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Whenever faith seems an entitlement, or a measuring rod, we cast our lots with the Pharisees and grace softly slips away.
-Philip Yancey, Soul Survivor
Pastor Mark Driscoll has laid out what I believe to be the best list I have run across in some time on the distinct differences between the Gospel and religion. Jesus delivered the very Gospel we preach today within the context of his earthly ministry and his fulfillment of the Holy Scriptures. It was the religion of the Pharisees (and any other man-devised system of connecting with the Almighty) that he came to abolish with his very life.
When you get down to brass tacks—Jesus is the Gospel and Jesus is about setting us free. And since I have been outlining what freedom is and what it isn’t (the Gospel shouts Freedom! after all)—I figured it would be fitting to share Driscoll’s list while we are taking the time to expose the fallacies of religion that are constantly at work to undermine the message of freedom.
Religion says, ‘If I obey God, God will love me.’ Gospel says, ‘Because God love me, I can obey.’
Religion has good people and bad people. Gospel has only repentant and unrepentant people.
Religion values a birth family. Gospel values a new birth.
Religion depends on what I do. Gospel depends on what Jesus has done.
Religion claims that sanctification justifies me. Gospel claims that justification enables sanctification.
Religion has the goal to get from God. Gospel has the goal to get to God.
Religion sees hardships as punishment for sin. Gospel sees hardship as sanctified affliction.
Religion is about me. Gospel is about Jesus.
Religion believes appearing as a good person is the key. Gospel believes that being honest is the key.
Religion has an uncertainty of standing before God. Gospel has certainty based on Jesus’ work.
Religion sees Jesus a the means. Gospel sees Jesus as the end.
Religion ends in pride or despair. Gospel ends in humble joy.
As Driscoll so explicitly points out, the Gospel of freedom Jesus embodies and the religion he came to expose are at polar ends of the spectrum—they are at diabolical odds with each other.
Legalism is helpless in bringing this about; it only gets in the way. Among those who belong to Christ, everything connected with getting our own way and mindlessly responding to what everyone else calls necessities is killed off for good—crucified. (Galatians 5:23b-24, The Message Bible)
Do you know why most Christians don’t get any better or why you don’t get any better? It’s because you’re doing it wrong, dummy! You are obsessed with sin and your faith has become another ’system of laws’ whereby you feel guilty and try and try and try to do better. It doesn’t work, never has worked, and never will work…
-Steve Brown
If I had this freedom thing down pat I wouldn’t bother writing about it. But I want to breath it with every gasp of air I have left before they box me up and stick me in some stuffy cemetery.
A few days ago I returned from a weekend away to see my oldest daughter graduate from high school. It was exhilarating and frightening all in the same swoop. Maybe you can relate to my feelings—she’s my first-born and makes me one proud dad. Anyways, I woke up the other morning and headed into the bathroom after putting my morning coffee on just to be greeted by a big red spot on the tip of the end of my nose (and for those who haven’t seen me—I don’t have the smallest beak in the world). The thing was irritating and it hurt too. Figures Id’ get one—my dad gets the pesky buggers every once in a while and I make fun of him. I thought by the time you were so close to forty these little ego deflaters would be history for good—let alone a man in his mid-sixties. I suppose I have something to look forward to besides streets of gold.
Nobody likes zits, or least no one has told me any different. Zits are like sin if you ask me—although those of you lucky enough to never get a zit can’t say you never get a sin. Sadly, some times it seems like I hate zits more than I hate sin. I also got to thinking about the fact that I didn’t touch my big zit—not once, and it disappeared within a day (to my satisfaction). Sin is like that I have found, and although my sin nature hasn’t taken any extended vacations lately to my dissatisfaction—my sins do seem to have a way of being less of an issue when I don’t obsess about them but rather trust that God meant it when he said he forgives every last one of them.
13 Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. 14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. (Romans 13:13-14, ESV)
I think the idea here is to starve the flesh—my sin nature has trouble surviving let alone prospering when I don’t feed it. Like my big zit, I have this thing for obsessing about things that are better left alone and I am slowly but surely learning that it helps to stop thinking about my sin and start focusing on the one who has delivered me from it’s penalty.
Temptation has a way dissipating when it isn’t messed around with.
…To obey the law of the land leaves us our constitutional freedom, but not the freedom to follow our own consciences wherever they lead.
