I don’t know about you, but I often struggle to hear God’s voice with everything else rattling around in my brain. At least, that’s the way it seems.
But maybe it’s because God answers me in ways I don’t expect, so I don’t think I’m hearing His voice.
It would be just like God to act in ways that we don’t expect or understand. I mean, we just recently passed through Good Friday and Easter. What more explanation is needed than that?
So, I often pray for discernment, that I can determine what God’s will is for a big decision in my life. What I hope to get from God when I do that is a clear picture of what He wants me to do. But then again, I wonder if I am trying to avoid making the decision myself, so I pawn it off on God. Hey God, I don’t know what to do here, so You decide for me.
I also often wonder if God isn’t helping me to know His will in ways I don’t recognize. Like maybe the feeling I have about the decision after praying about it is really Him nudging me–or kicking me in the pants–C’mon already, beloved son! How obvious do I have to make this for you??
And here’s another thing. In hindsight, sometimes I am able to recognize that God has shown me His will through the words of people who love me. People who He has placed in my life. I think He gives us each wisdom, but it is never complete. I wonder if this isn’t so that we will realize that we need each other. No one person has all of the answers, but collectively we have many more of them.
For example, this morning, as we were getting ready for church, my wife and I were having a discussion, during which we reached a disagreement. With a few moments of reflection, I realized she was right. She was speaking wisdom into my life. I sure didn’t want her to be right, but she was.
Now, I’m not saying that she’s always right, but neither am I. That’s one of the benefits of having people I love and trust in my life. They can help me see things from a different perspective–one that might very well represent God’s will in my current situation. That’s also the benefit of speaking and listening to one another.
For better or worse, God gave us all each other. It can be messy sometimes, but I think He intended for us to help each other navigate life and, ultimately, find our way to Him.
Last week, I wrote about how Jesus restores us when (not if) we screw up. Peter was the biblical example I used, referring to Jesus’ beautiful restoration of one of His best friends, since He knew Peter would have been beating himself up over betraying Jesus.
Today, I wanted to take a peek at what happens as a result of being restored.
Fast-forwarding a little bit in time, and jumping from the Gospels to the Book of Acts (which is really the second volume of Luke’s Gospel), we see a new Peter. He had been so afraid (after promising to be brave) that he swore he didn’t know Jesus. But in the second chapter of Acts, we see the birth of the church, thanks in large part to Peter’s bold proclamation that Jesus was and is the Messiah (and I’m sure God had something to do with creating the church, too).
Then a few days later, Peter has an opportunity to recall how he felt after Jesus had restored him following his darkest days. He must have remembered this with tremendous fondness when he said this:
Now, fellow Israelites, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders. But this is how God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, saying that his Messiah would suffer. Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, and that he may send the Messiah, who has been appointed for you—even Jesus.
He’s telling anyone who will listen–including us–that God does not leave us to wallow in the filth of the bad things we have done and said and thought. As he remembers his friend and Savior extending a hand of grace to pull him out of his pit of self-pity, he says that we have the same opportunity. All we have to do is repent and grab hold of Jesus’ extended hand–or probably even just the hem of his robe–and He will restore us.
He picks us up–He picked me up. He dusts us off. He renews our relationship with Him. He tells us to go forth and sin no more, knowing that we probably won’t live up to that for even a day. Maybe not even an hour. But He is so patient with us that He doesn’t mind how quickly we end up back there, reaching again for His hand of grace.
But do you think He does this just so we will feel better about ourselves?
I don’t think so. His primary motivation seems to be so that we can spend eternity with Him in paradise–the result of our acceptance of His grace and mercy and forgiveness.
But that’s not all.
Returning to Peter’s story, we see that he is telling others about his story, his walk with Jesus. He is making the world a better place by building a body of believers who are sharing literally everything they have with each other and anyone in need. He makes a lame man’s day (probably his life) by healing him.
Obviously, God gave us all different gifts, so He does not expect that we all will respond in exactly the same way as Peter to His gift of restoration. Maybe your response could be something as simple as speaking kind words to everyone you encounter–even someone who was rude to you. Or it could be a random act of kindness, like paying someone else’s tab at a restaurant. Maybe you could really go crazy and write a positive blog, or post an affirming message on social media.
