Stepping into the Light

Occasionally we get reports here in Richmond about black bears on the loose somewhere in our suburbs, or even in the city proper. Just this weekend, a local news station showed video of a black bear cub trying to figure out how to get inside a supermarket in a nearby town. Witnesses said they'd just looked on in disbelief as the cub gave up and ran off. They laughed about having confused the young bear with a Rottweiler.

If you saw a black bear running through the parking lot when you stopped to shop at your local grocery store, what would you do? What if it were just a cub? As cute as a bear cub may be, it is still a bear--a dangerous animal with sharp teeth and claws--and it does not belong in the city.

Too many Christians react to our own sins the same way this weekend's surprised shoppers reacted to the bear cub.

"Oh, isn't it cute what I did?" "I sinned, isn't that funny?" "What I did wasn't that bad." "Hey, this might look bad, but I'm a good person."  These are some of the thoughts and excuses that we offer.

There are no cute sins, or small ones. Every sin is dangerous, even the ones that don't feel as bad to us as the supposedly big ones of murder and adultery. Sin always becomes a barrier between the sinner and God until the sinner repents. Sin may be part of nature, but it doesn't belong in my life as a Christian.

If I commit a sin, I'm a sinner. Not cute, and not funny.

(Photograph by Amy Jacobs)

On the 1980's television show "A Different World", the character of Whitley had a mantra she learned to say when she was stressed. It was three R's: "Relax, Relate, and Release". When faced with the difficulty of forgiving the seemingly unforgiveable, we should follow Whitley's prescription of the three R's by relaxing, relating, and releasing.

First, relax your tension by focusing on the benefits of forgiving: better physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual well-being.

Second, relate to forgiveness by looking not at what you think the other person has done to you, but look at and admit what your own unforgiving attitude has done to you. When going through this exercise, it doesn't matter how well-justified your attitude toward the other person may be or may seem. That's not the point. You can't do anything about what someone else did to you. You can, however, look at how you reacted and how your reaction has affected you. That is something you can change.

Third, choose to release yourself from the control the other person's attitude or actions have on you.

If you are still having trouble forgiving, use a fourth R: you’d better recognize that no matter what action is performed toward you by someone else, you can control your reaction. You can have peace with or without an apology or restitution.

Forgiving someone who hasn't changed does not mean you are condoning their behavior; it means you are not permitting their behavior to control the quality of your life.

You also don't have to continue to subject yourself to bad behavior by others just because you have forgiven them. The point is not to get bitter, but just to move on. How you move on is an entirely separate question from whether or not you forgive.

What does it mean to be born again? It means I know I've been changed, and I know Jesus did it. He bore the pain of my rebirth, just as surely as my mother bore the pain of my natural birth.

I will sing with the angels and praise God forever, because Jesus came down from heaven and allowed His name to be mocked and His side to be pierced so I could drink the living water inside Him and be washed clean in His blood. I was on my way to a hot and dirty hell when He stooped low to lift me up with Him.

My eyes see the world in a different way than before my change--not through rose-colored glasses, but through love that fights to exist in spite of the evidence of the unloveable that I see around me.

My heart is so full of gratitude that I can't give up following Jesus even when my natural (wo)man wants to.

Jesus is my compass and joy is due north. Love and forgiveness surround me even when I'm in despair. He will never leave me nor forsake me. He never has.

I want that for you too.

("I Know I've Been Changed" sung by Pastor E. Dewey Smith, Jr. of Greater Travel Rest Baptist Church in Decatur, Georgia)

From the blithe, blond, bland Jesus pictured in so much Sunday School wall art, to an enraged avenger, we seem to enjoy inventing our own version of Jesus so we can worship who we desire.

Why do we love these false or at best incomplete images of our Savior? The real Jesus scares us, that's why.

It's not necessary to pretend that the real Jesus doesn't frighten you. I think this is what the Bible means when it tells us to live in fear of the Lord--not in fear of what He'll do to us, but in awe of what He wants to do through us. God is not our buddy; He is our master. Even Jesus' closest disciples were often frightened and confused in the face of His power and His prophecies of death and rebirth.

