Cooper Stuff and Your Sins

"He who tolerates sin in himself, or excuses it in others, is not the friend of holiness, and therefore not the friend of Christ."

I watched the below video today, and wept through about half of it. But it may not be the half you would think.

I heard about the Michael Tait allegations pretty soon after the first exposé article came out. I was shocked, and disappointed, and worried. Shocked that Michael Tait, who had always seemed like a nice, friendly, safe guy and solid representative of Christ (literally, in one case), could do those things and somehow think it was OK to continue to do them for so long. Disappointed, because I've always liked the guy and enjoyed his work in Christian music. Worried that young (and even older) fans might turn away from Christ when they learned that this musician they looked up to had allegedly committed a long series not only immoral, but blatantly criminal acts. On that day I cried for the alleged victims of his abuses. And on that day I cried for the fans. That's who the first half of this podcast is about. I still have the same emotions for those people, but I've cried those tears already.

The second half of this podcast is about me. It's also about you, and John Cooper, and your pastor, and Michael Tait, and your youth leader, and the lady who sits in the row in front of you in church. And you. And me.

"He who tolerates sin in himself, or excuses it in others, is not the friend of holiness, and therefore not the friend of Christ." 

You know what? From time to time I commit sins. But sometimes I cut myself some slack in my mind. "It didn't hurt anyone. Nobody knows about it but me and God, and God forgives me."

But that quote about sin haunts me. It's not from the Bible, but it's from a smart person who knew things (you can find the quote in the podcast video at about 33:55). And even though it's not a Bible quote, it tracks with what the Bible says.

It's a long-ish podcast episode, but it's well worth the time. See you on the other side:

"He who tolerates sin in himself, or excuses it in others, is not the friend of holiness, and therefore not the friend of Christ."

I don't commit sins that would get me arrested. I don't abuse people as the Tait allegations describe. I don't do illegal drugs. But at some point, if the allegations are true, Michael Tait crossed over from being a man of God who shared the Gospel through music, to being a man who does terrible, inexcusable things and keeps them hidden. He was a Christian leader, now disgraced. I'm by no means famous, but I do serve on the worship team at my church. I also volunteer teaching preschoolers in Sunday School. At some level I'm a Christian leader, and I can't imagine myself crossing that line. But I bet Tait wouldn't have imagined himself crossing it either.

There's an old joke that many a preacher has told. A baby monkey found himself falling out of his bed every single night. "Mommy, why do I keep falling out of bed?" the baby monkey cried. His mother answered, "Baby, it's because you stay too close to where you got in!" I do not happen to believe that a person can easily lose their salvation, but in less than a week Tait lost the career he spent decades building, the respect of fans all over the world, and if allegations prove true, he could even lose his physical freedom. On top of that, he took the Newsboys down with him (radio stations across the country pulled their music and they lost their recording contract), and possibly DC Talk too, even though his DC Talk days seem to predate the alleged abuses. He absolutely fell out of his monkey bed. He seems to have repented, and I believe God is able and willing to forgive even these horrible acts, but Tait will never again have what he once had. And I don't want to run the risk of being the next "that guy".

So I'm going to try to sleep a little further from the edge of my monkey mattress. I'm going to edge closer to the center of God's will for me. Sometimes it's tough to live the way I know God wants me to. But I want my own sin to become intolerable to me. Hot, like a stovetop that I avoid touching because I know it hurts. I want to creep toward personal holiness, because I know that I may never make it to the center of the bed, but the closer I get, the less chance this monkey will have of spending the night on the floor!

A Dog's Life

I saved a dog's life this morning!

It was rush hour, and I was driving down a busy street, two lanes going both directions plus a turn lane in the middle. I was approaching what may well be the busiest intersection in our small town at that time of day (the intersection is within a mile of four schools that between them cover all grades from preschool through high school, and it was getting close to time for school to start), and there he was... a medium-sized brown dog, the kind that chases chickens around on a farm or Frisbees around in a dog park. I was in the left lane, and when I spotted him he was walking across right to left - which meant he had two lanes of traffic to cross, and if he didn't get across pretty quickly the light in front of me was going to change and he was going to have dozens of cars bearing down on him. I spotted him in plenty of time to miss him, but there was already one car coming the other way... in the lane the dog was about to walk across! What could I do to help him?

Only one thing. I hit my brakes and leaned on my horn. I didn't just give it a little "beep beep" - I made one long blast that lasted until Mr. Dog was completely out of the street. I could tell it startled him, which was exactly my intention. I wanted him out of the street, and I wanted him to think twice before ever crossing that street again. It also alerted the other driver that something was going on, and he avoided the dog by a wide margin too.

I imagine Mr. Dog was pretty scared by my horn... probably more scared than by my car. He may have thought someone or something was trying to hurt him. But that wasn't the case... in fact, my car and the other cars on the road were far more dangerouns to him than my horn was. My horn was scary, but the purpose of the horn was to save him from something that could potentially hurt or kill him. I wasn't being mean to Mr. Dog; I was showing him compassion and love by making a big scary noise so he would get out of danger.

Sometimes people read the Bible and find places where God said to His people things like "Follow the rules I'm giving you, or else this bad thing will happen to you," and we read that and perceive it as a threat. But if you read more and more of the Bible, you'll discover that God is the God of Love, not attack and retribution. When God says "do X or else Y will happen to you," He's not saying that He will punish you for your sins - He is saying that if you cling to your sins, something bad is going to happen to you because sin is destined for destruction. If you hang out in the street during rush hour, you're going to get flattened by a minivan. God is leaning on His horn, trying to get you to run from sin so you run from the consequences of that sin. If God blows a horn for you today, pay attention! It may save you from getting hurt like my horn saved that dog this morning.

Worthy

This week at my church the worship songs were all about how Jesus is worthy of our praise. Whenever I hear a song like that, my mind immediately thinks, sure, God is worthy of praise, but what makes MY praise desirable to a holy God? In Isaiah it says that our sin makes even our righteousness like "filthy rags". What does God want with my filthy rags praise and worship?

