Just when I think I know what it means to follow Christ, God throws me a curve ball as if to say, "You're far from finished, Jeff. There's so much more about me that you need to learn."
When I was a new Christian, life was good and fairly simple. I consumed myself with Christian radio, especially talk radio where I could hear sermon after sermon about living the Christian life. The Bible held all the answers to life... and where I couldn't understand it, I had the resource of some masterful teachers who gave me great insight as to what God's Word is all about. Sure, there were difficult things in the Bible that were hard to understand... but by and large, answers to every question in life are contained between those beautiful pages.
Then I went to seminary... and one by one, many of my "safe" presuppositions about what the Bible is, and how it transforms the human heart were kicked out from under me. Don't worry... I'm not a Bible basher... in fact, just the opposite. Anyone who's ever been to The River will tell you that I'm huge on getting people to read large portions of the Bible. I may have changed my thoughts about how God intended us to interact with the Scriptures... but nevertheless, my passion remains. In fact, I would definitely say it's grown deeper and deeper as I've allowed my entire self to be studied and interpreted by the words of God, rather than merely being the study-er that stands over the Scriptures in a purely intellectual pursuit.
I wonder if that's how Peter felt after his crazy dream about eating non-kosher food. Here he was, a good Jewish man who was raised to believe the Jewish Law is the absolute and final word on religion... only to meet Jesus the Messiah who turned his Old Testament beliefs about God's Son upside down. Then, when he gets over that hurdle, God hits him with another challenge to his system of belief: God is not limited to saving the Jews only... that is, any more than Jews are limited to eating food that is "clean" according to the Law of Moses.
What? Didn't God give Moses the Law? Wasn't it Yahweh who mandated that Jews cannot eat pork? Why the change of heart? How are we supposed to just let go of what we deeply believe as biblical truth, when God commands us to break His very rules?
Now let's bring it in to our context... what would you say are the prototypical sinful behaviors listed in the Bible that are absolutely wrong according to God? Of those, which ones seem to be getting violated by people in this world on a daily basis? What I mean is... which of the sins listed in the Bible has the world tried to condone and show tolerance toward?
Got one in mind...? Good. Now here's the follow-up question: What should our response as God's children be to those 'sinners?' Shall we stone them? Shall we shout them down? Shall we curse them? Shall we haul them off to court? Shall we make jokes about them? Shall we make them feel less than human?
Perhaps we should say it's not really sin. Perhaps we should distort God's Word to placate our cultural difficulties? Perhaps we should appoint these people as leaders of our churches? Perhaps we should pretend that sin is not sin? Perhaps we should just look the other way so the world won't hate us anymore.
Hmmmm... then again, perhaps we should love them the way Christ loves us.
The question is... how?
Wow, I thought of these verses:
ReplyDelete"He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first." (John 8:7)
"This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief." (1 Timothy 1:15)
Seems odd that Paul, whom I assume most would consider a great minister, said he was chief among sinners... not in the past but present (he said AM not WAS).
Jesus made it clear that none of us are without sin, allowing the woman to escape the Law demanding stoning for her sin.
I know that people argue the continuation of choosing to sin versus the sin we seem to fall into without much thought as being drastically different when it comes to being accepted as a leader. Though it is true that some say certain behaviors are not sinful even though Scripture says not to participate. is that where the debate lies? I don't know. I do know that even my thoughts are sin, yet I continue to have those thoughts... so how am I different? Does God's mercy reach beyond forgiving my thoughts to forgiving the actions the thoughts represent that some others may act upon (and which even I sometimes do)?
All I know is that I'm so glad God is the Judge, not me.
I'm hungry!
ReplyDeleteFood for thought..... How do you love them and not condone the sin? Oh, I know... treat them like Jesus did when he walked the earth, not like the man in the back of the church thanking God he was not like them....humm... Food for thought.
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