It's right to be frightened, but not right to respond to our fear by worshipping a fake Jesus who is either totally non-threatening or whose possible punishments keep us up at night.

We often get our false ideas of Jesus either from other people, when we don't read the Bible for ourselves, or when we pull scriptures out of context.

We have to read the entire Bible to get the best picture of Jesus. There is great danger in picking and choosing which scriptures to emphasize in our understanding and worship, but that is standard practice for Christians and our churches.

While the New Testament as we know it records just the highlights of Jesus of Nazareth's three year ministry, and extremely little of His earlier life, every chapter in both the Old and New Testaments can help us to see Him more fully.

When we do see Jesus more fully, any Christian with any sense should experience a healthy degree of fear. After all, to be a Christian means to follow this perfect Jesus the Christ, not just to believe in Him.

Who would not be scared at the prospect of developing a relationship with someone who sacrificed His life to pay for our sins and wants us to become just like Him? Though our sins are forgiven for His sake--just for the asking if we trust Him--we are called to sacrifice ourselves just as He did, for the sake of fulfilling God's will. We don't have to literally die on a cross for God, that work is completed; but we are all called to give up pursuing the wants of our flesh and to substitute God's will for our own. All of which is a little like dying--in a good way.

The ideal is for our flesh to be crucified as was Jesus, and for our spirits to be reborn as kindred to His.

This is scary only until we do it--again and again and again. The closer we get to God's will, the more we are filled with the Holy Spirit, who comforts us and enables us to continue on in the life God wants for us, without fear.

God custom-made Benjamin William Harris, Jr. just for me. Not because I'm so deserving, but because God knows what He's doing all the time. If I, in all my wisdom, had sat down to design the perfect husband for myself, I'd never have done as good a job as God did--obviously--but Benjamin is what I would have been aiming for.

Benjamin is my pastor, my lover, protector, provider, and a daunting inspiration. Not that he's perfect, but he's the perfect man for me.

My stomach flutters when Benjamin touches me, and I still get a tingle in my backbone when he walks into a room where I've been waiting. He's the only person with whom I've ever felt free enough to reveal myself completely: no secrets and no excuses.

This is a husband who allows me to be angry when I am, yet he can get to me to laugh even when I don't necessarily want to. And when he's mad at me, he doesn't spoil me by crumbling at the sight of my tears. (Which is a good thing for him, since tears come with nearly every emotion for me.)

He calls me "Baby, Baby" and compliments me both privately and in public all the time. But he's a great coach too, never failing to give me a push when a push will do me more good than sweet talk.

Benjamin's sacrificial living, his fierce love of family and complete availability to anyone who needs a friend, a counselor, a taste of truth, or just a handshake when the world is passing them by, makes me proud to be his wife and hopeful that with his example I will grow to be a better representative of both my husband and of Christ.

I have a good man, God put us together, and I'm grateful. Did I mention that we got married five years ago today?

Happy Anniversary, Baby.

In the Church, we often hear the advice to guard our eye-gates and ear-gates because the sin is contagious and the influences we allow into our lives through these exposures will alter our realties and attitudes in ways we might not notice until we find our relationships with Christ have changed, either for better or worse.

As an atheistic college student, I regularly went out drinking with my new friends and acquaintances. Once drunk, we'd noisily head back to our dormitory, and my contribution to the night's hilarity was to serve as group songleader. I could have chosen "Jungle Boogie" or for that matter the theme song to "Mister Ed". (If you've never heard of this early 1960's sitcom, let me know. If I have that many youthful readers, I'll try to dedicate a future post to that talking horse.)

However, the song I chose as our drunk and rowdy theme was "Onward, Christian Soldiers". Why? Maybe because I was familiar with it since my childhood days at Christ Episcopal Church, and I liked it's jaunty marching beat, or maybe I chose "Onward Christian Solders" because the drunken students I had in tow were almost all Jews and I enjoyed the irony.

