Sin--It's Not Just Evil Anymore

Murder. Adultery. Lies. ---Sin.
I recognize them.  They are evil.  All of them.
God says not to do them.  I get it, and generally, do pretty well at it.
But somehow, in the niggling back of my mind, I knew I wasn't done.

Christ showed me why.
He did it in the desert.  Alone, hungry, weak, and bedeviled:
Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil.--Matthew 4:1
And how did the Master Tempter beguile Him?
...tell these stones to become bread.
...thrown yourself down.
...all this I will give you.--Matthew 4:4,6,9

Satan tempted Jesus with food, with rescue, and with the power He already possessed.  By itself, none of these things were bad.  Christ, in another situation at another time, could have reached out and taken any one of them without sin. 
But not then.  Not there.

And so it is for us.
Sin does not come only in the footsteps of evil deeds like murder or deception or betrayal.
It comes at the dinner table, at our desk, in our bed.
In perfectly innocent-sounding activities, but ones God has forbidden in that place and time.

We fast by God's command and forsaking a fast is sin.
That donut, or that nap, or that good-looking charitable activity, is not evil by itself, but today, it might be sin.
Even Jesus had to look at something He wanted in His flesh, something He might have the next day or the one after that but right then, He, like we, had to look it in the eye and say,
Away from me, Satan!--Matthew 4:10

The beauty of all this comes when we look away from the thing dangling before us, that temptation, and see what God wanted us to see in the first place, the whole point of the exercise:
Himself.


And, after we have seen, He sends His angels to minster to us.

Now Where Was I?

My husband does not want me to use herbicides.
But I want a perfect, weedless garden.
For 30 years, we have wrangled about this.
It needs to stop.

But how?  Nobody wants to give in.  We both think we are right and, from our own perspectives, we are.  After all, no biblical principle hinges on whether I spray Roundup on the creeping charlie.
Or does it?

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.--Matthew 5:3,5
A man's pride brings him low, but a man of lowly spirit gains honor.--Proverbs 29:23
I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and revive the heart of the contrite.--Isaiah 57:15

Think about it.
What makes us really humble?
Is it bowing and shuffling when someone tells me that I have done something well?  No.  That makes me secretly proud.
Am I humbled when I experience defeat after striving to do or learn something?  No.  As often as not, that simply spurs me on to try harder next time.

But obedience, now that breeds humility.
Doing what someone else wants, not what I want, when I know my idea or plan is just as valid as theirs.  Setting aside my own will in situations where all I sacrifice is me.
That's humility.

Of course, I should never set aside my holiness, my love and devotion to God, but all else can be well lost.

And it feels nasty.
Is not my opinion or desire of value?
Of course it is.  That's why setting it aside takes so much effort.
I am humbled by giving up my will not because it has no validity, but because it does.

Some positions are not important enough to fight over.
But they make great tools by which to learn holiness.

Obedience in these issues is how I push aside the extraneous parts of me, how I enter into the holy of holies, where my humanity takes a back seat to God's supremacy.

Humility was never about my position before other men.  
It was always about my position before God.
And, as it turns out, pulling weeds.
I am always with you.  You hold me by my right hand.--Psalms 73:23

Beyond the Bandaid

I am concerned about my son.
No--that's not right.
Just say it.
I'm worried about him.

Never mind why.  The reason doesn't much matter because he's a grown man and I can't do much about it.
But that doesn't stop the love.  Or the worry.

In fact, his maturity increases the concern because my ability to influence his situation decreases with his increasing age.
Unlike when he scraped his knee falling off a bike or when little Jimmy took a poke at him on the playground, I can't kiss away his hurt.
I can't fix it.
And parents are fixers.

So what do I do?  God has some advice:
This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses.  Choose life, so that you and your children may live...Deuteronomy 30:19a

I want life and blessings for my children, but I can't get them by fixing their hurts and problems.  I do it by choosing God.

