New Eyes, Same Old Story 1.0 (October 2012)

How often do we go about putting training wheels on a seasoned cyclist's bike? Do we ask a boxer with a heavyweight title in their trophy case to run the paces with a high school pugilist to show they're really the best? I'm sure Lakeside Christian Church's senior pastor, Marshall, would be insulted by the former, as would Mike Tyson be by the latter. Consider the other side: How often do we register our sons and daughters for the Tour de France when they're ready for the training wheels to come off? Do karate championships pare up a yellow belt and a black belt?

Look at Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 3:1-9:

¹ Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. ² I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. ³ You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans? ⁴ For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere human beings? ⁵ What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. ⁶ I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. ⁷ So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. ⁸ The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor. ⁹ For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building.

What do we do, then, when we make God out to be in the business of behavior modification, a worker in actions like one works in textiles? The importance of this passage is not that Paul or Apollos does work, but that God grows in God's field. God builds in God's way.

God has never been in the business of telling us to do the right thing or He'll hate and/or destroy us. God has always been about calling us to return to Him, turning from sin to the fullness of life in His care, with HIM as king. But since we are more concerned with "doing" and "acting," we have the example of Jesus "doing" exactly what God wanted so we could stop "acting" like we've got it all figured out. So now Jesus is the standard, and His sinless life - which we must believe He lived, if He truly did ruffle feathers by claiming to be God, and God hates sin - is the only thing God accepts. Because it's perfect. And God is perfect.

So the $1,000,000 gospel question is: "Do I have to be perfect too?" The mystery of God is that the answer is a two-part-er: "No (initially because of Christ) and yes (inevitably in Christ)."

With each new generation comes a new rethinking and retelling of the gospel of Jesus. New eyes have the challenge of telling the old, old story - not a new one, not something dreamed up or manipulated till it's something different, but the same story - to a fresh-on-the-scene demographic. It's part of the divine story that we have been invited to participate in. You might say the Director is always the living and active Word of God.

What does the redemptive work of God throughout history look like now for those who are followers of Jesus, or considering becoming one?

What we're talking about here is not what we want but what is true, about the faith and about us. What's true is that Jesus is the author and perfecter of our faith. What's true is that we look to OTHERS and pick apart THEIR theology and cherry-pick scriptures to bolster our case and consider ourselves justified - nay, commanded to - by scripture. Gregory Boyd would say this is the necessary consequence of eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil - we become the judges, juries, and arbiters of what is good and what is evil. The problem is, our judgments are not God's and can tend toward the self-serving.

At some point, we need to drop the act of picking each other apart, turn to Jesus as the standard, grow in Him as we devour the living Word, and drop the self-serving act.

I have actually written a complete, longer version of this same post, going into greater detail and containing a video from a man named Jefferson Bethke, that you can see here.