Pride…or Obedience?

“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13 ESV

As I write this commentary, my society here in America is in the cold, dark depths of the Coronavirus outbreak. Times are frightening, and things may not improve for weeks or months. Medical supplies, the tools our healthcare ‘troops’ use to fight this invisible enemy, are in critically short supply. Testing materials, physical protection equipment, are all being used up at phenomenal rates, with no supplies left with which to replace them. Respirators in particular, which can under the right circumstances carry us through the hardest hours of an infection, are very hard to come by, and some of us are using the shortage to generate increased profit. “Supply and demand”, don’t ya know?

We are physically separated from one another, one in every six of us has lost his or her job, around us our economy crumbles away, and all we can do is watch it go. And be afraid. Many of us can’t pay our bills, may not have jobs to go back to when this is eventually over, and through no fault of our own face the loss of everything we have built for ourselves; our home, career, possessions, whatever ease of life we have been able to scratch out. Waves of stress pound on our rocky cliffs like never before, and as we stand on that precipice with nothing else to do with our time but watch, too many of us feel like the earth under our feet is turning wet, slippery, beginning to give way to those waves.

This feels……..biblical, in its scope.

Jesus’ words in John are hard words to live by, especially in times like now, when a few days from today any one of us could really, truly face the gut-wrenching choice of ‘do I go on a respirator, or allow someone else to take that slot?’.

What does my faith require of me? What might my Lord and my King want from His servant? 

We can debate who is a ‘friend’ in the eyes of the Lord. It’s also important to point out that Jesus doesn’t command this, He merely states it. But there it is, nonetheless.

I think the question every person of faith needs to consider is, ultimately….how will you live out your faith? Is God more important than your own life? Your life has always been in God’s hands, and surely if He wishes He can save you through the fire, respirator or no. The Bible shows us this. But this choice is at the heart of Christian faith. Is me first, you next…acceptable?

How will you choose to understand Job 13:15? “Though he slay me, I will hope in him; yet I will argue my ways to his face.”‬ ‭ESV‬‬  It’s not honest to just look at the first part of that verse, and ignore the last. Will you trust God all the way to death and beyond? Or will you argue with God, protesting your innocence before Him and disagreeing with His perfect will?  God never directly responded to Job’s arguments, He just forcefully reminded him which of them was God and which was not.

What do you take from that? If God allows you to become infected, will you choose to potentially save your own life, or potentially save someone else’s? A terrible choice to face to be sure, but it could happen. For some of us, it will happen. Your own life over another’s? Or faith in God’s saving hand, His miracles?

Even in the theoretical, that choice looms. The boastful pride of life…or sacrificial obedience?

A Good Man

Since I became a man, I have always tried to be a good man.

I know from reading the Bible that I’m not good; Jeremiah 17:9a tells us that “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick;“ So I know by at least one standard (the most important standard) I’m not good at all. But by the standards of this realm, I’ve tried to be good.

Like many of us, during the Misspent Days Of My Youth I was a poor example of decency; into petty crime, sexuality, drinking, casual racism, and the list goes on. But even then I knew I was wrong to do these things, and that to wander further down those darkening roads was a bad idea. I knew I needed to return to the lighted ways, and though I wasn’t a believer at that time, I can remember thinking that I wanted to be ‘on the side of the angels’. Funny that I, an unbeliever, should choose such a phrase… By the time I entered my twenties most of that misbehavior was behind me. (most of it….I was still in college…)

Since then I’ve tried to live by the golden rule, and treat others the way I’d want to be treated. Again, I didn’t know it then, but that’s in the Bible as well. (Matthew 7, Luke 6, and, indirectly, elsewhere) And as my Father has led me closer to Him, I’ve come to understand that His Spirit has been at work in my life for a longer time than I realized, teaching me the way I should go. I’ve also learned that as we make our way, the choices get harder, and too often there is no ‘right’ answer, merely an assortment of ‘more wrong’ and ‘less wrong’. Life becomes grays.

But I’ve always tried to remain upright, especially while raising our son. If I didn’t live the truths I was trying to teach him, how could I expect him to set his star by them when it was time for him to make his own choices? I’ve long felt quite strongly that it’s only important to have morals when it hurts to have them. Anyone can be strong when the temptation is across the sea, but when it’s across the room, or across the table? That’s when morals matter ~ when it actually hurts, or embarrasses, or costs you money, or endangers you to say or do the right thing. If call yourself honest but cheat on your taxes or stay silent when the cashier gives you too much change….you’re not really honest. One person I know likes going to yard sales and hunting for valuable collectibles that the owner is selling for a pittance. He likes taking advantage of the seller’s lack of knowledge. I asked him if he ever tells them what the item is worth before he buys it, and he looked at me like my face had grown tentacles. Then he snickered, and said, “No, of course not!” For him, taking advantage of people is part of the enjoyment. I find a shadow of darkness in that approach, and my estimation of his poor character was unfortunately borne out years later. I’m sure many people would tell me it’s just good business to give someone merely the price they, in their ignorance, are asking. But I have a hard time accepting a gain or a blessing if someone else had to suffer loss as a result. I’d rather see us both benefit instead.

The trouble is, there are other terms which can be used to describe an honest man. Fool, for one. Patsy. Schmuck. Loser. And those descriptions apply to me as well. I don’t agree with them, of course. But in today’s America, honesty is no longer in vogue. Character is largely missing from our society these days, in part I believe because everybody thinks everybody else is cheating–so why shouldn’t they? Having morals is not only uncommon today, we have corrupted the very ideas of truth and decency and good character to the point that we now disagree about what truth is, what honesty requires of us. Someone wiser and more eloquent than me said ‘a half-truth is still a whole lie’, but I believe that’s dismissed by many as a ridiculous notion. Why tell the entire truth, when telling just part of it would do as well?

