John 5

The older I get, the more I like them – doctors, that is. I have a rheumatologist for my arthritis, a dermatologist for my psoriasis, an ENT doctor for my sinus condition, and a regular doctor I call Wayne for everything else.

But the sad truth is, I’m getting older, and I’m just falling apart. Not that I’m complaining, mind you: some guys my age have already gone on to their just reward (whatever that is). I’ll be joining them one day, and so will you. Pardon the cliché, but death is just another part of living.

That’s why I marvel at the folks who insist that the mission of Jesus was primarily to bring about physical healing. And to be sure, he did his share of healing. Take this poor lame fellow here in John chapter five, for instance. There he was, just sitting by the pool waiting for an angel to stir up the water. According to legend, the first person to jump in after the angelic stirring would be healed of whatever ailed him. Maybe it was the Ancients’ version of Last One in is a Rotten Egg.

Of course, this wasn’t the only instance where Jesus was found healing sick, crippled, or even dead people. He seemed to be doing it all the time, and the crowds loved him for it.
But if we are to maintain that his mission was simply to heal, I have a couple of problems with that. First of all, everyone he healed eventually died anyhow. Sure, he relieved them of their physical bonds for the moment, but the end result was still the same. They croaked. Secondly, since he was in a sense God, why didn’t he just heal everyone on earth at the same time? He could have done that from heaven and spared himself the cross.

The truth is, his purpose was higher, much more otherworldly than simple physical healing. For the creator of the universe, healing was a simple task. It cost him nothing, and could be done by simply reversing, or suspending, the laws of nature. After all, they were his laws, weren’t they?

As far as I can tell, Jesus’ purpose in healing this particular man was two-fold.

First of all, he exposed the hypocrisy of Jewish tradition. As with all religious tradition, it at some point supplants the will of God. God simply said, “Don’t carry a burden on the Sabbath.” This law was designed to make sure man took a break from the distractions of life and reflected on his relationship with his creator.

What strikes me odd about this event is that the Jewish leaders ignored the obvious: in Jesus’ healing of this poor fellow, something took place that could not be explained away. God had intervened in the natural order of things and broken his own rules. Simply put, crippled men don’t just jump up from their beds of affliction and start dancing around. The only explanation for this man’s healing is that God had performed an immediate and undeniable miracle.

Can you imagine witnessing such an occurrence only to point out that the one performing the healing had violated tradition? One would think that the only appropriate response would be, Good grief! Did you see what I just saw? Not so with these fellows. They didn’t care about the crippled fellow or that God had just done something miraculous in their presence. Tradition had been broken, and everyone knows that we can’t do that.

What really gets my attention, however, is that Jesus appears to have a purpose in healing this fellow that goes beyond making him whole, namely to lay out his business plan for his kingdom. If you notice, he responded to the objections of the rabbis with a bold proclamation – I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death into life.

Forget physical healing, we are talking about resurrection here. I would hope that I would have been one of those who would see Jesus’ miracles and later witness his resurrection from the tomb and said, Hey, I don’t care about tradition or protocol or social convention. I’m with this guy! He heals sick people, raises dead people, and now he himself has walked away from the tomb. And he promises that I can do the same thing? This is a no-brainer. I'm going with Jesus.

But who knows? Maybe I would have been one of the skeptics. Maybe I am one of the skeptics, but I would like to think that I would be like this fellow who in telling the Jews who it was who healed him seemed to be saying, Well, don’t you look pretty all dressed up in your robes. All those years I languished by the pool and you didn’t raise a finger to render aid to me. Then along comes this Jesus and heals me. And later on, after I’m dead, he’s going to give me eternal life.

Hmmm! When faced with the decision to follow Jesus or not, it is a fairly easy one to make when you think about it like that, isn't it?

john 4(part 3)

Review time!

The woman was all wrong on three counts. Her ethnicity was wrong. Her gender was wrong. Her moral character was wrong.

No doubt about it, this woman’s life was a mess.

Take a look around you. Maybe someone quite like her lives on your street. What? Oh, I’m so sorry – I didn’t mean to insult you. Of course you don’t live around people like her. Nope! Note in your neighborhood. But surely you’ve seen her at the mall or maybe when you drove past a bar late at night on your way home from worshipping with the saints, and she's standing out front acting all available and stuff.

This lady, like a lot of us do when someone begins to make us uncomfortable about how we live our lives, wanted to get off the hot topic of her multiple sex partners, so she blurted out the most pertinent question she could think of. "Where is the proper place to worship – the Samaritan temple or the one in Jerusalem. Now you and I are on to her little bait-and-switch game. We know she didn’t give a whit about what Jesus thought. She only wanted to deflect the impending judgment she was certain was forthcoming.

So how would he answer? How would you answer? Probably I would have explained that the temple in Jerusalem was ordained by God and that it housed the scrolls that proved Jewish lineage. I would further elucidate the fact that since she could not prove her Jewness, she was in effect illegitimate – a half-breed bastard if you please.

I’m sure my response would have produced a wellspring of positive response.

Jesus, on the other hand, went right to the point. Ironically, the question she posed in order to turn the discussion away from her actually hit to the heart of the human condition. Simply put, worshipping God is not a matter of time or place. It’s about spirit and truth. It is an attitude of the heart. It is a morning, noon, and night thing. I’m thinking of the word “consuming.”

We, however, want to limit worship. It’s more comfortable for us that way. Eleven o’clock on Sunday morning, we turn our worship button on. Eleven forty-five, we turn it off. Twelve noon and we're on overtime. Religious duty done for the week. If we’re really committed, we return for another thirty minutes of torment on Sunday evening. And if we’re really righteous, we punch our card again at Wednesday night prayer meeting. The rest of the week, we’re free to raise hell (literally speaking).

I hope this doesn’t offend you, but our language betrays us. Ever heard of “worship service?” How about “going to worship?” Or maybe you like the post-modern “worship leader” or “worship team.” Then there is the ever popular praise and “worship” music.

This is not to say that we are not worshipping when we come together. We are. But what else could Jesus have meant when he said “The time is coming when you will worship the Father neither here on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. For the Father is looking for worshippers who will worship him in spirit and in truth?” In my humble opinion, Jesus took the time and place thing out of worship and replaced it with another model.

Isn’t that what Paul meant when he said, “I urge you, therefore, in view of God’s mercy to offer your bodies as living sacrifices … this is your spiritual act of worship.” It seems to me that he is advocating a wholly distinct view of worship. No longer is it temple or church sanctuary, but a total surrendering of self and will to God. And this surrendering is borne out one’s clear view of God’s unparalleled mercy and grace. In other words, when I view the cost of his mercy, I surrender (sacrifice) my body to him. After all, that’s what he did for me. That kind of worship has nothing to do with "church" and everything to do with me and my heart.

