Just to think about

When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the Lord said, "My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal, his days will be a hundred and twenty years."

Who were the sons of God?
What does, "My Spirit will not contend with man forever" mean?

The Nephilim were also on the earth in those days--and also afterward--when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown. The Lord saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.

Was God disappointed He made man?
Did God feel He made a mistake?

How do you think God feels now as He looks about?

So the Lord said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth--men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air--for I am grieved that I have made them. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

Could what was said of Noah be said of you?

Whale Sightings

Took two days over the weekend and ate...and ate...no exercise, no water but I did eat. Gained 3 pounds

Yesterday
Walked an hour and prayed, beat the ground up for three laps around the track, drank 6 cups of water, had a double cheeseburger and Pibb, ate a pretty small dinner
Beelzebub (she now has been given her sixth different name since we got her...now Rachel calls her snowball) mauled my leg trying to reach my waist and then kept chasing the needle of the dial on the scale...took 6 tries before I got a reading I liked.
Lost 2 pounds
Bottom line: Even

Why Noah, Why Not Noah

What is it that went so wrong so quickly with Creation that God made the call to wipe out everything? There are two ways to look at the Flood account. Why did God destroy the world...animals and people? Why did God save a remnant? It is quite easy to just take the righteousness of Noah argument to explain completely God's decision to save His family but there seems to be something running much deeper in the psyche of Yhwh that makes the Noah family and (the Noah creatures?) saveworthy. If success is measured in all the variables I mentioned below, then we are hardpressed to define Noah in a success assessment. He wasn't at all cool like the Nephilim. But there is something more there that cannot be separated from the saving decision of God to hold on to Noah. Yes he was good and right but he wouldn't always be so and the generations that followed made a mess of what they were given. Most of Noah's descendants were nothing to make one proud. But Noah was grabbed and held by God and that is a fascinating consideration. Why? Some might say "why not" but only because they have not considered the pain God suffered over what came out of His Creation...Here is the key verse in all of this discussion. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Genesis 6: 8 NIV Why? What makes God want us when we have so little to offer Him? That I think is the key question that when answered unlocks the mystery of Job and his sufferings. If we get at the answer to why God kept Noah and his family, we can reconcile the troubles we face with the mercy of the Cross and the love God professes for us. Why Noah?

Success?

What does make you successful? The Christian cliches are easy to pull out and mumble mindlessly to those you think need to hear them and yet most of them have felt pretty shallow to me. "Give God your best." "Be faithful!" "Pray and read your Bible." What if you do all that and it still feels like an unsuccessful life? The Christian community certainly doesn't in reality assess life this way. Christian success is built on popularity, likability and doing better than others around you. Blogs are successful based not on how well they are written or designed but rather on how many actually go to them again and again. Even in the Christian community this is the case. Churches, ministries and artistic endeavors are all rated based on the very real success quotients of the world stretching all about us. How many like them, attend them or financially support them is the measure of achievement. We act like the Church doesn't see it this way yet it is so. But then what about the vast multitude who never taste success, never have their blogs read, never preach to crowds, never cut a CD, never gain more than a handful of compliments for their life work. Where do their lives rank? Eleanor Rigby and Father McKenzie are the John Lennon caricatures of Christian success or unsuccess lived out. But are they caricatures or the way we really do play out the Church tune? This week I am examining Noah and his wasted life. It has brought me to my knees in humble recognition of how far I have drifted from a right way of looking inward. What is a success paradigm I can live with and embrace with joy? Father McKenzie is not that far from my doorstep and I must know what to do about him. I already know what John Lennon thinks...

Don't Forget...


"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. Matthew 7:13-14

A Tale Of Two Minkahs Concluded

Continued From Yesterday's Blog

The internal response of Cain to God’s reaction to his minkah is most telling. Remember we are peering in on the infancy of mankind when sin has not worked its way through every fabric of life yet, when bloodthirsty men and adulterous women were not making sin seem such a small and commonplace thing. The psychology of man was still simple too. Horrible experiences had not yet marred his way of thinking and interacting so we see in this microcosm of being a very telling thing about how life really is. The way Cain responds to God’s feelings about his sacrifice honestly feels rather childish. Why did he become so furious just because YHWH thought much of Abel’s minkah but was not happy with Cain’s? The reaction of Cain isn’t the result of immaturity; it is the way things look when sin hasn’t saturated your life and you are careless in your devotion to God.

One of the most important strategies of science is to eliminate every single variable from an experiment so that all you have left is a clear result. You want to test for how beneficial drinking lots of water is on health, you compare two groups of people with similar physical characteristics and give them the same diet and same exercise regimen and have them live in the same sort of environment and you might be able to find out how helpful it is to drink lots of water…or not helpful. In our account is the same sort of study. What you have here is the elimination of every other source of discouragement, every other difficulty, every other problem with friends and family and you are left with just the pure outcome of giving a bit to God and no more. We are so accustomed to lackadaisical, lukewarm, tepid faith that we are desensitized to its real effect. We see in Genesis four that it makes us miserable human beings. It is easy to just slough off this example as merely reflective of Cain’s socio-pathic personality. He had bad genes. Did he though? So far all we have about mankind in the early parts of Genesis is the wormy, pathogenic work of sin on the human race. In Genesis four is sin played out in offerings to the Lord. God clearly wanted us to know by showing us Cain’s response how a degenerate view of sacrifice could erode the human personality.

Jesus warns against lukewarm faith in Revelation. He continually chided the disciples about their own commitment to Him. One of the more painful rebukes of Christ was His refusal to go out and meet with His mother and brothers when they demanded He see them. He completely disavowed Himself of them when He asked the rhetorical question, “"Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" Pointing to his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother." Matthew 12:48-50 NIV What does it mean when Jesus says He spits out of His mouth lukewarm believers? Could it be that it looks more like we see in Cain than we care to consider?

Honestly, we are nothing more than what we find within. If lukewarm faith, lukewarm sacrifices, lukewarm morals tear up the world inside us, make our inner self polluted like we find in Cain, then wouldn’t it make sense to begin acting like Abel? What three things could we do today that would pull us out of this Cain world? Maybe we could make a commitment to read our Bible each day. That could be a firstfruits sacrifice. Maybe we could get up ten minutes earlier each day just so we could pray fervently. Maybe we could tithe…give ten percent of our income to this church each week. Maybe we could join a cell group and do it to please God and stop being only interest in your own preferences. Maybe you could donate some free time to clean up some of the projects needed to spruce up this property. Maybe you could go out of your way to invite at least two people to our church this week.

Abel was a normal person like you and me. But then so was Cain. We live like one or the other. Does it matter which one we look most like? It really is a matter of your minkah.