To obey the dictates of our own consciences leaves us freedom from the sense of moral guilt, but not the freedom to gratify our own strongest appetites.
To obey our strongest appetites for drink, sex, power, revenge, or whatever else leaves us the freedom of an animal to take what we want when we want it, but not the freedom of a human being to be human.
-Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words
Some times I get the feeling that I am supposed to be a stone statue when nothing could be further from the truth. I think God would rather we mess up once in a while than never attempt to live at all (and no—for the record and those who consider themselves God’s policemen—I am not condoning that we go out and commit some big fat sin because God has no problem with it—because he does).
We have rules all around us that ask us to do that which we can’t do or to abstain from that which we most want to do—and even when we can accomplish or live up to half of these self-sanctioned rules—adhering to these dictates would mean our ceasing to be human. God never demands we check our humanity at the door—it is religion that asks us to do that. God’s idea of following Jesus doesn’t include doing away with fun, desire, or even good sex for that matter—in it’s proper place of course. Following Jesus is to be a life of joy—not sadomasochism.
As I read my copy of the New Testament I am ever reminded that Jesus went to parties and the like—despite the ire of the religious establishment. And I’m certain that some within his own ranks wished he’d have stayed at home in the Synagogue (but Jesus lived among the people). It could even be argued that he was the life of the party (no pun intended, I promise). Jesus laughed and he really made some people mad (and I’ll go out on a limb and say his laughing had much to do with their being so upset—stiff-necked religious people consider it their God given duty to stop any fun before it begins you know). Jesus may have even teed it up a time or two in his sandals over at the country club—although, I’m not so sure that playing a round of golf in a toga in the middle of the desert heat would have been all that comfortable.
We see Jesus being the first guy out in the morning to go fishing and also read of him taking a nap in the stern of a boat—so it’s not hard to imagine him getting his beard trimmed up or him polishing off a stack of pancakes and going back for seconds.
Although Jesus was fully God—he was also fully human.
This is the family tree of the human race: When God created the human race, he made it godlike, with a nature akin to God. He created both male and female and blessed them, the whole human race. (Genesis 5:1-2, The Message Bible)
We do well to remember that we are free to be human ourselves—as a matter of fact—it is us Jesus-followers who should be most human.
There are some who have no understanding to hear the truth of freedom and insist upon their goodness as means for salvation. These people you must resist, do the very opposite, and offend them boldly lest by their impious views they drag many with them into error. For the sake of liberty of the faith do other things which they regarded as the greatest of sins… use your freedom constantly and consistently in the sight of and despite the tyrants and stubborn so that they may learn that they are impious, that their law and works are of no avail for righteousness, and that they had no right to set them up.
-Martin Luther
Some of you must to be shaking your heads and saying by now—Come on Ken, there has to be some rules, you are giving people the idea that they can live any way they choose and still be a Christian.
I have said nothing of the sort. I will concede—the gospel of grace is abused—but we don’t pull the medicine off the shelves just because some would use it recklessly. What I have said is that we want rules instead of relationship. We like religion over Jesus. We’ll take self-serving outward religious fashion shows over inward and uncomfortable revivals. It’s much more difficult to be genuine than it is to be religious. And it’s much more advantageous when it comes to our fragile and attention-starved egos to follow a man-made code than to follow the Son of the Living God. Let’s face it—we want people to pat us on the back when it comes to our being so religious, so giving, or even so Christlike—we’ll trade the freedom that’s ours for an ata-boy not even thinking a split second about what we are giving up to get the small worthless token.
11-12 The obvious impossibility of carrying out such a moral program should make it plain that no one can sustain a relationship with God that way. The person who lives in right relationship with God does it by embracing what God arranges for him. Doing things for God is the opposite of entering into what God does for you. Habakkuk had it right: “The person who believes God, is set right by God—and that’s the real life.” Rule-keeping does not naturally evolve into living by faith, but only perpetuates itself in more and more rule-keeping, a fact observed in Scripture: “The one who does these things [rule-keeping] continues to live by them.”
13a Christ redeemed us from that self-defeating, cursed life by absorbing it completely into himself. (Galatians 3:11-13a, The Message Bible)
God understands something that we just can’t seem to get through our thick skulls: A heart set free doesn’t need rules any longer. If you want the unadulterated-unfiltered-cold-hard truth—our hearts never needed rules to begin with. Our hearts were plenty lost without any help. Rules or no rules, we were wretched without Jesus.