This is our chance to shine God’s Light into the darkness all around. Let’s each of us decide how we can reflect the incredible lightness of having been restored by the Savior of the world. And then do it.
God blessed me with a rich season of Lent, and a Holy Week during which I felt His presence. I hope the same was true for you.
Unfortunately, though, it didn’t take me long to duck away from His presence here and there as soon as Easter was over, returning to some things God had put on my heart to give up for Lent and beyond. I don’t know why I did this. I was so frustrated and disappointed in myself. It had seemed so easy to give things up during Lent, and then almost impossible to avoid them the day after the season ended.
Did you experience anything like this over the last week?
If so, welcome to the human race.
I don’t say this as an excuse for doing things we wish God didn’t see. Instead, I say it to remind myself and all of us that there was only one perfect person in the whole Bible–Jesus.
But what about all the famous people in the Bible? you may ask. What about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Nope, all flawed. Moses? No, he was a murderer. David? Sorry, the whole story surrounding Bathsheba brought him down to our level.
One of the things I love about the Bible is that it’s full of stories of flawed people accomplishing great things for God simply because they trusted Him and walked Him like they would a best friend. Also, this is another reason why I find the Bible to be so believable–if you were going to make up a religion, you would not admit so freely that the people who carried the narrative forward were so broken and ordinary, so much like you and me.
In fact, what I experienced this past week closely resembled what happened to Peter. He had been one of Jesus’ closest and most trusted friends. Jesus had said He was going to build His church on the rock that was Peter. When Jesus had been describing what was going to happen to Him, Peter bravely declared that he would follow Jesus through it all, including to the grave, if necessary.
But Jesus told him otherwise. He prophesied that Peter would abandon Him when He needed His close friends the most.
And Peter did just that–He denied knowing Jesus three times.
So I wonder how Peter had been feeling up to, and even after, Jesus’ resurrection. If it were me, I would have been wondering how in world I was going to be able to live with myself, knowing that I had abandoned my best friend–especially one whom I had believed to be my Messiah–during such terrible moments. I can imagine Jesus’ words rattling around my brain, breaking off little pieces of sanity as they went: “Before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times!”
But Jesus, our compassionate Savior, must have known how Peter would be feeling. In fact, in Mark’s retelling of the story when some of the women followers of Christ discovered the empty tomb, he points out that the angel specifically called out Peter by name:
But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’ ”
This doesn’t mean that the angel was characterizing Peter as not being one of Jesus’ disciples. It means that Jesus must have lovingly directed the angel to mention Peter because He knew that Peter’s heart would be aching because of his denial of Jesus.
The story gets even better.
Chapter 21 of John’s gospel describes it. Distraught with grief, Peter and the other fishermen must have decided to return to their prior profession, since evidently this “Jesus’ disciple” thing wasn’t going to work out after all. After Jesus gave them another miraculous haul of fish, Peter jumped out of the boat early and ran to see Jesus–an exuberant returning to God.
And what did Jesus say to His friend? None of the things I probably would have said (“Well I warned you!”, or “It went down just like had said it would!”, or even “See, you need to listen to me!”). Nope, not Jesus. He pulled His friend to the side. Knowing how much Peter had been beating himself up, Jesus lovingly restored him. You may be wondering why Jesus asked Peter three times if he loved Jesus (see John 21 verses 15, 16, and 17), to the point where it seemed to be hurting Peter’s feelings. I think it was to match the number of times Peter had denied Him. It was as if each time Jesus asked Peter the question and Peter responded, Jesus was erasing one of Peter’s denials.
Thankfully, it’s the same story for me, the same story for you. When (not if) we screw up, when we turn our backs on Jesus, we only have to change direction from our broken ways and return to Him. In fact, here is the description of the Greek word for repentance from Wikipedia:
The Greek term for repentance, metanoia, denotes a change of mind, a reorientation, a fundamental transformation of outlook, of man’s vision of the world and of himself, and a new way of loving others and God.
Like Peter, when we realize we need to do this, we should jump out of the boat so we can get to Jesus as quickly as possible. We shouldn’t worry about getting wet or what kind of mess it will make. Just get to Jesus.
