The God of No/The God of Yes

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One God. 
That's what we have. One God. Unchangeable. Forever.
But which one is He?
Is He the God of the Old Testament--the one who punished and destroyed and slaughtered?
Or is He the God of the New Testament who saves and forgives and loves?

The simple answer is that He's both, but that's the problem. It's not simple. It doesn't make sense. Unless we toss out the Old Testament in the face of the New, our God does not appear unchangeable. He seems almost schizophrenic.
Let God be God, some say. Trust Him today and you will understand Him later. After all, He is the God who said to Moses,
I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy and compassion on whom I will have compassion.--Romans 9: 15
And it's true. He has that right. He's God.
Why, then, am I still not satisfied?

Take sacrifices, for instance.
In the Old Testament, God set up an complex system of sacrifice--a calf for this, a pair of doves for that, incense, grain--an unending stream of them so that the courts of His tabernacle ran red with blood and stank with entrails every day. And then, after Jesus, they stopped. Just like that.
Old Testament/New Testament.
One God....or two?

Was the coming of Jesus as revolutionary as all that? Really?
Well, as it turns out, yes, it was.
 As it turns out, I need to see both sides of our God, the old and the new testament sides. Otherwise, I will not know Him at all.

The God of the Old Testament is the God of No.
 After men sinned, He had to be. We lost our connection with Him. We would no longer walk with Him in the cool of the day. We could no longer share His heaven. We would die. From that day on, His answer would be No.
Do you hear me, God?
No.
Can I satisfy you, God?
No.
Can I properly worship you, God?
No.
Can I draw near to you?
No.
Will you forgive me?
No.

All the sacrifices....they were never enough. The prayers...they could not pierce the veil.
Mankind needed the one thing they could not provide. They could follow all the rules, perform all the sacrifices, say every prayer, celebrate every feast day, but everything fell short.
In the Old Testament, men learned their hopelessness before a holy God. 
Nothing they could do was good enough. The answer was, and always would be, No.

Then Jesus came. And died. And rose. And established Himself as not only the perfect sacrifice, but as the perfect and eternal intercessor between sinful man and Holy God.
In that moment, God's No became Yes.
Do you year me, God?
Yes, through Christ.
Do you forgive me, God?
Yes, through Christ.
Will you take me into your eternal presence?
Yes, through Christ.

There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all--Ephesians 4:4-6

One God.
One.
Old Testament and New. Not schizophrenic--just what God's perfection looks like with and without Christ. 

And that is why we have them both. Jesus may be our friend, but He will never be our buddy. He may be fully human, but He will never be like us. Never.
Christ Jesus is the only One who makes possible any rejoicing, who allows us hope in the face of our own corruption. Christ Jesus lived and died so that God would not have to destroy us, too. His own creation. The ones He loves.

Without the Old Testament, the New Testament has no real purpose. Jesus came to save us from the justifiable wrath of His Father. Without understanding of the coming wrath, His salvation has no meaning.

The temple sacrifices taught us that God meant business. And then He swept them away with the only sacrifice that could actually accomplish its purpose.
In Jesus, God's forever No became a forever Yes.

The Modern Disenchanted: Hey, Jesus--Wassup?

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Judas Iscariot is a hard one to figure.
He had to have been fairly smart and, at some point, to have inspired some measure of confidence. The apostles let him handle the group's money, after all. We tend to think of him as evil, but he couldn't have been, not completely, not at the beginning.

What happened to Judas?
Maybe he fell victim to the same weakness that some popular pastors do--the allure of intelligence, the confidence of skill. He sure went wrong somewhere, that's for sure, becoming at best, the cartoon thief who shakes your hand while picking your pocket. At worst, well, we saw his worst. He betrayed the Son of God. And people still do--by desertion, by betrayal, by ignoring the promise He made regarding His church.

I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.--Matthew 16:18

Judas' most revealing discourse with Jesus comes in the upper room after Judas had already concluded negotiations with the Pharisees and agreed to hand Jesus over for thirty pieces of silver, a paltry sum for such an act. All the apostles are sitting down to supper and Jesus tells them all that He knows what's coming--that He's been betrayed and Judas looks right at Him and asks along with the others,
Surely not I, Lord?--Matthew 26:22

Who does he think he's kidding? He sounds like a gangster who, thumbs hitched in his drooping jeans, saunters into his rival's hangout slurring, "Wassup?" As if he doesn't know. He's not fooling anyone, at least not for long.