You see, a heart set free wants to follow Jesus—it doesn’t need seventy-five rules about how to do anything. Rules got us no where before Jesus and I can’t understand what on earth makes us think they will post-Jesus. Seriously—it’s like learning where to get a spectacular gourmet meal and then returning to the place we were paying the same money to get a maggot covered plate of slop—as if we never found the new restaurant. Maddening behavior really.
What possesses us to return to rules and religion when we have Jesus?
The reason we’re so bad is that we’re trying so hard to be good.
-Steve Brown
Have you seen these invisible fences they have for dogs? I have to imagine that an invisible fence would make a good candidate to ruin your life if you were a dog.
You can’t see these things driving around your subdivision because they are invisible after all. They have become quite popular and it’s no wonder—what a great concept. We had a dog some years ago that was a prime candidate for the invisible fence thing. We didn’t end up getting one for several reasons and looking back I’m not so convinced our dog wouldn’t have run right through the thing no matter how many shocks it would have zapped him with. Max and I were pals on day one, we were two peas in a pod. Like me, he liked to move around and he wasn’t much excited about being told he needed to conform.
The spacious yard we had so kindly provided for our new dog was not even close to sufficient for him. I guess it didn’t help that we had one of those stupid metal stakes you put in the ground so your dog can run around in circles until he makes you so dizzy watching him that you need to scarf down a box of Dramamine to handle it.
It didn’t help that Max was a bird dog either. He’d just about rip off anyones arm that dare try to walk him. Even with one of those cruel choke collars on, he was a terror. It might explain the pain I have in my shoulder lately and it’s been almost five years since I saw the crazy dog. If there was something within a mile to chase—you might as well have attached yourself to a telephone poll. Max even decided one spring that he wanted to redecorate our backyard with crater’s he decided to dig—our yard resembled the moon when he was done with it.
I felt sorry for Max.
Looking back now, I think obedience school or Ritalin would have only made Max more frustrated. The reality is, we got the wrong dog to fit the bill. What we had in mind was a nice little pet for our kids. It didn’t work out that way. Sitting still and taking orders wasn’t the dog’s strong suit. And I’m not sure that dog was even capable of it. He was a dog after all, and dogs aren’t made to be couped up in an 4′ by 2′ cubicle all day long. Invisible fences have to make dogs resentful I figure, I mean how fun is to see a female two lots over you’d like to frolic with and have a straight shot at her and then all of a sudden you remember that you have a stupid invisible fence that you can’t jump over?
Dogs were made to run free without a leash tied around their neck when you think about it.
I think it’s reasonable to say that religion is a lot like the invisible fence thing.
While we were in conference we were infiltrated by spies pretending to be Christians, who slipped in to find out just how free true Christians are. Their ulterior motive was to reduce us to their brand of servitude. We didn’t give them the time of day. We were determined to preserve the truth of the Message for you. (Galatians 2:4-5, The Message Bible)
When we set up rules to keep and all sorts of regulations in regards to our life in Jesus we end up serving the same purpose an invisible fence serves; the moment no one is looking or the fences come down we are off and running to some place we have no business going.
Invisible fences aren’t for us Jesus-followers. Come to think of it, they aren’t much good for dogs.
Luther, in speaking of the good by itself and the good for its expediency alone, instances the observance of the Christian day of rest—a day of repose from manual labour, and of activity in spiritual labour—a day of joy and cooperation in the work of Christ’s creation. ‘Keep it holy’, says he, ‘for its use’s sake—both to body and soul! But if anywhere the day is made holy for the mere day’s sake—if anywhere anyone sets up its observance upon a Jewish foundation, then I order you to work on it, to ride on it, to dance on it, to feast on it—to do anything that shall reprove this encroachment on the Christian spirit and liberty.’…
-Samuel Tayler Coleridge (1772-1834), Table Talk
The enemies of freedom are many—but I’d have to say that religion is it’s fiercest. If that surprises you it shouldn’t.
Religion has never been about the love of God but about the works of man. Nothing has changed since the inception of man’s oldest institution. More is done in the name of religion to keep people down and hold them back from actually following Jesus than any other single thing. For a people who should be as free as anyone—us Jesus-followers—we sure can be a pretty bound up and tightly wound people. It’s one thing for our younger brothers and sisters in the faith to be all hung up on keeping a list of rules that they feel they must follow to please God—but it’s altogether for us who ought to know better by now. Shouldn’t we be following a person instead of a set of steps to spiritual success after all? Doesn’t any measure of spiritual success for the Christian come down to following Jesus?