The truth is (and you and I both know it), anyone can sit on a pew (and why do they call it a pew anyhow?) for an hour a week. Anyone can drink some grape juice, eat a piece of cracker, and sing a few songs if that’s all there is to worship. But offering my own body up as a sacrifice? Now that’s another matter. My body might not seem like much to hang on to to you, but it’s all I’ve got.

Back to the woman at the well. It is interesting to note that she left her jar of water to run back to the village and tell everyone that she had met the Messiah. That might not seem like much of a sacrifice to people like you and me who only have to turn a knob to have an endless supply of water running down the drain out into the sewer. But in an arid region like Samaria, water was a precious commodity. It wasn’t wasted. But the possibility that she had met the Messiah put everything into perspective.

Priorities change when you meet the son of God.

John 4(part 2)

Okay, so we’ve enumerated the social problems Jesus had in speaking with a person of questionable lineage in public. And not only was she one of “those” people, she was a she. The point is, if you’re trying to start a world-wide movement, you just don’t go around violating social customs like this. It just isn’t done. Like the time my mother stopped me at J.C. Penney’s just before I drank from the water fountain clearly marked “COLORED.” And I wasn’t even trying to start a movement. Shoot, I wasn’t even running for class president. I was only eight years old, for goodness sake. I just had a pure heart at the time.

Unfortunately for the defenders of social custom, Jesus isn’t finished shattering expectations. In addition to all the other problems with this woman’s resume, she was also a woman of – shall we say – questionable character. To be specific, this woman had been around the block a time or two. Married five times and currently “rooming” with a dude. Here in the South, we call this “shacking-up.

Now Jesus really is in trouble. You don’t have to read the Bible for too many days before you understand that women who slept around usually got stoned in his day. And I’m not talking about the Bob Dylan kind of stoned either. I’m talking death penalty here.

But there he was, right there in John chapter four not only speaking with but initiating intimate conversation with this half-breed whore. As my mother used to say, what was he thinking?

If you didn’t know your God so well, you might think that God’s son was opening the doors to the kingdom a whole lot wider than they used to be.

And so he begins to dangle the bait of the kingdom before her eyes. Go back and read it for yourself. The exchange is intriguing. Give me some water please - I thought you Jews hated us - If you knew me, you would ask ME, and I would give you living water – Sir, give me this living water, so I don’t have to keep coming to the well for it.

Finally, he gets to the point – You’ve got that right. You have had five husbands and you’re shacking up right now.

Ouch! That one had to hurt. To be honest with you, this woman did what I would have done – she changed the subject by posing a deep theological question about where the proper place to worship was - First Baptist or Third Presbyterian? That’s what I want to know. I know my life’s a wreck, but I’m dying to know which church is the one true church.

His answer? It might surprise you.

John 4 (part one)

Okay, let’s activate a little background knowledge. But I’m going to ask you to be honest here – you’ve done it before, right? What I mean is you’ve avoided “that” neighborhood on your way from one side of town to the other, haven’t you? Go ahead and admit it. We’ve all done it.

Sometimes your decision to take the long way around is a pragmatic one. You’ve read about the gang-related violence over there. Maybe you read about how a woman was abducted at a red light, taken to a secluded area, was raped and killed. Or maybe you’ve heard about the plethora of drive-by shootings in that area of town. So you just avoid it.

Or maybe we just don’t like the way people who live in a certain neighborhood look.

For whatever reason, we take the long way around.

I don’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable about your decision to avoid certain people. I’m just trying to help us understand the position of the “godly” Jews who would go miles out of their way in order to avoid going through Samaria.

The shortest distance between two points is, in the new millennium, a straight line. But that fact was true when I was a kid too. Mrs. Bulger, my tenth grade geometry teacher taught me that fact. I didn’t know it until then. My reputation at the time did not normally include listening to anything teachers had to say, but Mrs. Bulger was a particularly good-looking woman, so I hung on her every word. And I learned this very important fact.

So I am able to testify with absolute certainty that the shortest distance between two points was a fact way back when I was in school. As a matter of fact, it was also true in Jesus’ day. I don’t know – it is somehow one of those tested geometric principles that has endured throughout the ages.

It is therefore noteworthy that John records that when Jesus left Judea and went to Galilee he had to go through Samaria. The truth is that he did not have to go through Samaria. He could have done like all the other Jews did and take the long way around it.

To the Jews, Samaritans were an especially vile people. Half-breeds, they were rejected by the Jews, so they established their own temple in order to worship God. This of course only added to the hatred the Jews had for them. So intense was their hatred of the Jews for the Samaritans that some Pharisees would pray that no Samaritan would be resurrected.

So what did John mean when he stated that Jesus “had” to go through Samaria?

It could be that he had to go through his Samaria because he knew that he had a mission to fulfill. More than meeting the needs of the woman he would encounter at the well, he would make a statement about his purpose in coming in the first place – that regardless of ethnicity or even moral failure, the kingdom of God employs an open-door policy.

But there were other complications with his meeting this woman. Besides the fact that she was a hated Samaritan, she was also a woman. Much like the attitudes of many in the Middle East today, good Jews in Jesus’ day did not speak to women in public. It was beneath them. Women were not really human in the same way that a man was. Women were property, in subjection to men. In western cultures, there is no such prohibition, so it is difficult for us to understand how much Jesus speaking with this woman violated the prevailing custom. But rest assured, almost everyone would consider his behavior to be inappropriate even sinful.

But there he was not only speaking with her but initiating conversation. Worse yet, he was requesting that she give him a drink – out of her Big Gulp cup. Believe me – this was his biggest mistake of the day because Jews would never use the same utensils as a Samaritan especially a Samaritan woman.

If you are old enough and you grew up in the South, you might remember a similar and equally offensive custom that was codified in Jim Crow laws no more than thirty or forty years ago. Separate water fountains for black and white people. Most gas stations offered a restroom for women another for men and another for “colored” people. It was usually on the back side of the station and was often unkempt. Hospitals and other offices had different entrances for white and black people. It was a pervasive custom that seeped into every aspect of Southern culture.

The reason? Much like the attitude that the Jews had toward Samaritans and gentiles, black people were considered to be genetically and socially inferior to white people. Never mind that most Southerners considered themselves to be born-again Christians, this institutional disrespect continued until the United States government imposed equal rights on the region.

Religion is a funny thing, isn’t it? But more on that later – and the woman at the well too.

