If you want to know you have faith, my father says, that means you have to question it.  Faith is only faith when tested.  Otherwise it’s blind trust.  Not faith like that of a child, faith that is complete and whole, but childish faith, faith that happens not because there is reason to have it, but simply because one believes whatever one is told with absolute trust, because one is not wise enough to ask good questions.

Asking questions can lead one to a dark, dark place.  A place where one waits restlessly, is agitated, disturbed, depressed even, where one feels that one’s grip on the world is evaporating.  It is a hard place, a place won with sweat and tears.

A lot of Christians feel regret and remorse when they enter this place.  They ask if they are somehow wrong, if there is a problem with them, if God hates them or doubts their sincerity.  They sometimes feel cheap, like hypocrites.  They ask, “do other Christians go here?”  They ask, “am I the only one?”  They ask, “why would God allow me to go down this road?”

The answer is, “A lot of Christians go there.”  The truth is, most Christians who are strong in their faith are strong because they go there.  So if you’re having a long, dark tea-time of the soul, you aren’t alone.  I’ve been there, as have been my brothers, my husband, my father and mother, my grandfather and grandmother (on both sides).  If you are in that place, that place of late-afternoon restlessness, far from the morning and the evening stars, you are in a room with many others.

The third question is the one I am most loathe to answer, because I know how this answer can sound.  But here it is regardless:  God allows you to go down that path precisely because of how much he loves you. Because of how much he wants you to be assured of your faith.  Because he wants you to be strong and vibrant, and that kind of strength and vibrancy only comes from being tested.  Consider the first blossoms of spring and how they are killed off in a single frost.  Young faith is like that.  It is bright and beautiful and easily smothered.  True faith, the strong faith of a summer rose, the passionate and much envied faith of a tall oak, that faith only comes through time and testing, through surviving many a frost and winter, through harrowing times of drought and still surviving.

Hold on to the memory of the morning of your faith, hold on to the hopes of seeing the evening stars, and remember that all phases of life come to an end and most of them are replaced with something better.  You can bear the restlessness of an afternoon’s doubting, even if it lasts for years.  You can bear it and hold on to hope, hold on the the desire for faith, hold on to the need for love, and rediscover all things in a greater depth on the other side.

Many of us go there.  Most of us end up glad that we did.

“Forgiveness doesn’t mean escaping earthly consequences”, my father says, “you can forgive a man on death row, but he still serves out the penalty accorded by the courts.”

This particular blog isn’t about my personal life, and thus personal details are often left out.  The very, very observant readers may sense themes and put one and two together, but, anyway…  Forgiveness is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.  What does it mean to forgive someone?  Certainly it can’t mean acting as if the deed forgiven never occurred.  One should forgive a priest who molests an altar boy but one shouldn’t act as if it never happened.  So what DOES forgiveness mean?

For me it means choosing to love past something.  Choosing to release anger and judgment and allow God to be the authority, instead of my own taste for vengeance.  Forgiveness sometimes means not seeking justice, it sometimes means releasing one’s own need for satisfaction, and it sometimes means finding comfort in God rather than in justification.

There is nothing harder than forgiveness, nothing harder than grace, nothing harder than loving through a cloud of pain.  But there is nothing better, as well.  Justice can be lonely, justification can be cold, consequence can be cruel.  Forgiveness itself can be bloody at times, but there’s a kind of warmth and comfort that comes from the stripped nakedness of one asking for forgiveness and the sudden contact of the other consenting that brings out this kind of intimacy that cannot be found anywhere else.

Because the truth is that real, total intimacy comes not from trust but from figuratively being seen naked in all of one’s human, flawed, and sinful reality and finding that love still endures.  True romance is not in loving someone because of their perfection, but loving them while knowing just exactly how imperfect they are.  It’s sad that as Christians we seem to want perfection all the time, to the point where people are ashamed to admit their shortcomings.  This creates a syndrome that prevents real intimacy.  The intimacy of saying, “I love you, knowing who you truly are.”

And isn’t that God?  “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  THAT should be our flagship verse.  John 3:16 is sweet, but 1st John 4 is honest.