Tertullian, a theologian who lived around 200AD, had something to say about what plagued Judas and so many others:
At the height of a man's sin is his refusal to recognize Him of whom man cannot be ignorant.*

Judas refused to recognize Jesus for who He was. Disappointed, unable or unwilling to understand, and eventually marginalized because of it, Judas blamed not just Jesus, but the whole bunch. He turned his back on all twelve of them.

Judas' rejection of Jesus is the same as modern men rejecting the organized church founded by the same Christ because it fails to live up to their expectations.  Judas went off the reservation so completely that even when he realized he was wrong, it didn't save him. He sealed his fate not because he'd sinned but by what he did next.
Then he went away and hanged himself--Matthew 27:5

Had he asked forgiveness, had he added repentance to his conviction, he could have shared heaven. But it didn't happen. And, as modern men do the same, they end in the same place.

This is the hard reality. Churches will behave badly. They all do it at one time or another. But the good ones recognize their wrong, admit it openly, ask forgiveness of those they have wronged, and change. The process of forgiveness and restoration is the same for groups as it is for individuals and some make it. Some don't.

We may have to change friends or change churches when things go bad, but we do not get to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We are not smarter than the church God left us. We are not better or more clever than the Body of Christ.

We all share Judas' basic failing. We all have the potential to do exactly as he did. The test is what we do when we're tempted to think we are too smart for God, when we are so sure of ourselves. It is that moment when we stand in the shadow of the hanging tree, where even Judas discovered what he should have done.

*Apologeticus 17

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Our Father, Who Art in Heaven

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Father. Our Father. Father God.
It rolls off the tongue. So easy. So natural. So....well, true.
God is our Father. He made us. He nurtures us. He loves us.
But not for everyone.

I got a real eye-opener recently when I heard the story told by Scott Hahn* regarding the discussion/debate he had with a muslim cleric about God. Actually, Hahn didn't want to engage in the debate--he was convinced by his sister and brother-in-law because he was the only person they knew who was theologically educated well enough to even try and, well, the cleric wanted to. After all, it wasn't an opportunity that presented itself every day.

And, actually, it started out pretty well. They agreed about a lot of the attributes of God--His perfection, His majesty, His sovereignty, His might. They agreed about many of His works--His creation and sustenance of the world, His destruction of mankind through flood and their preservation through Noah,  His liberation of the Israelites through Abraham, and more. But the trouble started when Hahn first referred to God as 'Father'.

The first time Hahn called God Father, the cleric slammed his fist down on the table, shouting that he would not tolerate any more blasphemy. Blasphemy? wondered Hahn. For calling God 'Father'? Apparently. For a muslim, it is blasphemy to ascribe any human characteristic to God. God, to him, is not Father, nor is He a Son. He does not love with a Father's heart, and He does for forgive with it, either. 

Then what, Hahn asked, is God if not Father?
"Master," declared the cleric. "God is Master."

Master--as in slave master. Master--with complete authority but no obligation to affection. Master--owner and source of all sustenance, but with no need of mercy. Master--user, ruler, absolute commander. Worshiped and followed without question, unforgiving of failure, not hesitating to deservedly punish. God.

And that was the problem. God the Father loves. God the Master rules.

If this sounds unduly harsh, maybe we shouldn't be too surprised. We were warned of this. Sarah, Abraham's wife, made it obvious:
Get rid of the slavewoman and her son, for that slavewoman's son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.--Genesis 21:10

Ishmael and Isaac, both Abraham's sons, would not share the same inheritance. Ishmael would forever be a slave, but Isaac would inherit all of Abraham's riches--his herds, his wealth, the best of what Abraham had to give. Ishmael would never again know his father's love. And neither did the cleric, the spiritual descendant of Ishmael. God was not his father.
He never heard this--
So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.--Galatians 4:7

As Christians, we will never fully understand the yoke under which some people have to labor. God is, after all, our kind Father, who, when we stray, waits at the gate for us with open arms. He forgives. He has storehouses of blessings He is saving to shower down on us. He guards and protects and nurtures. He quite literally holds us in the palms of His hands. Not so for everyone, however.

