Copy And Paste This!

This is true! Try it! Mark this entire status update with your mouse, select copy, and paste it into a new post. When you do, the following will happen: you will have a new post on your wall that looks exactly like this one, and everyone you know will realize that you are good at following instructions, even when they are nonsense.

You will, in fact, be safe from Facebook charging you for your account, because when you use Facebook, Facebook uses the information you voluntarily put on your timeline to target you with ads. You already pay for Facebook by volunteering this information. Other than that hidden cost of your own privacy, you are already safe, probably forever, from paying a subscription fee to Facebook. This has exactly nothing to do with this or any timeline post.

Facebook will not take any action based on your timeline posts, including this one, unless you disagree with them politically. In that case they will censor your post and possibly soft ban you. The best thing Facebook will ever do for you based on one of your posts, including this one, is to show you an advertisement for something that you indeed do want to buy. They will not change the order of the posts you see or begin to display old friends you haven't seen posts from in a while in your timeline, based on something you copied and pasted into a new post.

When you copy and paste this post, your status picture will not change into a picture of an angel, a cute Corgi, Al Gore, or the Grinch who stole Christmas. Nothing online or offline will change in color, other than your face turning red when you realize you have been tricked. You will still have to wash your laundry and do your income tax and pay for your cheeseburgers. You will not be contacted by any celebrity or receive any kind of compensation. It is a Facebook post, not a magic incantation. Exactly nothing at all of any circumstance will happen.

Except that you will have a new post on your wall that looks exactly like this one.

MJ 12/30/2022

 

Too Rational

Last week I posted two things I had previously shared on Facebook - here's the first, and here's the second. This is a third discussion I posted a day or two later.

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Still thinking a little bit about the discussion several days ago about Christians, our actions and our motives...

The other day I heard a friend say that the way she deals with someone treating her badly is to tell herself "Maybe he's just having a bad day." (This is not someone I know on Facebook, BTW, so don't think I'm talking about you!) Apparently that works for her, and I think that's a strategy employed by a lot of Christians. But I DON'T think that's God's best way.

Here's why. When you rationalize someone's behavior that way, you may defuse the anger inside of you, but you're doing it under your own power. You're "white knuckling it," as I think I said the other day, tricking yourself into acting the right way. You're not acting in the power of the Holy Spirit. And what if you then discover that the person who is wronging you is having a GREAT day, and they just hate your guts? What if they make it perfectly clear that they wronged you from pure malice? What if they honest to goodness just WANTED to be mean to you? What if you assume they are a nice person having a bad day, and you find out they are actually a mean person who is perfectly willing to hurt you again, on purpose? How do you rationalize that into "they're a nice person and I'll be nice back?" I've seen people try to do this... it just winds up making you look gullible and act like a doormat.

I know in some comments yesterday I also cast an unfavorable light on the whole "WWJD" thing*, but in this case, what DID Jesus do? When He was on the cross, put there by people who had planned literally for years to get him killed (and even tried it unsuccessfully several times), Jesus did not rationalize. Jesus did not assign a positive motive to them. "Father, forgive them, because they're probably just having a bad day." No - Jesus saw the situation for what it was. He looked into their hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit and saw the sinfulness there, but he also saw the ignorance. He didn't invent a motive for them; he saw the reality. And THEN He forgave them.

I think as Christians, our forgiveness should never be based on rationalizations. I don't think we should assume that someone is nicer than they seem, or they didn't really mean to hurt us, or whatever. Because maybe they AREN'T nicer than they seem, and maybe they really DID mean to hurt us. As the children of God, we can trust the Holy Spirit to show us the reality of every situation, and how to react accordingly. Then we can react in love AND appropriately. We can forgive with God's forgiveness, not by ignoring the problem and hoping it will evaporate. "Turning the other cheek" is not the same thing as "turning a blind eye". God does not want us to make ourselves ignorant. God wants us to have the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, see things for what they are, and react to them by His power, not under our own steam.

* Here's what I had said (in a comment) about WWJD:

The whole "WWJD" thing always made me feel a little uncomfortable, not because I disagree that we should act like Jesus, but for some other reason I couldn't define. But I've realized that the reason is that I don't think we should consciously be thinking about whether what we are doing is what Jesus would do. I think that we should allow Jesus to transform our lives until we *automatically* do what Jesus would have us do. It's not a matter of me acting like a good boy because it's what God wants; it's a matter of me *being* a good boy, because Jesus has made me one. The actions proceed from the sanctified person; the actions do not sanctify the person.

What do you think of "WWJD"? Ignoring people's actions and assuming there is a rational reason behind them? Turning the other cheek? Sound off by clicking the "Comments" link below this post!

