Redefining Sin (part 1)

I remember the day as if it were a movie.  Not shot particularly well, more like security camera footage, only in color.  For some reason this is the way most of my memories from my childhood work, a photograph, a silent video, somewhat sepia toned but with spots of color.  I can always see myself in my memories, almost as if they are someone else's of me.  Someone videoing and taking still shots of my life all the while knowing exactly what it is that I am thinking, what I am feeling.

So I am walking home from school, and I hate myself.

I've always had a strong conscience.  I had fought with it for a long time.  I tried not to care, I even tried to be a little bit of a "bad kid," but that conscience...  My mom used to tell me that if I ever did anything wrong then I was going to be caught.  No 'ifs', 'ands' or 'buts' about it, I would be caught.  She said something about God loving me...

What I started to realize was that she was right in the worst imaginable kind of way, I was always caught, but not always by someone else.  I was always caught by myself.  That stupid, overactive, never sleeping conscience!  Maybe this was why I always viewed my memories as if from the outside, maybe because I was always spying on myself, and I hated what I saw.

I grew up in church hearing about the evils of sin in our world.  How we all have a "sin nature" that causes us to want to sin.  How there are forces of darkness in our world that would try and cause sin to become the accepted way of life.  How sin entered into the world when Adam and Eve first bit the forbidden fruit.  I understood this in my own life.  I could see it as if from the outside.  I was filled with this blackness.

So I am walking home from school, and I hate myself.  I know who I really am.  I walk in the front door and no one is home.  I am so sick of myself.  I don't want to die, because I am certain God will throw me in hell, but I really hate me.  I'm fuming with it.  I walk into my bedroom, I shut my door, I pull off my shirt, I take out my belt and I begin to whip myself.  Over and over again, welcoming the pain, not holding back.

I deserve this.

I have been caught.

I have been found out for who I really am.

I cannot hide from me.

I had come to understand sin as an outside force, a black cloud in a sense.  Something ever looming on the horizon, praying on the weak, causing me to want to party, and look at porn, and break things.  But I also saw it as an infecting force.  And how do you deal with an infection?

So I took my daily inoculations of reading my bible, and praying, and going to church, and lifting my hands in worship.  I went on a mission trip, I shared my beliefs with my classmates; all this in an attempt to hold the force of sin raging in my body at bay.  But I wasn't fooled, God wasn't fooled, we both knew who I was.

I began to hold tightly to Paul's statement in Romans 7, "I do not do the thing I want, but I do the very things that I hate!  Wretched man that I am! Who will save me from myself?"

So I whipped myself.  I punished myself so that God would not have to later.  Maybe if He saw how much I hated that I was sinning, He would take that into consideration when determining my eternal destiny.

I was so broken.  I was such a mess.  How could I ever move beyond this?

The change came when I began to redefine sin.

(To be continued...)

Turning the Scope Around

When I was a kid I used to love looking through my dad's binoculars backwards.  I would hold the large lens opening up to my eyes and then hold out my hand.  It was like my arm stretched out in some eery kind of way and then my hand was so small.  I'd wiggle my fingers and feel very long.  I could entertain myself for hours just looking backwards through those lenses.

Telescopes, spotting scopes, binoculars, scopes of all kinds fascinate me still.  I still find myself turning them around at times.  What's interesting is the image is the same image no matter which way you look through the scope, it's the depth that changes.  Looking through the scope backward leaves much blackness in your field of vision, removes the image far from you and keeps you from seeing much detail in it.  Looking through the lenses as they are intended to be looked through fills your vision, gives you much to look at, much detail and brings the image in very close.

In the bible we are given two primary lenses in which to view God, who God is and what God does.  Both lenses give us much information about God, allowing us to see Him as He really is, allowing us to look on the physically unseen reality of God.

