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Truth or Love – 2

I received a very thoughtful email response to yesterday’s blog, and in my reply I ended up writing another blog in the process 🙂  Here’s a clip from the dichotomy I addressed yesterday:

“Today in America we’re seeing a huge spiritual backlash against the traditional christendom of our predecessors. Generations have been growing-up believing increasingly that truth is relative, religious people are mean-spirited, and churches are full of hypocrites. The travesty is that this has been sometimes true…enough of the time that it’s poisoned an otherwise Godly heritage and given birth to a pendulum swing.  I may be oversimplifying to make a point, and forgive me if that’s so, but it seems to me that the type of faith that was promoted & exemplified in most of the 1900’s was characterized by an overzealous pursuit of true doctrine, separatism and growth formulas; at the expense of honesty, brotherly love, and the lifestyle of service that was displayed by our Master. This backlash has produced a tidal wave of followers of Jesus who are very sincere, accepting, and accommodating; but who really don’t know what they believe or why…and they’re falling prey to all kinds of false, misleading, and cancerous beliefs that don’t look anything like Jesus. ” 

Of course, I was simplifying a very complex issue in order to make a point….sort of poking at both ends of a spectrum.  There’s a tremendous amount of polarization in America generally, and within American Christendom specifically.  My effort here is to shake this up a bit and point to a uniting force that Jesus and the Apostles talked & wrote about a lot…and modeled as well.

This has to do with Biblical interpretation…what lens do we look through?  In speaking to a polarized situation, I think that those on the more “doctrinal/legalistic side” are often in need of more self-aware and loving motivations.  And I think that those on the “anything goes as long as we act lovingly” side need reminders that there actually is absolute truth and it’s important.  The point is that there is no “right place”…there is just tension between these two values.  Even Christ’s assertion, often called the “Great Commandment” in Matthew 22, is that all the law & prophets hang on the 2 commandments to love God with everything we are and to love others as we love ourselves….and upon further investigation we learn that “loving God” is synonymous with obeying His commands.  So we again are faced with this interesting dichotomy because if you chase truth and love to their ends, they seem to lead to different places…But they actually both lead to God.

I still struggle to find balance in this every day, in every situation, because life is messy and not prone to stasis.  I think we’re called to live in this dynamic tension, gradually growing more wise and peaceful in it but never really mastering it…that’s part of my understanding of “walking by faith.”

There are certainly portions of scripture that are meant to be taken literally (don’t steal, love people, honor your parents, learn the scriptures and pray, etc.) and others that are meant to be taken figuratively (cut off your hand if it causes you to sin, eat Jesus’ body and drink his blood, hate your father & mother so you can love Jesus more, etc.), the trouble is that there’s bound to be disagreements about which is which…and this will always be the case…but we can put differences aside in what Paul calls “disputable matters” and remain unified in the “main things” (There is one God and He is real, Jesus is Him on earth, Our connection with His work saves us, wow).  If all of us Jesus people can see our differences as secondary or tertiary, perhaps we would be so condemning and dismissive of each other when we disagree.

On the other hand, throwing doctrine out the window so that we can just blindly love everything can’t be right either.  There are a lot of Jesus people I know whose belief system has been so affected by the PC environment we live-in that, if truth be told, they would say that their belief in Jesus is no different/better than their co-worker’s belief in Buddha or Allah or Krishna…that all the other deities worshipped in humanity are all different forms of the same truth, and that the one chosen isn’t as important as a person’s sincerity of belief.  In my research & experience, this belief (universalism) is more prominent in America, especially the Northwest, than Biblical Christianity…and it has definitely impacted and infiltrated the ongoing Body of Christ.  The critical path with believers caught in vortexes of false belief is to emphasize the historical reliability and spiritual uniqueness of God’s “salvation history” as chronicled in the Bible…and where we are now in that story.

If the Bible is real, then Jesus was the most theologically true person AND the most inviting and loving person who ever lived.  Although we are not Him, we are called to follow.

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Truth or Love

Truth Or Love?

