one thing that is lacking in many churches today. Perhaps it is because it is one thing that is lacking in many believers today. Maybe I am projecting this on others because of a lack of peace in my own life, but I think not. Very few of us, including Christians, exude a sense of peace and calm.

Notice that Jesus does not say, “your service has saved you, go in peace.” Nor does he say, “your confident statements about the quality and quantity of your faith have saved you.” It is the woman’s faith that is demonstrated by her actions that have saved her.

The result of that faith should be peace.

Why, then, is peace missing from the Christian experience?

One reason I have observed is that I place unrealistic expectations on myself and others as to how a Christian should behave. Any time you begin a sentence with “Good Christians don’t . . .” or “Good Christians do . . .” stop and reevaluate what you are about to say. Those unrealistic expectations lead to frustration that will destroy peace.

Another reason for a lack of peace is a distorted view of the Gospel. When I understand the enormity of the debt I owed but could not pay, and further understand that Jesus has satisfied that debt, it should bring a great relief that leads to peace. Yet, perhaps because I think myself better than I am, I attempt to earn enough to satisfy my own debt. This is a little like a child breaking his piggy bank to pay the trillions of dollars of debt that irresponsible politicians have accrued.

Tim Keller has given a short summary of the Gospel that I have found helpful. I may not have it word-for-word because I cannot remember where I found it, but it goes something like this:

I am more deeply flawed than I ever dared believe, but I am more deeply loved than I ever thought possible.

Faith brings us under the umbrella of that love, a love that cannot be put off by our flaws.

That understanding should allow us to go in peace.

On money lenders and impure motives

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This morning I read the story in Mark 11 of Jesus cleansing the Temple. He was angry with those who were using worship at the Temple for their own gain. Since most of us haven’t been guilty of selling birds or running a currency exchange in the back of the church, we are afforded the opportunity to smugly look down on those rascals that Jesus tossed out.

But it strikes me that I have been guilty of attending church for wrong reasons. A sense of obligation is not a good reason. Fear of criticism is not a good reason. The desire to feel good is not a good reason. The only valid reason to worship is because my understanding of who I am and who God is requires me to gather with others to bring praise to the God who loves us. Like those money changers, I can be guilty of worshiping me while pretending to worship God.

On the other hand, I can look back and see that even when my motive has not been pure (can my motives ever be totally pure?), I have grown in my relationship with God as a result of attending church. God can minister to me even when I’m not interacting with him appropriately. If we learn anything from Christ it is that God does not stand on his dignity when the welfare of his children is at stake.

The point of this post is to challenge myself and others to see that we are more like those against whom Jesus acts than we would like to admit. The reason that those characters are in the Bible is to challenge us to be something different. But without a work of Grace in our lives, we will gravitate toward those very behaviors.

There is not one tendency of the Pharisees that I have not seen in my own heart. Thankfully, as I draw closer to Jesus these tendencies have reduced control in my life, but they are still there.

Mark 7:20-23 records Jesus as saying:

“What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

The point is not to make believers to be worse than we really are, but to remind us that the tendency toward these behaviors lies within us. We are in constant need of Grace and in constant need to be gracious to others.

Why are you amazed?

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Amazed“Men of Israel, why are you amazed at this, or why do you gaze at us, as if by our own power or piety we had made him walk?” – Acts 3:12

I can read about miracles in the Bible and not be amazed. The flannel graph presentations of my youth have made the stories so familiar that too often I do not connect with how radical the events actually were. This healing should amaze me but its familiarity masks how marvelous it really is.

But how would I respond if I actually witnessed a miracle of this nature?

In Acts 3, Peter and John passed by a lame man who frequented the gate to the Temple. Rather than giving the man some money, they grabbed him by the hand and commanded him to get up and walk. Not only did he walk, the formerly lame man was jumping around and praising God for the miracle.

Yes, the people who saw this were amazed. Which is exactly how I would be under the same circumstances.

Peter then asks them the question quoted at the beginning of this post, “why are you amazed at this?” The people who witnessed the miracle were coming to the Temple, the place where the miracle working God of Israel’s history was to be worshiped. They should have come to that God with the expectation that he would intervene on behalf of his people.

The people had low expectations as to what God was willing to do on their behalf.

Perhaps I am speaking only for myself, but it seems that those of us who grew up in the church have low expectations as to what God is willing to do for us. Do I pray as if I expect the miracle to take place? Am I banging on the doors of Heaven in anticipation of my petition being heard and a response enacted?

The notion that God’s response to my prayers is in proportion to the faith in which I offer them is dangerous and goes against Biblical teaching. I am certainly not saying that my expectation of being answered is the currency that buys a correct response from God. God is not a vending machine that gives me what I want if I put in the right amount of money. The amount and quality of my faith has nothing to do with it. My expectation of an answered prayer is not something that I can muster up. I don’t need to exercise my “faith muscles.”

What I am saying is that my prayers are tepid because I am not allowing myself to connect with how awesome and powerful God really is.

I need to remind myself that God does want to work in history, this is the major lesson from the incarnation. God does want to bring healing (emotional and physical). God does want to draw people to himself. God does want to bring me through the difficulties of life with my faith intact. I should not be amazed when I see him doing the very things for which I pray.

Then when God acts, I should be grateful but not amazed.

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