I have done a lot of what we call "Redneck Tech", rigging things up because you aren't able to do them the right way. When I had my mustang it was held together by tie straps and screws I found in my toolbox. I can make almost anything work "good enough". If something comes out crooked you can knock it straight, you can always rig something up. Somewhere in the core of my soul is the belief that if you do things the right way something won't come out right.
I think that is how we got started in this mess. Eve was worried that if she followed the rules that her and Adam would miss out on the "knowledge of good and evil", and so she fixed it. When Adam looked at her imagine what he must have thought. "If I follow the rules my poor Eve will be left alone. If she has eaten and I do not then we will be separated." There was probably a lot of justifying that went on in his mind before he decided to fix the problem. The world and his family just weren't right, so he rigged them up. He took a shortcut. He ducktaped the world.
When you read through the book of Genesis, you will quickly run into a character named Abraham. He is a pretty good guy, generous to friends, lot of moral and emotional courage, loves his family. His wife was evidently a ten on the hot babe scale.(Genesis 12:10,14) Even at around 90 guys were still willing to fight for her. In fact, they wanted her so much that Abraham figured they wouldn't mind killing him to get her, so he made a habit of lying and saying he was her brother. This was Abraham's fix, his ducktape. Like Abraham, my first response when I run into a problem is to lie. It just seems so easy. When I am trying to be honest, I would say that it is a habit and the lie just pops out before I know what I am doing. But, at the bottom of the habit is that belief, the belief that the world is broke and I need to pull it back together with a tie strap.
If we make it as far as Genesis 20, we find Abraham still up to his same old tricks. They get to some foreign country and he is claiming his wife is his sister. He lets the king tote off his wife to marry her(GRRReat fix, btw) and guess what happens? God curses the whole country because they have messed with Sarah. Well it turns out that the king hasn't actually touched her, the only real harm that happened to her is the humiliation that Abraham caused her. And the king is like, "Why have you put us all through this? What were you thinking?" The whole kingdom had suffered, Sarah had suffered, Abraham and all of his family suffered but God had prevented the king from touching Sarah. There was a plan in place all along. The world wasn't broken, it didn't need a patch.
With the really important things in life it seems like no one who is willing to help is able to help, and the people who are able aren't willing. Throughout history everyone has been looking for a way to make those who are able to help willing. Back in the day, folks realized that no other human could deal with the problems that really bothered them so they looked for some kind of spirit to help. God wouldn't do the kinds of things that they thought needed to be done, so they tried to get spirits they thought were closer to them to help them out. They gave those spirits all the kinds of things that they thought they might like, they praised them, they helped out the spirit's friends, gave them gifts, killed stuff for them, eventually killed people for them. Once we decide that the situation is desperate and it is ok to start doing whatever it takes it isn't long before we are doing things we would never have dreamed of. False religion starts with us deciding that something is good that God doesn't have planned for us. We judge good and evil for ourselves, but out of the whole world the only thing He has forbidden us to do, is decide what is good instead of leaving the decision to Him. Whether we use Law or Common Sense or logic or anything, our faith must be that nothing is good except what He has chosen for us.
Our ducktape is the only thing that is really wrong with the world. Our shortcuts and patches, our deciding what is good and using any means necessary to get it are the whole problem. I am determined to believe and behave as if I believe that the world is not broke, that no situation is desperate, that there is always good reason to hope. If Christ really holds all power and rules the world exclusively for your good, then the only thing hurting you is the way you thrash around and kick up a fuss trying to get what is already promised to you by the One who can never lie.
He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Romans 8:32
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Comfort with Truth
It seems like all of my life I have been fighting sin. Fighting and losing. Over and over, day after day, the same old enemies seem to conquer me. I remember a long time ago this battle made me doubt if I was ever a Christian, because I thought we were supposed to be able to win this fight. I have tried everything, I have come up with tricks and strategies to resist temptation but in the end everyone of them fails. This has been my life for as long as I can remember.
