Crisis, Commitment, Communion

Wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it. -- Proverbs 13:11

I think I heard that there were three winning tickets for this week’s huge Powerball drawing.  That’s means probably a minimum of a hundred million or so to each winner – a lot of money to be dumped into someone’s lap.  Most of us cannot even imagine what that means, and most people cannot handle that kind of wealth.  We have learned how to manage the income we have.  Poor people have acquired skills in dealing with poverty.  Show up at any Walmart or similar store the day after the monthly load of EBT cards takes place.  These people know to the minute when their money will be available.  They know to the penny how much they have -- three or four hundred bucks, or fifteen hundred, a person like that can manage with some degree of skill.  Give them access to a hundred thousand, a million or a hundred million, and they simply have no concept.

It happens to lottery winners, to athletes, and to some entertainers – especially those who become overnight celebrities.  To the rest of us, it seems strange that someone who has an inordinate amount of money should ever end up in debt and bankrupt, yet, this is a very common path.  Managing large amounts of money is a skill like any other.  It can be learned, but it is takes time.  If your money comes in slowly and your wealth accumulates little by little, your management skills grow apace.  Everything works out.

The same applies in the spiritual realm.  We get a picture of it in type as God promises to give Canaan to the Children of Israel:    I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild beasts multiply against you.  Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased and possess the land (Exodus 23:29-30). 

The problem the Israelites had was that, though they had been delivered from slavery, they were still slaves in terms of their mindset.  It took time for them to see themselves as the Lord saw them.  Upon encountering the gigantic inhabitants of Canaan, the faithless spies famously said that they were as grasshoppers in the eyes of their enemies, and in their own eyes.   After being beaten down and oppressed for generations, they could not change their minds about who they were and what they were capable of.  They had come out of Egypt in crisis which led to, quite naturally, celebration and vows of commitment, but very few of those so delivered entered into communion.

I believe that conversion is a genuine experience, but, at the same time, I am skeptical of instant Christians – just add water.  Typically, I think we come to a point of crisis where we realize what we are doing isn’t working.  We recognize and embrace the truth of the Gospel.  We commit ourselves to Christ.  The riches of God’s grace and mercy become available to us, and we rejoice.  After a while, though, most of us experience difficulties.  The same old problems confront us.  The same old man too often responds to those problems.  We wonder if we were ever “saved”, or if we need to “rededicate” our lives to Christ.  Maybe it didn’t take the first time.  I have a close relative who used to rededicate about every six months.  I don’t suppose it hurt anything, but I’m not sure it helped anything either.  How many times do you need to cross the Red Sea?  It borders on magical thinking. 

What did Jesus tell us to do in the Great Commission?  Make disciples.  Disciples are those under discipline.  They are learning and developing a new attitude and a new mindset – renewing our minds is the Scriptural phrase, to go with the new nature we have been given.  When people say that we learn to pray, we mean that people learn when to pray and that prayer is listening as much or more than pleading.  We have faith, but we need to develop it and refine it, challenge it and test it in real world situations. 

It takes time.  This is why most people do not die immediately after coming up from the waters of baptism.  A Crisis Christian can immediately or almost immediately become a Committed Christian resulting in a Celebrating Christian.  It doesn’t always happen, but it’s common.  To become a Communion Christian, however, is always going to be a process.  A few of us -- for reasons known only to God, move to that place fairly quickly.  To those watching from the outside, the transition may appear seamless and sudden.  The rest of us take the long way home.  We adapt slowly.  At times it may seem that we are making no progress at all, but we can trust that the Lord is leading by the way that is best.  Some of us take more changing than others, more dying to self than others.  Do not despair or fear.  Little by little, we grow in grace. 

Halfway

For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. -- Titus 3:3

Apart from the grace of God in Christ, that’s how the world operates.  In fact, that’s how you define the world.  This is not to say there are not nice people who are non-Christians of one form or another, but the system itself is motivated by the corrupted nature.  From war and violence to advertising and consumerism, “passions and pleasures”, revenge and retribution, and arrogance and avarice are the drivers for what we have to deal with in the world. 