Can I bring my sons practical help?  Sure.  In fact, I should.
But that help is only a bandaid in the larger scheme of things.

My choosing God, however--walking with Him before my children and the world--gives God the opportunity He craves to do what only He can do.

How do I know this?  He told me:
Listen to His voice and hold fast to Him, for the Lord is your life.--Deuteronomy 30:19b

Choosing God first will probably alter the kind of bandaid I apply to my son's owie.
Choosing God first may open the wound farther so He can clean it out properly.
But choosing God brings real healing and everlasting life.
And that is what a mother ultimately wants for her sons.

Why Didn't I Take the Blue Pill?

Nuts. Here I thought I had to do something bad to succumb to evil.  I don't.  All I have to do is give up. 

Following Christ has brought so much to my life--a hope and a purpose, a solid foundation, a clear path to walk, a promise of eternity, the touch of God Himself--but sometimes it doesn't seem like enough.

It's not enough when justice does not appear to be served.
It's not enough when Christians don't act like Christ.
It's not enough when I get tired of fighting.
It's not enough when the world behaves so much like, well, the world.

When evil triumphs.  When power and privilege corrupt, then corrupt more. When people who have made wrong decisions make worse ones.  

Living went so much more smoothly when I went with the flow, when I let the world carry me along rather than buck its trend, even though I know its trend leads to destruction.
Anyone who tries to follow Christ is subject to this:
I am afraid that, just as Eve was deceived by the serpent's cunning, your minds might be led astray from devotion to Christ.--2Corinthians 11:3


In the end, an expectation of ease leads to evil.  It happened to Adam and Eve.  It happens to us.

We have got to understand that our lives as Christians will be hard and will not get much easier this side of heaven.  That's why God warns us that He has to be enough.  Always.  Just Him.
Or:
Since they did not think knowledge  of God worthwhile, He gave them over to a depraved mind to do what ought not to be done.--Romans 1:28

God gives us peace, but peace does not equal ease.
As odd as it sounds, peace comes from not giving up, from arming ourselves every day, from admitting that the world is Satan's territory and a hostile place, then living in it as God's own.  
Ease and comfort come with living in Satan's world as Satan's own, and this I cannot do.
I know the truth.  I already took the red pill.  There is no going back.

Lord search me; test me and know my anxious thoughts.--Psalm 139:23

I think, therefore...

Descartes thought he had it all figured out.
"I think, therefore, I am."
If he can think, he deduced, he must exist, and thereby he established an intimate connection between thinking and existence, a correct one as far as it goes.

However, Descartes didn't deduce the depth of the connection between thought and physical reality.  When one considers God, rather than man, thought and reality become essentially the same thing.

And God said, Let there be light.--Genesis 1:3
And God said, Let there be an expanse between the waters.--Genesis 1:6
And God said, Let the land produce...--Genesis  1:11and so on.

Remember, our Creator doesn't have a mouth.  When God said, He thought.  His saying is done as effortlessly as thinking.  He thought the world into existence--the whole heaven, the whole earth.
There is no separation or hesitation between what God thinks and what happens.
There wasn't then; there isn't now.

 Now, with that in mind, consider this:
He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love He predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ...--Ephesians 1:4-5

Here as in the very act of creation, no pause exists between God's thought or will and its accomplishment or reality.  If He chooses, it happens at the same moment that the choice is made.

It is different for us, and a good thing, too.
Imagine if everything we thought actually happened--Yikes.
No, to make stuff happen we, as humans, have to DO something.

God has already both purposed and accomplished salvation.  We, however, have to act.  We not only have to know we can be saved, we have to turn the thought into deed:
If you confess with your mouth "Jesus is Lord" and believe in your heart God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved--Romans 10:9
Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.--Romans 10:13

Descartes got it partly right.  He existed, as do we, not because he thinks, but because God thought.
We know salvation for the same reason.
But our humanity does not wrap around that, so we join with God's will the only way we can--by both belief and the action of consent.
We say, "Yes, Lord."