John 3: Jesus, the Great Teacher (part 4)

To believe or not to believe? That is the question. Sorry, Hamlet. I couldn’t resist. But to be honest, that is the dilemma we all face, isn’t it? Every person who ever heard the good news has had to make that decision. But to believe is not to just give mental assent. This belief is one fraught with danger. It requires one to sell-out, to make a commitment so deep and so total that it not only improves who we are but changes who we are. Once we become believers, we are never the same – forever and radically altered. And even those words fall short of describing the demands of belief.

What Jesus is essentially doing in this encounter is laying down the conditions for entry into the kingdom of God. Under the previous system, one was a Jew by birth. He maintained his birthright by performing specified religious rituals. Of course, we know that true relationship to God was always a matter of faith – believing. But Jesus draws the line in the sand here. He makes it abundantly clear what he expects from those who would be in his kingdom.

To be honest, I’ve often wished for a new start. And you have too, haven’t you? Ever said, “If I could go back to when I was twenty (knowing what I know now), my life would be so different than what it turned out to be?”

Well, duh! For one thing, I would have invested every penny I ever earned in Microsoft and Apple. I would have avoided Krispy Kreme donuts like the plague. I would have spent more time with my wife and kids. I would have helped more old ladies across the street (you never know when one of them might be rich and leave her money to you).

Unfortunately for the flesh side of me, that is not at all what Jesus is talking about here. For one thing, I have been a fleshly kind of guy for as long as I can remember. I am truly drawn to the principles that govern this world. I want money. I want six-pack abs. I hate that double chin of mine so much that I would let a doctor cut it off if I had the money. I want nice cars and a house I can be proud of. The lure of the world is as common to me as it is to every human being who ever lived. I want what I want, and I want it now! And I want more of it now!

And that, I think is Jesus’ point in John 3. In order to enter the kingdom of God, there has to be a radical and complete shift in what is important to me. In other words, who and what I want to please changes. In the mind of the kingdom-minded man, the desire to satisfy the flesh doesn’t evaporate, but he makes a conscious decision to believe Jesus’ words about the flesh – that it counts for nothing. When I believe his words, I make a corresponding decision to be controlled by the spirit of God rather than my flesh. When my mind is focused on that truth, I choose to obey the spirit rather than the flesh every time (no matter how strong the pull on my flesh to satisfy itself).

Where I get in trouble is when my focus is not on the spiritual but on the flesh. Look around you! The entire world is operating on the principle of flesh satisfaction. The flesh is all about me and nothing about finding out what pleases God. For someone to break out of that fleshly mold and live his life on the entirely opposite principle is so radical in its difference that it’s like becoming a new person.

I know someone is going to say, “Hey, what about baptism? That’s what Jesus meant when he said ‘water and the spirit.’”

Maybe so. But even if he was talking about baptism when said “water,” that’s still not the point. If someone has not believed Jesus’ words about flesh and made the decision to submit to his will, what good would getting wet do? So what if I’m baptized in water. You think that’s going to make me a new person? If water baptism was all there was to entering the kingdom, I’ve got a better idea than believing. We round up some of those husky boys that hang around the gas station in my neck of the woods and we go out and find baptismal “candidates,” tie them up with duct tape (which is very common in my neighborhood), throw them in the back of one of the thousands of pickup trucks that run the roads around here, and take them to the river. Easy as pie!

I believe in the necessity of baptism as much as the next guy, but baptizing a fellow who has not believed in Jesus or in his words is like…, well, I can’t think of analogy so ridiculous that it would show you how foolish it would be to dunk an unrepentant, unbelieving man in water.

“ You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born again.' The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."

John 3: Jesus, the Great Teacher (part 3)

Have you ever considered this story from Nicodemus’ point of view? Well, I have. And I’ve got to be very forthright here – I completely identify with the poor fellow.

Think about it this way: He witnesses a few of Jesus’ miracles, so he begins to think to himself that there is no way that Jesus could be pulling off these signs and wonders if God were not with him. Am I on the right track here? So he goes to Jesus one night just to talk to him. Surely he knew that some of the other Pharisees would have raked him over the proverbial coals if they had seen him making this renowned visit. It’s not like he would be unwilling to take a public stand for Jesus if he were absolutely sure. Later on, after the execution of Jesus, Nicodemus was one of the fellows who carried his body to the tomb, so we know that he was a man of principle. But at this point, he just wasn’t sure – at least he wasn’t sure enough to stand next to Jesus as he preached in the synagogue. So he pays him a visit before he makes a total and public commitment.

And what does he get in return? If you want to know what I think, I think he gets what looks like at first glance, a runaround.

“Unless you are born again…”

Two thousand years later, this statement makes perfect sense – at least we think it does. But Nicodemus did not have our perspective. Jesus’ words were fresh off the press. Live TV, if you will. What do you think must have been going through his head at this point?

Born again? What in the world could he mean by born again? What am I supposed to do now? Go back up into my mother’s womb and come out again? I weigh 150 pounds now and I’m five feet seven inches tall. What in the world is all this born again talk? I just want to know if he’s from God or not.

What would you have done at this point? I would like to think that I would have pursued it further. But I would have probably been saying to myself, “Something's a little off with this guy. How am I going to get out of this one?"

Me? I probably would have been thinking of a thousand excuses for why it was necessary for me to leave.

I’m assuming here that Jesus was well aware of the fact that Nicodemus was confused by his reply. Personally, I would have responded to Nicodemus differently. I would have been more direct. But then again, I’m not the son of God. My problem is that I’m not as sure of where I came from, where I’m going, or why I’m here as Jesus was. He knew who he was. He knew his purpose. And he definitely knew the message he wanted to deliver to the world into which he had been thrust. So Nicodemus’ temporary discomfort was subjugated to Jesus’ greater purpose. Jesus knew that what he would teach Nicodemus that night would offer him the opportunity to live a vastly different life than the one he would have lived had he never encountered the son of God. As a matter of fact, his offer of a new and different life still stands over two thousand years later.

That’s why God is so good at what he does, by the way – he always sees the bigger picture. You and I are more prone to value the here and now, but God sees all the way to the end. And so, in the interest of the greater picture, Jesus adds to the confusion.

"No one can enter the kingdom of God if he is not born of the water and the spirit. "

And now for the big question – what does it mean to be born again? What does it mean to be born of the water and the spirit?

John 3: Jesus the Great Teacher (pt2)

The truth is, lots of people are like Karen. They want to know which way the wind is blowing before they make a commitment. Politicians are renowned for possessing this useful character trait. You remember John Kerry, don’t you? Fair or not, George Bush was able to successfully paint him as a flip-flopper on the issues. Of course, John didn’t help himself when he said he voted for the war before he voted against it.

And that’s the problem of course with taking stands that are not rooted in principle. If your goal is to find out what everybody else is thinking before you tell them what you are thinking, you get caught when the wind changes direction.

