I Have Decided

Growing up in a Baptist Church in the heart of the "Bible Belt", it was impressed on me over and over again the need to "give my heart to Jesus", to "make a decision for Christ".  And so I was baptised when I was 7, and again when I was 14, and I needed it again after that but I had given up by that point.  The case was made as pleadingly as ever case was made, over and over again.  I was to understand that Jesus was standing outside my heart, knocking on its door, anxious to come in and change my life, and that everything hung on me making the decision to open the door to Him.  I thought that I had done that when I was seven, but by the time I had lived with myself for 14 years there could be no doubt that I was no Christian.  I had certainly tried, but it was clear that I had failed.  To listen to all of my teachers talk, becoming a Christian was the easiest thing in the world, but I couldn't seem to do it.  Just say the magic words and become a new person.  Well I had said them over and over again, and sometimes I was pretty sure I had been sincere.  This is the story of my childhood, trying and failing to become a Christian.

I began to feel that everytime I invited Christ into my heart, I slammed the door in His face.  I knew that I wanted Him to come in pretty bad, but it slowly dawned on me that I wanted much more for Him to stay away from me.  I was a battleground between light and dark, but it was becoming clear that the light in me was largely imaginary, little more than moonshine, and the darkness was sickeningly real.  I understood that the part of me that hated and feared God was stronger than the part of me that accepted him.  And I knew, whether because of experience or by some intuition, that it would always be that way.

I saw very clearly that I only had one hope, but I had no idea if it was true or just a product of my sickened imagination.  That hope was, and is, simply that Christ was willing to do more than stand outside and knock.  I began to dream of a God who would come and shatter the world I had built, a God who would not be stymied by my veto.  And I know that some won't like the way I worded that, but the doctrine of "making a decision for Christ" is exactly the doctrine that we have the veto over God, that our word, "I refuse", is the last word.  My hope, however, is in a God who will not knock on the door of my heart, but beat it down with a battering ram.  I know now that if Christ is ever going to be a Saviour it must be built on His being a Conqueror.

I have been told that this teaching is demeaning to Christ, that it teaches that Christ is no gentleman but stoops to the level of the lowest of men in His quest to save us.  All I can say is that Christ has done more humiliating things for us.  He has sunk to the deepest depths because that is where we live.

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you 

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; 

That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend 

Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. 

I, like an usurp'd town to another due, 

Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end; 

Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, 

But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue. 

Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain, 

But am betroth'd unto your enemy; 

Divorce me, untie or break that knot again, 

Take me to you, imprison me, for I, 

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, 

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.  John Donne Holy Sonnet 14

As Donne expressed so eloquently, our only freedom is in Christ enslaving us, our only purity is in Him taking us by force.(for those who don't know "ravish" is an archaic word for rape)  Our only hope for righteousness is that He has, truly and in fact, become sin for us.  Rather than insisting on His right to us as our Creator, on inspiring us with His beauty(which we cannot perceive in Him, esteeming Him as one stricken, afflicted by God according to Isaiah), on reasoning with us, a desperate act is needed to save desperate sinners.  Our salvation depends on only one simple truth, that Christ has the strength and the will to save us.

So He called them to Himself and said to them in parables: “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself, and is divided, he cannot stand, but has an end. No one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man. And then he will plunder his house. Mark 3

You and I CANNOT make a decision for Christ, can't let Him into our heart, can't give Him our lives because they are already the property of Satan.  I have decided to follow Satan, but, thanks be to God, I don't have the last word.  Christ's saves me, by vetoing my suicidal will.  We are all possessed.  We are the goods in Satan's house.  But there is one stronger than him.  He conquers the world, the flesh, and the Devil by the sword of His mouth, and then He takes us, useless, mindless, hopeless thralls of the Devil, as His prize, the spoils of victory.

Glorious Day

The Last Temptation of Christianity

When we consider what it means to trust Christ, I think it is very clear that this means more than a simple intellectual assent to the facts contained in the Bible.  To actually trust Him requires knowing Him.  To know Him as God is impossible for us, if that were possible then it was pointless for Him to become a man.  For, I contend, that the principle reason for His Incarnation and His way of life and death and resurrection as a man is to reveal Himself, who He is, to us.  If this is true, then the best possible way to know God is by studying the character of the man Jesus Christ, His psychology if you will.