Because Jesus told us in the story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32) what He will be doing:
“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.”
He will also be running to us as we run toward Him. He’ll throw His arms around us. He’ll kiss us. Nothing dignified about it, so overjoyed is He that we came back.
He will restore us. He restores me, erasing each one of the bad things I’ve done, setting me back to the way I was when I was walking with Him each day.
For that, I am forever thankful. It’s another Resurrection Day.
Even though the game is still going on, we know the final score:
Jesus: 1 Satan: 0
Looking around the world today, it may not seem like it. Evil is rampant everywhere. Darkness pervades our culture. Some churches are closing their doors. People who follow Christ used to lead the way in politics, art, and science, but now it’s easy to believe we have been shoved out to the fringes of society.
And yet, there is Easter. The tomb is empty.
The same darkness that seems to be thriving in the world today tried to kill God on the first Good Friday a couple thousand years ago. And at first, it seemed like they had succeeded.
But in His typical style of smashing expectations, Jesus proved them wrong, not by climbing down from the cross and avoiding death, but by dying and then coming back to life!
What??? How is that even possible?
It’s not. Except that with God, all things are possible. Jesus said this in Matthew 19:26:
Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
And then He proved it by physically coming back to life after being dead (see Matthew 28).
So what does this mean to us?
Well, for one thing, it means that we can trust God to achieve what we think is impossible. No matter how bad things are in the world or in your life, Jesus can repair and restore them. And He will, although the fix will almost never look like what you or I had envisioned.
It also means that we have this hope to latch onto–that in the end, death and misery and evil will be overcome. Jesus has already defeated them, but it will just take a bit more time for the story to unfold completely.
We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain.
Finally, Jesus’ resurrection confirms that we have not placed our faith in something flimsy or fleeting. If nothing else does, it should prove to skeptics that Jesus is who He says He is. And it should assure us in our times of doubt that even though God doesn’t always make sense to us, He is for us. He is good. He is working to our benefit, even when we don’t see it.
For these and many other reasons, I am so thankful to God for this Resurrection Day, and that in the end, love wins.
May you experience God’s abundant blessings on this day when all things are made new!
So, this is Good Friday. The day God shows us the extent to which He will go to save us from ourselves. This is the God who bled and died for me and for you, to pay the price for all the stupid things we’ve ever done.
I know that it had to happen this way, that without Good Friday, there is no Easter.
But I have a confession to make: every time I reach the place in one of the Gospels where it describes the terrible ordeal Jesus endured on Good Friday, I wish it didn’t have to be that way.
It’s like watching your favorite movie for the tenth or hundredth time. No matter how many times or how loudly you warn the hero not to make that ill-fated decision, they still do it. They open the door to the closet where the guy with the chainsaw is hiding.
What’s especially challenging for me is a passage like this:
Then the men stepped forward, seized Jesus and arrested him. With that, one of Jesus’ companions reached for his sword, drew it out and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear.
“Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?“
Another confession: every time I read this, I want Jesus to call out to God so the twelve legions of angels will swoop in and rain down all kinds of terror on the evil people preparing to torture to death the greatest man who ever lived.
Can you imagine the self-restraint Jesus exercised to not do that? I know I’d be much more inclined to bring in the angels than I would be to endure the misery Jesus knew was coming.
But that’s the difference–one of many–between Jesus and me. He did what He knew needed to be done to save rotten people like me and you. He knew He needed to walk through the crucifixion to storm the gates of hell to rescue us. He had to face death so He could defeat it and be raised to life again.
That’s the difference between a superhero and a savior.
We wanted a superhero to win the fight today, to wreak all kinds of havoc on the bad guys. We wanted a superhero who would kick the Romans out of Israel and restore God’s chosen people to their rightful place in the world order. We wanted a superhero who would automatically answer all of our prayers in exactly the right way (by our definition), like a cosmic vending machine.
But what we got was even better, albeit completely baffling to us.
I mean, who ever thought that the Messiah could be killed? That makes no sense. And just think how the Jews would have adored Jesus if He had found a way to defeat the hated Romans! But instead, He prayed for them.