Our friend Nicodemus here in chapter three has developed quite a reputation as a wind-tester over the years. Many is the sermon I’ve heard deriding him as a sneaky little Jew. The preachers would paint an unseemly portrait of Nicodemus as they had him slinking around in the middle of the night to find out if Jesus was for real or not. To hear the preachers tell it, it wasn’t hard to imagine him darting from one dark spot to the next as he navigated his way to where Jesus was staying. Maybe he lightly tapped on the door as he cast one furtive glance after another up and down the street to make sure he had made his journey undetected.

All of this makes for good commentary, but we don’t know a whole lot about poor, maligned Nicodemus except that he was a Pharisee and that he came to Jesus after sundown. We also know that he was kind to Jesus in his death, so he must have been a pretty good fellow after all.

There are a couple of other things about Nicodemus I think I like.

For one thing, in spite of being in danger of suffering severe political and social consequences at the hands of his fellow Pharisees, he still made the inquiry. Secondly, he was honest enough in his search for God to recognize that Jesus could not have performed the miracles he performed were God not with him. Other Pharisees would witness the same miracles and still accuse Jesus of working for the Evil One.

But this story isn’t about Nicodemus as much as it is about how Jesus responded to this inquiring man. We’ll spend a little time on that tomorrow.

John 3: Jesus the Great Teacher (pt 1)

Maybe you’ve had an experience like the one I had in the fourth grade. Actually, I have had several of these experiences through the years, but I particularly remember this one.

I was at that age - if you know what I mean. Well, maybe you don’t know what I mean. What I mean is, I was at that age when all boys begin to notice that there is something profoundly different about the opposite sex – GIRLS. That’s not to say that I was prepared to take the plunge and actually have a girlfriend – shoot, I wasn’t even prepared to admit to any living soul that I might be ready to admit that I possessed even the remotest interest in girls. But just between you and me, I was beginning to notice. And I liked what I saw. Well, forget the just-between-you-and-me thing – I’m an old man – who cares if you tell now?

Well, there I was on the playground hanging around with all the other boys who were also beginning to like girls but wouldn’t admit it when all of a sudden, Debbie Underwood came running from across the sandy lot where the girls congregated in their segregated coven. It took a minute to realize it, but she was headed straight for me.

And I’ll never forget her words – Can we talk? Oh, what profundity.

So Debbie and I sauntered off to the side together. We stopped. We looked one another in the eyes but only briefly because back in the day, looking girls in the eye caused my intestinal track to writhe in spastic rhythm.

Karen Thurston wants to know if you like her.

Well, sure I did. I had in fact been worshiping from across the playground the ground that Karen Thurston walked on for months. She was everything to me. I could not have imagined life without her. But I had not dared to offer my hand to her. In fact, I had taken great pains not to show any interest in her at all. Even though I loved her with all my heart, I would not make myself vulnerable to that one human experience that we all loathe with every fiber of our being – rejection!

I know now what I did not know then – Karen suffered the same phobia as I. She feared that I would reject her, and it was safer to experience it second-hand, as it were, coming from me to Debbie to her than had she heard it from my mouth. So she sent a surrogate.

Just so you’ll have closure on this story, I looked Debbie in the eye (briefly again), laughed, and said those ill-fated words I shall never forget - Is she nuts?

Thus, a romance that might have rivaled that of Romeo and Juliet never took root. The seed of love never germinated. The blossom of love… you get the point, don’t you?

The story John tells of Nicodemus in chapter three is where I am headed, of course. Just hang on! I think you’ll get the point. But more about that tomorrow.

John 2: Jesus - the Son of Man

So here’s the story as I see it. Jesus goes to a wedding party. The party goes on until late in the night. The guests drink all of the grape juice. Jesus makes some more out of water. The guests marvel at its quality.

That would be a nice story if it weren’t for one little Greek word (those pesky foreign languages). You see, the Greek word translated as “too much to drink” (drunk freely, KJV), actually means “to get drunk.” That’s right – get drunk. If you want to check me out on this, have at it. The transliteration of the word is methusko. Everywhere else in the New Testament, it means just what I said it means – get drunk.

Now back to the new and properly revised story: Jesus goes to a wedding party. The party goes on until late in the night. The guests get drunk. They run out of wine. Jesus makes some more out of water. It must have been alcoholic wine because the host of the party says (my translation), “Most people bring out the cheap wine after everyone gets drunk. You, however, have saved the best wine for last.”

Now before you go running off and telling my mother that I’m advocating getting drunk (I'm not), I would ask you to just hear me out on this. Not that it matters what I say about anything having to do with the Bible; I’m just asking you to check me out. Sort of a Fox News/Bill O’Reilly sort of commentary on the Bible, if you will – I report. You decide.

The reason that all of this matters I can trace back to the Jesus I met in Sunday school when I was growing up. And let me tell you one thing, he’s a lot different that the Jesus here in John chapter two. I could never have imagined him making wine for a party. I can't even imagine him going to a party.

The first problem I had with Sunday School Jesus is that he was a sissy. I’m sorry, but if you ever saw the Sunday school curriculum back in my day, you would have to agree with me. His long blonde hair hung in waves around his shoulders. He was handsome, even pretty - I could never tell. A halo hovered over his head that looked like the fluorescent light in my grandmother’s bathroom. That just freaked me out. But I think the worst thing about my Sunday School Jesus was the way he held his hands out in front of him with his palms extended toward his viewers. That really gave me the creeps.

I’ve got to be honest with you: I’ve never seen a man who even remotely resembled Sunday School Jesus in appearance. He was untouchable, unapproachable even. He’s the kind of guy who could change the conversation when a group of the guys were hanging around the boat ramp at the lake.

“I been thinking about getting a new four-stroke Honda fifty horse with a …, shhhh - here comes that weird guy with the circle of light over his head who holds his hands out in front of him all funny like.”

No sir, you would never talk regular guy stuff around my Sunday School Jesus. As my brother-in-law often tells me, you could tell Sunday School Jesus weren’t from around here.

The problem with my Sunday School Jesus is that you just can’t find him in the Bible. I’m telling you the truth – he’s nowhere to be found. Not even a hint of him. But he keeps showing up at church.

On the other hand, the Jesus I see in the Bible is a rugged man who later in this chapter made a whip out of ropes and beat the fool out of some ruffians who were messing up his father’s house. He told his followers that he came to cause trouble. He told his disciples to buy weapons. All of this and he never took up weapons against anyone. In fact, he marched willingly and fearlessly to his death. He wasn't all that easy to figure out. As a matter of fact, he seemed to go out of his way to confuse people. Almost like he was playing head games with them sometimes. At other times he was brutally direct.