While Christ has filled my life more and more, the patches where I feel completely alone remain as terrible as ever. Temptation remains unconquerable. While the beauty and power of His Gospel covers so much of my life, the periods without it actually seem worse than ever before. The closeness to Christ actually seems to stir up the old "Natural Man", that's me, to a frenzy against all that is good, a self-destructive fury where I seem to destroy all the good things in my life. And this is the way that it is supposed to be.
I have come to believe that we are not meant to conquer sin. Our willpower is not meant to resist temptation until temptation goes away. Not that we shouldn't try, but we need to understand that no stubbornness, no hatred for sin, no tricks or techniques will win this victory. Perhaps Christ lets unbelievers bring their sins under a kind of control that way, like scaring off a wild animal with fire, so that they don't go on a rampage and destroy their lives and neighbors. But He hasn't chosen that path for us. In the end, that way is worse than the sin it defeats. To conquer what seems to be a terrible sin to us by willpower and planning may actually be trading your sin for a worse one.
You see when we defeat sin, we become the hero of the story. We become the guy that killed the giant. We become strong and brave. We become holy and righteous. We become our own savior. And that is the most terrible hell that there is or could ever be.
I am sure that if you or I conquered sin we would mention God in our victory speech. He would probably even be first on the list and we would make a big show of giving Him all the credit. How modest of us! How humble of us! How praiseworthy. "God made me strong and then I killed the giant." "I couldn't have done it without Him." But that way it will always be our victory. We will be the hero. We will be the savior. We will be alone and doomed.
I don't want to be the hero of my own story. Not ever, not even a little bit. Or I guess I should say, I do want to be the hero, I want very badly to be the one who can fix things for myself and for Cheychey, I want to be the one who can deliver us from our troubles, I dream about it everyday, but I have come to believe that that is the way to death. Me being the hero is destructive, is hell.
If we defeat our will to sin, our temptation, with a will to do good then we have stolen Christ's glory. What did He fight His great battle for if not to defeat sin? That is His glory, the glory of the Only Begotten, and for anyone else to have a share in that is to steal what is absolutely greatest. It would be less blasphemous to say that we had a part in Creation, that you were His partner on the first day, than to say that you had a part in defeating sin. Because beyond all doubt redemption is more divine than creation. Our dream is to by our will(strengthened by God), our courage(provided by the Holy Spirit), our greatness(with Jesus singing backup) conquer our sin, set our lives straight, lead our families to live happily ever after. In this way, we actually provide the bulk of our salvation and Christ just signs on the bottom line. My God is NOT a spiritual ATM. I have treated Him that way, and I am not sure how to stop.
But I believe that there is another way. Rather than facing sin with guns blazing, there is a knowledge of Christ that will unravel sin, that will cause temptation to blow away in the breeze. We would not find our temptations tempting if we thought the way that He thinks. And that is what I want this blog to be. That is why I wrote it. I made the name Comfort with Truth, because the truth about who Christ is is the only real comfort available to us. It is the comfort for consciences who have lost the fight with sin over and over and are sick of it. The Gospel is the comfort for all of our pain.
1 “Comfort, yes, comfort My people!”
Says your God.
2 “ Speak comfort to Jerusalem, and cry out to her,
That her warfare is ended,
That her iniquity is pardoned;
For she has received from the LORD’s hand
Double for all her sins.” Isaiah 40
The other, and less bad, vices come from the devil working on us through our animal nature. But this does not come through our animal nature at all. It comes direct from Hell. It is purely spiritual: consequently it is far more subtle and deadly. For the same reason, Pride can often be used to beat down the simpler vices. Teachers, in fact, often appeal to a boy's Pride, or, as they call it, his self-respect, to make him behave decently: many a man has overcome cowardice, or lust, or ill-temper, by learning to think that they are beneath his dignity - that is, by Pride. The devil laughs. He is perfectly content to see you becoming chaste and brave and self-controlled provided, all the time, he is setting up in you the Dictatorship of Pride - just as he would be quite content to see your chilblains cured if he was allowed, in return, to give you cancer. For Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense. Mere Christianity C.S. Lewis
While Christ has filled my life more and more, the patches where I feel completely alone remain as terrible as ever. Temptation remains unconquerable. While the beauty and power of His Gospel covers so much of my life, the periods without it actually seem worse than ever before. The closeness to Christ actually seems to stir up the old "Natural Man", that's me, to a frenzy against all that is good, a self-destructive fury where I seem to destroy all the good things in my life. And this is the way that it is supposed to be.