Sorry my thoughts are so scattered.  Ironic that in a post discussing total intimacy I’m forced to be withholding, but life is strange.

Dichotomies.

Is it either-or or is it both-and?

Leonard Sweet describes it as the swing affect.  When you hit the apex of the swing on the playground, you have to simultaneously kick forward and lean back.  You reach this moment of pure balance where you’re trying to both kick into the future while remaining in the past.

It’s impossible to maintain, though.  Eventually everything reverses itself.

My relationship with the Church and religion has always been a strained one.  Needless to say I’m largely unhappy with the church in America today.  I want it to change, I want this desperately.  I want to move into the future.  But at the same time I find myself remaining in the past.  Why?  Because two thousand years ago our faith was reformed by the one person who best understood what it ought to be.  I believe that the early church had to have some wisdom because the founders actually knew Christ.  But, at the same time, the wisdom that led them through the founding of our faith may not have any application to today’s society.

The past, the future, that one moment of pure balance lost in the downswing.

I believe there is something inherently good about tradition because it connects us to the millions of years of history that our world has gone through.  We need to learn from generations past if we don’t want to have to make all of the mistakes that they made to gain that wisdom in the first place.  Yet, at the same time, one must acknowledge that tradition for tradition’s own sake becomes useless.  Have you heard the one about the woman that always cut the ham in half because her grandma did?  Then grandma says, “I only did that because my roaster was small.”  Without knowledge of the “what for” tradition is empty, a meaningless gesture, without any real value but a massively huge cost.

The future, the past, blurred in the upswing.

At the end of the day, all I know is that I know nothing.  I thrive off intuition.

I often get things wrong.

But he himself insisted, “I am the man.” (John 9:9 revised)

Short Bunny Track:

I read the Bible.  Contrary to what some may think because of my apparently hedonistic views on some things, I do in fact have a Bible.  Three, actually.  One of which is in my handbag at all times.  When I am waiting for an appointment, I read the Bible.  When I get to church early, I read the Bible.  When I wake up in the morning before the kids, I read the Bible.  I usually have a schedule of reading it from start to finish at least once a year, re-reading Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon and Revelations several times more because I just really like them.  (Psychoanalyze at will.)  Lately, though, I’ve found myself mired in the New Testament.

I tell you all of that totally unnecessary information to explain why, when my son woke up at 4:30 this morning and I couldn’t go back to sleep, I ended up reading the books of John and Acts.  Have you ever had the experience of reading something so familiar, and at the same time it seeming like wholly new text?  This is a rare occurrence for me, but this morning that was the case.  Perhaps it was my sleep addled mind further addled by an onion bagel and Pepsi, perhaps it was the sound of the birds and train at five AM, perhaps it was the way the light looks in early morning when there’s bound to be a storm before noon.  Whatever it was, I was feeling unusually contemplative.

My mind got stuck on the man born blind.  I’ve read that passage many times, too many times to count.  My brother preached from it once many years back.  I could remember his haughty and over-acted tone as he read the words, “he himself insisted, ‘I AM THE MAN.‘”  I could remember the laughter of the congregation.  But something in me this time said, “that’s not funny.”

Let me re-tell you the story this morning. (John 9 for those curious.)

Just coming off of an argument with the Pharisees in which Jesus said that the Father would be glorified through Jesus, Jesus and the disciples encounter a man born blind.  His disciples, ever curious, ask why the man was born blind.  See, the Jews believed that earthly misfortune, such as illness, was brought on by sin.  So they were curious- if a man was born blind, whose sin was that meant to punish?  Sins the man would commit, or sins his parents had?

Jesus, ever cryptic, responded that it was to show God’s glory.  So Jesus put mud on the mans eyes and told him to wash himself.  The man went and washed himself, and found that he could see.  Some might say that it was in that moment that God’s glory was seen.  But wait, there’s more!  When the man came back to town I’d wager that he carried himself differently.  That he was different.  So when the people saw him they questioned- is this the man born blind?  And the man insisted that he was.  So the Pharisees got involved.  The Pharisees were sure that it must be the Devil’s work, as Jesus offered healing on the sabbath (something they had decided was sinful) and the man went and bathed publicly on the sabbath (something against the rabbinical laws of the time).  Of course this causes a great deal of confusion.  The man born blind insists that it was through God that he was healed.