Another thing I like about the Bible Jesus is that he hung around with regular guys. Four were fishermen. One was a hated tax collector. Another was a revolutionary who wanted to throw the Romans out of Palestine – by force. Even Jesus was a carpenter. They certainly were not the theological seminary types, I can tell you that for sure. Instead, they were rowdy and impulsive. Luke calls them unschooled and ordinary.

Jesus was indeed one of the guys in many respects, but he also had a tender spot for people that a lot of men don't have. He noticed blind people and crippled folks. He paid attention to widows and children. He could spot a hypocrite a mile away. One minute he was pouring scalding hot water on the self-righteous, the next he was lifting a humiliated whore out of the dust and asking her where her accusers were.

That’s why this story in John 2 is so important to me. He’s at a wedding. He’s talking to other common people. All around him this party is going on, and no one notices that the son of God is in their midst? The bride and groom are gazing blissfully into one another’s eyes. The proud parents are boasting about how many grandkids the union will produce. The attendees are catching up on news from relatives and friends they haven’t seen in a while. The house is filled with joy and laughter. But no one notices that Messiah is at the party.

What do you think would have happened if my Sunday School Jesus had floated into the room on a misty clould? He would have broken up the party, that's what.

Abraham Honey, let’s go home. I know it’s early, but that Sunday School Jesus is giving the me the creeps. Look at how he holds out his hands. Something ain’t right with that boy.

I know it’s hard for us to accept the fact that Jesus was a man – a real man. What I' not sure about is why. Maybe it’s because he lived a life none of us has ever been able to live, and that is inconceivable to us. We might be thinking, I don’t know about that tempted- in- every- way- as- I- have thing. There’s no way he could have stood up to the temptations I’ve faced and remained sinless.

So we invent another Jesus, one who was aloof – above the fray. Sanitized, if you will. My Sunday School Jesus resembled a man – sort of. But not really. He was alien, from another planet. Nothing like me.

Maybe I want to sanitize Jesus because if I can negate his humanity, I can negate his suffering. If I can negate his suffering, I can negate the part I played in his dying. So I turn his palms outward, I let him play the part of an effeminized, angelic almost-man, and call him Savior. My Jesus suffered, but it wasn’t all that bad; after all, he had a halo.

What’s the difference, you might be asking. You might wonder why it’s so important for me to see Jesus as a real man. Why did Jesus have to appear in human flesh anyhow? Why did he have to be made just like me with all the trappings of humanity?

The Belgic Confession states, He sent his son to assume the nature in which the disobedience had been committed, in order to bear in it the punishment of sin by his most bitter passion and death.

Those words go a long way in explaining why. By his suffering and death, he paid the penalty for my guilt. But that’s not all.

The truth is I had to have some evidence that God was willing to adopt me as one of his own before I could accpet his offer of mercy. That he would do so was inconceivable to me. I’m too dirty, too sinful for him to do that. Every time he approached me, I ran the other way. In my mind I was an enemy with him because of my evil behavior. Because of my sin, I was alienated from him.

Sometimes, when I call out to the God of heaven, I imagine that no one, especially God, can understand me. I envision an enormous gulf between me and him – one that I could never traverse, one that he would be unwilling to. More than anything, I am consumed with my own unworthiness. If the gap would be bridged, it would not be me who did it.

Yes, I was alienated from God. But listen to the rest of the story:

Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation-- if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant. (Col 1:21-23)

The story of Jesus is that God appeared – as a man just like me. He didn’t have an edge on me except that he knew who he was, where he had come from, and where he was headed. But the human condition was real to him. The alluring pull of sin and the excruciating agony that accompanies resisting it was authentic, the genuine product.

In the end, he died because of me. Sad as it is, it is my only hope. And by placing my faith in his bloody death as the only way I will be released from my open rebellion to God, I glorify God. He reconciled me by Christ’s physical body through death. He did that to present me holy, unblemished, and free from accusation. That's not about me but him.

Even though the Bible Jesus is a lot more demanding than Sunday School Jesus, I’m going with him. I don’t know, he just seems like he fits in around here. He’s our kind of people if you know what I mean.

John 1 (part II)

All I know about sheep you could put on the back of a postage stamp. As a matter of fact, I think I must have been in my forties before I had any contact with the gentle creatures at all. I had been living in a rural area of North Florida for about three years when a man and his son bought the land next to my house. Everyone else in the area raised cattle or hogs. Imagine my surprise, will you, when I awoke one morning to see fifty or sixty sheep grazing in the pasture next to mine.

There I was, minding my own business at six o'clock in the morning when all of a sudden ... Baaaaaaaa. It sounded like thousands of them right outside my window. Of course there weren’t literally thousands, but I knew right away that we were dealing with something surreal, otherworldly.

So here's what little I know from observing sheep from the other side of the fence:
• sheep don't bite grass like cattle do; they pull it up.
• sheep are harmless
• sheep are vulnerable to predators
• sheep are almost childlike
• Sheep aren’t all that smart.
Personally, I couldn't imagine taking any one of those trusting souls in my hand and slitting their throats with a knife. But that was the life of most of my neighbor's sheep: he sold them to a merchant in Miami who sold them to members of the occult to be used in animal sacrifices. Even though animal sacrifice is disgusting to us post-modern types, the practice of sacrificing sheep for one religious reason or another goes back thousands of years. Most of the time people did it to atone for sin or appease some deity.

As a matter of fact, the ritual sacrifice of innocent animals began the biblical narrative that ended with Jesus. You remember the story, of course: Adam and Eve violate the one-law legal code. The ensuing guilt awakens a certain never-before-felt awareness that they are naked, so they hastily prepare a new wardrobe of fig leaves and hide out in the bushes from an approaching creator. He finds their apparel unacceptable and fashions new clothing made of animal skins.

So for the first time in human history, man sins and an innocent animal pays the price. Blood was shed to cover sinful man.

Fast-forward a few years. Moses is doing God’s bidding on that captivity thing. I don’t know why God wanted to choose those whining, complaining, fickle Israelites for his people, but he did. So he chooses a reluctant leader in Moses and begins to work his miracles. Flies, frogs, bloody water … all kinds of revolting plagues befall the Egyptians in an effort to persuade Pharaoh to let his people go.

Pharaoh stood his ground. You have to respect him for that. But then the mother of all plagues was thrust upon Pharaoh and his people: all the firstborn in all of Egypt died in a single night. The only ones to escape this calamity were the undeserving Jews who killed an animal and sprinkled the animal’s blood on their door posts. Once again, man sins and an innocent animal pays the price.