I have come to believe that we are not meant to conquer sin. Our willpower is not meant to resist temptation until temptation goes away. Not that we shouldn't try, but we need to understand that no stubbornness, no hatred for sin, no tricks or techniques will win this victory. Perhaps Christ lets unbelievers bring their sins under a kind of control that way, like scaring off a wild animal with fire, so that they don't go on a rampage and destroy their lives and neighbors. But He hasn't chosen that path for us. In the end, that way is worse than the sin it defeats. To conquer what seems to be a terrible sin to us by willpower and planning may actually be trading your sin for a worse one.
You see when we defeat sin, we become the hero of the story. We become the guy that killed the giant. We become strong and brave. We become holy and righteous. We become our own savior. And that is the most terrible hell that there is or could ever be.
I am sure that if you or I conquered sin we would mention God in our victory speech. He would probably even be first on the list and we would make a big show of giving Him all the credit. How modest of us! How humble of us! How praiseworthy. "God made me strong and then I killed the giant." "I couldn't have done it without Him." But that way it will always be our victory. We will be the hero. We will be the savior. We will be alone and doomed.
I don't want to be the hero of my own story. Not ever, not even a little bit. Or I guess I should say, I do want to be the hero, I want very badly to be the one who can fix things for myself and for Cheychey, I want to be the one who can deliver us from our troubles, I dream about it everyday, but I have come to believe that that is the way to death. Me being the hero is destructive, is hell.
If we defeat our will to sin, our temptation, with a will to do good then we have stolen Christ's glory. What did He fight His great battle for if not to defeat sin? That is His glory, the glory of the Only Begotten, and for anyone else to have a share in that is to steal what is absolutely greatest. It would be less blasphemous to say that we had a part in Creation, that you were His partner on the first day, than to say that you had a part in defeating sin. Because beyond all doubt redemption is more divine than creation. Our dream is to by our will(strengthened by God), our courage(provided by the Holy Spirit), our greatness(with Jesus singing backup) conquer our sin, set our lives straight, lead our families to live happily ever after. In this way, we actually provide the bulk of our salvation and Christ just signs on the bottom line. My God is NOT a spiritual ATM. I have treated Him that way, and I am not sure how to stop.
But I believe that there is another way. Rather than facing sin with guns blazing, there is a knowledge of Christ that will unravel sin, that will cause temptation to blow away in the breeze. We would not find our temptations tempting if we thought the way that He thinks. And that is what I want this blog to be. That is why I wrote it. I made the name Comfort with Truth, because the truth about who Christ is is the only real comfort available to us. It is the comfort for consciences who have lost the fight with sin over and over and are sick of it. The Gospel is the comfort for all of our pain.
1 “Comfort, yes, comfort My people!”
Says your God.
2 “ Speak comfort to Jerusalem, and cry out to her,
That her warfare is ended,
That her iniquity is pardoned;
For she has received from the LORD’s hand
Double for all her sins.” Isaiah 40
The other, and less bad, vices come from the devil working on us through our animal nature. But this does not come through our animal nature at all. It comes direct from Hell. It is purely spiritual: consequently it is far more subtle and deadly. For the same reason, Pride can often be used to beat down the simpler vices. Teachers, in fact, often appeal to a boy's Pride, or, as they call it, his self-respect, to make him behave decently: many a man has overcome cowardice, or lust, or ill-temper, by learning to think that they are beneath his dignity - that is, by Pride. The devil laughs. He is perfectly content to see you becoming chaste and brave and self-controlled provided, all the time, he is setting up in you the Dictatorship of Pride - just as he would be quite content to see your chilblains cured if he was allowed, in return, to give you cancer. For Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense. Mere Christianity C.S. Lewis
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