In one lens we see who God is, His character and person are revealed, God is named:

El Shaddai - God almighty, or God all sufficient
Jehovah Rophe - The Lord who heals
Jehovah Shalom - The Lord our peace
Jehovah Rohi - The Lord our Shepherd
Abba - Father, Daddy
Emmanuel - God with us
Holy Spirit - Named as Comforter, Counselor, Spirit of Truth, Sanctifier and more
God is:

• Love
• Good
• Kind
• Faithful
• Righteous
• Just
• Wise
• Sovereign
• Omniscient (able to know everything)
• Omnipresent (everywhere)
• Omnipotent (able to do anything)

...and many, many more.

The other lens is what God does, what He engages in in the world:

• God pours out His wrath
• God exercises judgment
• God will heal all peoples
• God sent His one and only Son
• God is the giver of good gifts
• ...we could go on and on with this as well.

How we look through the lenses, which is placed in front of the other, greatly affects how we view God.  Are we trying to understand who God is through the lens of what He does, or are we trying to understand why God does what He does through the lens of who He is?  Which way we look through our scope greatly affects how we view God.

If I see God's wrath and judgment first, then I struggle with Him being a good and kind and loving Father.  If I see Him as being the giver of good gifts then I struggle with His omniscience and omnipotents when it comes to evil in the world.  In this view, God looks distant, far away, small, limited in His actions.

However, if I am looking through the lens appropriately, understanding what God does in light of who He is, then I will understand that His wrath can only be exercised in His love and kindness and goodness.  I will understand His plan to heal all peoples in light of His omniscience and omnipotence (in other words I will trust that He knows what He is doing and will not hold him to my time frames or my limited understanding).

Looking through the lens appropriately does not mean that I will all of a sudden have full clarity in my knowledge and understanding of God, He is infinite after all.  What it will help me to do is trust Him when some circumstance in life does not seem to add up.  (God, I may not understand why you allowed such devastation in Japan, but I do know that You are Good, that You are Kind, You are Love, You are capable of doing anything, You are capable of knowing everything and You are our Father.  Because I know who You are, I will choose to trust what You are doing, and even maybe what You are not doing when I think You should be doing more.)

I heard it said once, you cannot fully understand the depths of God's love if you do not first understand the magnitude of His wrath.  I think that is a backwards scope.  How can I possibly understand what God is doing if I do not first seek to understand who He is.  

"And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent." - John 17:3

Starving the Cancer

Last night was our monthly ONE Gathering, a gathering of most of the local youth ministries of our community once a month to celebrate our unity in Christ.  This is what I talked about:

Several months ago a friend forwarded me an email.  I hate forwards...I loved this one.  It was someone's discovery of Zephaniah 3:17 painting a beautiful picture of an incredibly loving God.  I was moved by it.  I had to check it out for myself.

Zephaniah 3:17:
The Lord your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save;
He will rejoice over you with gladness;
He will quiet you by His love;
He will exult over you with loud singing.

Language interpretation can be an interesting thing in that it sometimes is not an exactly exact science.  The best that can be done sometimes is to find the best words to communicate a concept that can only truly be understood in the the context of the original language.  Here are a few examples of some other colorful words that could be possible interpretations to use in this Zephaniah passage:

Rejoice - to leap, to jump up and down
Gladness - joyful cries
Quiet - be speechless
Exult - dance
Loud singing - a ringing cry

So indulge me, if you would, in a paraphrase using some of these other words:

The Lord your God is in your midst,
a mighty One who will save;
He will jump up and down over you with joyful shouts;
He will be struck speechless in His love for you;
He will dance over you with a ringing cry and loud singing.

So a question, can someone like this be trusted with your life?

The ruler of the universe, who is not far away, but right here with you.
The mighty and heroic One who will rescue you.
All this and yet when He thinks of you He:

• can't keep from jumping up and down with joyful shouting
• becomes speechless in His love for you
• dances and sings loudly because of you

Can you trust someone like this with your life?

At first I think the ready answer would be yes, but strangely enough, the process begins with following Him to death.  Death? 

Jesus said, "If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me." - Luke 9:23

The cross was a Roman execution tool.  One would carry their own cross that they were about to be nailed to down a processional for all to see to the place where they were to be executed.  It was an effective means used by Roman soldiers to put an end to rebellious types who would fight the ruling Roman government.  So, Jesus says to embrace your cross; don't fight submitting to the ruling authority; embrace the giving up of your own life.