So the Pharisees say “you were mired in sin from birth!” and kick him out of the temple.

I suppose that was something that poor man heard a lot.  I’m sure he was constantly reminded that he was living out the punishment for sins past and present.  I’m sure that it would have been impossible for him to better his station in life, as he couldn’t work and other people wouldn’t want to bring an “unclean” man into their homes.  After his parents had died I’m sure that he lived a destitute life, saved only by the fact that the Jewish people were ordered to care for the poor.

“Mired in sin from birth.”

And what did Jesus do?  He did much more than heal a man’s sight.  He gave him a second chance, a new life, freedom from the curses that were constantly spoke over him.  He washed that man of the taint of sin and perception.  He raised him above the standard to which he had always been held.  Jesus radically changed the way that people had to look at that man and his life.  No longer was he under the curse of sin and death and the judgment of the law- here he was, a freed man.  A seeing man.  And proudly would he proclaim that he himself was that man!  All of the shame he had carried, gone in an instant, washed away with the mud that covered his face.  What a beautiful picture to hold in one’s mind, that mud dripping away, the man looking up.  Realizing.

But that moment was not the full extent of God’s glory.  God’s glory was in the townspeople and the Pharisees, gumming away at the problem, wondering.  If the judgment was gone, what did it mean?  Had the proper sacrifices been made?  Had reparations been meted out?  Had the sacrifice been accepted and blessed?

Jesus had asked not for sacrifice, but for obedience.

Can’t you just see the glory?  Feel it tingle down to your fingertips?  Taste it on the tip of your tongues?  There are moments where I think, “why was I saved?  What good am I?”

I tell myself, “you are mired in sin.”

But hear for a moment the pride in that man’s voice as he said, “I AM THE MAN!”  We are saved! God is glorified through Jesus.

It’s almost too much to hold in one’s mind.

(link to scripture references: Acts 9, Acts 22, the Gospel of John)

I’ve seen comments around WordPress that talk about the fact that the New Testament shows many ways of winning people to Christ.  Sometimes Jesus showed compassion before calling people to repentance, this mode of thought states, and other times he threw them down off their horses.

It’s an interesting way of seeing things, to say the least.  I myself have always stated that Jesus showed compassion equally, with the exception of the Priests and Pharisees.  Jesus showed no tolerance for hypocrisy, and God never seemed to like hypocrites or the “lukewarm” very much.  For all of those who struggled, on the other hand, there never seemed to be a lack of compassion.

Throughout the Gospels one sees Jesus showing such an amazing amount of compassion.  His first miracle was one which may otherwise seem odd.  When he changed the water into wine (John 2) he did so not to encourage drunkeness, but to save the host and hostess a great deal of embarrassment.  To have insufficient refreshments for your guests was, in that time, something very shameful.  He showed compassion to the woman at the Well by speaking to her, and by not judging her for her sins.  For a jewish man in those times to be alone with a woman who was not his wife was questionable- a Samaritan woman moreso, a Samaritan who took many lovers and lived with a man to whom she was not wed- that was unconscionable!  Simply speaking with her was an act of grace.  Choosing her to be the one to redeem her people- that was God, plain and simple.

The next miracle?  The man by the Pool of Bethesba.  Jesus showed him compassion by healing him, since he had no family to aid him in his time of need.  This is an odd one, because Jesus actually commands him to do what the Pharisees termed as sin, by picking up his mat and walking.  Had the man refused and chosen legalism, he would have lost God.  Yet- Jesus also commands him to stop sinning.  That man must have had to have spent a great deal meditating on what seemed like Jesus’ mixed messages.

And another- feeding the five thousand.  What else could you call that but compassion for the many who were hungry for the word and also had growling stomachs?

The woman caught in adultery- what could be more compassionate than sparing a woman who would have otherwise died?  Again, we see love and grace before we see a command.

