The Little Things: Excuses

Standard

One of the societal trends I have noticed in the last ten years is that people increasingly make excuses. Everyone has an excuse as to why the work I’m paying them to do hasn’t been done, why they can’t fix my car right in four tries, Magnifying Glasswhy the pictures came out fuzzy, why they burned my meal at the restaurant, and on and on and on.

What baffles me about this trend is that the reason for that failure to execute never is “I made a mistake.” It’s always something more along the lines of “My distributor can’t…,” “My manager won’t…,” “The service center we use isn’t…,” and the ubiquitous “It’s their fault, not mine.” I’m convinced that the next time I actually hear a person say, “I messed up,” I’m going to hand him $20 and say, “Thank you for taking responsibility for the problem.”

Honestly, it’s that bad.

What makes it worse is that there is no greater source for excuses than in our churches. Nowhere else summons up the patter of random deflections than in the group we meet with on Sundays.

The curious thing about this, though, is that it is usually not the church entity itself that is making excuses for itself, but individual Christians within those churches. It is the nature of any volunteer organization, which a church primarily is, to have somewhat more slack rules of operation, but what makes us Christians so unwilling to take the blame when something goes wrong?

“We were supposed to have a prayer meeting on Wednesday, but Steve couldn’t…,” “Someone was going to visit our elderly shut-ins this week, but…,” “It’s not my fault that no one put together the youth group program until the last second and…”—well, it just gets tiring.

The grace of God is cheapened when we use it as an excuse for not doing what we say we will do. Jesus didn’t take too kindly to us making excuses:

Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.
—Matthew 25:41-46 ESV

The Church in America needs to dump excuses. We’re using them to excuse ourselves from taking responsibility for our actions (or inactions, as the case usually is.) We need to own up when we make mistakes. We need to stop acting like grace is there to excuse us from doing what we need to do.

Excuses may seem like little things, but they break the heart of God when He sees His Church so ready to spout them and so unwilling to own up to our responsibilities as ambassadors for Christ. For every witness we bear, our anti-witness through excuses only undoes that work.

It’s time to be more responsible. Or as the word of God says:

One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much….
—Luke 16:10a ESV

If we wonder why the Church in our country seems so lackluster, perhaps this is the place to start.

Lord, To Whom Shall We Go?

Standard

White cross on a hillRob Wilkerson of Miscellanies on the Gospel (latest winner of a Warnie Award, I might add) burns up the Internet with the question of why Christians aren’t satisfied with Christ and have to go to other sources for their spiritual fulfillment:

In closing, might I add a more practical way that we can lurch backwards into the simplicity of the gospel message of Christ and Him crucified? It involves a ‘put off’ and a ‘put on.’ First, let’s put off Hollywood. It offers nothing but a mirage. Too many Christians, including myself, watch movies in order to gain some redemptive element which we can use as common ground to share the gospel with others. That works sometimes. But I’m beginning to think that when that is used as common ground, generally their perception of Christianity, priests, and preachers is just what Hollywood has told them it is. So if we start with Hollywood, we’re already starting with a broken tool…a severely broken tool. I say let’s ditch the whole thing. Ironically, it’s filled with nothing but emptiness. There’s no gospel in Hollywood, so let’s stop allowing it to seep into our minds, hearts, and homes.

Second, let’s put on the Lord Jesus Christ as He’s already revealed Himself in the Bible. He hasn’t revealed anything of Himself in Hollywood. If we read our Bibles as much as we watched Hollywood’s products, or better yet, if we read our Bible as much as we watched Hollywood’s products and instead of Hollywood’s products, what kind of Christians do you think we would be?

Amen, Rob.

A few years ago, I came to the stunning revelation that nothing ultimately satisfies but Jesus. I stopped giving my time and effort to things that accomplished nothing but satisfying my own craving to be entertained. So much of Christianity has turned into entertainment! Seymour over at The Light Is Sweet posted this perfect commentary from one of my personal faves, Leonard Ravenhill:

Entertainment is the devil’s substitute for Joy; the less joy of the Lord you have, the more entertainment you need.

How eerily true.

Too many want to justify their entertainment fixation by saying that one can find truth in films. My answer? You can pan for flecks of gold in vast fields of manure, but why do it when Christ can fill you up with an infinitely more satisfying treasure: Himself.

Anyway, my journey into the revelation that only Jesus is needed came about because of a passage that has always been one of my favorites, but which I did not fully understand until two years ago:

After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the Twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”
—John 6:66-69 ESV

Lord Jesus Christ, to whom shall we go? There is no truth apart from You. There is nothing that satisfies forever like You do. There is nothing worth possessing more than You. There is no one worth knowing more than You.

And yet how easily so many go careening from one cheap, throwaway thrill to the next. Even people who call themselves by Christ’s name. How desperately sad.

That’s not me anymore. I hope it’s not you, either.

Do We Know God?