To me, one of the most interesting places to look at His psychology is in His temptations.  Far too often we simply skip over the thorny question of what in these temptations was actually TEMPTING to Him.  I think the first point to look at is the fact that He was really tempted, that is He perceived something desirable in the devil's suggestions and felt some inclination to carry out the suggestion.  Without that they are not temptations at all.  I looked at the temptations some in a previous post but today I want to look especially at the third and last temptation and how it affects us today.

Again, the devil took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to Him, “All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.”

Then Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.’” Matthew 4

The root question here is, "Why would Jesus want to be the king of the world?"  We can't imagine that He desired anything they could add to Him, all of His actions belie that thought.  No, even in His temptations, He remains true to Himself.  So, why would the Son of Man who came to serve want to rule the world?  I think it is clear that He must have been thinking about the benefits we would receive from His kingship.  How much different would our world be if it were ruled by one who is wise and forgiving?  Our jails would quickly empty, all war, all strife of all kinds would very quickly cease.  No more ten thousand sects drunk on their own bullshit, but all men united as brothers in a single religion unerringly tied to the Truth Himself.  As Isaiah says even the animals would be at peace.  The sad Earth would abandon her mourning and put on gladness, for no one can be sad in the presence of the Bridegroom for whom we were all made.  I am not overstating the change that His government would bring to this world, if anything I am underplaying it.  It is very easy to see why the Lord who wept over Jerusalem would be tempted to heal all of her hurts.  The temptation was a temptation to save us.  It must have resonated with the deep things in His soul.

Indeed, the whole Temptation may be regarded as the contest of the seen and the unseen, of the outer and inner, of the likely and the true, of the show and the reality. And as in the others, the evil in this last lay in that it was a temptation to save his brethren, instead of doing the Will of his Father. George MacDonald

I think that the same temptation that tempted Christ tempts us today.  The church feels very strongly, I feel very strongly, the need to have a Gospel that heals men's hurts, that actually makes things better.  We want very much to have a church that is successful, that is converting the world, that is marching forward.  I think that this is why the idea of a Millenial Kingdom is so attractive to us.  The same temptation to DO SOMETHING that our Lord felt we feel too.  We think it is right and true and we still can't see why it would be sin for Christ to take the reins of Planet Earth into His very capable hands.

It was when Peter would have withstood him as he set his face steadfastly to meet this death at Jerusalem, that he gave him the same kind of answer that he now gave to Satan, calling him Satan too.  George MacDonald

Christ's goal was not to set all of the prisoners free of their prisons, but to make them free IN their prisons.  It is not that the poor cease to be poor but that they become rich in their poverty.  It is not so that we might cease to be dead, but that we might, in His Death, be alive even in our death.  And perhaps hardest to take, His plan to make us righteous is not for us to stop being sinners but for us to be righteous though still sinners-a righteousness that can't be seen at all and can only be believed.

Nothing but the obedience of the Son, the obedience unto the death, the absolute doing of the will of God because it was the truth, could redeem the prisoner, the widow, the orphan. But it would redeem them by redeeming the conquest-ridden conqueror too, the stripe-giving jailer, the unjust judge, the devouring Pharisee himself with the insatiable moth-eaten heart. The earth should be free because Love was stronger than Death. Therefore should fierceness and wrong and hypocrisy and God-service play out their weary play. He would not pluck the spreading branches of the tree; he would lay the axe to its root. It would take time; but the tree would be dead at last—dead, and cast into the lake of fire. It would take time; but his Father had time enough and to spare. It would take courage and strength and self-denial and endurance; but his Father could give him all. It would cost pain of body and mind, yea, agony and torture; but those he was ready to take on himself. It would cost him the vision of many sad and, to all but him, hopeless sights; he must see tears without wiping them, hear sighs without changing them into laughter, see the dead lie, and let them lie; see Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted; he must look on his brothers and sisters crying as children over their broken toys, and must not mend them; he must go on to the grave, and they not know that thus he was setting all things right for them. His work must be one with and completing God's Creation and God's History. The disappointment and sorrow and fear he could, he would bear. The will of God should be done. Man should be free,—not merely man as he thinks of himself, but man as God thinks of him. The divine idea shall be set free in the divine bosom; the man on earth shall see his angel face to face. He shall grow into the likeness of the divine thought, free not in his

own fancy, but in absolute divine fact of being, as in God's idea. The great and beautiful and perfect will of God must be done. George MacDonald

The Cross is not the road to glory.  It is the End not the Means.  His Kingdom really is not of this world, not because it belongs to another world, but because it transcends all worlds.  It is not some ignorant and aloof God who is all of our joy but the very Man of Sorrows.  It is His stripes that comfort us.  Christ did not die so that men might not suffer, but so that their sufferings might be like His.