With the Man born Blind we see that Jesus, like with the man at Bethesda, requires obedience before healing.  Jesus puts mud on the man’s eyes and tells him to go wash, after which he is healed.  But in that request for obedience we still see compassion.  Later in that passage, when Jesus is confronted by the Pharisees, he says, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.”  This is tremendous compassion for the man born blind, who was kicked out of the temple because he had been “steeped in sin from birth.”

Next we find the story of Lazarus.  What could show Jesus’ love more than the fact that he cried for the anguish of his friends, that he reassured them, that he did not respond to their doubts with anger, that he raised their brother and friend from the dead?

Then in a short while, we come to the ride back to Jerusalem.  We see Jesus riding a donkey through the gate that the Romans would ride their war horses through, both symbolic of Jesus’ servanthood and simplicity, and also a harsh call to attention for the zealots who would have expected Jesus’ “kinghood” to be a literal one.  (Not to mention that it must have felt to the Romans as if they were being openly mocked.)  Then Jesus washes his disciples feet, again making himself a servant, again showing compassion.  He feeds his friends.

And then he dies.

But his work here is not done.  He returns to the disciples and again teaches them on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24).  And finally, after all this time, we find ourselves on the road to Damascus with Paul, who was then Saul.  And who was Saul?  Saul was a Roman Jew who gladly imprisoned Christians, who witnessed their stonings, and was on the road to Damascus with arrest warrants in hands in order to drag back more Christians to their death.  Saul was no mere sinner- Saul was the enemy of Christians and thus in some ways the enemy of Christ.

On the Road to Damascus he witnessed a bright light and heard Jesus asking him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”  Saul was struck blind.  In Damascus Christ appeared to another man, Ananais, and told Ananais that Paul was Christ’s chosen to preach to the Gentiles.  Who better to minister to the Gentiles than someone with a reputation for killing Jews, right?  (Am I being sarcastic or not…  you decide!)  Ananais healed Saul, and Saul then became the Christian known as Paul.

Here is my question to all of you:  Does this story sound like Jesus coming and throwing someone off their high horse?  Does it sound like permission for condemnation?  Or does even this story reek of God’s compassion, grace, and love for even the most lost?  God took an enemy of the faith and made him one of the Way’s most infamous Apostles.  Only God could do such a thing.  That God must do such a thing by making the man blind and weak and dependent on the graciousness of one of the men he had come to Damascus to arrest has a sort of poetic or prophetic sweetness to it- but it doesn’t seem like God made Paul weak in order to torment him- he did so in order to bless him.

And only God himself has such power.

So to go back to my original point- with what should we win people over?  Do we knock them off their horses?  No, we show them compassion.  Leave the fancy stuff to God.

The internet is a tricky place.  It’s a little like a masquerade, with everyone picking avatars that rarely show their face, the real person hidden in a veil of carefully constructed identity.  The internet being such, it’s easy to forget that there’s a real person on the other side of the ethernet cable.  Because there’s rarely proximity or touch involved, it’s easy to think of people one meets online as not real people, not containing real emotion or full identity.  It’s easy to think of every aspect of their online identity as being concocted.  It’s easy to disregard truth in favor of perception.

It’s easy to be cruel.

In my days on the internet I’ve been a part of a lot of different online communities.  In my early days it was fan sites for favorite bands.  Every once in a while we’d all be told that we had no taste in music or that certain members of bands were not who we thought they were.  There’d be outright lies, misleading half-truths, odd motivations.  As time passed on I joined a few online RPGs, groups in which concocting identities was the norm.  And as such there were a few practical jokes played with multiple personas, some of which went miserably awry.  Even further on there were a few support groups for people dealing with depression.  Let me just say that if you have blade to wrist and someone says “depression is a choice”, it doesn’t help things.  Despite the fact that it’s easy to lash out at an idea, one must always remember that whatever one is lashing out with involves people as well.  Real people with real feelings that can be really hurt.