What is the ruling authority that Jesus is referring to?  God's ruling authority.  He is the creator and ruler of the universe.  His Kingdom, His rule and reign, is present right now, and we can either fight for our own way, our own life, or we can take up our cross, submitting our very lives to Him.

Why would anyone ever choose to do this?  Because Jesus also said, "For whoever would save His life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it." - Luke 9:24.  In other words, everyone who is born also dies.  you can fight to stay young, fight disease, fight natural and even unnatural disasters, you can kick and scream and fight, but eventually you will die.  So Jesus says the only way to save your life is to give up trying to save it.  Lose your life for His sake, then your life will be saved...

How does this even make sense?  Because of a thing called sin.  Sin is a cancer that feeds on life.  It consumes life, never satisfied, always needing more and more.  The more you feed it, the hungrier it becomes until it consumes your very soul and leaves no trace of your humanity.  We see examples of this all throughout history; Jeffery Dommer, Charles Manson, Adolph Hitler, to name a few.  Ruined souls with little to no remnants of humanity left in them.

We were designed for life with God, never intended to live solely on our own.  We were designed to live in community, in relationship, with God and with each other.  Sin is the inherit desire in all of us to look out for #1, to seek my own desires no matter the cost to myself or someone else.  When we walk down this road, when we try and rule our own lives, the cancer of sin runs rampant through us feeding on our lives, feeding on our very souls.

The only way to stop sin is to starve it to death.  When we embrace dying to our own passions, desires, ways of living, being in charge of our own destiny, then we die to this life and embrace God's new and perfect way of life, and sin starves, the cancer stops spreading.

Jesus, Himself, led the way when He willingly went to the cross when He was already sin free.  "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whosoever believes in Him would not perish, but have eternal life."  That word "believes" can literally be translated"to place one's confidence in".  So whoever places their confidence in Him, whoever trusts Him, will not be consumed by the cancer of sin and perish, but will have eternal life, God's new kind of life, the kind of life you were intended to live.

You, on your own, are powerless against the spread of the life and soul consuming sin cancer.  One writer in the bible says we are in slavery to it.  When we choose to place our confidence in Jesus, when we choose to trust Him with our lives, then we die to our own self preservation, our trying to save our lives, our own way of living, and the spread of the sin disease is stopped.  We are free.  Free to live the lives we were intended to.  Lives consumed with the goodness of God.

I don't know about you, but I would call that good news.

Dying To Live

And I heard the voice of the Lord saying,
"Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?"
Then I said, "Here am I!  Send me."  And He
said, "Go, and say to this people:

  "  'Keep on hearing, but do not
               understand;
     keep on seeing, but do not perceive.'
     Make the heart of this people dull,
          and their ears heavy,
          and blind their eyes;
     lest they see with their eyes,
          and hear with their ears,
     and understand with their hearts,
          and turn and be healed."
     Then I said, "How long, O Lord?"
     And He said:
     "Until cities lie waste
          without inhabitant,
     and houses without people,
          and the land is a desolate waste,
     and the Lord removes people far away,
          and the forsaken places are many in
               the midst of the land.
     And though a tenth remain in it,
          it will be burned again,
     like a terebinth or an oak,
          whose stump remains
          when it is felled."
     The holy seed is its stump.

-Isaiah 6:9-13

At the risk of being run out of the church, I have to confess, I have come very close to hating this passage.

What kind of God is this?  What kind of God is it that would not want His people, His children to turn from their self destructing ways back to Him so that He might heal them?  Why bother sending Isaiah in the first place?  Why give them the message they need to hear and then hope they don't get it so they will be destroyed?  What kind of God is this?

A frustrated God?
An angry God?
A righteous, vengeful, holy, vindictive God?