Standard

Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD.
—Jeremiah 31:31-34a ESV

Everyone wants to know a person’s qualifications for ministry. There’s an art form to that little boast, but I’d rather like to know someone’s disqualifications for ministry instead. I’m certain they’d reveal more worthwhile truth than a hundred puffed-up positive examples.

One of these days I’ll post my full list of disqualifications for ministry, but until then I just want to list one: I’ve never read J.I. Packer’s Knowing God.

Perhaps that’s why I’m puzzled by so many of the descriptions of knowing God that I hear out there. I found this particularly unsatisfying one on the site of someone I respect:

Feeling God-Not Knowing God
In Christian music we are missing the key pillar, the cornerstone, which the other two rely upon – sound doctrine! There has already occurred a much needed return to praise and worship in the church and we’ve observed that across the board in evangelicalism. There has also been, in recent years noted scandals with both Televangelists and Christian artists, bringing a heightened call for more personal integrity, holiness and ecclesiastical accountability. Though we have not arrived in those areas, we are on the path, nevertheless, the Achilles heel of our industry is the blatant absence of sound biblical theology which has effected every level of Christian music. This is most evident in its message. Christian music, originally called Jesus Music that once fearlessly sang about the gospel, now sings of a Christ-less, watered-down, pabulum-based, positive alternative, aura-fluff cream of wheat, mush-kind-of-syrupy God-as-my-girlfriend thing. There is an obvious reason this has taken place: artists primarily feel; theologians primarily think. We need artists who will balance their zeal with knowledge to invest their lives in the daily discipline of Bible study, and then, to write with the fire, passion and enthusiasm which that study has illumined to communicate the glorious language of the church – the holy Word of God! Until this occurs, we are guilty of sentencing a generation of Christians to simply “feel” their God, rather than to know their God!

So the problem here is that people feel God, but they don’t have the Bible memorized alongside a correct doctrinal stance? Hmm…. When I was growing up in the Lutheran Church I was told that knowing the Bible inside and out was not the same as knowing God. This was reiterated years later in the Presbyterian Church. The problem here becomes one of knowing God versus knowing about God. It’s the same as if a man were to tell me everything he knows about his girlfriend. I can get a rough idea of her, but I truly don’t know her at all. Having facts about her does not equate to knowing her. (I’d even go so far as to say that this man may not truly know his girlfriend, either. There’s an enhancing of the knowing that develops as she moves from a girlfriend to a wife. Hence the Bible’s use of the word “know” in that one unusual sense.)

I’m not certain what the author of that quote is saying then. He also talks up passion and enthusiasm, but then downplays feeling in knowing God. That’s not only confusing, but adds no insight into the equation he’s offering for knowing God:

Knowing God = Enthusiasm for God + Knowledge of the Bible

I’ve known a few folks in my time who’ve had both of those items on the right of that equal sign and virtually none of what’s on the left of it. I don’t think this equation works.

The “enthusiasm for God” issue is also tough to deconstruct. Brand new Christians who are about a millimeter deep in the Lord can have boatloads of enthusiasm and know God only marginally. Meanwhile, the taciturn guy in the back pew may be a mile deep, but he’s not quite as bubbly as your average Campus Crusade cheerleader who became a believer last year.

I’m postive the quote’s author would add the Holy Spirit into that mix if he had the opportunity to revise his comments. The Spirit becomes the unnamed essential that is simply assumed.

Now the equation reads:

Knowing God = (Enthusiasm for God + Knowledge of the Bible) x The Holy Spirit

In other words, the Spirit generates the enthusiasm for God and illuminates the knowledge of the Bible. That’s a bit more satisfying than the previous equation, but still I’m left unmoved by it.

A conundrum exists now that the presence of the Holy Spirit has been added. A Catch-22 of sorts emerges in that you have to know the Holy Spirit in order to know God. The Bible says as much:

Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”—these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
—1 Corinthians 2:6-16 ESV

Knowing the Spirit is essential to knowing God because the Spirit alone searches the depths of God, giving revelation of His Personhood.

If we use the idea that the original quote’s author makes, we’re back to square one because we have to know the Spirit. Can the Spirit be known through enthusiasm and knowledge of the Bible? If that were true, what explains all the spiritually dull Christianity we see around us today? One would have to wonder from this if anyone knows the Spirit, much less knows God the Father, or the Son.

In the end, I worry about making knowing God into an equation. Some well-meaning teachers and preachers have tried to balance that equation and have only driven people to despair as they try to follow the formula. You can add just about any aspect of Christian practice into the equation and still not come out knowing God.

If this were just a routine issue, we could blow it off. There are some today who call themselves Christians yet believe that God is unknowable—I am not one of those people! I believe that knowing God is critical because if we do not know God, He does not know us. I think we’re all familiar with this passage:

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
—Matthew 7:21-23 ESV

I’ll end here with a question to all you readers:

What constitutes knowing God?