Because we don’t much like what we would see. You can take your pick of word pictures to describe us. We’ve got our head in the sand. We’ve got logs in our eyes. We suppress the truth, that we are unrighteous, in unrighteousness. However you put it, we are ugly as sin and don’t want to admit it. Because we are as ugly as sin.
One of the chief strategies we use to hide ourselves from ourselves is to be on the hunt for the flaws in others. When I am busy focusing on the failures of others I a. haven’t the time to look for or at my own, b. can see my own as small in comparison c. can keep others’ attention on the failures of others and d. paint myself as a heroic crusader for righteousness.
What ends up happening, of course, is that I end up parading my hypocrisy for all the world to see. Consider what you have read so far. I suspect, if you are at all like me, you started out reading this piece with this question, “Why do they struggle with self-awareness?” You may be wondering why they aren’t self-aware like you and I are. You, if you are like me, are wondering, “Why can’t people be gracious and forgiving and humble like we are?” We have whole swaths of the church, no, we are whole swaths of the church where we grumble about other swaths of the church that just don’t “get grace” like we do. We pat ourselves on the back for not being like those legalists. We go to the temple, beat our breasts and pray, “I thank You Lord that I am not like other men. I berate wicked Pharisees. I remind people daily of their failure to be loving and kind.”
We are all sinners. That, of course, excuses no one’s sin. It does, however, remind us to remember ourselves, to include ourselves in our witch hunts and our condemnations. It keeps us from adopting a posture of moral superiority that simply demonstrates our lack of self-awareness.
“There but for the grace of God go I” carries two different meanings. When we see someone suffering we may speak these words as a reminder that all that we have and enjoy we have and enjoy by His grace. It says, “Only His goodness has kept me from that hardship.” It also, is a perfectly fitting response to seeing the sins of others. The reason I’m not Derek Chauvin isn’t because of a goodness inherent in me. The reason I’m not Osama bin Laden isn’t because of my commendable moral efforts. The difference between me and Hitler is found in God’s goodness to me, not my goodness for Him.
We are always to cry out, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.” And when we notice that we are praying this way while others are praying, “I thank you Lord that I’m not like other men” we need to pray again, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.” May we always remember that we don’t get grace because we get grace. We get grace because He gives grace to us who don’t get it.
It is bad enough that we are such suckers for the bait and switch. The devil has been playing this gag on us for millennia. We should have learned by now. When the angel comes along and says, “You know, God is love. And what He wants you to do is to love one another,” the devil doesn’t show up on the other shoulder and say, “Love, ah, that’s for suckers. What you really need to do is some good hating.” He’s not that dumb. Instead he shows up on our shoulder and says, “Of course, I want nothing more than for you to love everyone. Love is my favorite thing as well. Why, just the other day I was composing a haiku about love. Let’s see here, how did that go? Love one another; If your lover is not there, love the one you’re with.” He fills God’s words with his meanings, and, because we miss the switch, we end up tied in knots.
What is worse, however, is that he sometimes comes along and actually gets us to substitute a whole different word for the good one. He switches not just the meaning, but the word itself. Nice, though some have called it the cardinal evangelical virtue, is not, I’m afraid, a command from the Bible. God never said, “Whatever else you do, be nice.” Instead it is a command from the culture.
There is only one thing required to be nice, and only one sin against niceness in the culture. You certainly never have to go out of your way and be a neighbor to anyone. You never have to make personal sacrifices of any sort. All you have to do is repeat the mantra of the age, “If that’s the way you see it, that’s fine.” See how non-threatening that is? It allows both of us to keep our pride, to keep our convictions, to keep our sins. And it costs so little. In short, to be nice is always and only to embrace relativism. Once you’ve swallowed this one, nothing else will ever get caught in your throat.
Actually though, you’re only half the way home. You have to study the other half of the nice rulebook, the side they only talk about when they have to. You see, there is one thing that still must stick in your craw. That, of course, is when some blamed fool refuses to play nice, to abide by the rules. When someone says, “It doesn’t matter how I see it, or how you see it, or how a billion Chinese see it. What matters is how God sees it, because He is the one who determines reality. Our job is to get our own perceptions in line with His, which are of necessity true. And all perceptions which do not match His are of necessity false,” you are not nice if you respond with a polite, “If that’s the way you see it, that’s fine.” Here, according to the devil, and he ought to know, the correct, and only nice response is, “Crucify him.”