Why the Apple was Delicious

Eve picked the apple because it was beautiful and juicy.  I suspect it tasted sweet and made a satisfying crunch when she bit into it.  God could have made it ugly or poisonous, but He didn't.

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good and pleasing to the eye and desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some, and ate it.--Genesis 3:6

It made sense to her.  The tree, after all, held the knowledge of good and evil.  Knowledge is good, right?  The fruit was supposed to bring wisdom.  God wants us to be wise, doesn't He?

It made sense.  Simple, common sense.  So what was the problem?

The problem wasn't with the apple.  The apple itself was fine, exactly what it was made to be.  The problem was Eve.  And what she thought of God.

Eve thought of the apple first, not God.  According to Eve's reasoning and common sense, the apple should have brought wisdom, but it brought death for only one reason: God said it would.  

God's command supersedes appearances and simple deduction and common sense. If common sense ruled, knowledge of good and evil would have brought Eve the advantages of wisdom and we would all have profited by it.  But it didn't because God knew that, in the end, it would destroy us, and it did.

It is not the worth of a thing itself that matters most.  It is whether God, in His infinite wisdom, affirms or denies our access to it. Temptation ties itself not to the thing, but to our willingness to trust and obey. 

Jesus saw this immediately when Satan came to visit Him:
Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.--Matthew 4:4

Plain obedience satisfied Christ.  Should it not satisfy us as well?

Walking up the Hill

I can't help it.  I want health, and love, and good fortune.  Whenever life alternatives present themselves, I prefer one outcome over another--the easier, pleasanter one.

God already knows what I want, of course, but I tell Him anyway.  When life gets tough, I pray...
"Please, God, let my son grow into a man, a man after your own heart."
"Please, God, let my husband not have cancer."
"Please.  Please."

And God can say "No."
He can say, "I will do with your son as I see fit." or "It's time for your husband to come home to me."
"No, please....No, God."

That's when the problem expands from the situation itself to the condition of my own heart. Is this my crisis of faith?  Am I lukewarm because I want one alternative over the other?

Then I remember Jesus:
My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.--Matthew 26:39

Jesus had a preference for outcome, too. His body did not want to suffer either, and we share the same kind of bloody, heartbeating flesh.  My humanity, like His, longs for ease and communion.

Wanting these is not the crisis of faith. The crisis comes not in the wanting, but in the response--the ability to say, like Jesus did,
Yet not as I will, but as You will.--Matthew 26:39

Ease and good fortune have their eyes focused on earth.  My sweet God wants me to look higher and when I do, I find, like Him, the joy set before me. Then, with Christ beside and my eyes fixed resolutely on my own Calvary, I can walk up the hill.

Two Elizabeths and Me

I wonder what Queen Elizabeth thinks about being queen.  She has known all her life that she would reign in privilege.  It is part of who she is, but she didn't earn it.  She walked into it, inevitably, with every step, every breath.  All she had to do to be queen is to live.  No one ever expected her to do anything else.

And how about Elizabeth Taylor?

She had to have been strikingly beautiful from birth, her famous eyes causing gasps from the minute she opened them.  When did she discover that she had been given talent as well as beauty?  She did nothing to deserve either, but lived in the grace of them all her life.

When am I going to understand that I am no less privileged, no less blessed than either of them?  In fact, I am more.

I was chosen by the living God to be His own.

You did not choose me, but I chose you...John 15:16

God saved me and I worship Him.  God knows me and I know Him.  God loves me and I love Him.  He grants me this as a sublime privilege in this world.

After all, at the end of time, everyone will know and recognize God.  No one will be able to deny Him.  Now, however, He does not grant that vision to everyone.  He grants that vision, that knowledge, that salvation, to whom He chooses by His goodness alone, and by it we see Him while still in this world.