I don’t know if it’s true, but I recall hearing that George Carlin once said “Life is all about what you’ll do for fifty bucks, and what you’ll do with fifty bucks.” That does seem to capsulize the issue nicely. I’ve used that idea over the years as something of a signpost. I can’t –honestly– say that I’ve always done the right thing. But I want to, and I try to. I volunteer. I tithe to my church, although not yet at the ten percent the Bible calls me to give. When I see someone with a sign on a corner, I’ll frequently give them five or ten bucks. A good man I know related the story that his late wife, upon seeing someone in need and looking for a handout, would offer to buy them a meal and whatever other supplies they needed, and I’ve done that as well.

But the truth remains: in the eyes of Almighty God, all my good deeds are nothing. Isaiah 64:6a says “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags…” (NIV) In fact, the Hebrew phrase translated in the NIV as ‘filthy rags’ and elsewhere as ‘polluted garments’ actually means ‘garments of menstruation’. That makes it pretty clear what God thinks of my goodness. So why bother? Why does He say to me in James 2:17 “Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.” (KJB)?

I think the answer is because of something most of us overlook, which we take for granted in our arrogance: free will. God gave us the right to choose. To choose Jesus over Satan. Right over wrong. Faith over despair. Light over darkness. The next world over this one. Self-control over wild abandon. Someone else’s good over our own pleasure. I’ve been reading the book of Genesis recently, and in it we see the roots of the current Middle East conflict, between the descendants of Ishmael and Esau, and those of Isaac and Jacob: modern-day Arabs, and Israel. Ishmael and Esau were both first-born sons, but in both of these cases God chose the second sons, Isaac and Jacob, for Himself. But He allowed the two sons He passed over to be born first, to come into the world, and even more, to be blessed by Him as the fathers of many nations, which they did become. Why allow this, unless He wanted us to have to choose? Why state in His Word that we were “…created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“ (Ephesians 2:10b) if He considers those works menstrual rags? So we could choose to do them. So we could choose to be obedient to Him. So others could see the light of the Holy Spirit in us, acting through us, and wonder about it, perhaps investigate this Jesus, and maybe even bow to Him. Could God have created perfect children who never choose sin? Of course He could. It seems to me that what he wanted in His heaven were children who had seen evil, and chosen the light over that darkness.

So I have chosen to be a good man, as good in the many passing moments of each day as I can be. I fall short, and sometimes fall into repetitious patterns of sin and failure. But I always want to be on the side of the angels, and in my unworthiness to be a servant to, and an ambassador for, the Great I AM. I continue to try and hold myself to a higher standard than the world around me, not because I’m any better, but because I want to please my God. May His Will be done in me, and through me.

God In My Life

I never intended this space to be about God, or Christianity, or -heaven forbid- religion.

I envisioned it to be nothing more than an organized place for me to write, to crystallize thoughts and then express them in, hopefully, an interesting manner. Not quite a diary -I’m a guy, after all. An exercise, then. Not a product, because as much as I feel a desire to write, I have no illusions that I’m any good at it. Even if I were, I have squandered too many years failing to practice the craft. So here I am, thinking and writing on the range of topics that reflect the facets of my life, as I am living it. My life, not God.

And yet…

And yet as I have lived my life, and as that living has brought me to faith, to believe that He exists, that He knows me and loves me anyway, He watches me always and has some kind of plan for my life, whether broad or focused… My faith has gradually had more and more influence on my life, on the many many details and activities that make up that life. And I like that. I actually wish I felt His guidance more, because it would make having to choose easier.

I don’t mind having so many choices these days. It’s the lurking suspicion that all those options are being offered to obscure the best choice, to allow the giver of choices to claim he (or she) gave me the opportunity to choose whatever I wanted, and thus place blame for a poor choice squarely on my shoulders. I don’t like having to educate myself so many times, especially about things I probably won’t care about once the decision is made. God knows what the right choices are, and I wish I felt His leading towards them more often.

But it occurs to me that a good father isn’t a ‘helicopter parent’, one who hovers over their child’s shoulder, essentially making their choices for them, eliminating their opportunities to make mistakes and then to grow and learn from them. So perhaps God wants and expects me to make mistakes, and to grow in Him as a result. For my own part I’m not sure that at this late age I’m a fan of that…but His will, not mine.

So as I write about the things that happen, the thoughts that occur, I strive to make the mundane interesting, to bring perhaps a new perspective on the already-interesting….and God seems to be a growing part of the life in which I abide and about which I write. It’s been several years since I wrote last, and in that time, my son has returned safely from his journey of personal growth, he’s found a good job, has a fiance, and seems to be successfully making his way in this world. He’s even making a few bucks on the side as a professional video game streamer. Who’da thunk it… My own life has been quite the roller-coaster ride over the last few of those same years. Perhaps one day I’ll write on some of those experiences, but not today.

So, if you believe, then you perhaps understand my growing trust in Him, my desire for His influence in my life, and why He will continue to appear on these pages. And if you don’t (yet) believe, perhaps I can give you a reason to consider Him, if your mind is open to the possibility of a better way of seeing this life. Either way, chances are good that God will be here.

Despite my original intentions.