 

Years ago the church I was attending had a worship choir. Every Sunday we were up there on the stage, singing along with the worship team. Some Sundays we would perform a choir piece, but regardless, every Sunday we were up there during the worship part. One Sunday a young lady was asking about being in the choir, and I encouraged her to show up for rehearsal and see if she liked it. "Oh, I don't know. I don't think I'm good enough," she told me. "It's okay," I said, "we have people with all skill levels in our choir. You don't have to be an expert singer to participate." "No, you don't understand," she told me. "I don't think I'm good enough."

Have you ever played a game with a very small child? Every kid is different, and things get different as they get older, but usually when I play a game with a really little kid, I want them to win. I want them to succeed. I don't want to beat them! I want them to experience victory! So what do I do? I throw the match. I play like a complete moron. Or I take the deck of cards and stack them so the kid always gets the good cards. Whatever it is, though, I try to give the child a victory. Why? Because I can, and I want them to know that they are a winner. I want to give them success! Did they earn it? Well, they probably played the best they could, but in the end, they couldn't beat an adult. They couldn't win without my help!

This week listening to these songs I remembered and internalized something I already knew in my mind - that our praise and our worship are worthy of God because they are placed there by God in the first place! Our personal goodness is irrelevant. It was a game we couldn't win. We had less of a chance than a toddler winning a chess match against a grand master. The deck wasn't just stacked against us - we didn't even get any cards! There was no way we could be worthy enough to reach to God. There is no way we could ever be "good enough." We were destined to fail.

Then Jesus entered the picture.

Jesus was the only person who was unstained by sin. He was the only one who could ever win the chess match, who could ever beat the house, who could ever hope to get the ball into the basket. Jesus lived a life of righteousness when none of us ever could, and then by dying on the cross, Jesus made that righteousness available to us. He won the Super Bowl, but we get to stand on the stage and receive the trophy! We weren't worthy of anything good - but Jesus made us worthy!

Our praise is worthy of a holy God because it comes from the righteousness placed in us by Him. He's stacked the deck for us! He's worthy of our praise, and we can't help it - our praise is worthy to be offered! Are you still asking yourself "But am I good enough?" Well, the answer is, NO, you're not. Or at least you weren't. But the moment you received Jesus, asked Him to be Lord of your life, His worthiness became yours. So give Him your praise!

Never Fall

This past weekend my pastor delivered a message about living a life where you never "stumble". I wanted to compile a list of Scriptures he used all in one place, and thought I would share! Here they are (emphasis is mine):

Joel 2:26-27:
“You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied,

and praise the name of the Lord your God,

who has dealt wondrously with you.

And my people shall never again be put to shame.

You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel,

and that I am the Lord your God and there is none else.

     And my people shall never again be put to shame.

Romans 9:33:

...as it is written, 

“Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense; 

      and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”

Romans 10:11:

For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.”

2 Peter 1:10:

Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. 

1 John 2:1:

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. 

John 17:23:

I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. 

Acts 1:8:

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

Philippians 1:20:

...as it is my eager expectation and hope that I [Paul] will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.

Psalm 33:22:

Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, 

     even as we hope in you.

This is by no means the complete list of Scripture references from the message - just ones on the specific part of the message I wanted to think about a little more. Here's the full message (it's worth listening to). The part containing the Scriptures above starts at about 18:55 (I've quoted the ESV above, but I think he's using the NLT in the video):



If you enjoyed this message, you can check out the full series here.

Letter

When Santa Claus gets your letter, You know what he will say:
"Have you been good the way you should On ev'ry single day?"

When Santa gets your letter To ask for Christmas toys,
He'll take a look in his good book He keeps for girls and boys.

He'll stroke his beard, his eyes will glow, And at your name he'll peer;
It takes a little time, you know, To check back one whole year!

When Santa Claus gets your letter, I really do believe,
You'll head his list, you won't be missed, By Santa on Christmas Eve.

-"When Santa Claus Gets Your Letter" by Johnny Marks (recorded by Gene Autry)

I think it's interesting that every story we tell kids about Santa Claus says that Santa gives "bad kids" lumps of coal (or will bring them nothing at all!)... but no kid thinks that they've been bad enough for that. Every kid thinks that Santa loves them enough to overlook the bad things they have done. Nobody is bad enough to tick off Santa! Write him a letter! Tell him what you want - he'll get it right to you!

For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. -Romans 3:23 NLT

In contrast, the letter God wrote to us (the Bible) tells us that nobody is good enough to meet God's standard. We're all "bad kids". We all deserve lumps of coal from God. Even worse, we all deserve to spend eternity in Hell!

Yet God freely and graciously declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. -Romans 3:24 NLT

The good news is that God sent Jesus into the world to satisfy God's justice - to pay the penalty for what we had done. To bail us out of Hell - better yet, to serve our sentence for us! That's the story of Christmas. It's the first part of God's plan to buy our pardon. To eliminate the eternal consequences of all our sins! What a great Christmas story!

Jesus loves me, this I know
For the Bible tells me so.
Little ones to Him belong.
They are weak, but He is strong.
Yes, Jesus loves me!
The Bible tells me so!

So why do we find it so easy to believe that Santa loves us enough to do something amazing for us, even though every one of us did something bad this past year... but no matter what we do, God can't possibly love us enough to forgive us for our sins? Why is Santa's love so easy to swallow, but God's is too hard to grasp?

I hope Santa left something cool for you this morning - I'm sure he did. And I also know that God gave us the most amazing, incredible, life-altering gift of all. Santa says: "You've done something bad, but you're still pretty good. I'll just ignore those bad things you did. Here's a gift!" God says: "There is no way you can be good enough to be able to receive what I have, but I love you so much that I'm going to wipe that slate clean and make it possible for you to receive from Me what you need!" Sure, Santa will overlook your flaws. God doesn't overlook your flaws. God has eradicated your sins through Jesus! Think about that today!

Merry Christmas!

