Renewing the Mind

I periodically read a blog by "Pastor Brad," who provides me with some great insights about the Christian Life.  He recently published a sermon that contained the following:

A lot of us begin our Christian lives with that kind of burning desire, don’t we? Our hearts are thrilled with this new life and we are fully aware that our wonderful new life exists because of Jesus. We can’t get enough Scripture or Christian fellowship or prayer in the early days. Gradually, though, so many of us slip into the routine of the Christian life and the burning desire to get to know Jesus at deeper levels subsides. As I have said before, the more we know about the Lord the easier it is to live without Him. We know what to say and what not to say, how to act, how to play our role, and we just settle in.

This is by no means Pastor Brad's ideal for the Christian life; just his observation of what often happens to us.  The real problem is that what seems, at worse, like complacency, is actually an attack on our lives.  It is not, of course, an attack on our physical lives or comfort.  We would never tolerate that!  In fact, the state that Pastor Brad describes is an attack of our own flesh on our spirit with the purpose of making itself more comfortable. 

Once the flesh has made itself comfortable we can settle down.  Then, it is so easy to lose sight of the fact that the real "us"  does not reside in the flesh, but in the  spirit.  It is easy to forget that the flesh, which obsesses us with its needs, is at war against the real "us." 

Don't you often wonder why scripture dwells so much on the trouble that Christians are expected to have in this world?  I do!  When I read such passages honestly I tend to respond, "What in the world does this mean?  I don't have a lot of trouble, pain, sorrow, sadness, tribulation... "  Even worse, I rationalize by thinking, "God must be blessing me by sparing me from all of the troubles the Christian life is supposed to bring in this world."  Or, "I must really be spiritual, I have overcome all of those bad things that happen to some Christians in life."

Occasionally, despite my spiritual lethergy, the Holy Spirit wakes up my world-soaked brain long enough to remind me of the theme of this journal; Satan's war against me is not a war against my flesh, it is a war against my mind.   When my renewing mind starts to work for my dead flesh; when it starts to rationalize why it is o.k. to  be comfortable at the expense of the lost, when I lose track of the difference between "niceness" and love, when my mind falls into the "routine" of the Christian life... Satan has won the war.

I believe I speak fairly for Pastor Brad, and I know I speak vehemently for myself:  When the Christian life becomes "routine" we are in serious danger of something far more menacing than physical death.  Matthew 18: 8, 9. 

Let's say that God is God, i.e., knows everything, can do anything, and so forth.  Let's say that God is love.  What then?

Can God do anything bad to us?  Can God do anything bad for us?  I think not.  What do you think?

If it is true that God knows what is best for us, and cannot, by virtue of his love for us, do anything other than what is best for us, then our only job is to get out of the way.

Now I am aware that there are evil influences in the world:  Satan and his people.  And I'm aware that they can do bad stuff and are frightfully deceptive.  But God is bigger than them, and if I let God fight them, and I get out of His way, and I say "No" to them, He is going to win. 

 Let's talk about deception for a moment.  I know that Satan and his people are going to try to fool me into thinking that good is bad and bad is good and, worst of all, that Satan and his people are going to tell me that none of that is very important.  But... if I ask God to reveal good and evil to me, what will He do?  He will reveal it!  In fact, He must reveal it!  Why?  Because He not only loves me, but He is love.  He cannot do anything bad to me and He must do everything good for me!  Now read carefully...  I'm not saying that God has to choose to do good for me because I say so, or because I deserve it, or because He feels guilty otherwise, or because He wants to please me, or because He wants to please someone else or even that He likes to be good;  I'm saying that God doesn't have to make a choice to do good for me because He IS good! 

I don't have to talk God into being good to me.  I don't have to earn it.  I don't have to be able to defeat the forces of evil.  I just have to admit that God is good, admit that I can't be as good as He is, accept His goodness, and get out of the way! 

 

I recently stated that God cannot have a relationship with an imperfect person.  This is a difficult topic to discuss because our sense of civility tells us that a value judgment is being made.  Value judgments are not well regarded in our culture at the moment, because we want to believe that everyone is perfect, and everything is all right.
 