The cleric eventually stormed out of the restaurant where he sat with Hahn, having warned Hahn for the third time that he was not to use terms like Father or Son in relation to God. He'd had enough. God was not, and would never be, his Father.

I admire the cleric for his clear understanding of God's exaltedness, but I have never had to associate God with harshness or with a supremacy that exercises itself without mercy. What terror would God bring without love? How would He use His infinite power? It scares me even to think about it. In the end, though, I am so glad for this perspective. It uncovers the real depth and privilege of the prayer that Christ, the Son of God Himself, gave us. It illustrates vividly the boldness and the favor with which we say,
Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name...

*Allah or Abba, Lighthouse Catholic Media

Hi there--I'm a Sinner

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Sackcloth and ashes. That's how the ancients did it.
When they were convicted of their sin, they tore their clothes, put on hard, scratchy garments,  poured ashes on themselves, then sat in a public place so everyone could see. We don't do that.

So, what can we do? After all, making a public declaration of sin cements our understanding of our situation before God in a way no private confession would ever do. So what, in the context of our own culture, could we do?

How about this:
As a rule, we're really good at introducing ourselves to people. What about if, the next time we shook hands with someone in greeting, we just said, "Hi, I'm JoAnne, and I'm a sinner."?

They do it at AA meetings all the time, don't they? It's part of their renewal, their repentance, if you will. They declare that they are alcoholics and so, begin their journey back from that pit. It should work for us, too, shouldn't it?

Say we did that.
What would a statement like that say, to ourselves and the people we meet?

First, God is real, and He has authority over my life, authority above both my own reluctance to admit it and any human's opinion of me.
If we say we have not sin, we deceive ourselves--1John 1:8
Against You, You only, have I sinned and done what is evil in Your sight...Psalm 51:4


Second, this same God created me because He loves me. If God is real, and instituted the conditions under which we are to live with Him--the same ones I have broken--He did so because they are a natural outflow of Himself. Whatever God commands me to be, He already is.
Be ye holy because I am holy.--Leviticus 20:7

Third, I am not perfectly holy, but God can save me. If I admit freely my sin, and acknowledge a God both all-powerful and loving, He has to have made a way for me. He is not content to leave me in the desolation to which admission of sin inevitably leads.
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.--1John 1:9

In the end, there is no gospel without sin. We wouldn't need it. God, already full and glorious in our sight, would be good news enough. As it is, though, things didn't work out like that. And what we live, or have the opportunity to live, is not Plan B. God only makes and keeps Plan A. He gets to do that, you know. Perfectly, like He does everything else.

He made us, and when He did, He knew we weren't God, like Himself. We never could be. Sin, and all its anguish, has to be part of God's plan. It's how we know His holiness, how we know how much all this cost Him, how much He loves us. We know instinctively that we cannot understand good in the absence of evil, happiness without unhappiness. Well, then, how could we know everything we know about God without seeing even a glimpse of life without Him? I don't think I could.

So, yes. I'm a sinner. And while I'm not proud of it, I understand the role my sin plays in God's plan. I need it. I need its anguish, its shame, its desolation. Then I know how much I need my God.

Hi. I'm JoAnne.....and I'm a sinner.

Learning from an Atheist

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"I don't need an outside source to tell me to be a good person. Seriously? How difficult is it not to be a jerk?"

Everybody should have an atheist in their life. I mean it. We take way too much for granted. Most of us have absolutely no idea how atheists think. We need to know more than how to answer them. We need to understand and respect them.

I love the atheist in my family. She pokes me. She argues with me. She challenges me. She makes me think.
"How difficult is it not to be a jerk?" she asked the other day.
It's a good question. She knows right from wrong for the most part--probably as much as most Christians I know. She knows she was born with this knowledge, a knowledge she didn't summon up for herself. She doesn't much care why she knows--she just does--and tries to live by it. She sincerely wants to be a good person and seriously can't imagine why that shouldn't be enough.