Perhaps the most riveting story of sacrifice is found in the narrative of Abraham. Remember that he was a hundred years old and his wife was ninety when messengers from the Almighty appeared to him to bring the “good news” that his wife was pregnant. Never mind the fact that this message would by anything but good news to me, it was a different time and a vastly different culture. Abraham was ecstatic.

But as God so often does, he throws what at first appears to be a wet blanket on Abraham’s joy. The only details the Bible gives of Abraham’s response is that he went about the business of doing what God told him to do. It (his response) seems almost matter-of-fact, if you want to know the truth. But surely, something must have been bouncing off the inside of Abraham’s skull, don’t you think.

I don’t know, maybe he was thinking something like, “What? I’ve waited all these years for a son, praying, pleading with God, and now he wants me to take him on the mountain, slit his throat, and offer his body as a burnt offering?”

To make matters worse for Abraham, God’s language seems to be carefully chosen to make certain that Abraham and we get the full personal cost of the sacrifice he is demanding of Abraham – “Take your son, your only son, the son you love…”

To the worldly, it might appear that God is working overtime to make sure that Abraham grasps the enormity of the pain and sense of loss he is about to experience. Unless you are a father, you cannot fully comprehend the sense of panic that begins to take root in your heart when you contemplate the loss of a child. And to entertain the thought that your only child, a child that was given to you in your old age after years of waiting, would be taken away from you is almost unbearable. But to visualize Almighty God commanding you to cut his throat and burn his body?

Of course, God stopped him before he went too far. I’m glad he did because it would be a hard story for me to read.

But the truth is an even greater travesty occurred a couple of thousand years later. John the Baptist says of Jesus, “Look, the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” In John’s account of Jesus’ life, we will see a story of a father who sacrifices his own son. He sends him away from home knowing full well that he will be killed. Furthermore, he will be assassinated by the very ones he is visiting the planet to save. So not only does the father know that the son will die, the son knows it too.

The only problem is, there will be no ram in the thicket this time. This time the son really dies. But just like Abraham received his son back from the dead in a figurative sense, this time the son really is resurrected from the grave. The son dies, but he defies death and bursts forth from the tomb three days later.

So here’s the story: the son accomplishes two things in his appearing on Planet Earth. First of all, he dies and provides for our purification. To all who believe that he is the son of God and that his blood will erase the guilt of every nasty, rotten, vile, evil thing one ever did in life, he gives the right to call oneself a child of God. Freedom from the guilt and penalty of sin. That’s what his death means to us.

Secondly, and this is the really good part, he’s sitting at the right hand of his father right now preparing a place for you to live after you breath your last breath. Get this – he’s paved the way for you to do just what he did – get off the planet alive.

Sometimes I feel so guilty about his death that I can hardly stand it. But I’m glad, on the other hand, that he did die because his blood washing away the filth of my sin was my only hope. If God had not loved me enough to pay the penalty for my sin, I would be in a tough spot.

His mercy is the only shot I have at eternal life. Either he makes me presentable, or I’m toast.

Thank you, God!

john 1:1-5

So here is the dilemma for modern man (and oh, by the way, it’s the same one the ancients faced): either Jesus is a fraud, in which case we are under no obligation to pay him any special attention, or he is who he said he is. In that case, the responsibility is on us.
Let’s consider the possibility that Jesus was, indeed, a fraud. It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve heard of someone who claimed to have the mind of God when we knew for certain that they didn’t. Remember Jim Jones? Most of the time, people who claim to be the Messiah or the son of God have a malfunctioning neuron somewhere, don’t they? Ready for the funny farm, you think?

So how would one know? How would you know for certain that someone who claimed to be on a direct mission from the Almighty really was who they said they were? More to the point, how do we know that John’s claim about Jesus being from God is a true one?

1:1-5
Here’s what I know: If you are going to make a ridiculous claim, you had better be prepared to back it up. For instance, you might doubt that I can dunk a basketball from a flat-footed position. We could argue about it all day long, but there is only one way to settle our argument – get a ball and head to the courts. Either I do it or I don’t. If I do it, my claim is validated and the matter is settled.

The truth is I wouldn’t make a claim like that. Even in my younger and not-so-gravitationally-challenged days, I could barely touch the rim. For me to boast that I had the were-with-all to dunk a basketball would defy credibility. I simply can’t do it. Never could, never will. Maybe in the resurrection but not in this life.

John’s claim about Jesus in an even more incredible one – he asserts that Jesus was not only present with God in the beginning, and that he had been an agent of creation, but that Jesus himself was God. Insane asylums are full of poor misguided souls who firmly believe they are divinity. So what separates Jesus from them?

John’s case for the divinity of Christ builds as the gospel narrative unfolds. Miracle follows miracle until the final miracle of Jesus’ own resurrection from his grave. Taken in their entirety, they make an almost unassailable body of evidence that Jesus’ claim of divinity is a true one. We don’t blame the Jewish leaders for their skepticism, but we do wonder how they could be witness to the laws of nature being violated and not wonder how it could have been done without an intervention on God’s part.

Personally, I would have written of Jesus’ life from the reverse. I would have first proved his divinity by delineating all of the miracles Jesus ever performed. And I would have used bullets (as in Microsoft Word) to do it too. Then when I had them all lined out for the unbelieving world to see, I would have lowered the hammer – “Now, for the rest of the story; the guy who performed all these miracles, these undeniable wonders, well…, he’s is the son of God, so repent or perish!”

Not John. He made his claim then backed it up. Not at all like a used car salesman, is it? As with all the New Testament witnesses, John give full disclosure right off the bat.

So when John says that Jesus is the light of the world, it too is a significant affirmation because it signifies that he represents the exact opposite of what the world is. This is a flawed world. The planet is inhabited by flawed humans who, left to their own devices, would choose evil over righteousness. It is a dark place where societies and individuals devolve into lawlessness without the illumination of light. And if it seems that the world is getting darker, you might be right. The sexual abuse of children is a multi-billion dollar industry. Can you imagine: people pay money to see others having sex with children? Half of all marriages end in divorce. We have seen so many people assassinated in urban malls, schools, and churches that it is now commonplace.

Yes, this is a dark world, but here comes Jesus – the Light of the World. Without fault. I know we always say that about people when they die - I never heard her say an unkind word about anyone, but we don't really mean it. But it's true about Jesus. He shines on the place because of who he is (the son of God) and what he is (spotless).

It is true that by contrast, he shines light on our sin and condemnation. Like cockroaches we scurry for cover when someone hits the switch. Standing next to him, we all look pretty guilty. That's why I always picked ugly guys to hang around with in high school. I wanted to be handsome by comparison. If you stand next to another flawed human being, you might think you look fairly innocent, but next to Jesus..., well, that's another matter.