It's About Trust

This past Sunday, my pastor spoke about Jesus' temptation by Satan in the desert. Satan tempted Jesus three different ways, and Jesus had an answer from the Word for each temptation. But what all three boil down to, and what all of our temptations boil down to, is trust. Do you trust that God cares about you? Do you trust that He is concerned if you have financial trouble and don't have enough to eat or a place to live? Do you trust that He has your best interests at heart, and if you follow His lead, things will go well for you? Do you trust that God wants to see you in Heaven with Him one day? Pastor's point was that every sin we commit in some way comes back to a lack of trust that God loves us and cares about us. If we don't trust Him, we'll try to do it ourselves, and that's where sin comes in.

I think we can take that idea a bit further, though. I would submit for your consideration that there is nothing else we can trust in except God. We certainly can't trust in other people - people are very complex creatures, and every one of us lets someone down from time to time, despite our best efforts. We can't trust things that aren't alive, either, things like financial market forces or things that occur in nature like weather patterns or medical facts. There are certainly patterns at work in all of those things, but they are so complicated that they are beyond our comprehension, and they can be affected by things we can't foresee. Heck, I live in Oklahoma... I can tell you that you can't even trust it to be cold in the wintertime and hot in the summertime.

You may think that you have one thing you can trust: yourself. If you think that, you are wrong. You can't trust your own memories, for example... any psychologist can put you in a situation where you are absolutely positive you remember something that happened, and you are absolutely wrong. Witnesses to crimes get details wrong all the time, not because they are lying but because they don't remember just right. When a witness is being questioned, the interrogator has to be extremely careful not to provide information for the witness that he will later be sure he supplied himself. We can't even trust our own judgement, because sometimes we just don't have a complete enough understanding of a situation to choose wisely, and sometimes there are factors we weren't aware of.

To be completely honest, you can't even trust your own eyes. Have you ever had a fever and hallucinated something, and it seemed completely real? Have you ever been on medicine that gave you weird visions, or had a bit too much alcohol and saw something that wasn't there? If our bodies get the least bit out of whack, or have even a tiny bit of any of a huge variety of chemicals introduced into them, we get all messed up. It might not even take something that extreme to throw you off course... try not going to sleep for two or three nights in a row and see if you still have a clear picture of what's going on around you. Even eating the wrong kind of food, even legitimate food that is good for your body, can make weird things happen given the right allergy or in combination with something else. Your brain is a huge chemistry set, and if the wrong chemicals get in there, you definitely cannot trust your own five senses.

There is nothing in this world that you can trust 100%. The only thing in existence anywhere that is trustworthy is God. If you choose to put too much trust in anything but Him, you're setting yourself up for trouble, disappointment, and ultimately, utter failure. But if you do put your trust in Him, you are setting yourself up for a life where success is not only possible, it is probable. Or, dare I say it? If you put your trust in God, success in your life is guaranteed. It may not look like what a man on the street thinks means success, but you will obtain success that you know in your heart is the best kind of success there is.

Trust God today. All the way, without reservation. See where it gets you!

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. 

---

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!

Invisible Lion

"Oh, Aslan," said she, "it was kind of you to come."

"I have been here all the time," said he, "but you have just made me visible."

"Aslan!" said Lucy almost a little reproachfully. "Don't make fun of me. As if anything I could do would make you visible!"

"It did," said Aslan. "Do you think I wouldn't obey my own rules?"

- from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis

Lucy Pevensie had just done a very brave thing when this exchange occurred. To save the lives of her friends, she had braved the frightening upper floor of a house she had been told was haunted by a very dangerous magician (who was either alive, dead, awake, sleeping, upstairs, downstairs, or somewhere else... nobody was sure) in order to read from a specific book a magic spell which would turn invisible things visible again. She and her party, who were on a grand seafaring adventure, had been captured by some individuals who had read the reverse spell from the book and made themselves invisible. After a while they had become tired of the "invisible" gig and decided they actually did want to be visible, but they were too scared to go upstairs again because the magician had also become invisible when they read the invisibility spell. If Lucy wouldn't go upstairs, find the magic book, and read the spell, the invisible people (or whatever they were) had promised to cut the throats of Lucy and everyone with her.

Lucy went upstairs and eventually found the right spell, but when she read it, just as the invisibility spell had unintended consequences (turning the magician invisible), the visibility spell had the unintended consequence of turning anything visible that was invisible - and apparently Aslan had been hanging around those parts invisible when Lucy read the spell.

When I read this passage to my daughter a few nights ago, a few things jumped out at me. (SPOILER: in case you don't already know it because you've been hiding under a rock since 1950, Aslan is the character in the world of Narnia who is similar to Christ in our world.) The first thing is that Aslan tells Lucy that he "obeys his own rules." In the context of the story, he's saying that if there is a magic spell that is constructed based on principles that have been put into place in that world, he will not go against them. But in the context of the Christian faith of the author, the famed apologist C. S. Lewis, this idea is used to explain that evil exists in the world not because God is not powerful enough to eliminate it (He certainly is powerful enough), but because He has given mankind the option to follow or reject Him, and He will not forcefully take it back without giving mankind ample time to make our decision.

The other thing that jumped out at me was that Lucy, without knowing it, had in her hand the power to make Aslan visible to herself and to others. Think about that for a moment, knowing again that Aslan is a Christlike character. Is Lewis saying to us through story that each of us has the power to make Christ visible to others? I think that's exactly what he was saying. By simply following Christ, obeying His word to the best of our ability and relying on His grace both to help us when we are too weak to obey and to forgive us when we fail, we make Christ visible to others. Lucy was engaged in a completely selfless act when she made Aslan visible; she was scared to go upstairs, but she did it to save the lives of her friends. Although the book doesn't put it this way, if you had asked Lucy, doubtless she would have told you that she was only doing what Aslan would expect her to do. When we live our lives as we know Christ desires us to, when we begin to exhibit some of the characteristics of Jesus because we are letting Him live through us, we start to give people some idea of what Christ looks like. We make Him visible by being faithful representatives of Him on the earth.

Of course, when we make Jesus visible, we may not get to hug a lion afterward... but we may get something far better. Two words from the mouth of Jesus: "Well done."

Sins of a Nation

Most of my friends don't care for Barack Obama.

