my big zit

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.

freedom’s fiercest enemy

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?

armchair quarterbacks

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.