I try to imagine sometimes how God sees her. I know He loves her--that goes without saying. But how does He look on her sincerely good intentions? Are they enough? That's a harder one. Paul, in writing to the Romans, considered the same thing:

It is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. When Gentiles, who have not the law, do by nature what the law requires, they are a law unto themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.--Romans 2: 13-16

Atheists have no faith in Christ, but they often have an active conscience--the law is written on their hearts. They, then, can be doers of the law without knowing from Whom the law comes. They are a "law unto themselves", but that law often conforms to God's. If God justifies the doers of the law, will my atheist then also be justified?

She might. God is, after all, in charge of His own heaven. He measures each one of us by something humans can neither see nor know--our hearts.
However, Jesus also said that:
No one comes to the Father except by me.--John 14:6
and:
By faith you are saved.--Ephesians 2:8
My atheist has neither Jesus nor faith. In fact, she has summarily rejected them both but, in her defense, I know far too many professing Christians who think less than an atheist about right and wrong. We might do well to consider them more often.  

Right and wrong are not always instinctively easy to come by. I used to think, for instance, that some certain lies ("No you don't look fat in that dress" or "I don't have to report that income--they paid me cash") were OK to tell. I don't anymore. My notions of right and wrong have shifted with changing age and circumstances.

It's the same for everybody. That's why a country has laws. None of us decides for ourselves what is legal. We don't individually decide our own speed limits and, as a result, we can all share the same roads without constantly crashing into each other. It's the same for life, isn't it? We don't decide right and wrong for ourselves so that we don't destroy one another. I may think it's OK to arm myself to the teeth and use my guns to defend myself and you don't. I may believe it's OK to spank my kids and you don't. I may think I have a right to share in someone else's wealth and you don't. We both sincerely believe we are right.

I don't know about my atheist, but when it comes to deciding right from wrong, I need a place to look it up, something I didn't write--the constitution for the laws of the land and the Bible for everything else. And I take comfort that, as long as I still live, God is working in both of us--me and my atheist. And, as long as she is willing to listen to me, really listen, I am happy to try to return the favor.

In the meantime, recognizing that I don't have all the answers, I cry on both of our behalfs, "Lord, have mercy."

What Scars Have to Say

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Scars.
I still have them. 
Painful reminders of my hurts. Throbbing echoes of hurts I caused.
And they don't go away.
Ever.

Heal me, I plead.
And God hears.
The bleeding stops, the wound closes--
But the scar remains.
Evidence of the hurt. Proof of the guilt.
Why doesn't it all go away?
I ask God: Why doesn't healing come with forgetting?

And God says: This is who you are.
Every hit you've taken, every blow you've given. They are part of you now.
Remember, He says. Remember your nature. Remember your origin:
From the sole of your foot to the top of your head there is no soundness--only wounds and welts and open sores.--Isaiah 1:6
My scars. Who I am. What I have done. What has been done to me.

Nobody gets to leave them behind his side of heaven. Nobody.
Even Christ wore His scars.
He stood in that room with His best friends, bright in His resurrected body. Alive again. Clean, victorious, and healed.
But those hands. That side.
Put your finger here. See my hands.--John 20:27
Still there. All the places of His own mortal wounding. Not smoothed over, not vanished beyond memory. Not comfortable.
But visible, both to Him and anyone who looked close enough.
His wounds, like ours, remained with Him.
Not for re-opening, but as witness. 

Christ's wounds bore witness to His perfection, His godhead.
My wounds bear witness to Christ in me.
My scars still stand ready to accuse, but they can also proclaim victory. 
Look at me, they say.
I have healed. I stand. I live.
I have known pain. I have inflicted it. See this ugliness? This is what it looks like.
Don't look away. You have them, too.

But this is the difference.
Because of Christ, I will not die from them. 

Why You Can't Hurt Me Anymore

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Some days, I wish I wore shoulder pads.
I am tired of hurting.
It's the accumulation, I think, that piles up over long years, the catalog of hurts that comes with living.
What do I do with them?

I know this--I must choose my protection carefully.
I can put on shoulder pads, but not erect barriers.
If I protect myself too much, I will miss my life. I am going to have to endure some risk, and some hurt, if I am going to do any living at all.