But that is not all that the Light of the World does. In fact, that's not the most important job he set out to accomplish. More importantly than illuminating our obvious condemntation, he illuminates our path. More specifically, he shines his light on the path. Later on, John will quote Jesus as saying, “I am the way…no man comes to the Father but by me.” Apparently, that is his purpose in coming – to lead us to the father. We know, in fact, that condemnation was not his purpose because he said plainly, “I did not come into the world to condemn the world but to save it.”

I sure am glad of that because I already felt pretty bad about myself. And knowing that his purpose was to eradicate my guilt rather than to heap it up on me sure makes me have a different attitude about him.

my thoughts on the gospel of John

At the present time, I am involved in a study of the Gospel of John. I will be using the Thompson Chain Reference Bible's Portraits of Jesus in my study. They are as follows:

JOHN’S PORTRAITS OF JESUS

Son of God
Son of Man
Divine teacher
Soul winner
Great physician
Bread of Life
Water of Life
Defender of the Weak
Light of the World
Good Shepherd
Prince of Life
King
Servant
Consoler
True Vine
Giver of the Holy Spirit
Great Intercessor
Model Sufferer
Uplifted Savior
Conqueror of Death
Restorer of the Penitent

My Lawbreakin' Family

I had my first run-in with the law when I was just a young boy. At least it was the first run-in I can remember. You see, I was raised by a family of law-breakers. Every member of the clan was a criminal including my dear mother and my beloved grandfather. Ironically, we thought of ourselves as law-abiding members of the nation, but in truth, we broke some law at least once a day.

Specifics?

Well, the law says, “Don’t covet.” Despite our best efforts not to covet– we coveted. Before we would know it, a little voice would say something like, “Would you look at the Turners? That Sears and Roebuck truck sitting there unloading that new living room suit, and Bertha's grinning like a mule eatin' briars looking over here every few moments just to rub it in. I hate braggarts!"

OOPS! Another law broken.

But that’s just one example. There were the “bear false-witness” (gossip) violations and the “don’t dishonor your parents” violations, and the…, oh well, you get the picture. Law breaking was going on everywhere in my family - daily. But you wouldn’t know it from listening to us talk. Shoot, we didn’t even know we were lawbreakers. No sir, according to us, we were pretty good folks. Like the Pharisees, we knew the law. Oh yeah, we knew the loopholes too. In our culture of lawlessness where finding and using loopholes in the law is important, the greatest discussion always centered around the question, “How far?” You know, like in, How far can I go before I actually sin?

Now don’t confuse our particular brand of lawlessness with the run-of-the-mill kind of criminal. We were nothing like the prostitute or bar-hopping-drunk variety of criminal. We weren’t even like the Baptists down the street. To look at us, you would think we were the Lord’s finest. No alcohol was ever consumed by people like us…at least not in public. We were never openly promiscuous. In every public way, we lived good lives. But secretly, we were expert wrongdoers. It was like we had multiple personality disorders – in a spiritual sense.

I’ll have to admit, it was kind of fun while it lasted. But, living the life of the criminal comes at a price. For one thing, I don’t think I ever felt completely comfortable with the arrangement. There was that persistent, irritating feeling that something wasn’t quite right.

Like the time I was singing "It Is Well With My Soul" for the hundreth time, for example. Until then, I had trained myself to sing those "church songs" without ever really hearing the words (a good trick to know, by the way, if you ever want to live a life of respectable crime). But this once, I don’t know why, my mind honed in on that phrase – it is well with my soul. I got to thinking, right in the middle of the song, “Hey Gordo, nothing’s all that well with your soul. I know it, and surely God knows it, so stop pretending like it is!”

So for years I chose not to actually sing the words whenever the congregation sang that particular hymn, but I would move my mouth like I was so that the other members of the church wouldn’t think I had a problem.

My problem was, I was thinking all along that the song was about being legally right – sin and guilt free, if you will – in the presence of God, and being right in the eyes of others was just as important.

It was quite a few years later that the truth of that song finally hit me like a ton of bricks (and you know how that can hurt):

When peace like a river attendeth my way,
And sorrow like sea billows roll
Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say
It is well, it is well with my soul.

My sin, Oh the bliss of this glorious thought-
My sin, not in part, but the whole
Is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more
Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord, O my soul.


I felt both joy and shame at once. Shame because I had missed the point of faith altogether. My whole life had been wasted thinking that faith was about me. Honest enough to know that I could never fully measure up, I had invented, or inherited, the ability to put my life into little compartments, each unanswerable to the other. It was the only way a man like me could feel good about himself. I had to have something to insulate me from the gnawing feeling that I was condemned. So I had my social life compartment and my professional life compartment and my religious life compartment. One did not, in my mind, necessarily have anything to do with the other. And the religious side of me was obsessed with the function and organization of the law (religion). In other words, I was all about the correct doctrine and little about how my faith should affect my treatment of other people, for example.

Believing the right doctrines? You bet I could keep that kind of law. Admitting that I was a failure at keeping the weightier matters of the law? No way could I do that because I did not know anything about how to truly redeem myself from the guilt of being disobedient (lawless).

Then, BOOM! Like I said, right between the eyes that ton of bricks hit me.

My sin, not in part, is nailed to the cross. And I bear it no more?

I like that - I bear it NO more...

Redemption isn’t about what I give, but about what someone else gives? You mean I don’t owe a dime? Praise the Lord, indeed!

No, it never was about me. And I’m thankful for that - knowing my proclivity for criminal behavior. My sin, not in part but the whole? What a waste! Years, my entire conscious life, in fact, spent worrying about parting clouds and trumpet blasts because I thought it was about me. But that’s the best part of the story…about it not being about me, I mean.

And Lord haste the day, when the faith shall be sight.
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll.
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descent,
Even so, it is well with my soul.

Because it isn’t about me, I can pray, fervently pray, for the Lord's return. I am able to do that because I’ve put my faith in him now, not in myself. Clearly, I have an abysmal track record when it comes to keeping the law. He’s wiped my slate clean, though. Even then (when he comes back), as the song says, it will be well with my soul because it is about what he has done on my behalf.

When my eyes were opened and I could see this good news clearly, I was more than shocked – I was dumbfounded. Truthfully, I never did really like my life of crime, but it was all I knew. And, to tell the truth, it was a sort of comfortable thinking that I had a leg up on this forgiveness thing (if everything fell into place just right and I held to the right doctrines). But in my inner being, I knew the ugly truth about me and the law. And I shuddered in fear at the consequences.