Ah! but when were his garments white as snow? When, through them, glorifying them as it passed, did the light stream from his glorified body? Not when he looked to such a conquest; but when, on a mount like this, he "spake of the decease that he should accomplish at Jerusalem"! Why should this be "the sad end of the war"? "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve." Not even thine own visions of love and truth, O Saviour of the world, shall be thy guides to thy goal, but the will of thy Father in heaven. George MacDonald Unspoken Sermons Vol. 1

Valjean's Soliloquy

The Blog About Nothing

I remember hearing once about 2 churches side by side who shared the same name except with the number 1 attached to the name of one and the number 2 attached to the other.  The story behind this, as I was told it, is that once there was only one church there and they were eating together one Sunday after church.  Two of the deacons simultaneously reached for the last piece of fried chicken.  The one said, "Brother, It was ordained before the foundation of the world that I would eat this chicken."  The other took the chicken, ate it, and said, "Yeah well I have free will."  My point in telling this story is that Christians will fight with each other anytime, anywhere, for any reason, or no reason at all.  So when we find something that pretty much all Christians everywhere agree on it is a pretty remarkable thing.  And perhaps our one area of absolute agreement is that we should be "doing something for the kingdom", we should be taking care of God's business.  Christians may disagree about WHAT we should be doing but they all agree that we should be doing something.  Perhaps the only person who would disagree with this is Jesus Christ.

Now early in the morning He came again into the temple, and all the people came to Him; and He sat down and taught them. Then the scribes and Pharisees brought to Him a woman caught in adultery. And when they had set her in the midst, they said to Him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses, in the law, commanded us that such should be stoned. But what do You say?” This they said, testing Him, that they might have something of which to accuse Him. But Jesus stooped down and wrote on the ground with His finger, as though He did not hear.  John 8

There are as many theories about what Jesus was doing here as there are people who have read this passage.  Jesus clearly perceived that a trap had been set for Him.  What did He do about it?  No one knows for sure what Jesus wrote in the dirt and how it was related to His present predicament.  I have my own theory.  I think He was doodling.  I don't think what He wrote had anything to do with the Pharisees, unless it was a caricature of them that He drew.  I think He was biding His time.

So when they continued asking Him, He raised Himself up and said to them, “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.” And again He stooped down and wrote on the ground. Then those who heard it, being convicted by their conscience, went out one by one, beginning with the oldest even to the last.

His words to the Pharisees confirm this interpretation.  He simply tells them to do what they were already planning to do, execute her according to the Law.  They were convicted, but note that it wasn't Christ or anything He said or did that convicted them, it was their own consciences.  Christ didn't see that this situation called for any action on His part.  He simply waited for His Father to take care of it so that He could resume His mission.

 And Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had raised Himself up and saw no one but the woman, He said to her, “Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you?”  She said, “No one, Lord.”  And Jesus said to her, “Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.”

His mission is to preach the Gospel to the poor, the cast down, those whose sin has caught up to them.  And when the time came to do this He was completely ready.  But His pattern of doing nothing, of waiting, is one of the most significant in His life.  It is seen in the first miracle John records, the turning of water to wine, when He saw that it was not time to act.  It is seen over and over again in His reluctance to perform signs and wonders, His refusal to judge.  Perhaps it is seen best when He stood before Pilate.  A single denial of the charges would have sufficed to set Him free, an appeal to any sense of justice would have put a stop to the proceedings.  And He just stood there like an idiot.  

Two possible explanations for this occur to me.  Perhaps the most obvious answer is that He was what He appeared to be, an idiot.  He became just like us except for sin, and stupidity is no sin.  Could it be one of our infirmities that He took on Himself?  We can believe that He set aside omniscience but somehow we assume that He left Himself enough wisdom to be the wisest of men.  Perhaps He really was the lowest most outcast of men, a retard.  Perhaps this is one way in which we must become like children.  And that brings me to the second possible explanation, which I believe is in harmony with the first.