The key is learning to recognize real danger.
Do not be afraid of those who can kill the body but not kill the soul.--Matthew 10:28
There is, after all, only so much another person can do to me. If I am to live at all, I will have to accept a measure of hurt.
My defense, though, is really a good offence.
I do have the power to kill old hurts and consign new ones to their proper place: it is the power to forgive.
Forgive as the Lord forgave you.--Colossians 3:13
 
And how do I do that?
I do it by remembering that, to some degree, I hand people the sticks with which they beat me.
If I hold on to hurt, it holds me captive in return.
If I take hurt in stride, chalking it up to the brokenness of this world and the people around me, I can reach out to, and be consoled by the only consolation truly available.
The Lord will protect you from all evil. He will keep your soul.--Psalm 121:7

How to Hate the Sin

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We are supposed to hate the sin but love the sinner. 
We hear it all the time, but the whole idea produces more blank looks and shaking heads than almost any other. How in the world are we supposed to do that?
 Well, like any other biblical principal, maybe it's best to start with ourselves.

I sin.
So do you.
But do I hate my own sin? 
No.
And how do I know this?
Jesus tells me:
If your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off.--Matthew 18:8

Did He really mean this? 
Well, He did, or He wouldn't have said it.
He probably meant it as a metaphor, of course, but the example serves to illustrate the force with which we are to approach sin. We are to hate it enough to cut off our own hand to get rid of it.

Jesus says to "take up your cross" (Luke 9:23) and "die every day" (1 Corinthians 15:31).
He leaves no room for excuses, no safe harbor while sin still reigns in us.
This is what He does say:
In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.--Hebrews 12:4
This is how much we are to hate sin.

Does this sound cruel?
It is not cruel to insist that we put to death strong, sinful desires.
It is not cruel to deny that it's OK for either ourselves or anyone else to give in to what is clearly forbidden.
We are to love both ourselves and others with self-denial.

Examine your own strong desires.
Do you indulge, rather than fight them because it's just so darn hard and you know that God, in the end, will forgive you?
I do.

The hand I must cut off is the hand of strong, habitual, sinful desire.
And it will hurt. A lot. A real lot. I will scream from it. I will not be able to envision what is on the other side, who I will be without it, how I will live, what I will do without the emotional crutch.
But, if I believe that heaven, and freedom, await, I must whack away, doing whatever it takes.
And then, pointing with my own bloody stump rather than a filthy, still-intact, accusing finger, I can learn to truly hate the sin and love the sinner because I have done so with myself.

Living in Debt

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Bills. I don't like them. You probably don't either. And I have too many.
House. Car. Heat. Lights. Food. Clothes. School. And on and on.
I owe so much, and those are just the practical debts--the ones I can pay with money.
I have others, too.

I also have debts I can't pay. These are the hardest ones to live with.
I owe my parents, who gave without expectation for my nurture and training.
I owe soldiers, who gave their lives for my freedom.
I owe teachers, who gave more than anyone asked for my education.
I owe my family, who suffered my sins and returned forgiveness.

I can never pay them back, any of them.
Worse yet, I take them for granted.
I've lived so long in the luxury of what they gave that I no longer notice it's even there.

'Thank you' is not enough. Ever.
But what else is there?

And then there's God.
What does God want for all He gives?
For life. A world to live it in. Salvation and the promise of heaven.
How can I pay Him back?

I can't.
Not God. Not my parents, my family, not anyone who sacrificed for me.
I will owe them forever.

So if I can't pay them back, what, then, do I do?
What do those I to whom I owe so much want from me if it is not recompense?
I know what God wants because He says so:
And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.--Micah 6:8

That's what God wants. Just action. Merciful love. A humble walk toward Him.
In one word, God wants appreciation.
And I imagine they all do.
They don't want repayment. They want love.

I will always be in debt.
Now, if I can only love...

The Not-So-Great Commission

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The Great Commission? Honestly, I'm not always a fan.
At least not the way I normally see it done.
Yes, Christ told us to take His gospel into the world.
Once.
In only one place in the Bible does He give us these instructions:
Go and make disciples of all nations...teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.--Matthew 28:19-20

But He didn't say HOW.
He didn't say TELL them.

Why can't we teach by showing them?
Why can't God speak up for Himself?
The Bible seems to think He can.