What we got was someone who appeared to lose the battle, but who actually won the whole war, who settled things for all eternity.
What we got was a Savior who repeatedly exercised incredible self-restraint so that He could actually receive the punishment we deserve. He allowed Himself to be killed so that we could live.
Again, it makes no sense, but I’ll take it. With humility and gratitude, I accept His sacrifice. Reluctantly, I thank God for Good Friday, and I’m glad He sent us a Savior instead of a superhero.
Today is Palm Sunday, the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem with adoring citizens celebrating His arrival with joyous shouts of “Hosanna” and “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” They waved palm branches and laid their cloaks across the road as a show of respect to the Messiah.
Those same adoring citizens could not know at that time that in less than one week, they would turn on Him. They would allow themselves to be swayed by satan and the religious leaders to call for His crucifixion.
But Jesus knew. He was fully aware of what was waiting for Him inside of this week that we call Holy Week. He knew one of His close friends would betray Him for 30 silver coins. He knew His best friends would abandon Him. Worst of all, He knew His heavenly Father would forsake Him as He hung dying on a cross.
Despite this awareness, Jesus chose to ride into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday anyway. That’s because He also knew why He was doing this–to take the punishment you and I deserve for all the bad things we’ve ever done and will ever do. He did this so we do not have to.
Jesus was human, so I’m confident that there were times leading up to this moment when He didn’t really feel like doing this (in fact, later in the week, He prayed for another way to achieve the goal of saving the world). But He went anyway.
Sometimes there are things we need to do that we don’t really feel like doing. It could be something mundane like taking out the trash, or more meaningful like going to work. It could be an activity directly related to our walk with God like going to church, or something seemingly unrelated like calling a friend. When I don’t feel like doing something, sometimes I remind myself of Jesus doing something for me that He probably didn’t feel like doing. Out of gratitude for what He did for me, I’ll usually end up doing that thing I don’t feel like doing, just in case it is part of His plan for my life or someone else’s.
It’s not much, I know, but sometimes it’s all I have to offer.
One of the evil one’s tactics, I believe, is to cause us to focus on the worst aspects of any given experience or situation, thus stealing joy from even the best that life has to offer. This causes people to miss the many blessings God has strewn across their path, instead viewing life as drudgery to be endured.
I know people like this. Don’t you?
They seem content wallowing in their misery. They offer many more complaining words than those tinged with happiness or gratitude. To them, there is no God; or if there is, they think they can keep Him in a box that only gets opened on special occasions.
I don’t see the point in forcing this perspective on the one life we’ve been given to live.
On the contrary, I think we should be stealing joy back from that vile creature, the devil.
One thing I like to do is replace negative thoughts with positive ones. That is, if I find myself thinking of something negative about an experience I’m having, I try to grab hold of it and look for something positive about the experience. Then I replace the negative thought with the positive one in the narrative I’m telling myself about what I’m doing.
For example, my wife and I are blessed enough to be on a little vacation in Florida at the moment. We had the opportunity to go on a boat with friends a couple of days ago. While we were out on the water, the wind picked up and the waves got a bit choppy. I don’t love a bouncy boat ride, so that could have defined my experience. Instead, I put my head back and relished the sun on my face, the wind in my hair, the sea spray on my skin. Back home, it was snowing. As it turned out, there were many more things to be grateful for than there were to complain about.
Another simple technique for stealing joy back from the clutches of the evil one is to be intentional about looking for the many simple blessings God hides in plain sight throughout each of our days. See things you’ve looked at a thousand times through new eyes. When was the last time you marveled at a brief light show caused by sunlight dancing through trees waving in the breeze? Or how long has it been since you were amazed by the sheer vastness of the sky, and wondered how it is that the God who created something so big could bend down so far from heaven so He could see you face-to-face? What about closing your eyes to breathe deeply the scent of someone you love, or to remind yourself how much you cherish the sound of their laughter?
Stealing joy back may be as simple as keeping a running list throughout each day of blessings, no matter how minuscule or mind-blowing, and then thanking God for them as your evening draws to a close. It is well within our grasp. There are miracles in every minute. It’s up to each of us whether we want to let the evil one steal, kill, and destroy our joy, or if we want to steal it back.