Let me rephrase that: most of my friends strongly disagree with many of President Obama's policy decisions. Sometimes this turns into outright dislike for the man himself (even though they haven't actually met him), and occasionally it causes some of them to teeter over into the zone where people believe that he is not a legitimate President because of where they think he was born, or that he is a militant Muslim of some kind trying to overthrow freedom of religion, or some other difficult-to-prove but inflammatory viewpoint. Most of my friends seem to be quite indignant at any suggestion that gun control is a good idea. They are angry when they perceive the President and members of Congress using tragedies as a way to promote what could be seen as a reduction in freedoms. They are incensed if someone says "...one nation..." and does not follow it up with "...under God...". They dislike Obama's foreign policies and his domestic policies. They were quite disappointed when he was elected again, although as I mentioned right after the election, I was quite proud of their response afterward.

I don't mean to distance myself from their viewpoints... as is often the case among friends, I share some of their concerns. What I am trying to do is paint a quick picture of the mindset of the Christian who is also politically right-leaning. Based on things I see on Facebook, comments posted on YouTube videos of political nature, responses to online news articles, and that sort of thing, there seem to be a lot of Christians who think that sin is dragging this country to its grave. And they are pointing their fingers at the "sinners" (Congressmen, abortionists, gun-control activists, Obama supporters, etc.) who they believe are the cause of it.

Last night I was reading the book of Daniel, and I came to a place where Daniel began to pray. Daniel was in forced exile from his country of Israel, but he knew that the reason for his exile was the sin of the Jewish nation, and Daniel began to pray for his country. I invite you to take a look at his prayer in Daniel 9:3-19 to see what he said.

Do you know what I noticed last night as I read it? Although Daniel was one of the most righteous among his people (remember, he was the guy who wound up getting thrown to the lions because he refused to betray God and pray to the king), Daniel did not pray to confess the sins of others. He confessed and asked for forgiveness of the sins of his country, including himself. He did not differentiate between idolaters back home dancing around on the hilltops making sacrifices to Baal, and himself, stuck in Babylon but praying three times a day facing Jerusalem. "We have not listened to your servants the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, and to all the people of the land," he prayed, despite the fact that his prayer was in response to his own reverent reading of the writings of the prophet Jeremiah. He included himself among the ranks of those who "...have rebelled against [God] and have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God by walking in his laws, which he set before us by his servants the prophets," despite the fact that Daniel was so careful to follow God's Law that years earlier when he was brought to Babylon in captivity, Daniel had "...resolved that he would not defile himself with the king's food, or with the wine that he drank," risking his life in the process. Although Daniel appears to have been quite a meticulous follower of God, certainly not someone we would look on as a "transgressor", he prayed as though he were. Because he knew that he was a member of God's people, and a member of his country, and he knew that they would live or die as a unit.

"United we stand, divided we fall." That's a good motto. If we point at someone else as the one who is messing everything up, we divide ourselves from others around us... we become a divided country. That sort of thing is what caused the awful "Civil War" that nearly destroyed us once. The United States of America is not quite like Israel... a nation primarily of one ethnicity and chosen specifically by God to be His people. I don't think the United States is chosen to be God's nation; I think the Church (meaning all Christians across the world) is now ultimately God's nation, His "Kingdom." But I do think that Christians should take a play out of Daniel's playbook and call out to God for forgiveness of the sins we have committed as an earthly nation, humbling ourselves as though we are among the transgressors. Because really, we are. Every time an official or governing body we have elected to represent us makes an ungodly decision, we have made that decision by proxy. And "I didn't vote for him" is no excuse. United we stand; divided we fall.

I personally don't think that we (the United States) will ever be able to right every wrong that we have committed or will commit as a country; I'm not sure that is even possible for any country. But if we seek God's face as His people and pray for the cleansing of our country, I think God will honor our prayers and we will see change for the better. And if we take the attitude that we are all Americans and dispose of the "us vs. them" mentality which has plagued us for the past few decades, it's possible that maybe some of "them" might come to Jesus and become "us". Or, we may find that although we may disagree on some of the details of politics, some of "them" actually turn out to be some of "us" already. But whether we all come to a consensus on political, ideological, or religious ideas (fat chance!) or not, we are all "us". We are all America. The UNITED States. If we become divided because we disagree, we risk failure. If we remain united, we as a nation can remain strong.

Election Results and the Christian: Part 2

In yesterday's post I talked about a Christian response to the election results from this week. Many of my Christian friends were sorely disappointed by those results, because their political leanings are conservative (as mine are). My point yesterday was that even under the regimes of the most pagan and downright stupid rulers in the Bible, God's people were able to prosper, so even if you think that Barack Obama is evil and stupid (I don't happen to think he is either, but some people appear to) there is still hope for the people of God. But I started to be concerned that one statement that I made might be misunderstood. I wanted to keep focused yesterday on the topic at hand so I didn't clarify then, but I do want to make sure today that it's clear what I didn't mean by it. Here's the statement in question:

In the end, the only thing in the Bible that ever caused God's people to ultimately not prosper is not their leadership: it is their own unrighteousness. God's people failed to prosper not when their leaders were bad, but when they chose not to maintain their own relationship with God.

What I was absolutely not saying by that was that if we are all good boys and girls and keep our noses clean, that God will be nice to us. Looking back at it, it could be read that way, but that's a half-truth that I want to clear up.

The stories I was discussing in that blog post (Joseph, Daniel, and Esther) had one thing in common: they occurred under the Old Covenant. I was telling stories from the Old Testament, and referring to the experiences of the Jewish people before Jesus came to Earth. In those days, the primary means of having a relationship with God was by following the Law. You would do what the Torah said, offer the proper sacrifices at the proper times and when you sinned, and that was the way that people related to God and maintained righteousness. If you read through the books of Kings and Chronicles, the times when the people had rough water as a nation were the times that they abandoned the Law and decided that worshiping idols instead of the one true God was a great idea. When they began to look to idols or to alliances with other nations instead of looking to God, they began to have problems - the problems that ultimately resulted in the exile of Daniel and the other young Hebrew men to Babylon. The means that God had provided for them to stay right with him were the rules they called the Law. Follow the rules and you're OK. That's what I had in mind when I wrote those two sentences yesterday.