Are you going to plead Baal's cause? If Baal is really a god, he can defend himself...--Judges 6:31

Baal couldn't, of course, but the God of Israel can and does:
No plan of Yours can be thwarted.--Job 42:2
Our God is in heaven; He does whatever pleases Him.--Psalm 115:3

God does not need us to preach.
In preaching to unbelievers we too often look and sound exactly like those with whom we disagree--with atheists, for instance. An atheist believes as fervently as I do, and he or she wants the same thing I do. He wants to convince me he's right.
"Agree with me," he says. "Admit I'm right, or you will pay the price of your folly."
That, my friend, is preaching boiled down to its simplest component.
And we, trying to fulfill what we think Christ commanded, often do exactly the same.

Better, I think, to do what Christ told us to do not once, but many times:
Believe. Obey. Follow. Love. Forgive. Serve.
In doing these, we will not only speak the Gospel. We will BECOME the Gospel.

Healing What Hurts

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Ow!
Oh, God, please heal kitty. Please?
Or Mommy, or Sally, or Grandma.
Who has a cold, or a broken leg, or cancer...
Please, God, I know you can do it. The Bible says so.

Praise the Lord, Oh my soul, and forget not all His benefits,
Who forgives all your sins, and heals all your diseases--Psalm 103:2-3

But He doesn't all the time, does He? Heal them.
Sometimes they don't get well.  Kitty or Mommy, or Sally, or Grandma.
Why not? Well, for a hint, take a look at the next two verses:
Who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion,
Who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagles'.--Psalm 103:4-5

He doesn't only want to heal, He wants to redeem.
He doesn't only want to save, He wants to give us a crown.
He doesn't only want to make things better, He wants to make them new.
This is what we don't often get:
God doesn't heal everything. He heals what hurts us the most.

Not all cancers are spiritually malignant.
All desires do not renew my life.
God grants the ones that do.

Round and Round We Go

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Oh, those Israelites.
Round and round in the same circle.

They soon forgot what He had done and did not wait for His counsel. In the desert they gave in to their craving; in the wasteland they put God to the test. So He gave them what they asked for, but sent a wasting disease upon them.--Ps 106:14-15

Round and round.

Actively loving God, then complacent, then rationalizing sin, then worshiping idols, then subjected to bondage, then rescued by God, then back to actively loving God again.
They never quite got it, did they?  I wonder why?
I should know, after all. I do it, too.
So do you.

Nobody lives in a constant state of awe and humility before God. Nobody always credits and adores Him for life and love and faith. We all cycle through our own sinful tendencies.
And He knows this. So God gave us a conscience. And He put up danger signs, so we don't have to retrace the same sickening circle all the time.
Do you know your danger signs?
I know mine.
My danger sign is rationalizing.

Here's what rationalizing sounds like:
First comes that prick of conscience, the annoying one, the one I want reason to ignore. Then the justification--
"God won't mind that second, or third, piece of cake. He wants me to be happy and satisfied. He says so."
"I can stay a little later. My husband won't mind."
"I'm so tired. The kids can make their own breakfast. I need to take care of myself, after all."
And I can find a Bible verse to support every one of these.

The bottom line, though, is that I don't want to give up my pleasure and I want God to agree with me.
Sounds a lot like "Did God really say...?", doesn't it?
Rather than using my Bible to teach and enlighten and bring me into God's throneroom, I use it to justify myself.
Here's the beartrap:
The minute I go to my Bible to get more of earth rather than more of God, I'm in trouble.
I have entered my own cycle of sin.
When this happens, this is the next place I must go:
Save us, O Lord our God, and gather us from the nations, that we may give thanks to your holy Name and glory in your praise.--Ps 106:47
It's all God. All God.

Learning from a Prostitute

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One of the tests of sanity is whether we know right from wrong. And most of us do.
Of course, knowing right doesn't always translate into doing right, but it could.  It's simple, after all. Just ask yourself one question:
Do  feel like I need to hide this?

Kathleen Norris tells a story about a monk named Ephrem who, when tempted by a prostitute, asks her to follow him to a crowded place then, once among the throng out in the open, gives her permission to do what she wants with him. He knows that her business is never done in the light, though, and she leaves him unmolested.*

We can put our own temptations to a similar test. Is what we are thinking a thought we can speak out in a crowd? Is what we want to do an act we can perform in public with perfect comfort?
The same reasoning applies to us as it does to the prostitute in Norris' story.
If we feel like we have to hide something, it's probably wrong.