Jesus has written his law of love on our hearts if we know him at all—we can toss aside our note-pads.
It’s a bit disheartening to read about all the rules we should be keeping when Jesus said nothing of the sort. He summed up the new law of love in a single sentence. We, on the other hand—have volumes and volumes about the traditions and religious dogmas of man.
Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God’s grace. If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily. (Galatians 2:21, The Message Bible)
Is it time for you to stick a fork in religion and get back to pursuing your relationship with Jesus?
Freedom is transformative.
-President George W. Bush, May 1st, 2008 (Celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month)
No matter your political persuasion—or non-persuasion—there is no arguing the effects that freedom can have on a country (of course it’s not so smooth at times or unopposed as we are seeing in other parts of the world—and then there are the blatant abuses of freedom here at home that may very well prove to be the undoing of our great democracy). More specifically though—I’d like to look at the impact that freedom can have on one solitary human heart.
Like the slave girl that Lincoln purchased (see previous post) and her subsequent decision to stay with him after learning she was free to go where ever she pleased—freedom is a liberating and moving force. Freedom has the power to transform a life like no other power on earth. Just ask a prisoner upon their release from prison.
God loves us with a love that sets us free.
15-16 We Jews know that we have no advantage of birth over ‘non-Jewish sinners.’ We know very well that we are not set right with God by rule-keeping but only through personal faith in Jesus Christ. How do we know? We tried it—and we had the best system of rules the world has ever seen! Convinced that no human being can please God by self-improvement, we believed in Jesus as the Messiah so that we might be set right before God by trusting in the Messiah, not by trying to be good. (Galatians 2:15-16, The Message Bible)
Some of us are up to our eyebrows in legalism—so caught up in the snares of rule-keeping that we don’t even bat an eyelash at it’s death-hold on us anymore.
The religion God promotes is never about rigid rules but it’s always about transforming freedom.
Christ, however, declares here: ‘Let it be your one concern to come to Me and to have the grace to hold, to believe, and to be sure in your heart that I was sent into the world for your sake, that I carried out the will of My Father and was sacrificed for your atonement, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, and bore all punishment for you. If you believe this, do not fear. I do not want to be your judge, executioner, or jailer, but your Savior and Mediator, yes, your kind, loving Brother and good Friend. But you must abandon your work-righteousness and remain with Me in firm faith.’
– Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 23: Sermons on the Gospel of St. John: Chapters 6-8
We can have our cake and eat it too when it comes to some things. When it comes to the salvation of our souls—it’s one way or no way. You can’t cling to Jesus and to your good works. One will save you while the other will see to it that you are lost.
Jesus won’t be a part of any equation—he is the equation or he acts as the gavel. And it’s not only our good works we can’t trust—it’s the good works of any one we might assume one-ups us in the good works department (or two-ups us for that matter). For some of us to find someone else to trust in besides ourselves it might not be too tall of an order, for others, well—I hope you see the light. I realize that to say that Jesus is in a class of his own may not sit well with my friends who’d like to seat Buddha—Mohamand—Joseph Smith—or the Jonas Brothers on the same platform with Jesus. While Jesus will stoop down and wash the feet of his followers, make no mistake—Jesus doesn’t share a platform with anyone. Being politically correct never was Jesus’ strong-suit. The day is coming when Mary—Moses—Pope-whoever—and Mahatma Gandhi will all kneel before Jesus.
16 ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16, ESV)
We read that and we can think I have that down. But like the item we are looking for on the shelf and cannot see because we are almost on top of it (which just so happens to be staring us square smack-dab between the eyes)—we need only step back and look at the verse from a healthy distance to see it as it is. It might be quoted so much for a reason. The simplicity of the gospel message is so simple we feel some insatiable desire to complicate it. God said we must believe in Jesus—of course the belief that results in salvation takes on the form of more than mere agreement. I’m not going to expound on dead faith (the same kind that Satan himself has and will condemn us) or living faith (the kind that only Jesus can author and serves to save us) here in this entry—but there is a world of difference. But what I want to point out here is that God makes no provision for trusting ourselves one iota for our own salvation—or anyone else for that matter.