Postscript: in this blog post, I am providing some thoughts on how to improve your outlook on life–at least some things that have worked for me and helped me assume a more consistent posture of gratitude toward the Giver of all blessings. I recognize, however, that there are many real mental health issues that people struggle with that cannot be addressed using techniques like this, and I do not mean to downplay these issues. If you or someone you know wrestles with mental health challenges, it would be best for you to seek help from a licensed mental health professional or your pastor.
When I first committed my life to follow Christ (way back in the last century, when I was a teenager), my faith was tiny. In fact, if I knew what a mustard seed looked like, I might have been tempted to say that it was as small as that.
But as it turns out, Jesus sets that as the goal for the size of my faith and yours:
“Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move.”
This means that my faith was even smaller than a tiny seed.
Why would Jesus say this? I mean, most of the time, I feel like I have a strong faith. Did He say this to make us feel bad about our lack of faith?
No, I don’t think so.
Why Mustard Seeds?
You might ask why Jesus chose to compare our faith to mustard seeds, and that would be a good question. He actually explains this in a couple other talks He has with His disciples, such as in Matthew 13:
“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”
So, it’s actually OK if our faith starts small. But it’s meant to grow. In fact, it’s meant to grow to something larger than we could have imagined. God plants a tiny seed in us, then cultivates it by working in us and through us. God will grow our faith, if we’re willing to cooperate with Him to do that.
But There’s Still a Pickle
But this brings up something that could be problematic. As I said, I feel like I generally have a strong faith in God. I would describe that my little mustard seed has grown into at least a big bush, on its way to a strong tree.
But I’ve never moved a mountain.
Or have I?
When I think about the person I am now compared to the person I used to be, I realize that God has moved mountains within me. By no means am I saying I’m perfect or that I have it all together, but I do think God has made me into a much better version of myself than I used to be. He has helped me jettison so much garbage from my heart: anger, being judgmental, selfishness. He has shown me how to love my wife and others better. He has carried away the fear that I’ve reluctantly handed over to Him in midst of countless sleepless nights.
If you had told me decades ago that God was going to help me move these mountains within me, I probably would have laughed (or cried). Given the enormity of the challenge, I would have deemed such changes to be impossible.
Yet here I am. While I have many miles to go, I’m certainly closer to the man God intended for me to be than I was when I first accepted Jesus into my heart and life.
But What About…?
There have been plenty of things that I have prayed for which have not come to fruition. Even though I prayed, all full of faith, for my mom and mother-in-law to be healed, they still passed away. A dear friend of mine is still on the verge of losing her decade-long struggle against cancer. Two out of my three grown children are still prodigals. Our country is on the brink of falling apart, and our world is on the precipice of a nuclear disaster.
Why does it seem that my prayers are so ineffective in the shadow of these mountains?
There are lots of ways to answer this question. But I don’t want to turn this into an endless blog, so let me summarize it this way: we judge the success of our prayers and the strength of our faith by outcomes. Specifically, the outcomes that we wanted.
But God has given us a heads-up that His outcomes may be unrecognizable as positive to us:
“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
So, we may be tempted to conclude that our prayers didn’t work and that our faith is weak because a situation didn’t end up like we wanted it to. But God tells us we can’t jump to that conclusion. He answers our prayers, but His answers may not look like answers to us because the outcomes aren’t what we wanted. Or maybe the timing isn’t what we had hoped for.
But we need to let God be God.
He asks us to trust Him, and believe that He is working for our good. He assures us that when we have faith in Him:
When we do that, when trust Him and have faith in Him, we may look back in a week or a month or a decade and realize that our mountains have moved after all.
I should start by pointing out that this blog post has nothing to do with the Britney Spears song by the same title, so if you landed here looking for insight into her lyrics (or anything else about the song), you might be lost. Having said that, though, maybe you didn’t end up here by accident after all, so feel free to stick around.
What I wanted to talk about instead is my tendency to screw things up. And your tendency to do the same. Well, and everybody’s tendency to do things we wish we wouldn’t do.