I am a tired old man who works too many hours and worries too much about money.  I am too short-tempered and too impatient because it is too easy to forget heaven and eternity when dealing with time and earth day in and day out.  Is there an app for that?  Why, yes, there is:

But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.  (Titus 3:4-7)

In the world we are, as Yoda might say, but of the world not we are.  The Israelites had the same struggle when they left Egypt.  Slave mentality is both pervasive and, in some ways, comforting.  It is harder to live in freedom than the average person might think.  People tend to exchange one form of bondage for another.  Free a person from financial worries, and he may become addicted to drink or drugs or debauchery.  It almost seems as though most don’t really want liberty but license, the freedom to pick out a nice set of shackles. 

We talk a lot about illusion versus reality, and I probably ought to talk more about what is versus what ought to be.  “Ought to be” is a trap, a labyrinth built, not to be solved but to imprison us in busyness.   We cannot beat the world at its game because we lose just by trying to play it.  Well, maybe we can play, but we have to play at a different level.

What I do for a living is really, in light of not only eternity but of the realities of life for most people, pretty trivial.  But I take it very seriously.  Getting that paycheck requires me to take it seriously, but I rarely think of that when I’m up all night or working on a weekend.  I think instead of the people who are depending on me.  I can get another job, or I could retire and live a little more lightly – whatever God has for me.  Other people, though, have their futures and their self-worth tied up in “the company” and worldly measures of success.  This is sad, and they will eventually discover the emptiness and pointlessness of such an approach.  It’s not my place to disappoint or disillusion them.  I like most of the people I deal with; some I don’t.  However, I owe all of them the best that I can do. 

That what Paul means in Romans 13:8 when he says, “Owe no man anything, except to love one another ….”  It’s not just a good idea; it’s the law.  God’s law says that I am responsible for my wife, my family, my neighbors, my friends – everybody.  I’m not responsible for their actions or choices, of course, but I am required to love them, no matter who they are.  To the extent that it is up to me, I must seek and support what is in the best interests of those in my sphere.  Thus, it quickly becomes obvious that harming others by violence, theft, betrayal, or deception is not acceptable.  (See Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 for a few prominent examples.)  Verse 7 of Romans 13 says, “Pay to all what is owed them …” – even in worldly terms – effort, time, obedience, taxes, respect, honor, etc.  We are the agents of God’s grace.  Our job is to express the goodness and kindness we have received in Christ to those around us where they are. 

People will take advantage of our love.  We will get shoved aside, ignored, overworked, put upon, run over.  Often it will be those closest to us who treat us the worst because they have never known anything else, or they have forgotten what they did know.  Or they are human.  There are occasions when someone can be helped only by a punch in the face or a swift kick in the butt.  Pay to all what is owed them.  These are very rare occasions.  God will write it on the wall.  Ninety-nine point nine-nine percent of the time, we can figure the idea of a butt-kicking is our own.   

It’s the kingdom against the world.  There’s a town up the road a ways called Halfway.  It’s a good hillbilly name because it’s halfway between two other towns.  The thing is that the folks in Halfway don’t live in either one of those two towns.  While there is no Halfway situated on the road between God and Mammon, even if there were, it still would be Halfway, not God.  I know a lot of people who live in Halfway and visit Mammon on Saturday night then go over and visit God on Sunday morning.  We don’t want to do that, so we have to live the kingdom way, entirely over in the kingdom.  We have to be motivated by love.  We don’t have to like, agree with, enable, or be controlled by other people to want what is best for them rather than simply want our own way. 

We may not be able to say this out loud, but sometimes when I’m dealing with someone who thinks they are making me do something (nothing is more irritating to my people), I will have enough presence of mind to think or whisper, “I’m doing this out of love for Your child, Lord, and out of love and obedience to You.”  Then I grit my teeth, bite my tongue and bow.   

(Update:  Bob asks a very good question: 

But, how is it in that person's best interest for you to bow? If the person is trying to pull a fast one, it is in his best interest for you not to let him get away with it! If you don't stand up to him, he will continue to bring harm to other people.

Earlier in your piece you spoke out against bondage, but at the end you appear to be endorsing bondage.

See my comment below)