A Tale Of Two Minkahs Continued

First let us consider why God didn’t approve of Cain and his minkah. Abel’s minkah is described as the first born of his flock. The first born in other parts of scripture is called the Lord’s. The first offspring of every womb among the Israelites belongs to me, whether man or animal (Exodus 13:2 NIV) It is the sign of God’s provision and provided hope for His ongoing care. The firstborn was what the rancher depended on to reassure him that his ewe or cow would keep his flock going. Even if no others were born by the mother, at least the one was there. To give that lamb or calf away was a show of faith that God would eventually replace the firstborn. Firstfruits followed the same principle. The first of the harvest was the most precious. It was what you could count on to feed your family. It was there. Who could say what might happen with the later part of the harvest? Plagues might wipe it out or locusts might shred it. The weather could turn hot and whither the crops. To give away your firstfruits was giving away your security. Yet it was the firstfruits God wanted. Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the LORD your God. Ex 34:26 It took faith to bring the firstfruits to God and only a believer could muscle up the gumption to do it. "We also assume responsibility for bringing to the house of the LORD each year the firstfruits of our crops and of every fruit tree. Nehemiah 10:35 NIV

Not only did Abel bring the firstborn, he also presented the fat of His firstborn. The Fat was the choicest part, the richest of it. When Pharaoh promised Joseph that his family would be able to enjoy the best part of the land of Egypt, he referred to it as the “fat of the land”, the exact same Hebrew word used to describe what Abel brought God. (See Genesis 45: 18) Again, the same word is used to describe the finest olive oil and finest wine of the harvest that God would give Aaron and his descendants. It was the “fat” or the olive oil and the “fat” of the wine his family would get. Now we don’t think so much of fat anymore because of our concern with calories and cholesterol and clogged arteries but the “fat” was the best, the finest you had. The offering of Abel was the most glorious he could offer; it was the fat.

Now turn back to Cain and his minkah. He gave some fruit he had. It was not the fat of the fruit. It was not the firstfruits. It was just something he had lying around his house. Ponder this. The ground had not been stained very deeply by sin yet and the world still was a relative paradise and it must not have been too difficult to find some sort of wheat or grape or apple to offer up to God. The implication is that Cain’s offering required nothing much of faith, nothing much of deliberation, (trying hard to choose the very best he had), nothing much of pleasure in the giving. His minkah was the plainness of obligatory religion. There are times when my children do their chores with all the enthusiasm of a corpse. There is no sense of rightness to it, no sense of pleasure in doing your best, no sense of giving a gift back to those who love you most in the world. It is pure drudgery and when the work is yanked out of them, it feels like a fingernail dragged across a chalk board rather than any sort of minkah. And yes, I am that same way. My minkahs can be just as thoughtlessly offered, just as carelessly given, just as free of affection as seemingly possible for one who is lifeless dust without Jesus.

We now must return to the original question. What separated Cain from Abel? Certainly is was the quality of their minkahs. One minkah was full of faith and extravagant pleasure in giving to a beloved God. The other minkah was an afterthought, a hand me down, a toss away gift. Several years ago a rather wealthy woman gave my family a used pot as a gift. It hadn’t even been washed. Now from someone who was impoverished, it would have been a most lovely thing to receive but from someone well off, it had the feel of flippancy.

A Tale Of Two Minkahs Concludes Tomorrow

A Tale of Two Minkahs Part One

Gen 4:9 NIV
Then the LORD said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?


What separates good people from bad? Is it what they do, how they think, or their passions that mark one from another? Are some people totally bad…others totally good? Were Cain and Abel opposites or do we have too little information to accurately judge them? Several years ago I was discussing with a good Mormon friend his theology of the three levels of heaven and asked him who it was, if even non-Mormons like me get to go to the 1st level of heaven, goes to Hell. “Well, I guess someone like Hitler!” Now that was reassuring because I as far as I know don’t have Hitler in my family tree or anyone as bad as Hitler lurking there. As poorly behaved as my kids sometimes are, none of them seem to have Hitler tendencies in them. I don’t have genocide in my background either so that seems to make it pretty safe for me. Now here is a good question! If Cain never killed Abel, would we think differently of him? Would he still stand out as one of the all-time bad guys of history along with the Boston Strangler and Joseph Stalin?

One of the most erroneous interpretations of Genesis 4 is the criticism of Cain for bringing a grain offering rather than a blood sacrifice to God. The rationale behind this is the idea that a blood sacrifice was desired by God and the grain offering of Cain was a sign on his part that he did not acknowledge his need for atonement and without the blood failed to trust in a coming Messiah. Of course none of that is indicated in the passage. God makes no complaint of lacking blood: in a sense the offerings are identical. Both brought what in Hebrew is called a minkah. But what is a “minkah”?

Minkahs are found all through the Old Testament. In some places such as in Isaiah 66: 20 and Jeremiah 41: 5 and Nehemiah 10: 33, the minkah is a grain offering, many times (Numbers 16: 15) it can be either and in other scriptures it refers to a meat offering (1 Samuel 2: 17 and here). Since both Cain and Abel brought minkahs and minkahs that are grain offerings are perfectly acceptable (Leviticus 7) and even commanded in the Law (consider Leviticus 6: 20), what separated one man’s minkah from another’s?

If there is one point that can be made which none can refute here, it is that God loved Abel’s minkah but didn’t think much of Cain’s. The text reads literally that the Lord gazed with interest upon Abel’s minkah but in verse 5 he had no such affection for Cain’s. Literally the Lord did not look at all at what Cain gave Him. I have been at social gatherings where I was completely ignored and felt the shame of it. Nothing I have experienced though drove me to murder and that is the most pressing issue in this passage and by far the most interesting. What happened here that led to such a fall?

I Resolve

I Resolve to…

Laugh More And Complain Less

Drink More Water But Never Lose Sight Of Ice Cream

Listen To My Friends Know My Critics

Take A Day Off Each Week Regardless of How Much Work I Have Left

Sing Loudly

Every Day Invite Someone To Church

Lose My Temper…And Not Try To Find It

Wrestle With My Kids Rather Than My Failures

Kiss The Morning And Then My Wife

Find Time To Pray, Play And Obey

Stretch

Read The Bible Long Enough To Hide Within It

Take A Nap

Give A Nap

Create

Take Risks

Shoot

Live Like Strider, Die Like Arwen

Break My Perfume Bottles On The Right Set of Feet

Whale Sightings

Drank 10 Cups of Water
no soda
Walked and prayed for an hour
hotdog for lunch
GREAT, GREAT Food at Cell Group...far too much to describe or list
NO atempt to clog...a combination of jog and clomp which is my clumsy, plodding gate
Ice Cream...it was forced upon me

Got the scale out...Beelzebub just watched...maybe she felt sorry for me

Lost 2 pounds
Bottome Line: Down 2 1/2 pounds

O LORD, you are my God;
I will exalt you and praise your name,for in perfect faithfulness you have done marvelous things,
things planned long ago. Isaiah 25: 1 NIV

The Undisputed Benefit of Drinking Carrot Juice

I honestly did not drink that much...

Whale Sightings

Drank 8 glasses of water
Ate Mary Jo's auwsome potato, carrots and grean beans and beef caserolle
No soda
Walked and prayed an hour
Trudged through three laps around the track
no soda
had beef strips and 2 slices of pizza and some of the salad you find described on this blog
no soda

With Much anticipation weighed myself
waited for Beelzebub or whatever her name is today to quit clawing the dial of the scale
gained 1 1/2 pounds
Bottom line: down 1/2 pound
I may have to find one of those scales at public rest rooms where you pay a quarter and get your weight and your fortune told...I wonder if Beelzebub will follow me there...

...No, I won't read the fortune!