If that makes you feel bad, you should know that when the Holy Spirit inspired various people to write the gospels, letters, and historic accounts that eventually became the Bible, He anticipated that we would all be challenged by the temptation to sin. How do I know this? Because there are passages that are not very flattering for some famous leaders of the Christian church.
Peter and Paul
My first example is Peter. Jesus told Peter that He was going to build His church upon that rock (most likely a play on the name Jesus gave him–“Petros” is greek for rock). Of course, that’s the way it turned out, but it wasn’t a smooth road to get there. Before Peter became a great leader in the early church, He lied to Jesus. Or at the very least, he was disingenuous and failed to live up to his commitment to Jesus.
As Jesus was preparing Himself for His coming crucifixion, He shared His Last Supper with His disciples. Then they went out to the Mount of Olives, where Peter made his bold promise to his Saviour:
Peter declared, “Even if all fall away, I will not.” “Truly I tell you,”Jesus answered, “today—yes, tonight—before the rooster crows twice, you yourself will disown me three times.” But Peter insisted emphatically, “Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you.” And all the others said the same.
Actually, it’s really two promises, since he restated it more emphatically. The great Apostle Peter committed to Jesus that he would never turn his back on his friend. But we know he did just as Jesus had predicted (see Mark 14:66-72).
Also, there’s Paul. He wrote about half the books in the New Testament. And yet, he admits in his letter to the church in Rome that he screwed up regularly:
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.
Of course, he wrote it in as obscure a way as possible (even for Paul), maybe hoping that nobody could sort out exactly what he was saying…?
What’s it All about, if not Grace?
So, what’s the point of reminding us all how rotten we are? Well, for one thing, we are rotten by nature, whether we realize it or not. But that’s OK, since it is only by God’s grace that we are saved–not because we are particularly swell people. What do we have to do to earn that grace? We can’t, really, or else it wouldn’t be grace! It would be something we’ve done so God has to save us from ourselves.
But that’s not God’s way. His was was to send His Son to save us and show us the path to heaven: believe in Him. And although “believe” is an action verb (perhaps tempting one to think, Aha, there is something I can do to earn my salvation!), in reality, belief is more about your posture of heart than it is about something you can force yourself to do.
Here’s how Paul embraced the beatiful exchange of belief and grace:
By entering through faith into what God has always wanted to do for us—set us right with him, make us fit for him—we have it all together with God because of our Master Jesus. And that’s not all: We throw open our doors to God and discover at the same moment that he has already thrown open his door to us. We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand—out in the wide open spaces of God’s grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise.
This is the passage where Paul famously says “Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand”, but I really like Eugene Peterson’s expansive view of this in “The Message” paraphrase.
So, how is it that the perfect and holy God accepts us in spite all our blemishes, regardless of all the awful things we have done and will ever do?
Grace.
It’s the gift offered freely to all of humanity, for those with eyes to see, ears to hear, and softened heart to receive.
Fundamental Attribution Error
One last point about this. There’s a term in social pshychology referred to as the “fundamental attribution error”. Although I may not be 100% correct about this (I’m not a shrink, just an avid reader), my interpretation of this is that when we judge other people’s behavior, we judge them mostly by their actions; however, when we think of our own actions, we judge them by our intentions.
This is probably why I have uttered the phrase, “I didn’t mean to hurt you” more times than I can probably count. And I’m guess you have, too. I justify what I did by my (hopefully) loving intentions. However, if I saw someone else do the same thing, I’d likely think something like, What a turd, that wasn’t very nice. (We’ll talk about judgment another time–I know we shouldn’t do it, but that is a long, hard lesson to learn in our western civilization).
So, what’s the point?
Well, of course, when we screw up, we should ask for and receive God’s forgiveness. If what we have done something that has hurt someone else (regardless of your intent), we should ask for and receive God’s forgiveness (it probably also a sin against Him) and we should apologize and seek forgiveness of the person we’ve harmed.
And…
You mean there’s more??
Yes. And, we should go easy on other people, even when they are behaving badly. Maybe especially when they are behaving badly (I’m not talking about when lives are in imminent danger, that’s a different story). Instead of a knee-jerk negative reaction ramping up to a fight, we should try to think about why that person might be behaving badly. Try to consider what might make you act in that way. Maybe they feel like they have no other option. Or maybe they don’t think they are behaving badly.