I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.--Psalm 27:13

You have saved me so that I can worship you.  I do not get to worship without salvation because with salvation comes knowledge and knowledge of God inevitably drives me to my knees.  If I truly worship, I am truly saved.  If I am truly saved, I truly worship.

I am either all in or all out.

I live, like the Elizabeths, as beauty and queen completely or not at all.  If God has granted His favor, I do not need to hide it and pretend that I am like those to whom He has not.  I need to grab all of it or reject it all.  I cannot say that I know and love God and live in condemnation.  I must be all God's or be nothing.

God designated me for this from the beginning of time.  I need to take hold of it.

I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.--Philippians 3:12b 

Already Begun, Part 2

When my children were small, I remember beginning their training with short words and simple sentences.  "Don't lie. Don't hit. Don't steal."  When they grew a bit, I offered them alternatives.  "If you eat your dinner, you'll get dessert.  If you don't finish, your dad will eat your cake." They understood these principles and, in their own way, were grateful for that understanding.

In Part 1, we talked about how a new year not only comes in the middle of our own life story, but also well into God's plan for His world.


God, a much wiser parent than me, gives us simple, straightforward choices, too.

This day I call on heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses.  Choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to His voice, and hold fast to Him.--Deuteronomy 30:19a


Following simple instructions first is how we grow up in God.  Just like a toddler learns that she is not the center of the universe by doing what she does not want to do so that she can get what she does want, so do we.

We acknowledge sin so we can enjoy the benefits of truth.
We repent so that we may be saved.
We forsake sin so we can approach God.

We do not want to do any of these things, but this is the choosing God commands, the casting of our lot with life rather than death.

And like a good parent, God not only tells us what to do, but why to do it.
Listen to His voice and hold fast to him,
For the Lord is your life.--Deuteronomy 30:19b

We not only follow the Lord to attain life, but the Lord IS Life.  Life is not the blood that beats in our veins or the breath that fills our lungs.  It is not thoughts or actions or desires.  Life is HIM.  When we choose Him, we choose the life we were born to, the life we walk through, dream through, fight through.  When we choose Him, He gives life, and we do not wither, but grow.

And He has more.
See Part 3.

Drawing up the Nectar

Even now, when autumn has taken firm hold, butterflies frequent my backyard garden. They float delicately on the last of the season's warm breezes, flapping a little, but mostly gliding from one flower to the next, sipping on each one. They don't live long, but look beautiful for a while, lay eggs, then die.

I know people like them. They are beautiful and smile a lot. They move easy, and shift readily to find places where a benevolent sun shines. They wave lightly and settle in for as long as it lasts, until a challenging puff of wind unseats them and they look for another tranquil spot. Their fragile wings do not bear mistreatment.

A bee's lot is different. He is sturdy because he has work to do. He buzzes a warning, but stings interruption. An ungainly lump, he flies with purpose and stays at a flower only long enough to gather what he must transfer elsewhere. He builds for other purposes than his own.

It's a matter of motive, I think. Each creature, butterfly and bee, become what they must for their specific purpose. As in uninvolved onlooker, I prefer the beauty of the butterflies, but farmers don't agree. For farmers, bees pollinate crops and bring fruit forth from flowers. Butterflies produce nothing but more butterflies.

Of course, neither insect chooses their what purpose to serve, but we do. For men as for insects, actions follow purpose. What we do is a consequence of what we most value, what we build a result of what we believe.

Don't you know that when your offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one you obey--whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?--Romans 6:16

I am going to follow something, to obey someone's call, and my actions will fall in line with that call. I will live, I will drink from the flower, and I can do it as a butterfly, that is to nourish only myself, or as bee, to build up for something more, for an almighty motive. In either case, I give my life, become a slave, to what I live for.

Thought for today: Whose purpose drives your actions?