The Giving Cycle

Today as I was reading my Bible I fell into the passage below. It has been used in a thousand different ways to promote all sorts of agendas. I wondered though at its most basic level how this applies to me. I have been tithing to my church since I was 18 (whichever church I was attending at the time) and so that is not a real issue for me. Cheerful giving though is questionable in all sorts of situations. Time probably is my most grudging charity and I have found myself grumbling for hours about lost moments. Yet I can squander thirty minutes on the sports page. The days are numbered and so are the bills in our wallet but only for a while…Soon enough we will enter the limitless realm where we will be held back only by the generosity we have pushed away now. It is time to give…


Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. As it is written:

"He has scattered abroad his gifts to the poor;
his righteousness endures forever."

Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.
2 Corinthians 9:6-11 NIV

Inside Out

Why do we think we should be any better off than Paul or any cooler than the Apostles? God isn’t concerned about making churches cool…He wants them to be clay pots containing the Gospel. Everything else it would seem; is about us…and superfluous. Inside or out, it must be the same. The Gospel within and the Gospel without!

If you only look at us, you might well miss the brightness. We carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives. That’s to prevent anyone from confusing God’s incomparable power with us. As it is, there’s not much chance of that. You know for yourselves that we’re not much to look at. We’ve been surrounded and battered by troubles, but we’re not demoralized, we’re not sure what to do, we’ve been spiritually terrorized, but God hasn’t left our side; we’ve been thrown down, but we haven’t broken. What they did to Jesus, they do to us—trial and torture, mockery and murder; what Jesus did among them, he does in us—he lives. 2 Corinthians 4: 7-11 The Message

Whale Sightings

Drank 8 cups of water
It goes downhill from here...
2 bean burritos, 4 slices of pizza (maybe 5...6?) 1 large pepsi, rice in the morning

lumbered 2 1/2 laps around the track, walked an hour praying

Pulled out the scale to find the results...our kitten that has already been given 4 different names by my daughter, who claws my legs every time I step in the bathroom (maybe Beelzebub would be a good name for her) is fascinated by the scale and the needle that spins around when you get on it (which it goes around a lot when you are over two bills)is struck by two magnificent options...mangle my leg or attack the needle spinning around. She chooses the later and so it takes me about ten attempts before I can get a good read.

Dropped 3 pounds
Bottom line: down 2 pounds

I'm Trying

I have gained 20 pounds. I am not saying since when but that is the bottom line. So now I have begun an all out assault on my weight. Yesterday I drank 8 cups of water. I lumbered around the track twice. (Lumbered is the right term as Benjamin our just turned two year old went with me and kept saying, "Let's go! I kept having this image of a beached whale trying to make his way back into the water.) I ate more brocolli than usual. I only had one double cheeseburger and two apple pies for lunch. I went to bed with eager anticipation of what all this hard work would bring and when I got up in the morning, I rushed to the scale to find the results...and waited excitedly for the arrow to complete its revolution around the dial....


I gained a pound...

The Lord abhors dishonest scales, but accurate weights are his delight. Proverbs 11: 1

Double click on the cartoon to be able to read the captions...pretty good

Today's Passage

I waited and waited and waited for God. At last he looked, finally he listened. He lifted me out of the ditch, pulled me from deep mud. He stood me up on a solid rock to make sure I wouldn't slip. He taught me how to sing the latest God-song, a praise-song to our God. More and more people are seeing this: they enter the mystery, abandoning themselves to God. Psalm 40: 1-3 The Message

Adam and Eve--Sin Pioneers Concluded

Continued...

A telling side bar to all this is well exposed by the commentators Keil and Delitschz. When Adam and Eve sinned by eating the fruit, the most critical concern of theirs immediately afterward was not the ugliness of their sin, it was the disgust with their nakedness and perverted sensitivity to their shame. Isn’t it like children to cry more about losing their bike for a day than to shed even the driest of tears for lying? Even for adults it is a universal tendency to care mostly about the punishment of sin and care not even the least whit about the sin itself. It is the getting caught that whips our hearts around, not any anguish about sin being evil. I read once where a writer asked why we so cavalierly toss out the expression, “God hates the sin but loves the sinner.” I understand the grace of God and the largeness of forgiveness but isn’t it true that you cannot really separate out the sin from the sinner? It is not that murder was committed. It is that a specific person committed a murder. A lie is not told as much as a specific person tells a lie. The sin and the sinner are intertwined inseparably just as flesh and blood cannot be taken from each other.

Confession is not picking out levels of culpability. I did some of it but Jane also did part of it. I have longings that make it tough to say “no”. God made me this way so He’s also to blame. The worst part of the consumerism form of Christian faith we have embraced so heartily lately is not the tendency of believers to flit from church to church or ministry to ministry based on personal likes and dislikes. It is the erosion of the “I” in confession it engenders. The focus of American Christianity is now as outward as Adam’s and Eve’s. For Adam it was Eve…for Eve it was the serpent. For modern Christians it is the music, the preaching, the coldness or the members, the flamboyance of the worship, the lack of friends, the too small children’s ministry, the youth program, the distance, the time, the mission statement, the politics. When Jim Bakker wrote his autobiography, he entitled it simply, I Was Wrong. That is a shocking assessment to make for our time. There is nothing in the title about Eve, the serpent or the boring sermons, loud music or limp handshakes that led him to do what he did. Jim Bakker simply said he was wrong. Quite nearly revolutionary for us in the Church. Can those words even come out of our mouths without a stutter? I was wrong.

The psychological tendency is as old as Adam…and Eve. Downplay the bad in me. Accentuate the bad in others. Critique and correct and you can be just as good as you want to be. I was wrong cannot camp with criticism. Peter, when given his charge by Jesus asked the universal question, “But what about John?” Confession is never about anyone but me. I sinned. I ate. I lusted. I lied. I was lazy. I ignored. I was selfish. I lacked faith. I wasted what God gave me. I was wrong.

Take one statement in scripture and ponder it a minute. The wages of sin is death. What does this mean? It means that sin is the worst of poisons. Take a second statement. All have sinned… Let this sink in for a moment. Who is that talking about? Adam thought it meant Eve and Eve thought it meant the serpent. Go to a final statement. If we confess our sins, God is faithful and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. It certainly is pointless to ask what might have happened differently if both Adam and Eve had simply said, “I ate and I was wrong.” That part of the story is over. But the part we have here is where you and I fit into it. It is the part where I say, “I _________ and I was wrong.” You say, “I ______________ and I was wrong.” Nothing about the church you attend, the troubles you have faced or the people who have let you down is relevant when it comes to confession. I cannot go any further down this Christian road until I do the first thing…confess my sins.. “I ___________ and I was wrong.” That is how it is done.

But what happens when we do this very simple thing? There are two benefits specifically. First, God works with us in a different way than before we confess a sin. If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land. (2 Chronicles 7:14 NIV) We can spend all day quibbling about what “heal their land” means for each of us but it seems like a very good thing to me. Secondly, confession changes the way our life is going. 1 John 1:9, quoted earlier uses a lovely term to describe the impact confession has upon us. It is translated “cleansed” but has the idea of pruning for the purpose of making more fruitful. Each time we confess our sins, God makes us a bit more fruitful, a bit, if we can say it this way, more Christian and more effectively Christian.