It’s ironic, now that I look back on it, that a belief system that valued obedience to the law would actually lead to greater lawlessness. But that is precisely the path my life took. That’s because law can never do what an undeserved gift can. And that’s the story, as I see it, of the biblical record. Undeserving as I was and am of anything short of capital punishment, my sin, not in part, is nailed to the cross. And I bear it NO more.

Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, O my soul!

spiritual warfare

The Battle Rages on

I have never really appreciated struggle. Well, some struggles can get me fired up. I’ll have to admit that when my Florida Gators rout a rival like LSU (something that hasn’t happened in a couple of years) I can get pretty excited.

No, the struggles I try to avoid with every fiber of my soul are of a very different kind – they take place deep down in my heart at the center of who I am. It’s the fight between my flesh and the spirit of God, I suppose. It is a battle that keeps me awake at night.

I would like to think that it is I who is doing the battling, but it’s more like a conflict, or a series of battles, that is taking place inside of me, independent of me. I am not really a participant, but I am much more than a spectator. In fact, when this war is being fought, it seems that it is being fought over me.

Who will control me?

Who will reign in my heart?

Who, or what, will be allowed to attach its name to me?I’m going through one of those wars right now. I guess it doesn’t matter what it’s about – not that I mind you knowing – but the fact that it is being waged is important, and I hate it!

Some people, as it turns out, are expert at masking the inner struggles that take place in their lives, or maybe they aren’t really struggling at all. Maybe they have conquered their flesh and made it submissive to the will of God. If so, I envy them, for I find myself in the midst of constant conflict of the kind that reeks of blood and carnage.

Just when I think that I’m on the right track, another round of mortar attacks explodes in my proximity. Bits of hot, spiritual flack protrude from my tender flesh. As I nurse my wounds, I am shelled again from the opposite direction. And at night, when all is quiet, and there is nothing to distract me from the ravages of the war, I come face-to-face with who I am.

Maybe you have never experienced this kind of battle, but it is gruesome. Conflicting thoughts bounce off the inside of my skull. I can almost see the tracers as demons fire at the things of God.

So what am I to make of all this?

At one time, I thought it was a sure sign that God had deserted me. Why would, I thought, a loving Father allow a child of his to endure such misery? I wouldn’t do that to one of my kids. Oh, I might have spanked them when I thought that they were engaged in behavior that had the potential to destroy them. I might have chastised them if they made decisions that would later prevent them from becoming all that they could and should be, but I would never allow them to suffer extreme suffering. Okay, maybe spanking did seem like extreme suffering to them, at the time, but as a more omniscient being, I always saw the bigger picture.

Take, for example, the time my son Zachary was playing with matches. The punishment I imposed upon him was, according to him, severe. It was painful. But I had seen firsthand what resulted when human flesh came in contact with fire. So I was willing for him to suffer the lesser pain of my discipline in order for him to avoid the greater pain of burning.

I don’t know the mind of God about every circumstance that comes my way, but I can tell you what I’ve been thinking about during this latest round of warfare. Maybe there is a bigger picture here for me to see. Maybe someone else has that same paternal instinct on my behalf that I have for my own children, only greater. The question is, what is the bigger picture than I should see?

As I said, I don’t have any way of knowing the specific mind of God in this regard, but I can tell you what is being impressed upon me right now. And that is this – if I am struggling with obedience in little things like spending money wisely or losing a few pounds, what of those who struggle with the really big things? My problems are common to many. We live in a society riddled with debt. for example. Our culture is overweight to the point that some health experts have declared fat to be a national epidemic. But our culture has labeled these behaviors as mere character flaws at worst.

Even in the evangelical Christian community, these behaviors would not raise an eyebrow in most places. But they are struggles of mine, and around them is centered my own personal war. And no one can trivialize my war; it is very real and its effect on me is profoundly negative.

And so I’ve been doing some thinking: If I find myself caught in the crossfire of a spiritual battle that seems to never end, if I struggle mightily reigning in my flesh in small matters, what of those who struggle with behaviors held in less regard than my own? Take, for example, the homosexual or the drug addict. In my own church family, others will gladly allow me the freedom to continue in my sin and remain an integral part of the family. No one shuns me or withdraws from me because I’m a few pounds overweight. In fact, many will placate me with statements like, “Well, you’re tall. You’re big-boned.”

But the addict?

Unlike me, partly because she bears an inordinate amount of guilt and shame and partly because I have been benevolently aloof and condescending toward her, she doesn’t enjoy the same fellowship as I. She just isn’t as respectable in her choice of sinful behavior as I am. Lucky for me I picked the good sins, right?

And so my struggle has led me to re-evaluate my own position before God. More specifically, my war has compelled me to re-evaluate my position before God relative to the repulsive and degraded people that have come my way over the years.

You see, the revelation is plain – while I was in open rebellion to my creator, while I was openly defiant toward almighty God, and while I was deliberately shaking my fist at the one who revealed his holy and specific will for my life after breathing into me the breath of life, that same almighty, creative God did something no one would expect the object of hate and utter rejection to do – he offered his body as a peace offering to me.

Perhaps even more striking is the fact that he took on flesh like mine in the first place. And in order to be like me, he had to give up what I had secretly wanted all my life – perfect paradise and communion with Him. He did what he did as if to say, “The breach in our relationship can be repaired – look what I’m doing to prove it!”

So how do I stand, relative to the worst among us, before God? The truth is, I stand before him for one reason – he picked me up, dusted the dirt of my rebellion off of my worthless, ungrateful flesh, and placed me in his presence. You see, I am able to be in his presence only because I am the object of his affection. There was nothing inherently good in me that warranted him doing anything for me other than to kill me on the spot and condemn me to eternal nothingness. Nothing, that is, except that he formed me out of the dirt and made me in his image.

Ironically, as it turns out, that is the same position the homosexual and the drug addict are in. The flaming drag queen who parades before God in open rebellion is loved by him in the same way that I am. This truth, I understand now, flies in the face of everything I thought I was, but it is true nonetheless. It does not complement me in the least except to say that I am loved by the one who, by speaking only a word, brought into being everything that is. It does not speak well of me or place me above or below any other human being. It only puts me in the presence of God, and for that, I should be a grateful and humbled man.

So what is the practical application if I have learned my lesson well?

Well, for one thing, I most certainly have not leaned my lesson well, I am sure. My flesh being what it is always cries out for self-justification. I want to be somebody in the eyes of other men. I want to matter in this world. No matter how hard I try to internalize both my mortality and my utter failure as a good and decent human being, I still revert to self-promotion.

Knowing this, however, does create an awareness I never had before. It does force me to pause and reflect on those ugly moments when I look down my nose at those “sinners.”

And hopefully, it will compel me to fall face down before the throne of grace in complete confidence that God will forgive me of my arrogance.

Gordon