Points

I recently traveled to Israel with a group from my church. We visited the sites, met many people, and held several meetings. It was a pretty amazing experience. One thing that stuck out to me though was the way Christians treat the places that are considered Holy sites in Israel.

If you’ve never been to Israel before, you may not know that nearly every place Jesus ever did, or is thought to have done, anything of significance now has a 500+ year old church built on top of it that is owned by a large traditional denomination. The holy item in question, whether it be the cave he was though to buried it, the other cave that he was thought to have been born in, or the rock he sneezed on once, will be surrounded by a shrine, covered in Gold, smothered with incense, and touched by thousands of Christians every day who believe that doing so will earn them points on their Eternal Security Rewards Card.

If you take a step back and look at these churches, they are often not very well kept or even clean. Some of the more prominent ones are run by multiple denominations, which has lead to literal fights over duties and responsibilities that now do not get done at all. You end up with a 500 year old church that has a gold plated interior and leaky roof. Instead of being examples in love, they are known for tourism and politics.

But then can’t we be the same way? How many times do we attend church on Sunday evening, not because we want to, but because we feel obligated to use our Eternal Security Rewards Card? Do we get more concerned about who’s responsibility it is to setup this or that than we are about loving that same person? Are we living for the God of Love or the god of points?

Image by Mattes

I Am Sin

I was reading a book the other day that talked about the way we refer to people who are ill. The author pointed out the differences between saying I am sick and I have a sickness. We would not say I am cancer. We would say I have cancer. The point they were making is that we should be conscious of the way we say things to avoid offending others.

It got me thinking about the way I think about myself and the way I think about others. Our society often defines people by what they do, Joe the plumber or Bob the dentist, and while using a profession as a title is a useful semantic practice it should not limit our understanding of the person. Often we think of what people do or what people have done as their identity. But we are not defined by what we do nor are we defined by the things that we have done in the past. It is easy to slip into a pattern of behavior, whether sinful or merely lazy, that goes on for such a long time that we accept it as a part of our identity. Thinking of something that you do as being a part of your identity by saying I am this can over time cause us to conclude that we cannot change. We can get to a point where we say I can’t overcome this after all I am a sinner.

Instead of using I am to describe these things that do not define us, we should put them in proper perspective by saying I have an issue with this or I struggle with that. Save I am things that define you like I am loved by God.

I know the thumbnail has nothing whatsoever to do with this post. I don’t have a picture that captures the essense of this post in 150 x 100 pixels so I used a fern.

It’s Going to Be Burned

I had finished up a project the other day and stepped back to give it a satisfied look when I suddenly had the thought, “It’s a shame that it’s going to be burned.” It was and odd thought to have, but I knew what God meant (He is usually the author of such thoughts). This earth and everything we build here will be destroyed one day. The things we label “permanent” will not last. My thought then turned to what will last, the lessons we learn and our relationships with others. I could have done a better job with the way I treated those I worked with. I could have been more kind and patient when mistakes were made or things broke down. These are the things that will last.

One of my teachers always says, “There’s a ditch on both sides of the road.” We are not to say that since nothing of earth will last, we will sit around and do nothing. After all what better way is there to show someone, whether you know them or not, that you love them than doing something practical for them and doing it well? We should find a balance in loving others and doing good things. Our motivation for work and everything we do should only ever be love, so that we may live a life that pleases God in every way.

Does God Love Me

At times reality seems so harsh and God seems so distant. We begin to question if he exists at all. Would the all powerful God of love let me go through such pain? We can only conclude that either he is not all powerful or he is not loving. But that leaves us living in a world that is more powerful than its creator or a world ruled by a tyrant. Perhaps this seemingly loose-loose scenario is the result of a misunderstanding of terms and a misunderstanding of the fundamental nature of God. We are certainly not the first to ask such questions. Over the course of history many have questioned God. David asked God why he allowed so many evil people in the world to go unpunished. These questions are good to ask because ultimately they lead where God always wants us to go, deeper in our relationship with Him.