A moment by moment practice of confession does more than just make us feel better about ourselves; it makes us literally better people. Confession was never intended to be a stored up unloading every time we need help; confession is a lifestyle of becoming fruitful and happy Christians. Take a moment. Consider a sin you have committed this past hour. Confess it and admit to God you were wrong in it. There is no magical formula for becoming a fruitful and happy Christian. The way is as old as Adam and Eve and as fresh as your affection for Jesus. Be the first. Say it. “I was wrong”.

A Great Passage For My Quiet Time Today

Well now is the right time to listen, the day to be helped. Don't put it off; don't frustrate God's work by showing up late; throwing a question mark over everything we're doing. Our work as God's servants gets validated--or not--in the details. People are watching us as we stay at our post, alertly, unswervingly...in hard times, tough times, bad times; when we're beaten up, jailed, and mobbed, working hard, working late, working without eating; with pure heart, clear head, steady hand, in gentleness, holiness and honest love; when we're telling the truth, and when God's showing his power; when we're doing our best setting things right, when we're praised, and when we're blamed, slandered, and honored, true to our word, though distrusted, ignored by the world, but recognized by God, terrifically alive, though rumored to be dead, beaten within an inch of our lives but refusing to die; immersed in tears, yet always filled with deep joy, living on handouts, yet enriching many, having nothing, having it all...2 Corinthians 6 The Message

Adam And Eve--Sin Pioneers Part 1

Gen 3:12-13 NIV
The man said, "The woman you put here with me--she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it." Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?" The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."


The whole idea that you are the first at anything is a pretty cool thought. Imagine being the Wright brothers---the first to fly a plane. How about being Neil Armstrong—the first to step foot on the moon. What if you were the first to ride on a motorized vehicle, the first to sail all the way around the world or the first to talk on a telephone. The truth is that being the first at nearly anything is something. The first to mix soy sauce with Tabasco for grilling chicken. The first to climb Mission Peak wearing a red bandana tied to your waist. The first to taste a Big Mac. The first to see the premier of Batman. Now, as the first people ever, Adam and Eve were the first to do all sorts of things. They were the first to utter a word, the first people to laugh, to sing, to take a nap and the first to make eye contact. Yet none of these “firsts” is what defines them most. They are best known for being the very first to….sin. And after that, they were the very first people ever to make an excuse.

The dialogue between God and Adam and then Eve is tightly constructed. No fluff in the comments, no sidebars to interrupt the flow. God—“ Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?" Adam—“The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” That’s it for Adam and God, at least for now. God’s conversation with Eve is even more compact. God—“ What is this you have done?" Eve—“ The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

Neither Adam nor Eve was wrong in the assessments. It was Eve who passed the forbidden fruit on to Adam and the serpent did deceive Eve. God never contradicted their accounts. We have the complete story in the Genesis 3 account and it is just as they reported. What is more, far from evading the questioning of God, the truth is both confessed their sins. Adam admitted, “I ate it”. Eve, “I ate”. Critiquing at all these two brief confessions seems like much ado about nothing. They after all did make their admissions. No police detective would complain much about a murderer’s confession that sounded like these. The bottom line is they confessed. That is all you need out of them, all any judge needs to hear.

The only problem with this line of reasoning is the simple little detail that throws the analogy into a heap. God was not trying to pry out the truth. He was not building a case nor was He trying to figure out what actually happened. The bottom line was not, “I ate”. It was,”I’. As long as Adam pulled Eve into the discussion and Eve brought in the serpent, there was nothing to talk about. Which, explains why God doesn’t answer back to either…He simply moves on to the next one in the micro plot. The probe of God was not into the truth but rather into the heart. The heart, in both cases, was grimly cold and unrepentant. All that was left for God was punishment...

Continued in Next Blog

Batman

It is not a strange thing that Batman--The Black Knight has generated so much interest. It is a well crafted movie with lots of cool special effects, fascinating characters and an exciting plot line. What is strange is that the writers might think they are saying something new about man. The Joker, a psychotic anarchist who has no real ambition except to throw everyone into turmoil and destroy moral character (or at least reveal the depravity of man) is no more surprising a character than we find penetrating the opening scenes of Genesis. And Batman, who straddles the moral fence between pure at heart good guy and moral relativist swashbuckler has his own counterpart in 1 and 2 Samuel. Both Batman and David glide above the law and are beaten into submission to it by the evil disobedience brings. Batman lost his Rachel, David his Absalom. When given ultimate moral choices, neither could stand and neither would fall. Both David and Batman were playboys without the stomach for it and neither could avoid fighting the giant. If there is a weakness to the movie, it is that it cries out for a Savior but settles for a Black Knight. The movie masterfully depicts the generational lines of sin but cannot come to grips with the ultimate question, “How do we end it?” Joker remains suspended between Heaven and Earth and Batman faces a lifetime running from police dogs, staying one step ahead of unmasking. “Is that all there is”, we sang when we were young, and The Black Knight trails with the same harmony. Sin is not broken by a Batman or a David. Only the perfect man/God can change anything permanently. The ferries may not blow up every once in a while but the same forces that pushed decent people toward an Armageddon are still out there because the Joker lives in us all. The tension wire is not strung from the Joker to Batman; it is between Two Face and Two Face. The makers of Batman cannot write in a true Savior because they either intuitively or experientially know there can never be one…unless you write in God.

Temptation--Conclusion

I have often wondered what the allure to the forbidden fruit was. Satan told Eve that if she ate it, she would know good from evil. But didn’t she already? She knew staying away from the forbidden fruit was good…touching it was evil. The difference between the two was as plain for her as the nose on Adam’s face. So what did she hope to gain by tasting the fruit? So many have made much of the temptation being an entrance into a moral awakening, that God was keeping Eve and Adam from understanding what good was in contrast to evil. That was not the case at all. Good and evil were both known to Eve. She stated as such when she told Satan what she was to do and what she wasn’t to do. That is the knowledge of good and evil.

What Eve was being led to enter was a whirlwind of terror. The Hebrew words translated good and evil are not so centered on moral opposites They are rather decribers of outcomes. “Tov”, translated good means pleasant, good, agreeable. Evil, “rah” means misery, calamity, injury, That was what Eve had never tasted. The good she knew. Peaceful living, quiet contentment, loving relationships. That was all hers. She had tov. The misery, calamity and injury was nowhere to be found in her world though. What Satan was inviting Eve was entry into a nightmare, into rah. He was taking her from Technicolor dreams to black and white devastation. I once saw a black and white painting depicting a battle scene of blown up buildings, fire scorched trees and broken bodies littering the landscape. That was what Satan had for Eve, a world of Rah.

So why would Eve have any interest in entering a nightmare world? There are two parts to the temptation that battled fiercely against her. In Genesis 3: 6 we see the power brokers that make temptation work. The first is found in the comment, “the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye.” The word translated pleasing, means desirable. It has an attractiveness that works within the body, a physical longing. Within Eve’s body, Eve was being pulled toward the fruit. Shakira’s lyric that explains why she must decide to give in to her boyfriend’s sexual urgings, “my hips don’t lie” profoundly describes this. The body, whether it be the hips, the tongue or the eyes is a monster of strength when it comes to temptation. Physical desire combines with physical need to drive the mind to sin. Eve felt the fruit in her eyes pulling her to it.