However, we're in a different situation now. When Jesus died on the Cross, He took all of our broken rules with Him. We call them "sins," but basically they are broken rules, transgressions of God's Law. God knew that ultimately nobody but Jesus would ever be able to flawlessly follow the Law - that's why He gave the Jews of the Old Testament sacrifices to pay the price for their rulebreaking, and that's why God gave us Jesus as the ultimate sacrifice to pay the price for all of them at once. Breaking the rules is not what separates us from God now; refusing to accept the cleansing that Jesus offers by the blood He shed on the cross is the only thing that gets between us and God. The "unrighteousness" that Israel of the Old Testament never could really quite break free from is the unrighteousness that Jesus has unchained from those who accept Him as their savior. So where "unrighteousness" from an Old Testament perspective meant "breaking the Law" or not following the rules, to New Testament Christians, "unrighteousness" is not a failure to follow rules as much as it is a failure to seek that connection to God that Jesus has provided. I don't think the sin-to-consequences link is the same now as it was then.

So to bring it back around: if you got the idea from my post that I think we should all be good, go to church on Sunday and not kick the dog on Monday, don't smoke or chew or run with girls that do, don't lie or cheat or steal or break the Ten Commandments, and then God will smile on us and protect us from the infernal Democratic Party - that's not what I wanted to convey. Be nice, absolutely. But don't try to be a good person in order to curry God's favor. You already have God's favor if you've accepted Him as your savior. Because you have God's favor, you are free to naturally live a life that lines up nicely with His Will and His Word. And because you have God's favor by the blood of Jesus, you aer under God's protection from whatever might try to harm you. There is no legislation, no five-point plan, no majority in Congress that can separate you from the love and protection and favor of God. We actually have coined a special word for that concept: the word is "Gospel." The Gospel is this: God has made a way for human beings to live in His favor. The guy who sits in the Oval Office has no effect on that.

Here's the original post - and here's Part 3 of this impromptu series!

(Un) Leashed

When we recently moved into our new third-floor apartment, we somehow misplaced our dog leash. When you live in an apartment with a dog, a leash is not optional... doggie's gotta take a walk! ...So my wife went to the store and bought a leash. It's about five feet long, and the poor dog kept getting halfway down the stairs before I even got a step or two down, and then I had to run to keep up with him on the way to the doggie potty area. This was not optimal, so I went to the store to look for another leash.

The one I bought is fifteen feet long and retractable. It has a button on it so I can freeze it at any length I want (it's saved the dog from several run-ins with other dogs and one potentially fatal double-team cat attack!) and it allows him to run around a little more without me having to run too... this is VERY important in the 100°+ temperatures we've been having this summer! I'm sweating just thinking about it!

The funniest thing happens when we get out on the grass. My dog has 15 feet in any direction that he can go without me even moving. That's a thirty-foot radius he can run around in, sniff around in, and do you-know-what in. But it seems like no matter where I stop walking, my dog wants to go somewhere outside of that circle! He seems pretty much ready to strangle himself into unconsciousness if that's what it takes to get where he wants to "go" (which, no matter where he is, is somewhere else). Usually I give up and walk around with him, but I wish he would just operate within the freedom that I give him. I'm not trying to restrict him; in fact, I bought him a longer leash so he would have more freedom. If I let him go where he wanted to go, he would get run over by a car or banged up by a terrified cat.

People often ask questions about what behavior the Bible says is acceptable. Is it okay for me to drink a beer? Is this outfit too revealing? How far can I go with my girlfriend in romantic moments? Honestly, the Bible doesn't always have precise answers for those specific questions, but the Word of God does contain guidelines for a lot of situations. The Old Testament in particular contains some pretty restrictive rules; God gave Israel a short leash. When Jesus came, He made it clear that He had written those rules on our hearts... we don't necessarily have to think about right and wrong, because we know right from wrong by the voice of the Holy Spirit inside of us. We have a longer leash. And in reality, it's no leash at all... if we choose to move out of the circle of the Grace of God and into the darkness of sin, we are able to do that at any time. But if we stay within the boundaries of what the Word of God and the voice of the Holy Spirit tells us, without "going" out where we have no "business" being - doggie puns intended - if we stay within God's Grace, we also stay within His protection.

Years ago when I was a teenager, my youth pastor used to tell this short story. "'Mama! Mama! Why do I keep falling out of bed?' the baby monkey asked. 'Honey, it's because you stay too close to where you got in!'" Don't flirt with sin. That's the old you, the you that existed before you met Jesus. The edges of what is right are not a place to explore. There's plenty of freedom in Christ; there's too much at stake to push boundaries when God has already placed everything you need within reach!

How Far is "too far"?

The following question came to me via Formspring:

Is there anywhere in the Bible that specifically lists what sexual impurities refer to, or how far "too far" actually is?

Here's my answer:

The short answer: no, not specifically. This is related to something we were talking about last night at my church, actually. There are two concepts in the Bible that you have to understand: "Law" and "Grace." "Law" means a set of rules that you follow in order to keep things square with God. The Ten Commandments are the most famous example of this, but the concept is throughout the Bible. "Grace" means that you are square with God because of the sacrifice of Christ Jesus on the cross. Under Grace, whether or not you follow rules and regulations does not determine if you are right with God; whether or not you accept Jesus' sacrifice for you determines whether you are right or wrong with God.

That is not to say that there are not right and wrong things to do even if you are living under grace. For example, a Christian under grace is not allowed to rob a convenience store at gunpoint. If he does, although he is forgiven by God when he confesses his sin, he is not forgiven by the owner of the convenience store or by the local police department. There are consequences of his actions which are not wiped out by Grace. So, there are "right" things to do, and there are "wrong" things to do, even if they are not necessarily always codified in specific sets of rules in the Bible.