When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night, your hand was heavy on me...then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity.  I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the Lord," and you forgave the guilt of my sin.--Psalm 32: 3-5

Hiding does not work. The only free soul is the one who has nothing to hide.
If I cannot be transparent before men, I cannot live righteously before God.

*Kathleen Norris, The Cloister Walk, p. 278

About Face! But Where?

Repentance.
'Tis the season.
And most of us know that it means more than being sorry.
It means turning around and walking in the opposite direction.
Stop lying and start telling the truth.
Stop losing your temper and start responding calmly and with kindness.
Stop wanting what someone else has and develop satisfaction for what is already yours.

Sounds good.
I can do that.
Well maybe, but even if I can, it's not enough.
No.
It's not enough.

Something else is going on here that requires our strict attention, and it has to do with the nature of sin in the first place.
Remember David:
Against You, You only, have I sinned.--Psalm 51:4

The same goes for us.
Turning around and going in the opposite direction does not mean only changing how I act. It means changing my attitude toward the primary victim of my sin--God.
If God is the true victim, then it is this relationship I need to most urgently repair.

I have sinned against God.
Now, having turned around, I must actively seek God.
That is repentance.

And when we do it, look what God says He will do:
If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and heal their land.--2 Chronicles 7:14

Sounds good to me.

Do Not Forget

God does not forgive, much less forget.
At least not in the way we most often think about it.
Just saying.

He never makes our sins just go 'poof!' and disappear. 
He does, however, move them.
I have swept away your offenses like a cloud, your sins like the morning mist.--Isaiah 44:22
...as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.--Psalm 103:12
But He does not make sin disappear until somebody dies.

When we know we are guilty, He does not forgive.
When we repent, He does not forgive.
Only after somebody dies does God forgive and, for us, God wants that person to be Jesus.

When we repent and believe, our sins are moved to Jesus' back, and He died for them, all of them. 
If we don't repent and believe, we are stuck with our own sins, forever, all the way into eternity, where we must do the dying for them.

Imagine that, every time we lie, a soldier drives another nail through Jesus' hand into the cross.
Every time we cheat or betray or love the world,--another nail, and another and another.
Don't kid yourself.
If you expect forgiveness, this must happen. It must. Either that, or you hang on to your sins right into hell.
The only way out is to stop sinning, which we should probably give serious consideration.
But forgetting may not be such a good idea.

The Rules of Forgiveness

I'm trying to understand the rules of forgiveness.
If the Bible doesn't contradict itself, and it doesn't, then how does this work?
God tells me to
Forgive as the Lord forgave you.--Colossians 3:13

OK. So, how does He forgive?
When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins--Colossians 2:13
So, He forgave me before I repented.

But then He says,
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.-1John 1:9
In other words, I must repent to be forgiven. 

So which is it?

Well, it's both.

When Christ went to Calvary, He proclaimed forgiveness and freedom for all men, although most of them did not know Him, had not even acknowledged His godhead, much less repented.
He did it all, all He could do.
But men still have free will, the free will He gave them.
Jesus did all of his part.  Men were forgiven, but their relationship with Him was not yet repaired.
It takes repentance to do that. 
When we acknowledge and repent of sin, we restore our communion with God.

And that is how we must forgive.
We do what we can while the offender is still clueless, still dead in sin.  We forgive him as Christ forgave us.  Without recompense, without expectation.
Then, sooner or later, he may acknowledge and apologize, repenting for his sin.
That is when, as in Christ, are we restored.

The Look of Real Horror

Aliens vs Godzilla
The Tomato that Ate Cleveland
Halloween 25
It's that time of year again, when horror becomes the pastime du jour.

But most of what passes for horror is only silliness.
Want to see real horror?
Try repentance.

Don't bother looking into the ridiculously manufactured faces of Jason or Frankenstein.
Try looking into the face of our holy God, knowing that you have offended Him and that He does not have to do more than think about your death to make it happen, and that His face turned away will be eternity in howling darkness.
Think about sin, your sin.

