Grace then truth or truth then grace?

The answer to the question is, it depends when we are talking about sin. It depends on the person who has sinned. The difference is whether the person is a part of the believing community. When I consider the Gospels what I see is that if the person is outside the community grace leads the way and if they are inside then truth leads.

Matthew 5.38-42 tells us not to resist the one who is evil. That is where we get the idea of turning the other cheek. It is similar to killing someone with kindness. Similarly, Paul says in Romans 12.20, "if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head." Jesus deals with people differently when he meets them. The Samaritan woman at the well in John 4 is an outcast even from her community and Jesus leads with grace and then introduces the truth of her sin. With Zacchaeus, another outcast as a tax collector, grace leads. With the prostitute at the home of the Pharisee, grace is first, and on it goes.

Matthew 18.15-20 tells us how to deal with sin among believers, and truth, confronting sin, comes first. In 1 Corinthians 5.12 Paul says, "For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?" When Jesus meets a self-righteous person like a Pharisee, he confronts their sin first. When the apostles preach to a primarily Jewish audience their message nearly always includes "but this Jesus, whom you crucified..."

We have tended to miss this distinction in the church in our day and tolerated all manner of bad behavior in the church by excusing it, "That's just how so and so is." Sanctification requires change and change doesn't happen by excusing sin. If Christians behaved better towards one another, the world might actually believe we weren't complete hypocrites.

Do you want to be healed?

One of the things that you read in the Gospels is Jesus asking someone if they want to be healed. It seems a strange thing to ask a blind man, so pointless to ask a paralytic what he wants Jesus to do for him. The longer I am in ministry the more it makes sense to ask such things. The church should be a place where people get healed, therefore it should be a place for the sick in any way, the wounded, etc. What I experience is that often those people don't want to get healed and made whole, they are identified too deeply with the wounding to let it be healed, they are the guy wounded by the church or by ministers or whatever and they don't know how to live any other way.

In every church I have ever worked I have seen the same pattern, someone comes in who has been hurt by the church and people begin to reach out and offer sympathy and then the person gets influence at some level. Soon, they begin to share their expertise in how the church should really be operating and that this church doesn't really care about people. Along the way, they drive people away because no one wants to hear the constant complaint and criticism, wounded guy becomes lonely, isolated guy and it is now the fault of this church and the pattern continues at another church.

Jesus didn't waste time with people who didn't want to be healed. Maybe we should start asking the question in churches.

Be good for goodness sake

The British Humanist Association is placing ads on Washington, DC buses this season that ask, "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness sake." My answer to that question, posed in that particular form, is that it is actually easier to believe in God than to work out how to be good for goodness sake. To accomplish the command there first requires that we identify and objectify "Good." Many have tried, including Plato and other philosophers, and none have ultimately succeeded in determining what is "good." Good requires more knowledge of reality than any of us possess. I have experienced many things in my life that I perceived as good that later I found to be something else.

What is good for me may not be good for someone else. When I was in consulting, I thought it was good when my firm got a contract, but when someone else got a contract we were bidding on, I didn't think it was good that they got the contract. I suspect they felt the same about my good. To be good is even harder and to do it for the sake of some principle of goodness that we can't really define is even harder, I have no reason to commit to something as ethereal as "Goodness."

No, what I need is what I have, not an ethereal god who is out there compelling me to be good, but God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen, who has all the information necessary to know good and evil and who has, in the form of Jesus of Nazareth, come and enfleshed for us what is truly "good" and who died for us and for our salvation, and who has also given us His Spirit to dwell within us to lead us into truth which is goodness. Why believe in a god, because being good for goodness sake is too hard for even philosophers.

God and guns?

I heard a radio ad this week by Hank Williams Jr for John McCain that really troubled me. I am not, in any shape form or fashion, opposed to gun ownership but "We love our God and we love our guns" is a bizarre juxtaposition of images. It certainly caught my attention and made me wonder who in the world decided that was a good idea.

I am certain the message was geared toward gun owners who either hunt or collect but in our violence-ridden world I believe that the words are wrong. I know it has to do with an election but I am uncomfortable as a Christian with the words and in particular the linkage between God and guns. Is that really the Christian message or does it reinforce the worst stereotypes imaginable?

I believe we as Christians have a different message for the world about who we are and what our values may be. For me, this ad clearly demonstrated the reasons I dropped out of the political world in seminary. I believe we need to be more careful about our political engagements and we need to be more clear about ethics and morals and we need to be on the side of the vulnerable in our society, whether they are the unborn who have no voice but ours or those who are falling through the cracks in society in other ways. God and guns isn't the right message.