Perhaps we are asking the wrong question. Instead of asking Why has the God who claims to love me let this happen to me? Perhaps we should ask What is love? and Who is God? Is he the kind of God who would create an imperfect world then step back and let us destroy each other without intervention? Is he the kind of God who has no understanding of what it feels like to be a man? To suffer the fate of all men and live under the burden of sin and the evil that results from it? Would it stand to reason that the God who would not withhold his only son, would withhold anything that it was in His power to give?

But what of Love. As David said, Why do the wicked get away with despising God? Why can’t the all-powerful God of love destroy that which is so opposite to Him? It is exactly because of his love that he cannot destroy all evil, yet. The evil that exists in this world manifests itself through men. In order to destroy evil, God must destroy men. If God destroys a man, there is no longer any chance that that man might change his heart and accept the love of God. Evil exists because God loves men more than he hates evil, and he asks his children to do the same.

Pro God

We all have problems with temptation and feel guilty when we fail. We naturally react by putting more effort into not sinning. Each time we fail we try to be stronger in our resolve. This can lead to us being the “Anti-Sin” Christians. We are against this and against that, and if we pray hard enough and resist strongly enough, we will finally get to where we are supposed to be. Unfortunately, as so many of us have discovered, this approach simply does not work.

The key to overcoming temptation is not in being strongly Anti-Sin, though don’t get me wrong we are certainly to be against sin. The thing we so often miss is being Pro-God. We describe Christianity as what we are not, instead of what we are. At the heart of Christianity is this simple but powerful message: God loves you. Christianity is simply loving God back, and that includes not sinning, but that is not the main thing. Love is. When we make sin the main thing we reduce Christianity to a heartless system of rules.

So what does that look like? Love. Love is a relationship, not something that can be written in official policies and rules. Nor is love something you can learn from a blog post, but I think you know what I mean.

Serene

Disclaimer: Unlike my other posts, the following should not be taken seriously or applied to your life in anyway.

It was a crisp spring morning with not the slightest bit of wind to disturb them. The rising sun shed warm orange light on the rushes surrounding the small pond. The first little duckling waddled and plumped into the water sending ripples clear across the bredth of the still water. The mother duck plunked in and quickly swam to the lead showing the rest of the fluffy young ducklings the way it was done. Nervously they one by one waddled in and were soon quacking with delight. The mother lead them cautiously near the edge at first, but slowly ventured further into the clear, flat water. One of the ducklings suddenly let out an alarmed quack, but as the mother turned to see, the entire planet was vaporized killing the mother duck and her ducklings instantly.

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Mark had just taken a satisfying bite out of a fresh juicy apple, when every alarm on the ship sounded at once. Normally the alarms would not have bothered Mark in the least bit, firstly because they were normally not his responsibility and secondly because he was on a vessel of the most powerful force in the galaxy, the Intergalactic Council of Planets (ICP) they almost called it the Intergalactic Council of Universal Planets, to signify that the member planets had one government not many, until they realized that the acronym would be ICUP) and because no one else in the galaxy had anything with a quarter of a tenth of a size of it’s guns and shileds. However in this case he was forced to be concerned because he was, in fact, the only person on the ship. (This was, of course, against every regulation ever written by a safety bureaucrat and was also very illegal.)

The Goal

I just watched the movie Surrogates in which the people of the not too distant future stay in chairs at home and control human like robots called surrogates. The news reels shown at the beginning of the movie praise the surrogates for making the world a safe place free of accidental deaths and most crime. As the movie progresses, however, the main character becomes increasingly frustrated by the way everything is artificial and superficial including his relationship with his wife. I won’t spoil the story if you haven’t seen it, but it really made me think about the goal of life. Often when I watch Sci-Fi movies I get excited about the possibilities that new technology offers, making the world safe, faster, and, most importantly, cooler. But that’s not why we’re here. Our goal is to work, and allow God to work in us, towards loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and loving our neighbor as much as we love ourselves. Technology, the improvement of society, and even public safety are not our first goals. Our relationships with God and Others are the most important thing in life.

Image from Wikimedia Commons and Touchstone Pictures