Nevertheless, if we are going to live the Christian life we have to understand what the Christian life is.  If we are going to understand what the Christian life is we have to understand the context within which it is to be lived, or not.  Specifically, we have to understand who God is and who we are.  

To begin, understand that when I refer to God as "perfect," or to unredeemed persons as "imperfect," no value judgment is involved.  Neither is there any value judgment in referring to some persons as "unredeemed." When I say God is perfect (in the context of this discussion) I am not saying that He is "good."  When I say that some persons are "unredeemed" or "imperfect," I'm not saying that they are bad.   I might be wrong in saying these things about a person, but I am not being mean; I'm just trying to state the truth as simply and accurately as possible.  If we respond to such terminology with resentment, our ability to deal with truth is compromised.

"Perfect," in this context means something like:  All the parts are there and functioning properly.  If we examine ourselves, or allow ourselves to be examined, with a view toward improving our lives, it will not be useful to react to well-meaning assessments with resentment.  Resentment is the enemy of life improvement and a barrier to healing.  It may protect us from being hurt by the truth, but it obstructs the renewing process, as well.

Christians generally believe that God created humans so He would have someone else to relate to in love.  We understand that, in order to have a loving relationship, both parties have to be able to choose whether to be in the relationship.  As Christians, whose lives have been "made new," and whose minds are being "renewed," we understand some things that we did not understand when we were dead to the Spirit of God and our minds were under the control of Satan.  One of the things we see is that, when we are first given the choice to have a relationship with the perfect God, humans invariably choose to opt out.  We need to spend a bit of time explaining why that is.

When Christians pray and worship they sometimes look to God and say, "You are God and I am not."  For example, I found this brief written prayer when surfing for those words:

Lord, we do the best we can - at least we think so. Humble us to see ourselves and our ministry through your eyes. Keep us from envy and the pitfall of endlessly admiring the plans of others. Help us to stay with you as we work to implement our worship. Keep us from falling into neatly arranged traps of self-deceit and arrogance. You are God and we are not. Thank heaven. Thank you! Amen  (Doug Lawrence, http://www.creatormagazine.com/dnn/MondayMorningEmail/September172007/tabid/345/Default.aspx)

No matter how many times I acknowledge words like these, and even say them, I never do so without some slight bit of resentment.  Something inside me says, "That's not fair.  I never get to be God.  Why do I always have to be the humble one?"  Perhaps you have that reaction, as well.   The reason we feel that way is that we understand that this God (whom we are not) is bigger than us in every way and has the ability to exercise power over us.  Even if we believe that He is good, and can never do a single thing that is contrary to what is best for us, there is something inside us that wants to be able to do it ourselves.  This is why, if we live long enough, we will try to take God's place, at least in our own lives.  Now we have a serious problem, because God will let us try it!

Remember that in order to have a loving relationship, both parties have to be in the relationship voluntarily.  God is not interested in pretend love.  In fact, God is not capable of pretend love.  Neither is He capable of pretending that we love Him.  When we want to turn away from God and be our own god, He just lets us go.  We call it "free will."  God is sad when we move away from Him, but, unlike us, He values our relationship more than He values His power. The movie "Bruce Almighty" is a sort of spoof on "being God" while, at the same time, points out the poignancy.

The movie portrays God as a wise but smart-aleckey elderly man. God tells Bruce that if he wants to, Bruce can fix all the world's problems in a few minutes, knowing full well from eons of experience that he cannot. Bruce receives millions of prayers, all from, according to God, just the town he lives in. Bruce is thus able to realize just how much work God must do to keep the entire creation "in line."
At one point Bruce and God are discussing Bruce's frustration with trying to get a girl he loves to love him in return:

Bruce: How do you make someone love you without affecting their free will?

 

 

God: Heh, welcome to my world, son. If you come up with an answer to that one, you let me know.