Door Number One

In our small town of five thousand people, we have thirty churches. Not surprisingly, some of them do not agree regarding what constitutes the truth about God. For the most part, we tend to get along fine, but everyone who attends church here has, to some degree, made a decision regarding what is true and migrated to worship at a place amenable to it. At least, I hope that is what they have done.

This world, after all, is full of choices. Understanding God is the most important of them and like the other choices, I can make it the easy way or the hard way. The easy way is to look around for godly-seeming people first to see what they've chosen. What does their life look like, are their marriages healthy, or did their children seem to turn out all right?--the Bible word for this is 'fruit'--then hop on their bandwagon with confidence that I'm on the right track. That can work for awhile, but at some point I will go off course because I have chosen to follow a fellow man who I may love, but who is only a man.

God has another way:
No one has ever seen God, but God, the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made Him known.--John 1:18
We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God so that we may understand what God has freely given us.--1Corinthians 2:13

God doesn't say "Follow him," He says "Follow Me." Through His Spirit and Word, He makes Himself known and through His Spirit and Word, we can find Him. This takes work, of course, a lot more work than examining and comparing ourselves to one another. God is the measure. He is the guide. He made the world and the rules, then gave us a way to discover them.

This is what we speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.--1Corinthinans 2:14

God gave us Truth and wants us to know the glory of discovering it so that we are not looking around, but looking always at Him. His Truth calls to us from behind only one of life's many doors. We cannot successfully follow any other person through the right door for any length of time. God extends His mighty hand to each one individually and He always waits behind Door #1.

Thought for today: How do you choose?

Ducks

When I taught seventh grade, we had two ducks for class pets, Leonardo and Archimedes. They weren't real ducks, of course. Real animals and large numbers of thirteen-year-olds do not mix well. The ducks were made of polyester fluff and stuffed with beans, easy to care for, and small enough to sit on desks or on shoulders or to hang from the ceiling fan.

They provided low-key amusement for the students, but the ducks persistently mocked me. Education is serious business, after all. I wanted to rock students' world with wonders: the beauty of poetry, rhythm of mathematics, the nobility of history. In naming the ducks, the kids had reduced the nobility of art and numbers to balls of fuzz. I didn't like it. I didn't like it at all.

I thought school to be made of nobler stuff--of reaching beyond their grasp, of dreaming big and then making those dreams happen. That part was all right, but I also thought that I could make it all happen, that I had chosen this career and could bring it to life by the force of my own vision.
But I was wrong.

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit--fruit that will last.-John 15:16

My job is not to enact my own vision, but Yours. I wanted to bring Truth and Beauty into the lives of youngsters, but that is not within my purview. Truth and Beauty belong to You and You deliver them to men. The fruit You want me to bear have arms and legs, flesh and blood. Truth and beauty are easy. They hover above this poor earth like beacons You gave to light the way. My job, whether a teacher or a plumber or a mother, is to deal with the messy parts, the people.

Now, Archimedes and Leonardo, they just sit there, wearing noble names and doing nothing, exactly the opposite of what You want for me. Any noble name I ever have, You will give. In the meantime, I must remember the beautiful, but work in the immediate. You have chosen it and it will last.

Swine in Pearls

They have chosen their own ways and their souls delight in their abominations.--Isaiah 66:4a

I can still delight in abominations. I can support them, work for them, grab them with two eager hands and draw them close. I can justify them, decorate them so they look beautiful, put them on display and show them off. I can spend my life studying or saving for them, I can collect them; I can whisper in their ear in the quiet dark of night.

But this is what waits for me if I do:

So I will choose harsh treatment for them and will bring upon them what they dread...--Isaiah 66:4b

I get what I choose. If I choose abominations, I get them. But if I choose You, I get You. It's simple, really. You call constantly. You rise up before me, moment by moment, waiting for me to look for You.

...for when I spoke, no one listened. They did evil in my sight and chose what displeases me.--Isaiah 66:4c

But it does not have to be this way. I have to hear You when You call, so an abomination is anything that muffles my ears. I have to see You all around me, so an abomination is anything that blocks my view. It is You, always You.