Parenting is a great metaphor for life, and many of my hard-earned lessons have come through my relationships with my kids.  They’re fantastic kids, and I love them with all my heart.  I would take a bullet for either one of them in a second if needed.  Sometimes, when I hear noises at night while I’m laying in bed, I imagine exactly how I would jump out of bed and sprint up the stairs to save them from a bad guy with my bare hands.  At other times, they make me so crazy frustrated I have to go for a run just to get some sanity & peace before talking with them.  The issues we’ve encountered with our children are nothing compared to the hell I put my own parents through when I was a kid…just ask anyone who’s known me for awhile.  Anyway, in moments of frustration, when kids get stuck in a behaviors or underlying beliefs that threaten their well being in some way, it’s the parents’ job to hold them accountable to what’s right…but to do it in such a way that feeds their spirits and strengthens the relationship.  This is parenting 101…and it’s the hardest lesson of all.  Chasten and embrace. Set free and guide. Judge and accept.  Obedience and grace.  These seem like opposites, and most people lean heavily on one while neglecting the other.  Healthy, effective parents embrace the tension and excel in both.
So here’s the metaphor.  Today in America we’re seeing a huge spiritual backlash against the traditional christendom of our predecessors. Generations have been growing-up believing increasingly that truth is relative, religious people are mean-spirited, and churches are full of hypocrites. The travesty is that this has been sometimes true…enough of the time that it’s poisoned an otherwise Godly heritage and given birth to a pendulum swing.  I may be oversimplifying to make a point, and forgive me if that’s so, but it seems to me that the type of faith that was promoted & exemplified in most of the 1900’s was characterized by an overzealous pursuit of true doctrine, separatism and growth formulas; at the expense of honesty, brotherly love, and the lifestyle of service that was displayed by our Master. This backlash has produced a tidal wave of followers of Jesus who are very sincere, accepting, and accommodating; but who really don’t know what they believe or why…and they’re falling prey to all kinds of false, misleading, and cancerous beliefs that don’t look anything like Jesus.  
This is one of the most important issues facing the Church today…rediscovering the art of living in truth AND love. We can only do this in the power of God’s Spirit living in us.
On the one hand, Jesus commanded us to love each other and sacrifice our preferences for others.  We see Him and His early followers in the New Testament standing in strong opposition to religious fundamentalists and making friends with the shadiest people in society.  
On the other hand, we are recipients and guardians of truth.  If the Bible is actually true historically and philosophically, and if Jesus really is who He says He is, then adherence to that narrative and body of teachings is of paramount importance.  
We need a new movement.  One that joins these two character traits of God and puts them on display to the waiting, watching, wandering world around us.  Let’s be the Holy Spirit’s movement, starting in our own lives.
Scripture Reading.  Below is an excerpt…just verse 15 of Ephesians chapter 4.  But you should read the whole thing….so good!
“…Speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of Him who is the head, that is, Christ.”
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What We Seek

The Bible gets blamed for all kinds of delusional thinking.  We tend to misunderstand for a variety of reasons, and chief among them is our propensity to read into it what we already think and then extract a sentence or two that upholds our view.  In this way, many unwittingly re-create a god of their own making…rather than allowing it to speak for itself and form the lyrics of truth from God’s anthem to our own.

This morning’s example of this is an often misquoted passage from the end of Matthew chapter 6:

“So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.” (Matthew 6:31-33

Seems like a really great deal, right?  Taken by itself, it seems to be a promise…one that is very self-explanatory and amazing.  However, do you see that first word?  “SO”….This implies that it’s looking back to what was just said.  Anytime you see something like that, you’d better read the part before so you’re sure that you’re understanding the purpose of what you’re reading.  Here’s the full section, which is often broken up into 2 sections in our modern Bibles.  Here, read the full section (Matthew 6:19-34):

“Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal. Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be. Your eye is a lamp that provides light for your body. When your eye is good, your whole body is filled with light. But when your eye is bad, your whole body is filled with darkness. And if the light you think you have is actually darkness, how deep that darkness is! No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

“That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life—whether you have enough food and drink, or enough clothes to wear. Isn’t life more than food, and your body more than clothing? Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are? Can all your worries add a single moment to your life? And why worry about your clothing? Look at the lilies of the field and how they grow. They don’t work or make their clothing, yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are. And if God cares so wonderfully for wildflowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you. Why do you have so little faith?

“So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. Seek the Kingdom of Godd above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need. “So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”

So you see, this section is not about getting all our nutritional and clothing needs met.  It’s about focusing our “seeking” on our relationship with God rather than the needs of today & tomorrow.  There is an aspect of promise in there, however, it’s not the point…and it surely isn’t meant to be instructing us to approach God with our daily needs as if He were our person Genie to meet all our needs.  It’s about having different framework than the corrupted, materialistic world around us.  It’s about teaching us what truly makes us content.   It’s about the connection between WORRY and DESIRE.  It’s an object lesson to teach us that “If I only had _____ I would be happy” doesn’t actually produce the contentment we seek.  I’ll leave you with this:

“I have learned how to be content with whatever I have. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little. For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength.” (Philippians 4:11-13)