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry. Now when the tempter came to Him, he said, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.”  But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’”  Matthew 4

The question of why He wouldn't make the stones into bread is a significant one and I know that I cannot answer it so well as a previous Steward of the Mysteries has:

  

If we regard the answer he gave the devil, we shall see the root of the matter at once: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." Yea even by the word which made that stone that stone. Everything is all right. It is life indeed for him to leave that a stone, which the Father had made a stone. It would be death to him to alter one word that He had spoken."Man shall not live by bread alone." There are other ways of living besides that which comes by bread. A man will live by the word of God, by what God says to him, by what God means between Him and him, by the truths of being which the Father alone can reveal to his child, by the communion of love between them. Without the bread he will die, as men say; but he will not find that he dies. He will only find that the tent which hid the stars from him is gone, and that he can see the heavens; or rather, the earthly house will melt away from around him, and he will find that he has a palace-home about him, another and loftier word of God clothing upon him. So the man lives by the word of God even in refusing the bread which God does not give him, for, instead of dying because he does not eat, he rises into a higher life even of the same kind. George MacDonald Unspoken Sermons Series I., II., and III. 

He would not do His own thing but only work the work which His Father gave Him.  He wouldn't change anything, even the simplest thing, because to do so would be to be someone other than Himself, who had made it what it was to begin with.

Then the devil took Him up into the holy city, set Him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down. For it is written: ‘He shall give His angels charge over you,’ and, ‘In their hands they shall bear you up, Lest you dash your foot against a stone.’” Jesus said to him, “It is written again, ‘You shall not tempt the Lord your God.’”

It was a temptation to shew the powers of the world that he was the Son of God; that to him the elements were subject; that he was above the laws of Nature, because he was the Eternal Son; and thus stop the raging of the heathen, and the vain imaginations of the people. It would be but to shew them the truth. But he was the Son of God: what was his Father's will? Such was not the divine way of convincing the world of sin, of righteousness, of judgment. If the Father told him to cast himself down, that moment the pinnacle pointed naked to the sky. If the devil threw him down, let God send his angels; or, if better, allow him to be dashed to pieces in the valley below. But never will he forestall the divine will. The Father shall order what comes next. The Son will obey. In the path of his work he will turn aside for no stone. There let the angels bear him in their hands if need be. But he will not choose the path because there is a stone in it. He will not choose at all. He will go where the Spirit leads him.  George MacDonald

Christ's reason for acting or for inaction was trust in His Father.  He was acting the part of a SON.  He was following His Father.  Which is exactly what we are convinced will be the denial of the faith, and will lead the church into unimaginable calamities.  And maybe it will.  But better to go through anything united with our Head than to be in any circumstance, however pleasant, apart from Him.

Let me then ask, do you believe in the Incarnation? And if you do, let me ask further, Was Jesus ever less divine than God? I answer for you, Never. He was lower, but never less divine. Was he not a child then? You answer, "Yes, but not like other children." I ask, "Did he not look like other children?" If he looked like them and was not like them, the whole was a deception, a masquerade at best. I say he was a child, whatever more he might be. God is man, and infinitely more. Our Lord became flesh, but did not become man. He took on him the form of man: he was man already. And he was, is, and ever shall be divinely childlike. He could never have been a child if he would ever have ceased to be a child, for in him the transient found nothing. Childhood belongs to the divine nature. Obedience, then, is as divine as Will, Service as divine as Rule. How? Because they are one in their nature; they are both a doing of the truth. The love in them is the same. The Fatherhood and the Sonship are one, save that the Fatherhood looks down lovingly, and the Sonship looks up lovingly. Love is all. And God is all in all. He is ever seeking to get down to us—to be the divine man to us. And we are ever saying, "That be far from thee, Lord!" We are careful, in our unbelief, over the divine dignity, of which he is too grand to think. Better pleasing to God, it needs little daring to say, is the audacity of Job, who, rushing into his presence, and flinging the door of his presence-chamber to the wall, like a troubled, it may be angry, but yet faithful child, calls aloud in the ear of him whose perfect Fatherhood he has yet to learn: "Am I a sea or a whale, that thou settest a watch over me?" George MacDonald