The second part of the temptation is a bit complicated to explain but quite easy to understand. It is said that for Eve, the fruit was “desirable for gaining wisdom…” The Hebrew word translated “desirable” is most often used in a bad sense…a selfish desire, an ungoverned desire, a pleasure considered that is wrong. The Hebrew expression translated, “for wisdom” describes a pondering, a considering, a thoughtfulness. What Eve was doing was ruminating about the forbidden fruit. She couldn’t take her mind off of it. This longing for the fruit was all she thought about. It kept popping up when she was eating dinner, when she and Adam were walking through the garden and picking any of the other fruit they had. Selfish desires given free rein in the imagination are monsters to defeat.

Temptation powered by the mind and the body when both are pulling against the will can be deadly. Look at what Eve got for her money. The scripture says she and Adam when their eyes were opened realized they were naked. This was not the recognition of right from wrong as so many mistakenly interpret the outcome. Adam and Eve, by their sin, were brought into the world of nightmare. If you have ever had a dream that goes bad, quickly, you know the terror these two felt as they lived with their new choice. Once I dreamed I was drowned by a tidal wave that swept over my dad and me as we were enjoying a pleasant conversation. Sin is the dream turned nightmare…the hope made slimy and filthy. Eve, perfect in her form, lovely to her husband, confident in her endeavors, became naked. She suddenly was despised and forlorn and isolated.

Living for God could be defined as the fight against temptation. The battle to follow God is brutal and once we submit to temptation, it brings us into a nightmare that is uncontrollable and deadly and we never can be certain where it will bring us. Sin is not a servant, it is a master and it controls us, we do not control it. As the Apostle Paul put it, Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey-whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? (Romans 6: 16 NIV) Temptation on the other hand can be mastered but it is tough. Both our body and our mind push us unceasingly toward sin and there is only one way out. What Eve did not do, we can. Hebrews 4: 15-16 reminds us that Jesus, having been tempted in every way that we are tempted, sympathizes with our weaknesses…the press of our bodies and the pull of our distracted minds make it almost impossible not to give in to the nightmare sin brings. But verse 16 gives us the secret to not giving in to sin. Only one force breaks the power of our bodies and mind. The grace of Jesus! Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

The old game show offered three doors and only one could be chosen. If you chose poorly, you went home with junk, choose wisely, your fortune could suddenly be made. Life is an unbroken chain of door number ones or door number twos. Eve chose door number two and her life became a nightmare. What, might be behind door number one? Only God knows. But, it won’t be door number two. Just ask Eve what she thinks of that!

Temptation--Continued

...The delay in punishment…death does not come immediately and definitely doesn’t occur when the temptation is working on us, makes temptation a ruthless enemy. If Adam would have seen Eve keel over as soon as she bit into the fruit, he might have thought twice about biting into it himself. Or even Eve, if she felt sick to her stomach as she gazed upon the fruit, she might herself have stopped short. But temptation works in a timeless fashion. The punishment isn’t there for you…all you have is the object of your desire. Tomorrow doesn’t come.

Temptation works at a second level. It rejects the premise that God speaks truthfully. When Satan denied God’s assertion that if Adam or Eve touched the fruit, they would die; he stated emphatically that they most certainly would not die. Temptation is more than a nod at something to do; it is a turning from someone who is. If God is not dependable and His words not trustworthy or more importantly, He isn’t really out there; then who can say what is right and wrong. Temptation is mostly a listing toward what seems good when God isn’t there to make sense of it.

The most interesting part of Joseph’s success at fighting off the temptation of Potiphar’s wife is that he never let go of two crucial parts to the sin he was facing. Potiphar had been good to him and sleeping with his wife would be horrible. Secondly, God was still and sinning against Him by sleeping with her was even a worse thing to do. His retort, when Potiphar’s wife kept pressing in her seduction was, “my master does not concern himself with anything in the house, everything he owns he has entrusted to my care. No one is greater in this house than I am. My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?” (Genesis 39: 8 NIV) If Potiphar was merely a shadow image and God just a picture on the wall, then Potiphar’s wife was pretty appealing. But if both existed, then the sin was terrible to contemplate. Temptation is like a drug that makes God go away and everyone impacted by the sin go away. They aren’t really gone, it just seems like they are. Like a child who puts a blanket over his head and thinks no one can see him, so is the one being tempted tricked into believing the temptation has mystical powers. It makes you think God is gone...

Continued in next blog...

Tempting...

Genesis 3:6 NIV
When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.


We know almost nothing about Eve except what we find here in Genesis three. Was she kind and warm or cold and calculating? Did she enjoy parties or prefer to be by herself? Was Eve a thinker or driven by her feelings? How was she as a wife and later as a mom? Was Eve a good cook…a good housekeeper, a good story teller? Eve, who some estimate gave birth to as many as 100 children has a seductive, alluring aura about her that may be due to all the naked renditions that have been made depicting her in the garden and later with the fig leaves after she sinned but was she attractive, or friendly or fun to be with? Did Adam enjoy her company as they grew older? Eve, whose name sounds like the Hebrew verb that means “living”, is known almost exclusively for her brief encounter with Satan and almost immediate plunge into sin. Other women have been known mostly for their sinning…Delilah, Jezebel and Potiphar’s wife. However, no other woman is so completely associated with sin and temptation as Eve.

What is most fascinating about Eve though is not her final decision to eat the forbidden fruit; it is rather the illuminating description of how temptation worked with Eve and what lead to her fall. The scene in Genesis three is surreal, a talking serpent is the central character along with Eve in a battle that would permanently alter the condition of the human race. The serpent we are told is crafty, shrewd. Satan’s take on God’s command to not eat fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is telling. “You will surely not die. Now Eve had just told Satan that the Lord commanded they could not even touch the forbidden fruit lest they would be killed. Satan’s strategy in the temptation is enlightening. He immediately shifts Eve’s consideration once he discredits God’s warning by telling Eve that on the “day” she eats the fruit, her eyes would be opened and she would know good from evil.

Satan brings into the dialogue a most critical factor in temptation…time. Whereas God’s warning was not bound to a point…you die on the day you take the forbidden fruit as you would with a lethal poisoned apple, Satan’s promise was. The day you taste that fruit, a magnificent wonder will happen. Temptation rests upon this one pillar…today and not yet. Today you will have open eyes. Today you will enjoy insight into mysteries unknown to you before. Today it will be sweet and pleasant and good. Tomorrow isn’t going to happen. Tomorrow is nothing to bother you. Tomorrow is the slave of today. Every temptation works this way. I will be leading next month a seminar on child abuse and the molester does his perversion because he takes tomorrow out of the equation. Upping the ante on murder…making the penalty worse, the execution more gruesome, the hanging more public has statistically been proven to be inconsequential to reducing the rate of murders both in the U.S. and elsewhere because every homicide is done without tomorrow. The catching part of the murder, the finding it out part of it, the punishment aspect, is left out when the murder is committed. Satan’s temptation was that tomorrow isn’t but today very much is. It still works that way. When I stole candy from a store as a child, I did it because I didn’t think I would get caught…actually I didn’t even think about it. The theft was based totally on today. Get the candy. The now of the Jolly Ranchers swallowed up the tomorrow of being nabbed.

