Attempts at Honesty

Reflections on the interplay of the Bible and Culture

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Character, darkness and secrets revealed

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Character needs no mask
Photo by Ben Fredericson via Flickr

I’ve heard it said that character is doing the right thing when no-one is looking. A man of character does not need to defend his reputation; he does not need an image consultant. He is what he is and eventually the truth will come out. Jesus told his disciples,

“Therefore do not fear them, for there is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. What I tell you in the darkness, speak in the light; and what you hear whispered in you ear, proclaim upon the housetops.” (Matthew 10:26-27)

The follower of Christ who does the right thing and gets persecuted or defamed as a result, need not worry about what people think if he is right before God. God will defend his reputation. What is hidden will be revealed and the truth will triumph.

Sometimes doing the right thing will be misunderstood. Sometimes doing the right thing opens you up to attack from someone who sees it as weakness. Sometimes doing the right thing opens you up to attack by one who has something that he is trying to hide. Sometimes when you do the right thing people will misunderstand or misrepresent your motives. Sometimes doing the right thing is downright difficult.

But we have no other option than to do the right thing. To do it, we must maintain an eternal perspective. Paul reminds the Galatians that there is nothing that happens that falls outside of God’s observation. He writes in Galatians 6:7, “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.”

I am reminded of a verse in the old hymn, “Who is on the Lord’s Side?”:

Fierce may be the conflict,
Strong may be the foe,
But the King’s own army
None can overthrow.
Round His standard ranging
Victory is secure,
For His truth unchanging
Makes the triumph sure.

You and I are responsible for being obedient to what God has called us to do. We must do the right thing. God has taken on the responsibility for bringing about the triumph of the truth.

The outcome is sure if we stay the course.

Love without qualifications

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John 13:35 – By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.

No LoveJesus is here indicating that love is to be the identifying mark of the believer. We are commanded to love, not love if . . . our love is to be not conditioned upon the response of the object of our love. There should be no qualifications on whether we give or withhold love.

While all churches would claim that they practice unconditional love, this is clearly not the case. Too often, for one reason or another, love is conditioned on rule keeping, service to the church or some other qualification. When any conditions are placed on love, it is not the love described by Jesus.

Conditional love must be avoided because it sends the message that you have no value unless you are complying with the demands. People who come to this type of church may feel loved for a while, but that investment of love better pay off in the desired response or it will not continue.

James speaks about this type of value judgment in James 2:1-8. In this passage James identifies this behavior as sin and a violation of the second great command to love your neighbor as yourself. James pulls no punches. In verse 4 he says, “have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil motives?” The root of this type of value judgment is evil.

The verb form of agape (selfless love) is used as a command 9 times in the New Testament. In only two verses was there a qualification on the love. In Ephesians 5:25, husbands are commanded to love their wives as Christ loved the church. Later on in verse 33, Paul commands every husband to love his wife as he loves himself. There are no further qualifications. And even these qualifications are not dependent upon how the object of love behaves. In all 9 commands to love, there is no out clause; there is no situation where it is appropriate to withhold love.

James tells us that to assess the value of a person based on their use to the church or their ability to keep rules is a sin. Paul tells us in Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” We all have equal value before the Cross.

To practice unconditional love, we must acknowledge our dependence upon God and our own need for grace. Once we realize how much we have been forgiven, then it should be easy to forgive and accept others. Can we follow Paul’s advice in Romans 12:9 and practice “love without hypocrisy?”

A world starved for real love is longing for us to get this right.

Is teaching the greatest gift in the church?

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I have been working (struggling) through questions about the purpose and practice of church. Recent blog posts have revealed some of the fruit of that wrestling. As part of my search, I read the opening chapters of Acts to compare the experience of the early church to my own.

I was struck by Acts 2:42 which says, “They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” There are four points of emphasis here:

  1. Teaching
  2. Fellowship
  3. Breaking of Bread
  4. Prayer

For the church to be healthy, all four of these should part of church life. My experience teaches me that an overemphasis of one does not make up for a lack in the others. A lack of balance between these four lays the foundation for an unhealthy church.