Though I thought I'd picked the song at random, I believe now it was no accident. The picture and sound of me leading groups of non-Christians boldly through the late-night streets of Greenwich Village, NYC, shouting a celebration of Jesus night after night after (albeit impaired) night, had to make an impression in my subconscious as well as my conscious mind. So much so that nearly three decades later, my very first sermon began with those words..."Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus marching on before."

By then, I'd stopped getting drunk on Michelob or Tangeray, having switched to intoxication by the Holy Spirit. Onward, indeed.

(Photograph by Jan Jelinek)

Now here is the ultimate scary "S" word, especially for women. As a bridesmaid at my friend Jackie's wedding 30 years ago, I became so awfully afraid when the minister marrying Jackie and John mentioned wifely submission that it took all of my willpower not to vomit in the middle of their ceremony.

My husband asked me recently, "Why is it that so many women hate the word 'submission'?"

Ephesians 5:22-33, which speaks of wives and husbands giving themselves totally to each other is the most beautiful, fantastic idea of marriage that I could imagine.

22You wives will submit to your husbands as you do to the Lord. 23For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of his body, the church; he gave his life to be her Savior. 24As the church submits to Christ, so you wives must submit to your husbands in everything. 25And you husbands must love your wives with the same love Christ showed the church. He gave up his life for her 26to make her holy and clean, washed by baptism and God's word. 27He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault. 28In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man is actually loving himself when he loves his wife. 29No one hates his own body but lovingly cares for it, just as Christ cares for his body, which is the church. 30And we are his body. 31As the Scriptures say, "A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one." 32This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one. 33So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.(NLT)

Submission is a gift from God but Satan has fooled us into fearing God's gift. Men have mistakenly twisted this thing so that it looked as if only women were commanded to submit. They twisted it so that submission looked like an obligation to lie down like a doormat. They twisted it so that the only thing it seemed a man had to do was give the orders and demand obedience; he didn't even have to believe in God but his wife was supposed to believe in him. As is often the case, one verse of scripture, Ephesians 5:22, was taken out of context for hundreds of years in order to justify the desires of a patriarchal society, the desires of men's flesh. (That's why women have lived in fear of the word "submission".)

Satan constantly conspires with our flesh to pervert the precious things of God. He rouses us into rebellion to keep us from getting all that God has in store for us. Satan makes us his doormats by twisting the truth so that we believe Christ's standards will make doormats of us. The violent fear I felt at Jackie and John's wedding was the result of falling for this twisted trick of Satan, so that I thought the principle of submission was a plot to weaken me, an evil to be fought at all costs.

Christ's standards of submission require strength. Perfect submission requires nothing less than the power of God in us.

Biblical submission means allowing yourself to be used (but not misused) by your co-builders in Christ's kingdom. It's about letting order reign in the body of Christ.

God needs living rocks that will offer ourselves to be chiseled and shaped and placed where He needs us, fitting together with His other living rocks, to become part of Christ's church, the foundation of His eternal kingdom. He refers to this offering of oneself as submission.

1 Corinthians 16:16 lets us know that all Christians should submit to each other and respect each other's work in the church.

Hebrews 13:17 says, Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account. Obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you. (NIV)

1 Peter 5:5 instructs us to submit to the wisdom of our elders, those who are more experienced in Christ than we are.

And Ephesians 5 instructs husbands and wives to submit to each other as two parts of a whole, equal in worth but having different assignments. A partnership can't work if both partners try to fulfill the same role.

My husband is called to trust Jesus (trust is the essence of submission) and put his will under the will of God. When my husband puts himself under the will of God, I can then trust my husband and put my will under his. Both of us are trusting God, but God requires us to do so in a particular order, just as stones can't just be thrown together to make a building; a certain order is required.

All three "S" words--surrender, sacrifice, and submission--scare us for one reason: because when we think about these "S" words we focus on our own weakness instead of on God's strength. Or maybe we don't trust God.

Surrender means to lose the will to fight God.