The reason the Bible doesn't necessarily set up specific sets of rules for every circumstance is that, first of all, God doesn't WANT us to live under a Law. Part of the reason God gave the Law to the nation of Israel was to demonstrate how impossible it is to always perfectly follow a set of rules. Living that way is a losing game. And second of all, God has actually written His Law on our hearts (see Hebrews 10:16 http://esv.to/Heb10:16). If you have accepted God's sacrifice through Jesus, your heart knows right from wrong. You know when you've crossed the line; you don't need a playbook with diagrams and a tape measure to know whether you've gone "too far." Under grace, The Law which is external becomes unnecessary, because God's Law is internal to each of us.

But you don't need a rulebook to determine whether you have sinned or not anyway, because from God's perspective, the sin is not something you do with your body, but something you do with your heart. Matthew 5:27 (http://esv.to/Mat5:27) says that if you even look at someone with the intention of having sex outside of marriage, you have already sinned, whether you actually follow through with it or not. This is not to say that you can't be attracted to someone and desire a physical relationship, because sexual attraction was created by God. But the instant of the sin is probably sometime around when you go from "I would really like to go to bed with that person" to "If given a chance, I WILL go to bed with that person."

So: the Bible doesn't particularly give specific "how far is too far" rules, although doubtless you could find some in there if you look around enough. The reason why is that you already know the limits, because God has written them on your heart; if you choose to look for rules and regulations, you don't have to look any further than there. When the sin has occurred internally, the sin has occurred from God's perspective. My advice to you is: keep your mind pure. Keep your hands from going where they don't need to go. Keep the parts of your body that need to be covered, covered. And if you make a mistake in your heart, bring it before God in prayer and make it right; don't beat yourself up about it. Live under Grace; don't go looking for the Law to tell you what to do, because the Law is merciless in meting out punishment when you mess up.

A Victim Of Dirt

This morning Pastor Orlando talked a lot about what God has redeemed us from, using the Christmas story as a starting point. But oddly enough, the things that turned on lights for me this morning were all about sin. Take, for example, something the angel said to Joseph in his dream, recorded in Matthew 1:21:

She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

Have you ever thought about the phrasing: "save his people from their sins"? Did you ever think of your own sins as a threat to your well-being? Not just as something you do, but as something that could attack you, hurt you, even kill you? Did you ever think of them as something that could enslave you? Look at what it says in Romans 6:20:

For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.

Sin isn't just something we do... it's something that enslaves us, controls us. Fortunately, there's a way to escape from being brutalized by your own sins. Pastor Orlando pointed it out, right in Colossians chapter 2:

And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.
(Colossians 2:13-15)

Without going into the level of detail that Pastor did, I'll reiterate his summary: God has forgiven our sins (trespasses), canceled our debt before God, and took away any weapons that Satan might have to attack us with. Have you ever seen a mime pretending he's in a glass box? There's really no box, of course, but the mime puts his hands on all the walls of the box that isn't there, exactly as though he couldn't get out. But what if the mime really believed it? What if the mime honestly thought there were glass walls closing in on him, constricting him, crushing him... killing him? We get the idea that our freedom in Christ is limited by something, but Colossians just told us that God has blown away all the walls that once pushed up against us. Don't be crushed by walls that aren't even there! Look into the Word and discover the freedom you have in Christ Jesus!

I learned the wrong thing

My pastor started his message this morning with Genesis 3:1-6. He went on to compare the first half of verse 6 to 1 John 2:16, which was an awesome point, but he had already lost me; I was seeing something in the conversation between Eve and the serpent that I hadn't seen before.

Okay, so in verse 1 of Genesis 3, the serpent asks Eve if God really said she couldn't eat from the tree in the center of the garden, right?

Wrong.

Look back at it. "He [the serpent] said to the woman, 'Did God actually say, "You shall not eat of any tree in the garden"?'" (my italics). God had simply said they couldn't eat from the one tree in the center of the garden, not any tree at all. But the serpent misquotes God on purpose, as though he had misheard a rumor through the grapevine. Why do you suppose the serpent did that? I think the serpent (who, we find out later in the Bible, is actually the Devil) understood human nature and knew that if he could just get her into a conversation, that was half the battle. Lesson #1 to learn from this passage: don't try to correct Satan's theology. Don't have a conversation with him. Shut him down, because nothing good will come of having a battle of wits with the Devil. You'll see why in a minute.

Eve doesn't know that the serpent isn't simply misinformed, so she tries to correct the "misunderstanding." But does she correct it? No she doesn't! She messes it up worse! "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'" (again, my italics). What's with the "touch it" part? That's not what God had said either! God just said not to eat it. God didn't say a thing about touching it. Someone had added something to God's word. Was it Eve? Was it Adam, adding some extra insurance when he told Eve what God had said? We don't know, but it apparently happened somewhere along the line, and maybe when Eve was starting to wonder about things, she touched the fruit and nothing bad happened, and that made her feel bolder about actually taking a taste. Lesson #2 to learn from this passage: don't add things to God's commands that don't belong. God's Word can take care of itself.

Anyway, I was sitting there, lost in this conversation, actually giving Satan some props, because he knew how to play this woman. He had the psychology down. He got her talking, defending her faith. He waited until she twisted it herself and he saw the chink in her armor. Then he contradicted God outright ("...the serpent said to the woman, 'You will not surely die...'") and told her a half-truth ("...God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."), distracting her from God's warnings and getting her attention on something that seemed like a better idea than following God's instructions. Come to think of it, it reminds me of how Satan tried to confuse and persuade Jesus Himself in Luke chapter 4 (which my pastor read later in his message) by quoting from Psalms. Oddly enough, Eve only had a few sentences of God's Word (that we know of, anyway) and Satan managed to twist it for her enough that she did exactly what God had said not to do. Jesus, on the other hand, had hundreds of years of God's word to deal with, and Satan actually quoted God's word correctly, but Jesus managed to see right through Satan's argument and avoid the sin Satan was trying to trick Him into.

And that's why we need the Holy Spirit. Even when the human race was only two people old, the Deceiver knew human psychology well enough that he was able to trick them. What chance to you and I have against an intellect like that, one which has debated with millions of the greatest minds humanity has ever produced and beat all of them but One, without the help of the One Who wasn't tricked? Don't go it alone today. Let the Spirit of God guide you, and you won't be deceived, even by The Deceiver.