Either way, our reaction, and the words that may come out of our mouths, might be more uplifting for that person than if we react without pausing to reflect on what might have led them to this behavior (and maybe even saying a quick prayer for them and for you that you respond well). This is the way Jesus interacted with people (except for “holier than thou” religious leaders). You just never know the impact you might have on that person. If you react gently (but firmly is still OK), you might diffuse a very tense situation. You might reflect a little bit of God’s Light into that person’s life. Or, at the very least, you might help them realize they were being a turd and flip their switch back to being a regular person.
Public service announcement: For the sake of the Kingdon, this should always be our approach to interacting with fellow followers of Christ in the public square, which these days is mainly social media.
Anyway, I think this is one of the things that Jesus came to show us: how to treat other people, whom He also saw fit to die for. We should all try following His example.
Something I’ve grappled with occasionally throughout my Christian journey has been Jesus’s parables. Some of them are quite clear, especially those he told earlier in His ministry. But then there are others that have left me scratching my head. For example, the Parable of the Shrewd Manager, recounted in Luke 16:1-15, has always been baffling to me.
But no, this blog isn’t going to try to explain it.
Instead, I want to think for a moment about why Jesus taught using parables–especially the confusing ones. I mean, some of them were so confusing that His own disciples had to ask Him to explain what they meant.
So, why did He speak in riddles? Was He trying to confuse people?
I don’t think so.
First off, using parables was a fairly common way of teaching in Jesus’s day. Also, parables tend to be earthly stories with heavenly meanings. They are vivid with details, making them easier to remember. This was important since most of Jesus’s original audience was hearing them, not reading them.
Anyway, when the disciples asked Jesus why he spoke to the crowds using sometimes confusing parables, He explained it to them. His answer can be found in Matthew 13:11-17:
He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. This is why I speak to them in parables:
“Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.
“In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:
“‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.’
“But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”
So, what does that even mean? Here’s my interpretation: people whose hearts and minds are open to understanding Jesus and His parables will eventually be given that understanding. To people who have already decided not to try to understand Him, these sayings will never make any sense.
Does that imply some sort of judgment from God if you don’t understand all of Jesus’s teachings? Certainly not!
This is all about the posture of your heart. If you earnestly try to understand Jesus’s parables, it doesn’t matter to God if you don’t understand them. It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand every word of the Bible.
I had a pastor who always described his conversion experience in this way: I gave as much as I understood of myself to as much as I understood of God. This always resonated with me. I would add to it that as you grow and mature as a person, and as you grow your relationship with God, your understanding of yourself and God should deepen. So, you always have more of yourself to give to more of God.
All of this is to suggest that you should not trouble yourself if you don’t understand everything Jesus says, or if not everything in the Bible makes sense to you. I think the important thing is that you understand that Jesus loves you so much that He sacrificed His own life to save you from yourself and the darkness of this cruel and wicked world. He made this sacrifice so you could spend eternity in paradise instead of hell. All you have to do is accept that gift by recognizing Him as your Lord and Saviour.
That’s all you really need to understand. But if you start there, in His warm embrace, and spend more and more time with Him, your understanding will increase over time.
Does this mean that someday everything in the Bible will make sense to us? Probably not.
But hey, that’s OK. On one hand, you’ll have all of eternity to ask Jesus to explain it all to you. Even the Parable of the Shrewd Manager. But on the other hand, once you reach heaven, you may be so overcome with awe from your first face-to-face meeting with your Savior that everything else falls away, including your questions and confusion. Nothing from your earthly life will matter anymore.
P.S., and now for something completely different–I’ve created a podcast to go along with this blog! I started with last week’s blog, but then I will probably go back to the beginning of this year and work my way forward. Meaning that it may take a couple months before this blog post finds its way into a podcast episode. But in case you’d like to check it out, here’s a link to the first episode on Spotify. If you prefer a different app to get your podcasts, please search for “Master’s Canvas”, or let me know your preferred way to get podcasts and I can let you know the link for it there. Thank you, and happy listening!
Master's Canvas - Writing & Photography by David K. Carpenter 