These are some of the explanations I've been given.  God in His awesome holiness and righteousness decided to deal with the wickedness and idolatry of Israel...but He was legally obligated to give them one more chance first.  Fairness demands an opportunity to repent.  So God in His omniscience devised a plan satisfy the demands for fairness, an opportunity to repent, while secretly hoping they would not take it, and then He could act on His frustrations, releasing His pent up anger, and unleash mountains of justice and righteousness on His children, dealing them a devastating blow.

This is the God of the Old Testament.  This is the God whom Jesus came to restrain with love.  This is the God whom Jesus could convince to let Himself take the beating that God was so eager to give all of humanity.

My problem was....this is not how Jesus talked about the Father.

How was I to reconcile the frustrated, angry, vindictive God image seemingly on display here with Jesus' explanations of Abba...daddy.

Oh, this ate at me...

How many times I have prayed, God, what am I missing here?...

In John 12 we see a story of when Jesus returned to Jerusalem towards the end of His ministry.  He had done so many things among the people, touched so many, the people were becoming convinced that He was indeed the long awaited Messiah.  They met Him at the entrance of the city with palm branches, laying them down in front of Him as He rode a donkey into the city fulfilling yet another of a long list of prophecies foretelling His arrival.  The cries of "Hosanna!  Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!" reverberating off of the walls of the city; it was a powerful moment indeed.  But that was verse 13...

Starting at the end of verse 16 we read:

When Jesus had said these things, He
departed and hid Himself from them.
Though He had done so many signs before
them, they still did not believe in Him, so
that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah
might be fulfilled:
  
     "Lord, who has believed what he heard
               from us,
          and to whom has the arm of the
               Lord been revealed?"

Therefore they could not believe.  For again
Isaiah said,

     "He has blinded their eyes
          and hardened their heart,
     lest they see with their eyes,
          and understand with their heart, and
               turn,
          and I would heal them."

Isaiah said these things because he saw
His glory and spoke of Him.  Nevertheless,
many even of the authorities believed in Him,
but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess
it, so that they would not be put out of
the synagogue; for they loved the glory that
comes from man more than the glory that
comes from God.

What in the world happened between verses 13 and 36???

Jesus called them to die.

Verse 24:

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of
wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains
alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
Whoever loves His life loses it, and whoever
hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal
life.  If anyone serves me, he must follow
me; and where I am, there will my servant be
also.  If anyone serves me, the Father will
honor him.

This is when it hit me, in order for their to be life, true life, real life, abundant life, eternal life, then I must let go of the shadow of physical life and all it's trappings.  What was true for Israel is still true today, as long as I am pursuing physical existence then I will provide for physical existence, I will be consumed with physical existence.

What will I eat?
What will I drink?
What will I wear?
Where will I live?
Where will I work?
What kind of car will I drive?
How can I best manage my 401(k)?
...and I begin to look for a god that I can hold, that I can touch, that I can feel.  I look for an idol.

What will set me free?

Death.

Jesus said if you want to serve me, you must follow me, and I'm on my way to the cross.  I'm about to show you how to die.  It is the only way for you to live, and I am dying for you to live.

Where does this leave us with Isaiah 6?

What if God, Abba, daddy, Father loves His children so much, and He knows that the only way for us to live is to die, but sometimes we get so entrenched in chasing the shadows of life that we just can't seem to break away on our own?  What if God, Abba, daddy, Father loves us so much that if we turn around even for a moment with our big multi-colored eyes and hold out our arms to Him He will run to us and sweep us up in His ever reaching arms, saving us from all manner of harms?  What if God, Abba, daddy, Father loves us so much that He knows He can't help it, even though He knows that for us to really live we must die?  Might He then say,

     "I have blinded your eyes

          and hardened your heart,

     lest you see with your eyes,

          and understand with your heart, and

               turn,

          and I would heal you."

It would be the hardest thing for God, Abba, daddy, Father to do, to not save the day, to not rescue, to not heal, to watch die.  But this is the only way to live, and so it must be done, and Jesus says follow me, I will show you the way.  I will show you how to die so you might live.

I don't know about you, but I am dying to live.