Mothers forums in which mothers who don’t breastfeed are eviscerated.  Or mothers who choose to go back to work are mocked.  Or mothers who don’t choose to go back to work are accused of taking advantage of their spouses.  Or single mothers are told they are “better off” without having to deal with a spouse.  All of these things that just make it harder on us all.  Make it harder for everyone on every side of the issue.  Because we don’t need to be divided, we need to be united.  Instead of focusing on our differences we should focus on those things which all of us share.

I do not, as a rule, moderate comments on this blog.  I realize that ninety percent of the things I talk about are issues that divide people, and I respect the fact that not everyone who reads my posts will agree with me.  Some people will think I am absolutely and in all ways wrong, and they are entitled to that opinion and entitled to voice it.  Occassionally I do delete a comment.  If someone, for example, refers to a person who is gay as one who (and I quote) “embraces the vile vomit of sodomy”, I will delete that comment.  It serves no purpose other than to be inflamatory.  Someone can believe that gay sex is against God’s plan without using words such as “vile” and “vomit”.

Just remember, commenters, that there are real people on the other side of this issue.  The gays are real people, with emotions, and needs, and desires, and even spirituality.  Just as those who believe homosexuality is a sin are also people, people who are trying to adhere to that which they believe is holy.  That is why I allow comments from all sides- because ninety nine percent of the time I think everyone truly is trying to do what they think is right or necessary.

Just please, please, comment with care.  Be respectful.  Don’t attack.  Wear gloves, if necessary.  Remember that for better or worse God put us all on this planet together and he called us all to each other.  We NEED each other.

Practice compassion.  Live with grace.

And for the love of God, comment with care.

Dreams.  A lot of the talk between my friends these past few weeks has focused on our dreams.  What is it that makes us wish and hope?  What do we want faith for?  In an ideal world, what callings of our hearts would we pursue?

So much about life has to do with getting by.  Managing.  Doing whatever is necessary to make it from one day to the next with warm enough clothes, food in our bellies, and hopefully spare change in the bottom of our pockets.  We center our lives around not what is best or what is most desperately wanted but simply what is necessary to get by.

Likewise my friends and I find that our spiritual lives have ended up much the same way.  We seek out not what we are praying for, but simply what is necessary to keep the fires burning and the hearth safe.  We don’t pursue our own ministries, but instead fill the holes that need filling to keep the machine running.  Secretly we wonder what would happen if everyone pulled out and pursued their own visions.

Collapse.

We know it, we just don’t say it.  And somewhere in the backs of our minds lays the question, “do we really need each other so badly that self has to be sacrificed every time?”  A question not to be said out loud, because Christ sacrificed his self and we feel obligated.  Not just obligated, called.  Called to each other.

And in that reality is the death of many dreams.  Dreams who have languished for so long that we are no longer familiar with each other.  Someone asks, “what is your dream?” and we fumble for the words.  We sigh and smile at not our dream itself but the thought of a dream, the thought of having something to wish for, the thought that maybe there are still fairy godmothers who will rescue us in the eleventh hour.

A wise man says, “start putting aside seed for your dreams now, so they can be harvested in your lifetime.”

I have no seed, just words.

So I set aside words.  Words not for the dream, but for the hope of the dream.  Words so that perhaps one day I will be brave enough to dream again.

The good Book says, “the Kingdom of God is forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it.”

Ah, I am a woman.  Perhaps that is my problem.

Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.

“The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’

” ‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.

“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’

” ‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. 30Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’ “

Then he left the crowd and went into the house. His disciples came to him and said, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.”

He answered, “The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels.

“As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. 41The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.

-Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

In the parable above, the wheat is growing up with the weeds. The owner tells the servant not to pull the weeds up because they may root up the wheat with them. When we exclude these people with overt, outward sins from the church we risk rooting up good wheat because of the weeds growing up with them. We all have our weeds. Some are just more outward and obvious than others. How horrible would it be to root up and destroy someone who may end up becoming a powerful force for Christ in the world just because they were homosexual, a teenage mother, divorced, or have any number of other outward sins?

