Change of Mind

Already in this political season we have heard quite a bit of name calling. One such name is "flip flop". I heard that term used today to speak of our president. He had said one thing, or taken one stand when he first ran for office eight years ago, and now appears to have flipped to totally different opinions.

My question, is this always a bad thing?  I told my husband that I was equally guilty of flipping opinions.  Many of the ideas I held when I was younger, I no longer hold as true. I remember jokingly sharing with a friend some years back that I had grown liberal, and she said, "no, you've grown up." Perhaps that's why we change, we've grown, matured and the old ideas no longer hold.

As a young person, I was very legalistic.  Everything came in black and white.  My parents felt that dancing was wrong. They could never really clarify why, but none-the-less, I accepted that. In junior high I would disdainfully reply, when asked if I was going to a dance, "no, dancing is against my religion." I cringe at that now.  I cringe because when I was asked to my first dance in high school I immediately said "yes", and had to suffer the consequences with my parents later. But prior to that, it made a very easy way out, and I hadn't thought about it any further than that. My thinking came when it became personal.

When I became a Christian, I took on many of my parents legalistic views, and as I grew older I added several more of my own. I'd like to say that phase passed quickly, but my college girlfriends would be first to set you straight. I could live my life more easily when it was black and white.  I didn't have to think about the whys. The rules, all the do's and don'ts, set parameters and made me feel safe.  I never stopped to think if they really honored God or not, I just did or didn't do, unless I was forced to question it, like dancing, and then my choice wasn't on spiritual grounds at all.

Interesting that people say something is "against their religion". A religion is a system with rules and regulations, rituals and duty.  The problem is, Christianity really isn't a religion. As I have said before, Christianity is a relationship. The ability to have this relationship was established when God paid the price for our sin. Sin kept us from having a relationship with God. Jesus paid the penalty for our sin, mine and yours, and now we can have a relationship with God.

This should make Christianity unique, but we've made it into a religion through the years. So much so that many people don't even know Christianity was meant to be relational. Religions rely on us doing things to meet a certain standard. Most religions thrive on legalism. Christianity starts out by teaching us we cannot meet the standard. God showed us his Law, but it's painfully obvious we can't live it. Only through Christ can we begin to be what God intended us to be.

So part of my "flip flop" has come as I have distance myself from religious ground. Once I began to focus on a relationship, I began to change my perspective. If I put too many conditions upon friendships, I tend to lose those friends. Certainly there are boundaries in relationships, but that's different from a rigid system of rules that must be followed. Relationships can be freeing, especially when we can love and accept unconditionally, treating one another with grace and forgiveness. The world opens up with friendships like that. And that is my relationship with God, opening up.

As a result, I can look at people through different eyes. Things begin to have shadings and appear less black and white. I find that I cannot paint people with the same, broad strokes.  Everyone has a different story. They may not go about life the same way I do, but they are still loved by God. He died for all of us. He forgave all of us. Who am I to disagree with that?

I then find myself on opposite sides of many issues with some of my fellow Christians. It looks as though I've flip flopped. I have, but not on the main tenets of our faith. The differences come in how I live out those tenets. I've chosen to follow Jesus' model. Read one of the books in the Bible that tell us about Jesus (Matthew, Mark, Luke or John) and see for yourself.  I think he will surprise you. 

Whom Should I Believe?

Someone reminded me today of a C. S. Lewis statement from Mere Christianity. For those of you who don't know, Mere Christianity began as a series of radio talks on the BBC during World War 2. Lewis was asked to talk about his Christian faith and why he believes in God and Jesus. The book provides a wonderful, rational explanation for faith in God. Pretty amazing that such a radio broadcast even existed.

Towards the end of Lewis' discussion on Jesus, he talks about what the biblical term "son of God", really means.  Lewis notes that a lot of people easily accept the historical Jesus, seeing him as a great teacher of moral truth, along the same lines as The Buddha. Lewis says that's a lovely thought, but impossible to defend.  According to Lewis, there are really only three choices we can make about Jesus.  Jesus is either a liar, a lunatic, or, in fact, The Lord.

The New Testament makes it very clear that the writers believed Jesus was God in human form.  Jesus himself made those claims. Who would make such a claim? A liar? A man making such high claims for himself doesn't make a lot of sense, unless there was some payoff, some scheme. A lunatic, mental hospitals have had their share of people claiming to be God or Jesus. But why on earth would we accept the teachings of either?  How could we ever say that those teachings merited our attention at all? Why have people persisted in holding Jesus up as a good teacher, someone to be listened to, if he, at the same time, claimed to be equal with God? Usually we try to distance ourselves from the like.

But if Jesus was indeed God in human form, then it makes sense to believe him, and accept his teachings. He would be The Lord indeed. Any thing less,why would we even care? Lewis says that it's impossible to take Jesus' teachings seriously if we refuse to accept him as God. We'd be taking the words of a mad man or a con man. And if he was either, then his teachings would not be so good.

Of course, even a broken clock is right twice a day, so perhaps he was some crazy man who happened to say some good things.  But Jesus' impact on the world seems a lot greater than that, doesn't it? It's amazing his staying power, in spite of the fact he claimed to be God. The world has tried to ignore those statements and accept the rest. But how can we do that?  Jesus is who he is. Why do we think we can pick and choose? Doesn't that diminish the whole?