You will know when you get it, when the reality of it dawns on you.
You will know.

Why have these people turned away?..They cling to deceit;..no one repents of his wickedness, saying, "What have I done?--Jeremiah 8:5-6

"What have I done?"
The sadness, the devastating reality, the...repentance.
That is horror. Real horror.
Not the movies, not any fright fest, no trick or treating.

We have to go there, you know. And often.
Repentance is not a Sunday thing, not a just-before-church thing, not even a daily thing.
The best repentance comes right away, moment by moment, the same way we sin.

"What have I done?"
And when we know, and repent, Christ will show us again what He has done.

The Cool of the Day

Imagine being Adam and Eve, juice still dripping from their chins, and hearing this:
The Lord God called to the man, "Where are you?"--Genesis 3:9

As if He didn't already know.
But His question reminded Adam and Eve they'd done something wrong. And they grabbed for fig leaves, looking for a place to hide..
It's easy to see that not much has changed. 
We still sin, we still feel shame, and we still try to hide.

And God still takes the initiative to find us.
He still asks, "Where are you?"
This is the real beauty of Eden--God was already seeking Adam before Adam gave Him a thought.  
Adam languished with his wife, satiated, absorbed, waiting to become as wise as God, when God interrupted Adam's torpor with a reminder that He still walked in the cool of the day and still wanted Adam, now disqualified, as a companion.

He does the same for us.
While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.--Romans 5:8
The Son of Man came to seek what was lost.--Luke 19:10

He calls, He leads; we answer, we follow.
And when we do, we can walk again with Him in the cool of the day.

Why the News is Good

Every Sunday, we sing about how God forgave our sins. Adam and Eve sinned.  I sin.  But Jesus came, sweet Jesus, and died for me.   

Jesus died because God wants us to live.  This is the good news, isn't it?  Knowing this, don't we have something to rejoice over, something wonderful to sing about?

Yes, we do.  But if that is as far as we go, we are missing the point. Jesus says He stands at the door. He stands at it crucified, risen, and waiting. But, the door to what?

He told us.  He showed us.  At the moment of His death on Calvary, the curtain of the temple split.  He opened the door to what lay beyond it...Himself. 

 The body of Jesus hung on the cross, but His nature, the holiness He shares with His Father and His Holy Spirit, had been confined to the darkness of the Holy of Holies behind an impenetrable curtain.  Our forgiveness through His death lets us in.

It's Him.  He is the Good News. 


Since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus by a new and living way opened for us through the curtains, that is His body...--Hebrews 10:19-20 (emphasis mine)


Jesus admits us to His own presence.  He tells us to follow Him to Himself.

This is why we sing.  He ushers us in, and there is no other way.

Get Over It--From Faith to Forgiveness

I've heard it said that we live in an age of the perpetually offended. There's some truth in that, I guess. It certainly seems like we do a great deal of tiptoeing around, working too hard to avoid the unpleasantness of strong opinion or the disagreement of firm belief. Sometimes, I just want to scream, "Get over It!"

Unless, of course, I'm the one needing to do the getting over.

I do not like being hurt, ignored, or betrayed any more than anyone else, but it happens, and God has clear instructions for me when it does:

If your brother sins, rebuke him and, if he repents, forgive him. If he sins against you seven times in a day and seven times comes back to you and says, "I repent," forgive him.--Luke 17:3-4

God says forgive. He uses small words and short sentences, but the task is not easy. After Jesus explained the need to forgive to the apostles in the above passage, they, during one of their rare moments of clarity, knew exactly what they needed to do it.

The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!"--Luke 17:5

It takes extra faith to forgive. While unforgiveness has its roots in self-interest and earth-bound understanding, forgiveness steps out of these and casts all of our lot into God's lap. That's why we need faith.

Unforgiveness keeps the focus on us. Forgiveness keeps our focus on God.

Forgiveness operates by the same spiritual mechanisms as obedience. I can neither obey nor forgive if I make earthly justice and my own way the goal. Obedience and forgiveness only happen when I see God rather than myself. I must forgive and obey not because I think I can, but because God tells me to.

Forgiveness and obedience may outwardly change nothing. They right no wrongs, ease no hurts. They do, however, draw me directly to the side of Christ and from there, all things are possible.