Sacrifice means to submerge your will in order to accept the responsibilities God has given you.

Submission means to make it your will to do God's will.

How much strength does it take to run away from God, reject responsibility, and do your own will?

When we admit our weaknesses and give in to God, that's when His strength builds us up to do His will.

If Jesus had not surrendered in spite of His strength, if Jesus had not sacrificed Himself, if Jesus had not submitted to the Father's will, there would have been no Calvary. There would be no road home to heaven and we'd all be on our way to Hell. There'd be no good news to share, no amazing grace.

I don't know about you, but I'd rather be in the will of the Creator of the Universe, than on my own.

The second scary "S" word of the week is "sacrifice".

In the Book of Leviticus, a system of sacrifices is laid out to reconcile God's people to God. Most of these involved the killing and often the burning of innocent animals. We don't practice this any longer because these were only graphic illustrations of God's principle that death is the consequence of sin, yet only innocent blood is able to wash away those sins. Even if we died for our own sins, this would not wash those sins away because we are not innocent. Once Jesus died for us and rose from the grave, animal sacrifices became just one more sin.

The different types of sacrifices made and the different ways they were shared are interesting.

A burnt offering had to be burnt completely and shared with no one, so that it was dedicated solely to God to atone for everyday sin, sin in general, the sins of the community.

Specific personal sin obligated the sinner to make a special sacrifice to God. Certain parts of this sacrifice were burnt as an offering to God, and other parts were given to the priests and their families to eat. Thus, sinners were obligated not only to apologize to God, but also to see that God's priests were fed in exchange for their ministry.

Peace offerings, which were sacrifices of meat, bread and oil made just to honor God, with no guilt attached, were shared with the entire community, including the priests. These peace offerings were completely voluntary, calling on the generosity of God's people to see that those who lived side by side with them had something to eat.

Sacrifice is an act of taking responsibility not only for one's relationship with God but also for the welfare of others. Most of us would like to think that we live sacrificially, but how often do we selfishly hang onto our money, our possessions and, even more important, the time and love with which God has blessed us, ignoring the sadness and bitterness and emptiness that we would see in our neighbors if we only dared to look. As noble as we believe it to be, sacrifice scares us.

What have I done in the way of sacrifice? Oh yes, I've given time, money, love, teaching, counseling, clothing, and food; I've smiled when I didn't feel like it and forgiven when I'd rather not. Good for me. On the other hand, I've also avoided all of these sacrifices when I felt comfortable doing so. I've stayed home when someone may have needed me to show up. These recent sins don't even include the selfish acts I committed before I was saved.

Should I give myself a pass because I know other Christians who have done worse than I? The problem with that idea is that the only person to whom I should ever compare myself to is Jesus, and that comparison is infinitely scarier than the idea of sacrifice. In fact, suddenly a life of sacrifice seems like the easy route.

What do you think?

Let me at a throne of mercy find a sweet relief, kneeling there in deep contrition, help my unbelief.-Pass Me Not (verse 2), by Fanny Crosby and William H. Doane

I believe, Lord
Help me in my unbelief
Help me not to hate
Help me, even in my righteous anger,
To not strike hearts with poison words

As I stretch my back this morning,
Undulating and unkinking my shoulders and neck
Lodge your hand in my chest and touch my memory
Kneading the twists and turns
That took me from wonder to terror
From a tender need to love
To a salty, brittle, darkened soul

Make me desire giving, Lord
Not collecting hearts
To disappoint

Let your tears fall
In my dry places --soothing,
Unkinking my soul
Until my own tears fall like rain
Into the ocean of God is love

I receive, Lord
Open my hereto unreceptive heart
To gorge on Holy Blood
Until I'm filled with Holy Spirit

Such power will steer my freedom trek
Up the straight road
Through the narrow gate

We'll cry in unison
To wash away the old me
The crust, the dirt, and salty sediment
Of lies, crushed dreams, more lies

I believe, Lord
Help me

(Graphic image by Lucian Bobotan)