There was an unmarried couple who were living together attending the church of a friend of mine. The pastor struggled throughout the premarital counseling process with wanting to approach the couple about their living situation, but felt God saying that he shouldn’t. It turns out that the man in the relationship had decided that if the pastor said anything about them living together he was done with the church. About two weeks before the wedding the couple felt convicted about their living/sexual situation and they chose to live separately until the wedding. Now they are both very committed Christians and very involved in that church. If the pastor would have confronted them they would have either never gone to church again or not gone for a long time (never underestimate God’s ability to find people!).

Excluding these people from the church betrays a real lack of faith and trust in God. It’s a way to retain control while acting pious and “holy.” We need to repent of trying to retain that control instead of giving all of ourselves to God.

—

The above was written by my husband, who follows my blog but rarely comments.  He told me I could post it here or he may post it on his own blog.  I thought that my readers my find it illuminating.  Because the point isn’t saying that sin ceases to be sin- the point is saying that if something truly is sin for someone, God will convict them.  God will do so in his own way in his own time, and we need to trust God for that.

Believe in the Lord of the Harvest.

Let’s be honest with each other for once.

I sin.  I try to sin as little as possible, but there are moments where I can’t help myself.

…  Okay, let’s be painfully honest.  I probably could help myself.  But there are moments where I’m stressed out.  Maybe the kids have been exceedingly difficult, or I’m fighting with my husband, or circumstances have conspired against me and I’m way behind in my housework and struggling to keep my head above water.  Then, you know that part of you that cares about what you’re doing is right or wrong?  That voice that tells you, “think before you do that”, or “you may hurt so and so”, or “God really calls for you to be better than that?”  You know that voice?

I get angry, and I flay it and eat it for dinner.  When I’m stressed out, I know that I ought to care but I just, well, I stop caring for a little bit.  And usually the next morning when I wake up and realize the person I temporarily became, I have this total grief hangover.  I want to hate myself.  And in those moments God shows me his grace by reminding me that Jesus died for me not when I was righteous, but when I was at my worst.  You know those handfuls of verses.  John 3:16 is over done, but Romans 5:8 is pretty good.  “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  And there’s 1 John 4:10, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

Now, answer me this:  If I can sin when I know it’s sin and when it feels like sin and when I feel like a pile of horse feces the day after, how much sympathy should I have for those who are sinning and don’t know it?  If I can sin in the face of my salvation, knowing the cost and understanding the consequences, how much pity should I have for those who do not, and sin, and will some day pay the price?

I’m not a bad person.  I’m a mother and a wife, I do the best I can.  I work for my church and I have an important ministry.  My life rotates around God and my family first, my ministry and church brethren second, and my own interests in a weak third.  I’m one of the “good girls”.  And yet I’m a brazen sinner.  Now, let’s be really horrifically painfully honest:  Everyone reading this post has a sin they have been convicted of and haven’t ended- or they just haven’t been convicted yet.  Not a one of you is free and clear.

And when I learn to control my anger, I know that won’t be the end of the journey for me, either.

So we are all sinners.  Sinners, all.  We all fall short and an awful lot of us wake up the next morning wondering why God is trying to save us at all.  So, how much sympathy?  How much love and empathy?  Is it possible to over-feel compassion for those who Christ has yet to touch?  I’m not sure it is.  Christianity isn’t an easy religion.  It’s full of struggles and doubt and pain and frustration.  This journey is not a smooth one.  It’s uphill the whole way and if you look over your shoulder you may defecate in your pants.

I feel for young Christians, so full of hope and fire.  I feel for them because I know that we all come to the place where our energy is flagging and things look pretty grim.  But I feel even more for those who have yet to experience God at all, because I realize there is a way where we can come to the point where our sins are smaller, and farther apart, and where we have the fruit of our labors to show for how much we’ve changed.

We’ve changed.

But we’re all still sinners.

Let’s talk about meat.

In Acts 21:25, it is stated that the Apostles had given the Gentiles a command to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, which seems straightforward.  By a legalistic standard, then, the fact that the Apostles had prayerfully considered the purity standard to which Gentiles should be held, and then asked them not to eat food sacrificed to idols (as well as cautioning them to eat unbloodied, or “kosher” meat) one should logically believe that this rule is Godly, and unchanging.