Maybe the writers got it wrong. Maybe this man Jesus never made such claims, but his followers did, for whatever reason. In the end, they all died for the cause. Most people wouldn’t die for a lie, but some might. So, maybe it’s the writers who are the liars. If so, why do we believe anything they say? We’re back again to accepting the good teaching, but in search of a good teacher. If they lied about so many things, why would we take these writers’ word at all?

Whether Jesus or the New Testament writers, if they made up the part about Jesus’ being God, how can I be sure what’s true and what’s not? This is all we have. These writers seemed to be pretty sure of what they had seen and heard.  They were willing to die for it. And whatever power they hoped to gain, it certainly wasn’t political. And what of the staying power of their words? 

Perhaps we have accepted the “good teacher” role because the teachings do ring true. What Jesus said makes sense, at least most of it. He told his disciples, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father (God) but by me.” That’s a pretty bold statement. Christians didn’t make this stuff up, it’s been written down from the beginning. Either Jesus speaks the truth, and we should follow him, or not.

As always, the choice is ours.

A Look At Current Events

I have a lot of issues with Christian education. Much truth is lost to misguided opinion. Take for example the idea that all sin has already been forgiven.  That will be taught in theory, but sharing how to actually live that out brings with it a lot of fear. If your sins are already forgiven, won’t you just go out and sin to your heart’s content?  Perhaps. But all that misses the point.

The Bible teaches that when Jesus died on the cross, he took everyone’s sin upon him and paid the penalty once for all (“The wages of sin is death” eternal death, separation from God). All meaning all sin for all people–past, present and future, therefore giving everyone the opportunity for eternal life (“the gift of God”).  If all of my sins were in the future when Jesus died (and they were), then all of my sins, and the punishment for them, were taken care of at that time.

We can take this gift or leave it.  So when we look around at one another and see behaviors we label “sin”, that sin has already been forgiven. It does not have to be worked off. God never asks us to get rid of our own sin. We can’t. We might (and should, as Christians) learn to sin less, but this side of heaven, the Bible teaches that we will still have to deal with sin in our lives. Since God never asks us to do the impossible, like take away our own sins, why on earth would we ask it of others?

The other truth about sin, God sees no hierarchy. The Bible always lists murder with anger, or sexual sins with envy, weighting them the same.  Sin is sin, missing the mark, the standard God has set. So our persistent ranking of sins isn’t biblical. The sin God hates is our persistence in refusing to acknowledge him and accept his very costly gift.

That leads me to Kim Davis and her quest to end the newly approved Gay marriage laws.  Is homosexuality listed as a sin in the Bible, yes. But right beside judging others and not living up to our responsibilities. In her quest to speak out against sin, why Gays? Because somewhere she has wrongfully been taught that homosexuality is a “big” sin, a heinous crime against God, an abomination. Maybe that’s how it’s viewed in the Old Testament, but that was before Jesus came to “fulfill the law” through his death and resurrection.  Homosexuality has been forgiven right along with every other conceivable sin. And, for the record, the New Testament has a lot more to say about judging others and being unforgiving than it does about homosexuality.

Certainly if you feel you cannot follow a civil law you need to take your stand.  Civil disobedience is a time honored American freedom.  But you take your stand knowing the consequences.  Greater people than Kim David have served time in jail for not obeying what they believed to be an unjust law. So quit your job or suffer the consequences.  But making such an issue of it, like signing those marriage licenses somehow paints her with an evil stain, that’s just ignorance of the Bible. 

Jesus spent most of his time walking, talking and eating with people the religious leaders of the day saw as “sinners”.  One such leader, a man names Simon, invited Jesus to dinner to check him out. While there a woman entered the room and knelt at Jesus’ feet.  She poured oil over his feet and began to weep. She dried his feet with her hair.  Simon thought, “if he only knew who this woman was, he wouldn’t let her touch him.” The Bible says that Jesus, knowing Simon’s thoughts, told a story about a man who had been forgiven a huge debt by his master, and a man who’d been forgiven a much smaller debt by the same master.  “Who loves the master more?” Jesus asked Simon.  “The one who’s been forgiven the most.” Ah.

The reality is, we’ve all been forgiven the most, but too many of us wrongfully believe that we’ve been better, cleaner, less sinful than someone else we see sitting across the room. We may have committed some sins, but they’ll never be as bad as homosexuality. Hmmm – hello Simon. To fully grasp Christianity is to fully grasp how much we’ve been forgiven, how very awful any sin is to God, how we all miss the mark of his holy standard.  Sin is sin; it’s all the same to God.  It was all forgiven on the cross.  Now we make the decision to accept or reject the gift.

It’s time for people who have accepted Jesus’ forgiveness to get off their sinful high horse and realize the only difference between them and that homosexual they are judging may be that they have accepted Jesus’ gift and the gay person has not.  Of course, it could also be the other way around, the gay person may already know God’s grace in their life, and the judgmental person may be judgmental because, though religious, they have yet to realize it isn’t about clean living; it’s about accepting that very costly free gift of God.