In the first letter to the Corinthians, Paul deals with a lack of balance in chapters 12-14. In the case of the Corinthians, they were out of balance by viewing the gift of tongues as the greatest gift. The gift of tongues was over-valued and as a result, overused and abused. At the end of Chapter 12:31, after providing a list of the gifts bestowed on believers, Paul writes, “But earnestly desire the greater gifts.”

We are told to seek the greater gifts. It is no accident that Paul’s statements about love come immediately after his enjoinder to pursue the greater gifts. He tells us in 1 Corinthians 13:13 that the greatest gift is love. Love should be behind all the functions of the church body. It should be the foundation.

It is interesting to me that often when discussions about gifts come up, Chapter 13 is skipped and we go right to Chapter 14 where prophesy is listed as a gift to pursue. In some circles, prophesy is equated to preaching, therefore preaching is the gift to be desired. The danger is that preaching can replace tongues as the out-of-balance gift in the body. When this happens, then there is competition and struggle over teaching opportunities and people end up functioning outside of their gifting. As a result, every church event is seen as a teaching opportunity.

Preaching and teaching have an important place, but as we can see from Acts 2:42, it is only part of function of the church. Great teaching does not make up for a lack of fellowship, community and prayer.

This is especially true in 2012. I could load my iPod with enough material to listen to great preaching 24/7. There is a surplus of teaching because so many good preachers have their sermons readily available on the Internet.

What I have seen is a shortage of the other three aspects of Acts 2:42. We in the Biblically conservative community turn up our noses at the Emergent Church movement. I have my issues with some of the theology in that movement. But what we cannot ignore is that they highlight something that much of the conservative church has missed. It is all about relationship.

It is a great oversimplification but you could say that the Emergent Church is all about relationship and misses on truth. We conservatives are all about truth and often miss relationship.

Can we find a church that incorporates both truth and relationship? Would it be possible for us to be full of grace and truth? Jesus is.

Truth Whack-A-Mole – Follow-up to a comment

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Whack-a-moleIn a comment on my blog post entitled Truth Whack-A-Mole a question was raised about Jesus’ claims to divinity. You can read the entire comment, but below is a snippet and my response.

I agree with C.S. Lewis that he was either lying, delusional, or the son of God. I have in the back of my mind that there’s a fourth option, that Jesus did not claim all of the things about himself that his disciples and Paul wrote about…maybe that Jesus was glorified after the fact

Chuck Colson uses the Watergate conspiracy as an illustration of the unlikelihood of the disciples and early church leaders of inventing this story. Mr. Colson points out that soon after the Watergate conspiracy began some of the conspirators revealed the truth to save their own hides. Contrast this with the Apostles who (with the exception of John) all went to a martyr’s death because of their claims about Jesus. It is a remarkable thing that someone would surrender his life for the sake of the truth. It is preposterous to think that all of them would go to their deaths for a lie.

The question I have is what would be the motivation for them to invent this Jesus if in reality he was less than what they claimed? Did the lie get them riches or influence? No, it brought them persecution and martyrdom. Was it wishful thinking on their part? If so then they were delusional.

This leads to a further unlikelihood – that of a whole lot of people sharing the same delusion and being willing to die for it. The church in its entirety faced persecution for the first 300 years of its existence. It is hard to imagine that this persecution would be endured for a lie.

In my mind, this whole line of questioning leads to an evaluation of the resurrection. The Apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15:5–8 made the following claims:

“and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep; then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles; and last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me also.

Paul most likely wrote 1 Corinthians in the early 50’s which was approximately 20 years after Jesus’ death. Were he to have penned a lie, there would have been people available to refute the lie. Paul even indicates that many of the 500 witnesses were still alive. Paul’s readers had the means available to verify the truth of these claims.

If you rule out the possibility of resurrection, then the only conclusion you can draw is that either Jesus or his disciples were delusional. If however, you are open to the possibility of Jesus being “declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead (Romans 1:4), then a cohesiveness of the data can be seen.

If Jesus was delusional and his followers cooked up a legend about him, then he is powerless to save either himself or any part of humanity, noble intentions or no. But, on the other hand, if he is who he said he is, if he was proved to be God through his resurrection, then I have hope that tomorrow can be better than today. I cling to that hope, not despite the facts, but with their support.

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