Acting vs. Being

Tuesday I posted something I had written on Facebook about a situation I ran into recently in rush-hour traffic. Here's something I posted the next day referring to that earlier discussion. 

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Thinking about my traffic "rant" from yesterday morning. I'm wondering if I might have come off as saying that you have to act right to be a Christian. That is absolutely NOT the case. Our actions are not what makes us Christians. Well, actually, there is ONE action that does make us a Christian: accepting/confessing Jesus as Lord. After that, other actions are irrelevant to our standing with God, although if we live a life of sin we may FEEL far from God. The blood of Jesus washes all of that clean, once and for all. Which, as the apostle Paul would (and did) say, is no license to sin, but our sin or lack of sin does not make or break our relationship as sons and daughters of God.

That said, our actions before others DO reflect on Christ. Our goal should be to let God transform us into something we can't make of ourselves. It's not a matter of white-knuckling it every time we want to sin and "being good" instead; it's a matter of letting go of our sin and letting our actions reflect what we already are. When I am tempted to sin, I have the option of either giving in and doing what I know I shouldn't do, or letting go of that worthless stuff and being the child of God that Jesus has transformed me into. I'm not sure those who have not accepted Jesus always have that option; the Bible seems to say that they are enslaved to sin and can't escape it. Followers of Jesus are free from sin; we can refuse to do it, or we can go ahead and make those mistakes. We have the choice; that's our freedom in Christ.

So, back to the highway thing. Let's say I'm the guy in the car who sees another driver do something that makes me upset. My first impulse might be to honk my horn, flip the middle finger, or even follow that person to wherever they're going and have angry words with them. But I have another option: I can put down that anger like putting down a rock I was going to use to stone someone. I can take off that "old man" reaction to the situation, and put on the "new man" reaction. I can look on that person with love and forgive them.

Don't try to "be good". You can't do it. It's not a matter of adding goodness to the situation; your goodness comes from God. God's reaction to the situation is already there. It's a matter of letting go of the bad to reveal the good that God has given you. The old hymns talk about being "stained with sin" which is "washed away" by the blood of Jesus; the stain has been removed, so it's only a matter of getting rid of the muck and stuff that might be clinging to you and revealing the cleansed person that was always there underneath. That's the example of Christ that others need to see. That's the person that reflects well on the church whose logo is in the back window of your car and the God whose Bible verse is on your T-shirt. Show others the person God has made you, not the shadow of the person you would be without Him.

Is it important to "act right" to be a Christian? Should we just plan on following Jesus and hope our actions will fall into line, or do we need to put some effort into it? Sound off by clicking the "Comments" link below this post!

Traffic Witness

Recently I posted this to Facebook... the resulting discussion was so interesting that I thought I would share it here as well.

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Driving in rush-hour traffic this morning. Saw that a big tanker truck had pulled partially out into the road, blocking one lane on a 2-lane stretch with no shoulder. My instinct was to move over into the left lane to avoid the chance of getting into a mess, but I started to zig without looking first. I saw the white BMW before I pulled out in front of it and zagged back into my lane. I freely admit that this was my bad, starting to make a lane change without looking out for traffic first.

The person in the Beamer wanted to make sure I knew how bad I was. As he or she flew past (apparently without touching his or her brake pedal at all), he or she blew his or her horn at me. The incident was over; this was not to warn me that I was making a mistake. This was a punitive horn honk; censure, not alarm. I was being yelled at.

Turns out we were headed along the same route. We got off the highway at the same place, and I pulled up behind Beeping Beamer at the stop light. Guess what I saw in the back window of the car?

A church logo sticker.

If I had not been a Christian but knew what the sticker was, this would have reinforced several stereotypes for me, the most important being "Being a Christian doesn't make any change in a person." Another would be "Wealthy Christians are jerks, just like other wealthy people." There might even be an element of "that person isn't really a Christian, they just use the church to get more money" in there, which would be totally ungrounded in reality, but people think these kinds of things. If you have a sticker advertising your church, or your faith, or even a Christian radio station on your car, do you want to give out that kind of message? To broaden the question: if people know you are a Christian, whether you're wearing your WWJD t-shirt or not, what kind of message are you broadcasting with your actions?

I know tons of wonderful Christians who can testify that God HAS made a change in their hearts. Some of them are financially comfortable; some maybe not as much. Wealthy or not, having Jesus in your life DOES make a change, or at least He will if you let Him. But none of us are perfect. We do get cranky in rush-hour traffic. We do have the impulse to honk our horns in anger. But I think it's worth it to remember that people are watching. The things we do reflect on the Christ inside of us. Let's make our actions match up with the gift of life we've been given.

Have a thought about our actions reflecting our beliefs as Christians? Having stickers advertising your church on your car? Looking before you switch lanes? Sound off by clicking the "Comments" link below this post!