God doesn’t give us three curtains to pick behind when it comes to our eternal destiny. There is no secret about who or what it is that God has selected to provide rescue from the entire weight of our sin. He didn’t let his Son be crucified in some remote location for no one to see, rather—he set him on the top of a hill so all would witness. Don’t you think if God intended for us to trust anyone or anything other than Jesus for our salvation he would have told us? Jesus is the only Savior we need—all others we must detest.
And that includes every last effort on our part to save ourselves.
Jesus is the curtain, the stage, and the entire play.
There is one case of death-bed repentance recorded, that of the penitent thief, that none should despair; and only one, that none should presume.
-Augustine
Presuming we can deal with Jesus some other day is something that we do. Admit it or not—we have done it.
And we still presume that Jesus can wait.
Jesus comes and presents us with himself—plain and simple—in his majesty and splendor. He can be dramatic, but more often than not he’s almost subtle about it. Unlike us, he’s not pushy or overbearing. While we can be sure he is strong—he is gentle in his approach. And he doesn’t make us come—although, he does have his ways to help make us willing. It’s a rather stark contrast between Jesus and our other choices you know. I will confess that I deal with this daily—so if you were looking for company—you have it. If you were looking for good company—don’t push it.
You see, Jesus always calls us to follow him today rather than putting him off until a rainy day. I think we presume that following Jesus means joining the local convent or taking an oath of celibacy—and I suppose it could. But I think often times we make following Jesus—not easier—but much more complicated than it actually is.
Buechner writes in Beyond Words,
For the best to happen, the worst must stop happening—the worst we are, the worst we do. But maybe it isn’t as difficult as it sounds. It was a hardened criminal within minutes of death, after all, who said only, ‘Jesus, remember me,’ and that turned out to be enough. ‘This day you will be with me in paradise’ was the answer he just managed to hear.
The unrepentant thief missed Jesus entirely while the believing one realized the urgency in today—he knew he couldn’t presume he had tomorrow.
4 Show me, O LORD, my life’s end
and the number of my days;
let me know how fleeting is my life. (Psalm 39:4, ESV)
Teach us Lord—to presume not that our days are not somehow numbered.
‘This is the day which the Lord has made,’ says Psalm 118. ‘Let us rejoice and be glad in it’ (v. 24). Or weep and be sad in it for that matter. The point is to see it for what it is, because it will be gone before you know it. If you waste it, it is your life you are wasting. If you look the other way, it may be the moment you’ve been waiting for always that your missing.
All other days have either disappeared into darkness and oblivion or not emerged from it. Today is the only day there is.
-Frederick Buechner (Beyond Words)
Betting that tomorrow will come is not a safe bet. It’s not like you are betting $5 and if you lose—Oh Well, I will win the next one. Assuming that we will have tomorrow to solely trust Jesus for salvation—or with our future and concerns—can turn out to be like betting your life and losing. The issue is never Will God be merciful or will God still love me tomorrow? The question in front of us is: Do we have tomorrow? And we can’t answer that with a definite Yes! Will we be able to make that call to an estranged wife or a wayward child tomorrow? Will we have another chance to talk to our son about the unfathomable love of Jesus or will we have another moment to hug our mom? Will we have another opportunity to reach out to our hurting neighbor who just lost his wife to cancer?
Jesus is the Savior for today.
4 So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was about to pass that way. 5 And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, ‘Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.’ 6 So he hurried and came down and received him joyfully. 7 And when they saw it, they all grumbled, ‘He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.’ 8 And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, ‘Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.’ 9 And Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. (Luke 19:4-9, ESV—italics mine)
The little man Zacchaeus came down out of that tree and had Jesus over for a fish-fry that day—he didn’t wait another day to act in response to Jesus’ request. And on that day—God had his way with the shady tax man and he made him a saint. The stakes are too high to bank on tomorrow, because if we don’t have tomorrow and we don’t do what we can do today—we’ll never get to do those things at all.
God’s going to be merciful tomorrow, he’s going to be loving forever—but what will you have missed out on by not trusting in his mercy and his loving-kindness today?
Life I’d say.