And the next time you're sitting in church, don't worry about it too much if the Holy Spirit takes you on a quick rabbit trail. I didn't miss anything from the message that was coming from the pulpit, and as you can see, I seem to have received a bonus message that was mine alone... well, okay, mine and now yours! The Word of God is amazing and multifaceted, and sometimes it's just a rollicking read (think about the intrigue in that brief exchange between one seemingly naïve and clueless woman, and the enemy of all mankind! Now that's suspenseful writing!) The Bible isn't just a Theology text. The thing that caught my attention was the drama of the story itself. Enjoy the Bible for what it is, whether you're reading narrative or poetry or a vision of the future or a letter written from an evangelist to one of the churches he had visited... take it on its own terms and enjoy it as a book. And then when God has something to teach you, you'll already be listening, and it will be easy for Him to make the revelation clear.



Here's a link to the message I was listening to.

how to live holy in youth days..how to serve lord jesus in youth days.what god is accepting from my youth life?

I received the above question on Formspring, a site that allows people to ask questions of others. You may have heard about it on the news; in some places teenagers are using it to heckle other teenagers. I'm not using it for that, as you can see below.

The book of Ecclesiastes says "Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, 'I have no pleasure in them' " (http://esv.to/Eccl 12/). The writer of Ecclesiastes tried everything he could think of to make himself happy - entertainment, money, superior knowledge, sex, everything. What he discovered was that anything you do in your life apart from God is meaningless. The point of the book of Ecclesiastes is to start out early, when you are a young person, following after God's will for you... and then when you get older, you won't have to look back and say, "Well, THAT was a waste of time!"

Now, as to "how" to follow God so that you don't one day look back and say that... I'm afraid that's not a question that can really be answered for you by somebody else. You probably know some of the key things you can do: learn everything you can about God's Word, spend time praying and worshiping God, that sort of thing. Another key is found in 2 Timothy 2:22 - "So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart." (http://esv.to/2 Tim 2:22/ ) By "youthful passions" Paul wasn't just talking about sexual passion (although that certainly qualifies) but he meant that you should remain cool-headed and not make big decisions based on the emotion of the moment. Check every decision against the Word of God and the voice of the Holy Spirit within you (meaning, pray about it and then listen to what God says back) and you won't spend your life messing up.

It also means that there are times when you literally should "flee" something that you know better than to get mixed up in. Recently a woman was telling my wife and me about how proud she is of her teen-aged daughters, who have a habit of calling or texting their mom when they are with friends and it looks like things might go in the wrong direction. "Mom, call me and tell me I have to come home right now!" is a text message she's received several times from her girls. They are fleeing from a situation they know they don't want to be in. A famous example of this "get out of there!" strategy is found in Genesis 39:1-23. (http://esv.to/Gen 39:1-23/ )

I would advise you to read that passage in Genesis, and also take a look at Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes can seem quite depressing (because the author was kind of down when he wrote it), but you need to look at it as an example of what will happen if you do not choose to follow God. I can't tell you step by step exactly what to do to serve Jesus - I don't know your situation (where you live, what needs might be around you that God might call on you to fill, what your gifts and talents might be, etc.) but I do know that young people face temptation (old people do too!) and need to resist it. And I do know that God had something in mind for you when He placed you on Earth, and He has no intention of keeping it a secret from you. Hook up to him - plug in like plugging lamp into a wall socket - by getting your mind filled with what the Bible says and by spending time in His presence in prayer and worship, and when the time comes for you to make a decision about what to do with yourself, make your decision based on God's counsel and not your own "youthful passions" and you will do just fine.

Ask me anything

Jesus Christ, Stalker

Tactical maneuvers, little white lies
It's all beneath the surface and what it implies
Assuming that the end justifies the means
You hope that no one's looking behind the scenes
I think you should know, God sees everything that you do
There's never a time when He's not watching out over you

"Ooo, how creepy!"

"What do you mean?"

"Didn't you just hear that song? It makes God totally sound like a stalker. Or a peeping tom or something."

"God's not a peeping tom."

"Oh yeah? Well it's still pretty weird to think that no matter where I go or what I do, even if nobody else ever finds out about it, God will know."

You can't escape, you can't hide
When He's looking at you with His infrared eyes
Deep in the dark, but the dark is light
When He's looking at you with His infrared eyes
There is no place where they won't find you
Don't turn your back, they'll be right behind you
Can't run away, no matter how you try
God is following you with His infrared eyes

"What's wrong with God knowing everything you do?"

"Well, what if He sees me doing something He doesn't like?"

"Why would you want to do something God wouldn't like?"

Out in the crowd you wear a charming facade
You're never concerned with being labeled a fraud
That friendly disposition is not the real you
But no one suspects; they haven't even a clue
I think you should know, God sees everything that you do
There's never a time when He's not watching out over you

"What about times when I want to do something a little... different? Maybe in a morally gray area. Sometimes I'd rather be anonymous; that way it doesn't matter what other people think. And sometimes, frankly, I don't want anyone to see me because I know better."

"You know better than to think that anyone can see you?"

"No, I know better than to do whatever I'm doing. I don't like to think about God always seeing me because I'm pretty sure that if He can see what I'm doing, I'm really in for it."

You can't escape, you can't hide
When He's looking at you with His x-ray eyes
Deep in your heart, but He can see inside
When He's looking at you with His x-ray eyes
There is no place where they won't find you
Don't turn your back, they'll be right behind you
Can't run away, no matter how you try
God is following you with His x-ray eyes

"But God's not looking at you to find reasons to punish you!"

"What do you mean?"

"He's looking at you because He loves you. When you're in love with someone, don't you like to look at them?"

"Well, yeah, I guess so... so that's why God's on the lookout all the time?"

"Yeah. God is on the lookout for ways to get you to come to Him. He's not looking for a reason to squish you for your sins."

"What was that part about Him seeing inside of my heart?"