And yet:

1 Corinthians 8
Food Sacrificed to Idols
Now about food sacrificed to idols: We know that we all possess knowledge.  Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know. But the man who loves God is known by God.

So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is no God but one. For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”), yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.

But not everyone knows this. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat such food they think of it as having been sacrificed to an idol, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled. But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do.

Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak. For if anyone with a weak conscience sees you who have this knowledge eating in an idol’s temple, won’t he be emboldened to eat what has been sacrificed to idols? So this weak brother, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. When you sin against your brothers in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ.  Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause him to fall.

So here we discover why the Apostles thought it best that the Gentiles abstain from certain meats, or adhere to the Jewish purity code where food was concerned.  It was not that this law was necessary for holiness, but instead because not following it could become a barrier to understanding for others.  So one could paraphrase this passage in vaguer terms by saying, “Knowledge builds confidence but love builds understanding.  If you think you know everything, you don’t know much of anything yet…  …Be careful that your freedom under the law doesn’t lead to lawlessness for other people.  Because if someone without your understanding of God’s grace sees that you are freed from the law, won’t they be emboldened as well?  And in exercising their freedom, might they not be tempted into true sin?  So if your freedom leads one of your brothers away from God, haven’t you done a bad thing?  I would rather starve myself than be a barrier to others.”

And I agree.  I, too, would rather starve myself than become a barrier to others.  Which is why I am careful about which lines I cross and when I cross them. I might joke a certain way or say certain things when I’m out gaming with my friends, but I wouldn’t necessarily speak or behave in that way in Christian company, because I’m aware that by doing so I may either cause my contemporaries to question my faith or cause their children to question their parents authority, both things that have negative consequences.  And my stifling myself also can be misinterpreted as my being convicted that certain things are sin.  Which is also untrue- it’s possible to acknowledge something has negative consequences (food sacrificed to idols) without saying that it is outright sinful.

My dad always defined sin this way:  You are sinning when you are certain God has made a requirement of you, and you don’t obey.  God may ask you to never eat a banana again, a command that appears to have no qualitative moral value, but if you eat a banana after you and God had that conversation, you are sinning.

There are other things that are certainly more black and white.  Drunkenness, gluttony, laziness, lust.  These are all things that are condemned in no uncertain terms, as is selfishness and gossip.  There are large gray areas around things like the passages about Modesty in the Bible.  Take, for example, 1st Timothy 2:9&10, in which Timothy said that women should dress “modestly”, not with braided hair and jewelry and expensive clothing, but with good deeds and humility.

Now, braided hair and jewelry, in this day and age, is not really “showy”.  And how does one “dress” in good deeds?  It is obvious that Timothy was pointing not specifically at their dress, but at their attitude.  Isn’t it possible that these women had lost sight of what was really important?  That they were trying to demonstrate their status within the church by their appearance?  And then, doesn’t Timothy’s caution to dress in good deeds in humility make perfect sense as a response?  The rule given, that of hair and gold, then speaks not to a true code of dress but a way to prohibit the behavior he’s trying to get to the heart of.  It’s like if I were to be a youth pastor again, and all of the kids in my group were comparing cell phones instead of participating in the meditations.  As a good youth pastor I would say “leave your phone at the door”, not because God hates cell phones but because the phones would have become an impediment to holiness.

And thus rules do not always have intrinsic value as a rule, instead they have value in achieving holiness.  And when we consider the reasoning behind rules, we should consider the end goal with as much weight as we consider the rules.  I would introduce homosexuality at this point, but instead I’ll go the hetero way.  My mom likes to tell a story about a church that started logging complaints in the sixties because all the young women stopped wearing bras.  The parishioners kept asking the clergy to order women to wear bras or kick them out of the church, and eventually there was a promise that the problem would be addressed plainly.  How was it addressed?  By a prayer from the pulpit that the men in the church would learn to control their lust.

I use that as an example because we all have responsibilities to work on those things that we know are sins- and often that means stopping picking at other peoples splinters to deal with our own specks.  When we focus too much on the rules, we fall into legalism.  So let’s focus on what really matters.

Let’s focus on our own holiness.