This Topic will be completed in the next blog

The Grace of the fishbowl

Take the most important part of your life and turn it up for everyone to see. Whether it be a friendship, a habit or a hope you grasp, it has power reverberating within it. It isn't as simple a thing for you as it is for everyone else glancing at it from the outside. It is rooted in your heart, entwining every nerve directing your parts and with that it is more complex than DNA, more complicated than the oil crisis. A friend has been struggling with drug addictions for years and it is so easy to discard if in fact you watch him like I watch my Beta loungining in his bowl. But if you are my friend, it is not a simple matter of shedding your skin, like some common lizard. It is frightening, and depressing and painful. It took me ten minutes to get into the lake while we were on vacation because the water was just a bit cool. Imagine tearing off your skin because someone on the other side of the bowl says you will be happier. Israel took more than a millenia to get rid of idol worship. Why are we so shocked when Christian people still gossip, still blow up, still complain, are still lazy, still pretend they are God's most able and trustworthy servants, still lie, still carelessly break promises. I see everything so clearly when I look at you. but whenever I gaze within, I find a convoluted tangle of contradictions that never really make sense to me. I am sinner living within grace. Take this any further and you are missing the most important detail of Man. We need a Savior for every single part of us...even our dreams need to be converted by Jesus. Grace is the one area of expertise the Church most needs to master...

The Jumpstart

What makes for a good day? The day we were supposed to leave for home from our vacation, my rear view mirror fell off my windshield. I went to check on the oil and I pulled the handle of the dipstick and it came off, leaving the dipstick beyond reach inside the tube leading to the engine block. After ten hours cleaning the house where we stayed and packing, finally at 5:30 PM, with everything in the car and everyone buckled into their seats, I went to start the car and it was dead. What is it about threes? So I got a jumper cable from one neighbor and the second neighbor offered to jumpstart our van from his truck. Nothing. Then I realized the cables were on the wrong terminals. We switched the terminals, tried again and it started but as soon as I took my foot off the gas, the car died. We tried several times before giving up. So what did I do? I prayed. The neighbor offered to call AAA and an hour later, a towtruck arrived. Benjamin, our two year old was thrilled to see a truck...I was praying the towtruck driver could get the van going. Immediately the van started but again, when I took my foot off the gas, it died. Finally after several tries, my neighbor suggested I just drive back with my foot on the gas the entire way. The only other option was to stay through the weekend, miss our church service and come home on Tuesday. I prayed. The road down from the cabin is treacherous...if you think you can drive the entire way downhill with your foot on the gas. Jump starting the van once again, my neighbor led me on a fifteen minute journey through the neighborhood. The first stop sign I came to was a moment of truth. I took my foot off the gas and stopped. The van did not stall out...and it didn't stall out the rest of the three hour trip home. What makes a good day...perhaps the simplicity of praying your way down the road!

How Did My Picture Get Published?

In Garden

Genesis 2:8-9 NIV
Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed.

When I go through the Garden of Eden account I am intrigued by it for the same reason we all are. The simplicity and purity found there is winsome. How many of us have thought with a nostalgia we don’t actually personally possess that it would be a dreamy world to enter. Certainly vegans would feel quite at home there. So too would all of us who grew up with Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. Would there be anything cooler than sitting down beside a lion and petting his mane as he purrs contentedly. Still others would be thrilled to live in a corner of the planet where crime is non-existent and people just “get along” Not long ago over a five day period in Oakland California, eight people were murdered. A peaceful neighborhood is all many would love to have. How about free food and no worries about rising gas prices? Think about what it would like to have a world economy determined just by two people…no one to blame for the loss of jobs and certainly major corporations and big government would not be pressing issues.

Now there are three possible reasons why the account of Garden life is left to us. The first is to provide a history of our roots. This is what happened and how it occurred. Just as biographers have researched out the details of George Washington’s birth and early life, so too in Genesis two the facts about the first man are described. A second possible reason for the descriptions we find there is to make us a bit envious, create within us a longing for something we can’t make happen with lots of effort or group therapy…we are given as it were a taste of heaven a snapshot like we could find in a travel brochure. A third explanation is that God wants us to know how things ought to be…that there really is a right form of life, a benchmark of sin-freeness…corruptionlessness.

Let us just assume it is the third explanation that best tells us why Genesis two is in the Bible. God is telling us how things are intended. What do we discover? First, mankind had a calling…a vocation that was five-fold. Remember that there are two ways we look at life-long tasking. The first is career. It is what we choose to do or at least end up doing most of our adult life. A career is something we stumble upon either because we like doing it or through circumstances it is forced upon us. Whether we are a housewife, an electrician or a lawyer, a career is just what we do for our livelihood. A vocation on the other hand by root definition, is what God makes us to be. It is our Lord shaped design and guided life path. Most people have no idea what their vocation is. It may or may not coincide with their career…if it does it is only because they stumbled into it. But some see the hand of God in what they do and vocation is the step of faith into God’s direction. I have a certain career because that is how God moved me and designed my being.

The vocation of Adam had five parts. It was first to Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth…(Genesis 1:28 NIV) For all my good friends who think we already have too many people, God’s calling for Adam and Eve was to literally, as you would fill a jar to the top, fill the earth with descendants. The Bible uses the same Hebrew word to describe the presence of the Lord filling the Temple. As smoke creeps into every nook and cranny of a house, so God, was in every part of the Temple. That is what Adam and Eve were told to do…fill the earth. Linked with this were the twin callings to subdue the earth and rule over the creatures living on it. …fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground. (Gen 1:28 NIV) The term ‘subdue is a strong one. It is the good Hebrew word “cabash” and means to “bring into bondage, to dominate as in conquest or to subdue”. The second Hebrew word, “rule” is just as big and strong. “Radah” means to have dominion, to rule, to dominate”. The sinless couple was instructed to “overpopulate?” the earth and make every living creature their slave and to hold the earth in bondage. Nothing in this vocation makes mother earth the master and certainly Adam and Eve were not told they were to live as slaves to dodo birds or polar bears.

Now lest you think the vocation was to “toot as you pollute”, there were two more parts to their vocation. Adam was commanded in connection with the Garden of Eden to “work it and take care of it. (Genesis 2:15 NIV) The word for “work it” is “abad” and the root of the Hebrew Old Testament word translated “servant”. Literally, Adam was told to serve the earth, to work it as a servant would do his tasks. It is in fact the very same word that is used to describe what worship is, that we serve, or “work” the Lord. Now, this is a quite profound thought. We are both master and servant where we live, ruler and ruled. I honestly am not sure where to take this. Remember, we are still examining the vocation of the Garden of Eden, God’s perfect place and sin free world.

If I am not a servant of the earth but I am to serve it, then who is my master? That of course is quite clear, it is God. My activities, all having to do with this place where I am settled are as a servant, and God is to give me every charge. Each rock I overturn, every foundation I lay, every plane I fly or monitor I read is, as servant. I think it is fascinating the way we have completely rolled over our calling. God told Adam he was to serve the earth as ruler. We instead rule the earth as servants.