I am still confident of this--I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.--Psalm 27:13

The Gospel of Jeff

Have you ever seen Jeff Dunham? He's a ventriloquist, a good one, and, although he could improve on some of his subject matter, his ability leaves me speechless. When he pretends to argue with one of his puppets, he demonstrates his best techniques, going back and forth so fast and with such perfect but invisible voice changes, that I can never tell that the sound isn't coming directly from the puppet itself. The actions of his puppets showcase his talents perfectly. Through them, he shows how he's just so good.

In the back of my mind, though, I know that the voices, no matter how many he uses or how quickly he changes them, all belong to Jeff. My eyes and ears may try to trick me into believing otherwise, but neither Walter, nor Peanut, nor Achmed speak on their own without his influence. They don't have a choice. I do.

God wants me to rely as much on His influence as the puppets rely on Dunham. He gives me everything I need to say and do things beyond my own abilities. And when I let Him, He gets the glory for what I do. Like Dunham, the credit for God's inspiration in my poor flesh goes directly back to Him. He created me to do this.

Bring my sons and daughters from the ends of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.--Isaiah 43:7
Serve with the strength God provides so the He will be praised through Christ Jesus. To Him be the glory and power forever.--1Peter 4:11

I have an important advantage over Dunham's puppets; God lets me decide what I'm going to say and do. When I choose His power over my own, when I step aside and say to Him, "I want what You want. I am weak. I choose not to indulge myself, to talk about myself, to achieve for my own ends. I choose to bring You glory as You show Your power to the world when my mouth, and my hands, and my feet move in Your honor."

When I do this, I reflect my God in the way He intended. He made me in His image so that when people look at me, they see Him. The ME I scramble to protect and pamper is smoke, not even supposed to exist apart from Him. Our rewards are not health or wealth or comfort or even answered prayer or heaven. Our reward is God Himself, nothing else. Nothing I do is good unless it glorifies God. Everything that glorifies God is good.

Heaven's slings and arrows

When the servant of the man of God got up and went out early the next morning, an army of horses and chariots had surrounded the city. "Oh, my lord, what shall we do?" the servant asked. "Don't be afraid," the prophet answered. "Those who are with us are more than those who are with them." And Elisha prayed, "O Lord, open his eyes so he may see." Then the Lord opened the servant's eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha."--2Kings 6:15-17

Most days, I want to forget that I am a soldier. As an apparently serene morning begins and I reach for a cup of fresh coffee and smile at the rising sun, I know in my heart that this day, so promising, will challenge me somehow. The challenges vary, they wear different clothes every day, but the real combatants never change. Whether I have to fight traffic, or experience unkindness, or discipline children, or pull a garden full of weeds, or encounter personal temptations, I often disregard what You taught me about fighting my fights. I am a minor player in them. I carry water or messages or at best fire a few feeble shots. You wield the real weapons.

In Roman 7, Paul bemoans his inability to live as he knows he should. He knows what is right and doesn't do it. He knows what is wrong and though he doesn't want to do it, he does it anyway. I understand his frustration. Just as he found, I am never strong enough, never clever enough, never prepared enough to fight real evil. And that's OK. I have You.

Elisha knew this when he showed his servant the real army. That army fights for me too, as long as I ally myself with its side. My real job isn't to fight, it's to choose. Yes, I have to enter swinging, but it is not me who determines the victor. As I desire You and Your good, You engage the fight. As I yield to evil, evil takes back ground in my life. Just as Paul lamented, evil already has a foothold, a wedge, in my life. I can let it in further or let You help me slam the door in its face.

You force that choice daily through circumstances and people. You show constantly the enemy gathering at my gates. You stand beside me with holy weapons at the ready waiting for me to look up from my knees, pleading for help. The instant I do, you fling them and enemy retreats. Then, when the battle is won, I don't just have a victory, I have You.