If you can call all those who don’t abide by the nice rules of relativism mullahs, and terrorists and Nazis and threats to our way of life and fanatics who must be hunted down like rabid dogs, then you earn that most coveted of sobriquets, “Nice.” It’s not enough to be relatively relativist. You must be absolutely relativist. It’s not enough to have some humility about your or my convictions. You must arrogantly assume that all convictions, by their very nature, must be false. As a nice relativist you must be absolutely certain that any and all absolutists must be stopped, no matter what the cost. Otherwise you may as well be a fellow-traveler with those who just aren’t nice.
It’s important for us to remember this the next time we feel the sting of the accusation that we somehow aren’t nice. The answer isn’t to protest, to get out our relativist credentials, and show how up to date they are. Our response the next time some syndicated columnist tries to connect the dots between us and bin Laden is to say, “If the objection is that both of us affirm objective truth, objective right and wrong, we’re flat guilty.” If the reason Islam is hated is not because it is false, but because it simply claims to be true, we ought to be in a panic that we as Christians aren’t the most hated group on the planet. If the powers that be insist on hanging all those who reject relativism, then our calling is to charge the gallows, not to tear them down, but to place our own necks in the noose of the not nice.
We can’t play nice with those who define niceness this way. We cannot keep both their rules, and the rules of Him whom we say we serve. When Jesus said, “If you confess me before men…” He didn’t mean standing up at some flag pole and saying, “This is what Jesus means to me…” When Jesus said, “Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake,” He didn’t mean that we should do everything we can do to change their word, nice, into one that we can affirm, and act upon. He didn’t mean that we should tone down His exclusive claims so that we can wear our nice pins to the nice meetings. He meant we will be blessed when they throw us out.
If we will serve Him our goal ought never to be that when we are gone they say of us, “You know, that so and so sure was nice.” The epitaph we should seek for our grave marker should be Faithful. Instead what needs to be buried is the virtue they call nice, that the name of Christ might live.
Like everyone else I have former friends, friends, and future friends. Some of my former friends have committed grievous, scandalous sins and taught unsound doctrines. Some of my friends have committed grievous, scandalous sins and teach unsound doctrines. Some of my future friends have committed grievous, scandalous sins and teach unsound doctrines. And, just so we’re clear, all of my friends, past, present and future will commit grievous, scandalous sins and teach unsound doctrines. One more thing- I am a former friend, a friend and a future friend to others, despite my own grievous, scandalous sins and my own unsound doctrines.
Which ought to inform all of us that our friendships are not grounded in the avoidance of either grievous, scandalous sin or the teaching of unsound doctrine. The best of our friendships are grounded in Christ, the same Christ whose death has covered all our grievous, scandalous sins and whose Spirit is at work leading us all into all truth.
When we end or disavow friendships on the basis of either moral or doctrinal failure are we not implicitly denying our own moral and doctrinal failures? Are we not saying, “I’m better than that?” Are we not falling directly into the sin of Peter who, for fear of rejection by his Judaizing “friends” refused to maintain his public friendship with his uncircumcised friends? And are we not due the very rebuke that Paul rightly gave him? Of course there is a time to draw lines in the sand. That time, however, is almost always later than we think.
I fear that we fall into the temptation to maintain only those friendships that don’t cause us to lose friendships. Like an older sibling making a younger sibling walk five paces behind so as not to tarnish an image we shun those who bring us shame, missing the glorious truth that our entire future is built on the reality that our elder brother not only doesn’t require that we walk five paces behind Him, not only doesn’t walk beside us, but rather walks directly in front of us, straight into the oncoming cup of the wrath of the Father.
Some years ago I had a theological disagreement with a friend. I refused to allow that disagreement to end our friendship, though I did speak and write publicly against the error. My public disagreement, however, wasn’t good enough for many who tarred me with the same brush as my friend. I was a “known associate” of he who shall not be named. As I said in those days, “These people will not be satisfied unless I spit three times in the general direction of my friend.” And I refused to do so. What was interesting is that I came to believe that my friend didn’t actually believe the error, but was unwilling to spit three times in the direction of his friends who did believe the error. I got falsely tarred with the brush he got falsely tarred with that eventually led to Kevin Bacon.
The defining quality of friendship is loyalty. Not loyalty to behavior or secondary theological distinctives, but loyalty to people. That loyalty will, sooner or later, be tested. May we all, when that day comes, remember and reflect the loyal love, the hesed, that our brother, our husband, our king, our savior has for us, always and forever.
Ask RC-Does the Bible allow deadly force to protect our homes?