Let me illustrate. Suppose the king of your land came to your house and cleaned your carpet, washed your dishes and taught your children how to play patty-cake. What would you think of that king? Now suppose instead, your servant came into your house and threw away all your favorite clothes, cleared your computer of all its data and offered your house on EBay at a below market price. What would you think of the servant? The servant acted as your king but your king acted as servant. Which of the two is a better fit for the Garden?

The fifth part of Adam’s vocation is the,”take care of it” part. The Hebrew word is “shaman” and means to “watch over, preserve, and keep”. It is the same word used to describe the care a shepherd has for his sheep. He guards, protects and provides for the sheep. He makes sure they get to places where there is enough water, drives off predators and sees to it that they have grass to keep them well fed. In other words, a shepherd is responsible for the care of the sheep. Adam’s place in the world was to make sure the world was well.

The expression, “in a perfect world” actually makes sense here. In a perfect world, how was Adam to be? He was a ruler living as a servant. He was a guardian who monitored the vital signs. He was under God. I am not so sure global warming is occurring and I certainly do not believe the Bible teaches “population control.” But it is our vocation to love this world God has given us and do all we can to bless it. We were talking in our cell group about the cool parts of life in the Garden of Eden and someone mentioned the naming of all the creatures. My first thought about it is that it must have been a weird thing to come up with a different name, a meaningful name for every one of the millions of varied creatures roaming our world. My second thought was that it must have been a wonderful thing to see them all parading before him.

My daughter has this complicated morality regarding bugs and slugs. Crush them or guard their path. She does both. We seem to be the same way with people. We sometimes crush them and other times guard their paths. We belittle and praise, slaughter and cuddle, notice and ignore. Our biggest problem is not deciding whether or not we are “one nation under God.’ It is deciding whether or not I am one person under God. If I am, then all I can do with you is bless your steps and guard as much of your heart as I can from being broken. If I am, then my first thought always circles back to how God might handle this. The hand that lovingly detailed out the spine of a maple leaf is the God who has ordered me to keep watch over my part of the world.

Recently an extraordinary thing was reported. A mother, who was not married to the father of her child decided to have an abortion. She previously had given birth to a son who died of a kidney disease that started in the womb. Despite being on the Pill, she became pregnant and believing she could not cope with losing another child to kidney disease, had her baby aborted. The only problem was that not much later she felt fluttering in her stomach and discovered after a visit to the doctor that she was still pregnant. This was a child living on two strikes. She decided to keep the baby and finally gave birth to a boy who was born with minor kidney problems but set to live what the doctors deemed, “a normal life”.

So what do you make of this? It is quite possibly the perfect metaphor for the post-garden man. A little part of the world, this child, this one too many child, this not perfect child, this unplanned child, is part of my world and I must decide what to do with him. Whether it be the spotted owl in my back yard, the minnows in the tiny creek down the road or the grumpy husband who won’t pick up his socks, I must decide what I will do there. Jesus put Peter on the spot. “Do YOU love ME?” “O, yes”, Peter declared. “Then”, Jesus answered, “take care of my sheep.” It is, precisely the same charge once given Adam.

Adam Meets...

Genesis 1: 27 NIV
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.


Perhaps the most interesting statement in the entire Old Testament is this one, that man was created in God’s image. What precisely does this mean? There are two sides to this issue. What is it about man that makes him in God’s image? On the other hand, what is it about God that makes man be in His image? The two sides are equally mysterious and equally important. Put another way, what is it we learn about God from man and what is it we learn about man from God? Exploration is one of the most fascinating of endeavors. Why are we so enamored with getting to Mars? For that matter, why did we care about getting to the moon and before that, why did we think there was anything of importance about the Galapagos Islands or the tip of Africa or Manhattan? Why do we want to look into the nucleus and the DNA molecule? We want to know and see and understand and at some level, be there. However, the two most distant shores are the ones we think we have explored ad nausea and yet both are more unknown to us than the farthest star.

The greatest of frontiers are set here in our central verse. Who is God and who is man? We have two sciences dedicated to the later; psychology and sociology and yet neither has been able to answer even the simplest questions about man. For example, why do we use a cell phone to send a text message and a computer to make a phone call? Why do we use a remote control after spending an hour working out? Why do we eat out when we are inside and eat up when the food goes down? We haven’t got answers to these questions. Nor do we understand ourselves. Why do we marry, build cities, make phone calls and work so hard? Who really is God? What is He like and what matters most to Him?

What Do You Do?

What do you do when nothing you attempt works? What do you do when you can't understand something simple? What do you do when you don't have enough time or enough money or enough energy? What do you do when you pray and it just doesn't seem to be enough? The reason why giving up is such a common occurence is because so much life is hard. The finish lines are cool because the race is over and you made it all the way but the race...now that is a different story. I think the reason why I don't like artsy movies that don't ever really conclude and I dislike even more the story that turns out badly for the one character I really like is that it hits too close to home. I feel like I am always waiting for the miracle, the surprise intervention, the mystic turnaround. The cell group that is too small, the offerings that hamstring ministry, the discipleship effort that just fades all are a part of this garden where we have been commisioned. Holding on is not just a catch phrase, it is the ministry. It is the life. Weedless gardens are ours but just not yet. Until then, we make our best effort to love...to listen... and to hug...Baby Emma reminds me of just how lovely it is be a child. I remember pretending to be asleep when the movie at the drive-in theater was over just so that my dad would carry me from the car into the house. Perhaps that is the best part of life. Being carried by Jesus...life isn't that bad!

Restore us, O God; make your face shine upon us, that we ay be saved. Psalm 80: 1 NIV

Humility

Micah 6:8 NIV
He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

Humility is a slippery fish. Almost no one really has it or if they do, they don’t think it’s there. A teen recently told me that if you think you are humble, the very thinking it means you aren’t. That is the clichéd thought on humility but is it true? Humility is a reverenced trait in Christian circles…not so much because everyone wants to have it but more because it has the halo feel about it, the ancient icon sense to it. Moses, the greatest of the Old Testament heroes was described as more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth. (Numbers 12:3 NIV) Jesus said of Himself that He was gentle and humble in heart. (Matthew 11:29 NIV) Whether it is the Apostle Paul (Be completely humble Ephesians 4:2 NIV), James the brother of Jesus (Humble yourselves before the Lord James 4:10 NIV), or the Apostle Peter (be compassionate and humble. 1 Peter 3:8 NIV) the New Testament declares humility a virtue of the highest order. But who of us is really like that? Who can say he or she is “humble”?

Humility is commonly expressed in several ways. In Asian culture, particularly in Korea bowing is a sign of respect, the deeper the bow, the more humble the personage. Humility is preserved within Catholic and Orthodox traditions by the kneeling bench. We do the same sort of thing in Evangelical churches when we bow our heads in prayer. In American culture we show a certain form of humility when we let pushy drivers merge in front of us. A common way to express humility is to deny a compliment its place. “Oh my drawing really isn’t that good!” “I got a lucky hit.” “I just threw some things together. It wasn’t really much effort.”

But do any of these humility forms necessarily indicate one is being humble? Can you bow before an elder and be vain, kneel in prayer and lack respect for God, let someone cut in front of you and despise the person driving, downplay what you have done but burst with pride at your work? Let’s take a quick glance at three examples of how humble behaviors can actually be nothing of the sort.