But the situation is worse than just poignant, because when a person turns away from God that person has willfully rejected the perfection for which God created him, and has exchanged it for the small kingdom of his little world. He also gives up absolute protection of God in a world system that intends nothing but evil for him.
Many people in American culture will find it difficult to identify with my last statement.  We live in a society that judges its value predominantly by externals, such as how much stuff we have, how much power we exert, and how good we look.  Moreover, we make our judgments about these things by comparing ourselves with other people.
This works quite well for those who profit from this value system.  For example, if we decide how “good” we are based on our ranking in the wealth department, the money greed mongers will thrive. If we value ourselves based on our looks, the fashion and fitness businesses will get rich.

 

These businesses are energetically engaged in getting us to buy into these value systems and to reject the perfection and love that God offers, for obvious reasons. No matter, we continue to “buy in” literally and figuratively.  In doing so we are rejecting the values of God in favor of our own pleasure and power.  We love ourselves and repudiate God.

If it was possible for God to overlook our rejection of His love, we could slide.  But, remember, God is perfect. He is not only perfectly loving, He is perfectly just. The effect of our rejection of Him is not a neutral influence in the world. When we reject God, our influence is negative on people around us.  Thus, we not only reject God, but we influence others to do so as well.  In this system, as scripture teaches, it is inevitable that we all reject Him, which renders us imperfect, and God can no longer have a relationship with us.  Thus, He leaves us to our own devices.  He did not turn His back on us; we turned our backs on Him.  Since God, our Creator, is the source of spiritual life, this separation from God results in spiritual death.
An imperfect creature cannot make itself perfect.  The damage has been done.  Even if the creature gives his life to God, the life is flawed.  The life must be “redeemed,” bought back and the creature doesn’t have the perfect, infinite currency that would be required to pay admission back to the presence of God.  Only God has it.

How terrifying!  The only person that can buy us back is the person that we have offended!  We have turned our back on the only person that has ever done anything truly kind for us, asking nothing but love in return.  If we are to be redeemed He would have to pay the debt, but the debt we owe is to Him!

The debt cannot merely be forgiven.  His justness demands that it be paid.  Clearly, the only reason that He would help us in this situation is if His love is so pure that He is willing to pay a debt that we incurred by our own selfishness, against the only person that ever truly loved us, when we had no reason to do so.

The debt is so large that only the life of God can pay it, and He is God, and we are not.  And then He pays it, and we continue to have moments of rebellion, and He keeps on paying it.  We turn our back and head for the pigpen again.  Terrified once more, we look back toward the only real home we ever had, daring to hope that He will forgive again.  Has He paid enough, has He finally turned His back, as any sane human being would do?  No, He stands in the door gazing after us, waiting again, with arms outstretched.  Why?  Because He is God and we are not. I hope the words are a little easier to say now.

Study: Conservative Theology Means Smaller Bank Accounts

Duke sociologist says conservative Protestants save less and accumulate fewer assets.

Britanni Hamm, Religion News Service | posted 4/02/2008 02:10PM

We were recently discussing the concept of "commitment" in the Christian life.  Several issues arose.  Among them:

• Is it appropriate for church leaders (preachers) to repeatedly ask congregants to "recommit" their lives to Christ?
• Is it appropriate for Christians to "recommit" periodically?
• What is "commitment" in the Christian life?

The word "commit" looks to me like one of those serious words that implies some degree of permanance, or finality.  In other words, I feel like if I "commit" something I shouldn't be concerned about doing it again, at least in the near future.  

We talked about this in Sunday School and most of us agreed that we have experienced groups that seemed to vary in their ideas about this.  Some of us have observed groups (churches) where people were encouraged to recommit on a weekly basis, and individuals who seemed to respond with "recommitment" almost as frequently.

Here is our dilemma:  We certainly don't want to discourage people from maintaining or renewing their relationship with God.  On the other hand, we would like to encourage people to take their commitments seriously.  Or, maybe our own view of commitment is too exalted and  it is perfectly reasonable for serious commitments  to require frequent renewal.

This is a great topic for discussion.  I hope others will contribute and help us expand our understanding of "commitment" in the Christian life.  Have at it!