When considering the glorious truth that our Lord would not extinguish a smoking wick, that He calls us to turn the other cheek we mustn’t forget this rather surprising admonition of our Lord, as He sent out His disciples, that they be certain to bring along a sword with them, that a sword was even more needful than a cloak (: 36). One of the most frequent “arguments” we hear in favor of pacifism is this emotive nugget, “I just don’t see Jesus wielding an AK-47 and blowing someone away.” Here Jesus calls on His disciples to arm themselves, even as they are sent out.
Moving from the lesser to the greater, it would seem on the surface that we ought also to have the liberty to defend ourselves in our own homes. That is, if Jesus suggests we may defend ourselves when out in public, how much more ought we to be free to defend our families while in the security of our own homes? At the very least this warning from Jesus in Luke’s gospel dispels the common myth that pacifism is, prima facie the right choice for the believer.
We are not left, however, with only an inference, no matter how sound such might be. The Bible, in fact, speaks to the issue of home defense. In , just two chapters after we are told “Thou shalt not kill,” thus demonstrating that we cannot either use the sixth commandment to defend pacifism, we read, “If the thief is found breaking in, and he is struck so that he dies, there shall be no guilt for his bloodshed” (verse 2). Notice a few things about this text. First, the conclusion isn’t merely that the guilt of the homeowner is mitigated by the intent of the intruder, but that there is no guilt at all. Second, note that the thief is struck. This isn’t an argument against tort liability, suggesting that we cannot be sued if an intruder slips in our home. Third, note that it is a thief who has broken in.
I have been in conversations with conservative, Bible-believing Christians who have argued with my conviction here, suggesting incredulously, “You would kill a man just to protect your stereo, or your wife’s jewelry?” The truth of the matter is that when a man breaks into your house he does not do so carrying a neon sign saying, “I’m just here for your stuff. Your wife and children are of no interest to me.” We don’t know what the man breaking in is after. But even if we did know what he was after, even if we knew he was only a thief, as we do in this hypothetical given to us in the very law of God, we are free from guilt if we should defend our home.
The Bible is abundantly clear. Men are called to protect their wives and children. The police exist to apprehend and bring criminals to justice, not to catch them in the act. That is what responsible husbands and fathers are for. We ought not take a sadistic joy in this calling, but neither should we have a weak-kneed fear of it. We serve a King who goes forth with a sword, and who sent forth His disciples with a sword. We serve a King who loves and protects us- His bride, and His children. Surely we can see that we who are the heads of our own homes, are called to do the same.
I don’t much care for physics. Never did. That, of course, doesn’t keep me from being grateful for physicists, and for engineers. This message has reached you through the labors of men who do care about such things. But usually when physicists start talking about wormholes, or engineers start talking about heat transfer rates, my mind begins to wander.
In like manner I have precious little time for books, articles, seminars about “leadership.” It strikes me as profoundly odd that “leadership” has become its own area of study, its own skill set, its own industry. I recognize, of course, that leadership is a real thing, a valuable thing. I have people in positions of leadership over me, and in turn I am a position of leadership over others. That said, it may be a sure sign of leadership failure on my part but I have never thought to myself, “I need to learn how to be a better leader.”
The questions I seek to ask myself when evaluating my interaction with those under my authority are far more fundamental, far more basic. I want to know if I encouraged my charges on to righteousness. I want to know if I treated them as I wish to be treated. I want to know if I exhibited patience with their frailties. I want to know if I was willing and eager to forgive, as I would like to be forgiven. In short, the measure of my “leadership” isn’t found in how well I measured up to some guru’s principles. Instead it is measured by how well I measure up to my Lord’s commands. To put it another way, I am far less worried about how I lead God’s people and far more worried about how well I follow God’s Son.
I fear that the seeming obsession the broader culture has with “leadership” as a concept, and the concomitant obsession of the church with the same theme is not a good sign. Given the lopsided attention given to leadership, isn’t it likely that we all give short shrift to our calling to follow not just Jesus, but those whom He has placed in authority over us? What does it say about us that while the Bible does from time to time talk both about leading and following, all our attention is on leading? Are we listening with lopsided ears?
Even when we get closer to getting it right we get it wrong. We talk about servant leadership, which on its face is indeed a good thing. But doesn’t that suggest that the reason we follow, or serve, is so that we can lead? What about servant servantship? If service is merely a means to the end of becoming leaders, if we race our brothers to the back of the line because we all desperately want to be at the front of the line, if we give with our right hand so that we might receive with our left, we’re not following Jesus aright. Followers, of course, don’t often write books or lead seminars on following, or on anything else for that matter. But that’s okay. We don’t become good followers by following a good follower. We become good followers by following the Good Leader.