Genesis 32 illustrates the first corrupted form of humility. Jacob, who nearly thirty years before had duped his brother out of first his birthright as older brother and then his father’s blessing had lived those three decades as a prisoner of his brother’s wrath. He had narrowly escaped Esau’s deadly plot to revenge his lost honor and inheritance but now, with his own father-in-law a mortal enemy, Jacob had to make his way back into his brother’s good graces or have nowhere to live. When Esau got word that Jacob was returning, (Jacob had in fact sent emissaries in advance to test out his brother’s feelings about him) he came to meet Jacob with an army of 400 fighting men. Jacob was spent. All he could do was face the music and so as the two parties approached one another, Jacob and his wives and children and handful of servants and Esau with his band of 400 armed warriors, Jacob worked his way to the front of the line. The outmanned Jacob bowed down to the ground seven times as Esau came near. Now was this humility or fear fueling each of the bows? It could easily be deemed humility but the truth is that Jacob really did not want to have nothing to do with his brother. He rejected every one of Esau’s overtures at fellowship and as far as we can tell, never met up with him again. Is it humility if you bow before someone you don’t like?

We pick on King Saul often but perhaps for good reason. When Samuel the prophet declared him the first king of Israel Saul complained that he was from the lowliest of the twelve tribes of Israel and a member of the least respected of the clans. When it was time for Samuel to introduce him as the new king to the entire collected nation he was found hiding behind the piles of baggage. Now was this humility or just a crushed ego destroyed by social stigma? Was he responding out of his healthy understanding of how difficult it would be to serve as king or did he just despise himself because his friends and neighbors had made fun of him when he was young? Is it humility when we decide we are ugly or stupid or untalented or is it a wound refusing to heal?

Humility is often just ambition gilded. When David became established as king, he wanted to do something for his friend Jonathon’s survivors and was informed a son, Mephibosheth still lived. Mephibosheth had been crippled as a child and David called him to his palace and after interviewing him, made Mephibosheth an honorary part of his family and the land that had belonged to Saul was restored to Mephibosheth as rightful heir. What is more, the servant of Saul’s, who had been living a free man all these years, was now made, along with his entire family, a servant of Mephibosheth. Talk about a change of fortune, not only for Mephibosheth but also for Ziba, the servant. Several years later, David was running for his life because his own son Absalom had gathered a vast army and was approaching Jerusalem with the intent of wrenching the kingdom from his father. Just as David and his allies made it out of town, he was approached by Ziba with a string of donkeys loaded down with raison cakes, figs and wine. “Where”, David asked, “is your master’s grandson?” Whether he was lying or not, we don’t know but Ziba told David that Mephibosheth had stayed home because he was in hopes that Absalom was coming with his army to make Mephibosheth king. Now why Mephibosheth would possibly think that could be and why David would accept this, we cannot know but David did believe Ziba and freed Ziba of his servanthood to Mephibosheth and gave all his former master’s land to him. Ziba’s response? “I humbly bow. May I find favor in your eyes, my lord the king.” Can we call that humility? Bowing to a king to win his favor and gain his gifts?

If humility is not an attempt to gain favor, not the result of insecurities and not a response to fear, then what is it? There are three key components to humility. If one or more are missing, we do not have humility but rather some warped anomaly. Just as the Orcs in the Lord of the Rings were corrupted forms of elves, so too, lacking any one of these foundational components of humility makes it something quite different. The first part of humility is the recognition that without God we are nothing. A collection of molecules stuffed together in a solid mass is not life, certainly not human. God’s parting words to Adam following the latter’s sin describes well our true condition. “…for dust you are and to dust you will return." (Genesis 3:19 NIV) We have ideas, and creativity and strength and will not because we earned it; we have these because God breathes life into us and makes every part of us living. We are exciting and fun and creative and full of action due to God keeping it going in us and for no other reason than that.

Humility is built on the fundamental premise that I am first and foremost, sinner. I live against the laws of the universe and have nothing to offer a soul but wrongheadedness and abuse of the gifts given me. I am a violator of the basic morals that make life good and I do the wrong thing again and again. Humility recognizes, as Paul the Apostle did, that I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. (Rom 7:18-19 NIV) It is not humility to despise myself because I fail at things or am ignored or rejected by others. It is humility though to know that I make judgments about things as a sinner, take stock of my life and the people around me as a sinner, do acts of charity as a sinner and make plans as a sinner. When I correct my children, it is as a sinner; when I preach a sermon, I do so as a sinner and when I am angry over the way my meal has been cooked, my anger is cooked in sin. Without that sense that I am a first-rate sinner, I cannot be humble…not even a bit.

Humility rests also on the reality that I am so loved by God, Jesus died for me. My ugly profile, my clumsy hands, my inability to remember names, my boring little stories and my bad breath cannot be my first or even my third point about me. I am the beloved work of art a God who desperately loves me made. If I hang my head because I do not yet believe Jesus loves me, that is one thing. But if I hang my head because I do not think Jane or Jeffery love me, that is altogether another thing. I can wander away from Jane and Jeffery and find love because God made me beloved and only a fool would despise me. There are millions like me beloved of God who know it and are made to love me too. There is not a shortage of people to love me. There is a shortage of me who know how loved I am. Humility is based on God’s infatuation with me; his last dying breath breathed for me. I cannot be humble if I do not know the taste of God’s love in me.

So what is humility? How do I do it? Humility starts with a desperate faith in Jesus for salvation; salvation for our post death life but also salvation for our life now. My confidence in the Cross to save each part of me…my career, my family, my finances, my thoughts, my friendships is the most crucial choice we make each and every day. Either God does not exist and we live as a complete pagan or He is and we make it our most important task the complete reliance on Jesus to manage and fill every part of us.

In the movie, The Chronicles Of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Lucy the youngest of the children brought back to Narnia to help rescue the Narnians has a hint that she has glimpsed Aslan the great lion (who symbolically represents Jesus Christ) but isn’t so sure it was him and can’t get the others to go with her to follow where he is leading. In the end the kids don’t believe her and it turns out disastrously for them. Finally, when Lucy does come face to face with mighty Aslan, she wants reassurance that earlier it was indeed him pointing the way to a safer and more direct way of saving the Narnians. Yes, he tells her, it was him. She then asks how many lives might have been saved if they had taken his directive. Oh, my child, she is told, you cannot go back and discover that for it is already done. But then he makes the sword thrust into Lucy’s heart. You, my child, even if no one else had gone with you, could have followed and it would have made all the difference.

The better part of humility is not the bowing of one’s head or the lowering of one’s dreams or the giving in to every poor soul who thinks he should boss you around. The better part of humility is following Jesus whether anyone goes with you or not. Last night, my boys were with me and two unbelieving friends who have been taught nothing in their home of following God or giving in to his will. We had bought some burgers and fries and were sitting in my car in the back side of the parking lot. I asked (told) one of my boys to lead us in prayer. At that moment was a great quandary. Not for me but immediately for my son. Do I speak out or mumble a complaint. Do I argue that I can’t or don’t feel like it or have nothing to say? Do I pray? In humility, my son bowed his head, opened his mouth and before his friends, thanked God for our food. Humility is not a way of thinking; it is and always has been the micro submissions we make to the God who through us is changing our world.