"God sees your attitude and intentions before He even sees your actions. In fact, if you do the right thing for the wrong reason, He still knows that it was done with the wrong attitude."

"Ruh-roh... I don't like where this is going now!"

"No, wait a second. Here's the thing. God sent Jesus to take the punishment for anything wrong that you ever did or ever will do. If you identify yourself with Jesus, that means that you place yourself in a category with people whose sins are taken care of."

"You make it sound like someone from another table paying for your dinner!"

"Well, sort of! So when God looks at you, He doesn't see an unpaid bill... he sees a customer in good standing. Really, better than a customer in good standing. It's like... well, I have a cousin who owns a restaurant. When I go over there to eat and get ready to pay, he always says the same thing: 'Your money's no good here.'"

"Because you're family?"

"Right. because I'm family. Family always eats free there. And once you accept Jesus' sacrifice for yourself, you become God's family."

"And He can't see it any more when I do wrong?"

"Sure, God sees it when you do something wrong... but He's already forgiven you for it."

There is no place where they won't find you
Don't turn your back, they'll be right behind you
Can't run away, no matter how you try
God is following you with His infrared x-ray eyes

"So when God is watching me..."

"...It's to love you. Take care of you. Provide for you. Protect you."

"Wow! That sounds like someone I want to be stalked by!"

The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous
   and his ears toward their cry.
-Psalm 34:15 (ESV)



lyrics: "Infrared X-Ray Eyes"
from the Crumbacher album "Incandescent"
words & music: Stephen Crumbacher.

Diapers

Back when my son was around two or three years old, when they sang "Jesus Loves The Little Children" in his class in the nursery at church, they would always add a new verse: "Jesus died for all the children, all the children of the world..." and the rest was the same. I'm not much for reworking something that's been around a long time (ever hear someone who doesn't think he's still a "wretch" try to retrofit "Amazing Grace"? I have... whew! Not easy!) but I was OK with this change; after all, the point is to teach truths to children, and that's probably the greatest truth of all. And at least it fits into the melody. But apparently very small children have a somewhat myopic view of the world; one day I heard my boy singing it out loud and strong: "Jeee-sus dia-pered all the chiiiil-dren, aaaalll the chil-dren of the woooorld!" (Then again, come to think of it, Jesus came not to be served but to serve... and if he saw a baby who needed a diaper, gosh darn it, I believe he would have diapered that baby!)

Fast-forward to this morning. I was walking along, thinking about something I had done. Have you ever let something simmer on the inside of you until it spills out into the open? This was a sin of the heart, and nobody knew about it but me and God, but it had colored my perception of a friend and I needed cleansing. I started praying, telling God that even though I knew at the time that it was wrong, I willfully harbored those attitudes anyway, and I knew that sometimes there are consequences to our sinful actions even though we are forgiven, and would God forgive me for my sin, but also cleanse me so that my relationship with that person could be right again?

All of a sudden, I knew my prayer had been heard. I could sense that God had not only given me a gift of forgiveness, but also of a true perspective. I had been forgiven, but also made clean. I guess that's what 1 John 1:9 means when it says that not only will God forgive us our sin, but also cleanse us from unrighteousness! And then it hit me... I was a child of God that had made a mess all over myself, and I had been wiped clean, maybe had a little powder applied, and diapered with a fresh diaper! So, maybe Bible images in places like Ezekiel 16 and Luke 10 are a little less indelicate, but as a dad who deals with diapers on a fairly regular basis, I have to say, when I mess up and come to God for forgiveness, a new diapie does a lot more for me than a bandage full of oil and wine. Maybe Jesus DOES diaper all the children of the world!

The Wrath Of God

Romans 1:18 (ESV) says:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

Did you notice that "the wrath of God" is not focused on the "men"? God's wrath is not against people. God's wrath is aimed squarely at sin... unrighteousness, ungodliness. It's only when we hang on to our sin that we potentially can wind up in the crosshairs. I'm so glad that Jesus made it possible for us to divorce ourselves from our sin once and for all and experience HIS righteousness!

This Little Light Of Mine

I've posted a new document at Scripture Menu, and I'd love to get some feedback on it. Take a look:

The Light of the Lamp

Please post any comments here on Christdot! That is, post comments here if you LIKED it. If you didn't like it, here's something that may put you back in a good mood:

IIIIIIII.com

You Can't Beat The Classics

Lately I've been doing my Bible reading from a copy of The Evengelical Parallel New Testament that I borrowed from the library. The layout of the book is really pretty informative for someone who, like me, has read up a bit on the whole literal vs. dynamig translation method debate; the two translations on the far left, the NKJV and the ESV, are the most "literal" translations (close to word-for-word from the originals). The others (NIV and HCSB, TNIV and NCV, NLT and The Message) are arranged that way so that the most "dynamic" of the translations (actually both paraphrases) are on the far right, and the four in between are roughly arranged in sequence from most literal to most dynamic.

Anyway, today I ran across a "classic" example for literal translation advocates: 2 Corinthians 5:21. That link is to a page that displays the renderings from the first five translations in the book: NKJV, ESV, NIV, HCSV, TNIV. They all say something to the effect that Jesus was made "to be" sin, so that we could "become the righteousness of God." Interestingly, when I glanced over at the NCV version of the verse, I had no longer "become" the righteousness of God, but was simply "made righteous." Likewise with the NLT and The Message. Maybe to some people that's a minor, hair-splitting change, but Theologically it's a big difference whether Jesus took a mud-bath in our sin and then he said we were OK, or whether he became the sin and we became the righteousness. Actually, I guess you could say it's the difference in old covenant covering with animal blood vs. new covenant cleansing with Jesus' blood.

I notice that The Good News translation is even worse... in that one Jesus just shares our sin with us, and we get to share God's righteousness with Him. Like he gave us a piece of his Snickers. ARGH!

(Notice that in this case, two of the translations that are often considered dynamic-equivalent "offenders" - the NIV and TNIV - came out with the more literal version of the verse. Fear of what the TNIV update of the NIV would mistranslate was a big part of the reason why the ESV and HCSB were created in the first place!)