This one gospel, this message of news that was simultaneously threatening and promising, concerned the coming of Jesus the Messiah, the long-awaited King, and included something about his origins, the ministry of his forerunner, his brief ministry of teaching and miraculous transformation, climaxing in his death and resurrection. These elements are not independent pearls on a string that constitutes the life and times of Jesus the Messiah. Rather, they are elements tightly tied together. Accounts of Jesus’ teaching cannot be rightly understood unless we discern how they flow toward and point toward Jesus’ death and resurrection. All of this together is the one gospel of Jesus Christ, to which the canonical Gospels bear witness. To study the teaching of Jesus without simultaneously reflecting on his passion and resurrection is far worse than assessing the life and times of George Washington without reflecting on the American Revolution, or than evaluating Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ without thinking about what he did and how he died. Second, we shall soon see that to focus on Jesus’ teaching while making the cross peripheral reduces the glorious good news to mere religion, the joy of forgiveness to mere ethical conformity, the highest motives for obedience to mere duty. The price is catastrophic.
-D.A. Carson
Some years ago now I was out playing golf (as I am fond of doing) and after finishing my round I noticed something drastic was missing. I couldn’t put my finger on it immediately, but as I drove home I slowly but surely began to see just what it was that had went wrong—I hadn’t enjoyed my round of golf one bit and I had missed all of the beauty there was for the taking over the course of my four hour excursion. What I had just paid a pretty penny to savor—I had let slip through the palms of my hands.
So it is with a flippant and unintentional handling of the truth of Jesus Christ.
We can miss Jesus even going to Mass or worship service every day of the week, and dare I say—even memorizing our Bibles upside down and inside out. To somehow proceed in the Christian life without a revelation of some sort of idea about just how far-reaching and pertinent the effects of the cross of Christ are indeed—like my afternoon at the golf course in which I missed the whole reason I go to play in the first place—to somehow view Jesus without seeing his crowning event and subsequent glorification is to miss Jesus entirely. Jesus wasn’t merely a piece of history—all of history rests on the revelation of just Who it is that he is and what it was that he accomplished here after leaving all of the riches of heaven and visiting this poverty stricken earth.
We must never forget that the Cross has implications in regards to the movies we see, the relationships we cherish, the thoughts we share (and the ones we hide)—and even the food we eat.
The Cross leaves no stones unturned.
52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ 53 So Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.’ (John 6:52-54, ESV)
Anyone who wants to snack on Jesus doesn’t have life.
When Jesus invites us to eat he invites us to a meal.
Philip Malancthon once said to his friend Martin Luther, ‘Today, Martin, you and I will discuss God’s governance of the universe,’ to which Luther replied, ‘No, Philip. Today you and I are going fishing, and we’ll leave the governance of the universe to God.’
-Mark Buchanan—The Rest of God (p. 220)
I’ve never gotten along real well with the hot-shot who seems to know exactly what the poor sap trying to beat Tiger Woods ought to do. This is typically the same guy who won’t play the terrorizing game of golf since it means getting off his rear. Maybe our would-be Tiger-killer would have an altogether different attitude if he were to go out and try and qualify for a PGA Tour Event himself. Tougher to do than to talk about.
Beating Tiger Woods on a regular basis doesn’t happen. The whole field has one goal in mind… although he was beat last weekend at the annual Master’s Tournament, and in case you missed it, he took second—even with a bum knee he had surgery on hours after the event had concluded. Big talking never does amount to much and Tiger Woods never has been much of a talker come to think of it—he lets his clubs do the talking whether he places first or second.
It’s pretenders and critics that are busy talking a good game while the Jesus-followers are quietly walking with God.
6 ’With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? 7 Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?’ 8 He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:6-8, ESV)
There are more armchair quarterbacks than real ones. It’s easier to beat Tiger Woods in theory than on the course, although I’m not so sure even beating Tiger in theory can be done. When it comes to reality—fat chance. My point is this: Try being like Jesus yourself before you pass judgment on someone else who has decided to take up the occupation. Jesus was no slouch and being like Jesus isn’t the same as being like your favorite uncle. It’s easy to compare ourselves to a guy like John Daly lets say—and it may be why he’s just so popular. But Jesus—good luck. It’s impossible in your own strength to follow Jesus, and unless you’ve done it, you might want to consider reserving your criticisms until you have. It’s always the non-practicing Christian (oxymoron I realize) who has all the answers. I’m not denying that there are phonies—that’s the case with everything. And I’m not talking about the bogus television preachers in this blog. I have met a police officer or two who do not represent the majority.
I still haven’t met an armchair quarterback I like.
But it’s sure hard not to like Tiger Woods.
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