A Free Gift from The King: Part 2

It's easy to get caught up in abstract and complicated ideas when it comes to theology. Sometimes I worry that I spend too much time debating the abstract and not enough time brushing up on the basics. I also worry about how people on the outside interpret the Christian faith. I fear that some have the impression of a people bound by rules and doctrines, who are constantly striving to be good enough while simultaneously telling others that they are not good enough. If this is how you view Christians I sincerely apologize. That is why I want to talk about what I consider to be a basic tenet of being a Christ-follower that I think some non-Christians would be surprised to learn about.

The little story I made up about the young, rebellious prince and the loving King in the last post, A Free Gift from The King Part 1, is an allegory to help explain this tenet. It's something we call "justification by faith alone".  You may also hear it paraphrased as "sola fide" - by faith alone. 

I'm going to be blunt here. Have you ever spoken to someone who has told you that in order to qualify for entrance into heaven you need to accomplish so many good deeds, dress a certain way, give a determined amount of money, be perfect, have never made a mistake, etc? They might have made it out to sound like a spiritual scavenger hunt or they may have made you feel like unless you start caring for children on the streets of Calcutta you are screwed.

I'm going to tell you with complete confidence that they could not be farther from the truth. If they truly believe they can earn their way into Heaven then they have totally missed the boat and I would be concerned that they are oblivious to the fact that they are drowning. There is nothing you can do to earn your way into Heaven. I can say this with confidence because New Testament authors take pages to try and explain this.

"Brothers, listen! We are here to proclaim that through this man Jesus there is forgiveness for your sins. Everyone who believes in Him is declared right with God - something the law of Moses could never do."

Acts 13:38, The New Testament (NLT version)

The Law of Moses was the rules that governed every aspect of Jewish life. Following these laws was considered necessary to be right with God. They included rules on what you could eat and not eat, how you planted your crops, how many tassels could be on your cloak, how you made tools and even how you had to deal with bodily functions like menustruation. Does this list of requirements sound vaguely familiar? The predominant-must-always-do-to-make-God-happy was the blood sacrifice of a pure and clean animal (often a sweet cuddly-wuddly little lamb). It was nuts! It was basically impossible to follow all of these laws to a T. Everyone who realized this was majorly stressed out as they did their best to check off everything on their scavenger hunt list. Then there were these guys called Pharisees who liked to go around pretending that all of these laws were totally reasonable and that they nailed every one of them all the time (they were lying) and that if they could do it, you should be able to do it too. 

But the regular folk were realizing that nothing they did was good enough to gain favour with God. Being stressed and preoccupied with all of these laws wore down the people and I think that over time they forgot how much God loved them. That's why they weren't really on their toes when God sent his son, Jesus (our Saviour, Messiah, the promised one - that's right, for years God promised that He would make everything right). Jesus is the definition of awesome and because the Bible does a far better job telling about his life with us than I could I will just cut to the chase. 

Ultimately, God loved us so much that he wanted to be right with his people forever without all the stressful scavenger hunts and bloody baby sheep. But if you've watched the news lately you'd have to admit that generally speaking our species is a pretty messed up bunch and it would take a big heaping sacrifice of purity to make up for all of that.  So God sent his only son, Jesus, to die like a sacrificial lamb so that any one of us who believes in him would no longer be chained to a rule book and dead sheep, but would instead be justified with God, even though they had done nothing to deserve it. 

"Therefore, since we have been made right in God's sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God's glory. We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confidant hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because He has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with love. When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. God showed His great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. And since we have been made right in God's sight by the blood of Christ, He will certainly save us from God's condemnation."

Romans 5:1-9, The New Testament (NLT version)

That's pretty much the best part but if you stay tuned I have a few more thoughts on the subject. . .

Oh the sacrificial cuteness.

Rules and Obedience: Part 3 (The Best Part)

Here we are again on my weird little investigation into obedience. I’ve written about obedience in the form of coercion for the immature and obedience in the form of rewards for the logically mature. I believe there is one more driving force behind obedience. This force is only for the mature folk. Often they need to be so mature that they can stuff their pride and self away long enough to be obedient when it doesn’t suit them at all. This force is only one word and it is arguably the most important substance in all of our lives.

LOVE.

Pure and simple; or terribly complicated. It depends who you talk to I suppose. In any case it can be a strong force when it comes to obedience. I’m not sure everyone will be able to relate to this - if you can, great, that might mean I’m not completely weird. If you can’t, oh well, you get to read a different perspective on things. Anyhoo, it seems to me that when you know someone loves you and when you love them in return, you want to be obedient. 

Now when I say “love” in this context, I mean “love” in the pure and simple form. Not intimacy, not lust, not necessarily spouses or significant others. I mean everyone that you care about and those who care about you. Friends, family and God. 

I’m an adult. I have my own house, my own car, my own everything. I have flown the nest. I’m not really responsible for anyone but myself and Jack. If my dad asks me to do something for him I do not have to. After all, he can no longer coerce me into obedience as if I were a child. There are not necessarily any logical perks to obeying him any longer now that I don’t reside under his household. So why would I ever do what he has asked? There’s a chance that what he has asked me to do is going to be a major inconvenience, or its going to cost me money, or I’m going to have to change my plans, or it’s something I just loathe doing. Why would I ever do it? Once again the answer is simple.

LOVE. I will do it because I love him. 

I’m staying at a hotel in downtown Edmonton with two of my very good friends. I think it would be easier if I just walk to my destination downtown, even though it’s dark out. I don’t give it much thought. Once again, I’m an adult and I’ve gotten used to having to look after myself. I’ve taken for granted the amount of time I’ve spent in my small towns and have forgotten the dangers of being a small girl in a sketchy part of the big city. My friend tells me no. He asks me not to because he doesn’t think it is safe. From the moment he said that it was settled for me. I’m not going. Why?

LOVE. I was able to easily set pride and preference aside and obey him because he cared about me.

I’m going to go ahead and fit this all into one post, so please forgive the length. I was prompted to write these obedience posts after fielding a few questions about my faith. It probably seems that Christians have a lot of rules or strange ideas - especially in this modern age. It’s even more confusing when they see people professing the term “Christian” while seemingly not practicing what that entails. I get this. I cannot speak for others and I sure want to do my best not judge them. Therefore I can only speak for myself. I am not a very good Christian yet. I mess up a lot. However, I continue to try to improve and live what I believe. A lot of this comes down to obedience - often times the hardest part! As I gain maturity in my faith I am finding that the best way to obedience is through love. So below you will find the best explanation of why myself and many others  are trying to be obedient to the teachings of Jesus. It might be the corniest thing you’ve read all week but then the best love stories are always on the corny side. 

There’s this really amazing guy I’ve come to know. He treats me like a princess. He’s always encouraging me and telling me that I’m beautiful and that he can’t wait to do a lot of great things with me. He is always there every time I call him and he listens to me, even when I’m being a silly, emotional, non-sensical girl. He comforts me, celebrates with me and he makes me want to be a better person. He’s kind of like a super hero because he’s always healing and saving people. He even gave his life to save me. I never want to leave him. He has promised He will never leave me. Not ever! The thing is, He has told me that if I trust him enough to live my life the way He asks, He will make me the happiest girl in the world. Sounds crazy eh? Some of the things He has asked me to do are harder than others, but they all seem to make sense. I told Him that I’m afraid I will fail and He said that he already knows that I will sometimes but other times my obedience will bring him so much happiness! He also says that if I want his forgiveness He will gladly give it to me anytime, any place. So you might wonder why I am doing what he asks of me. I might not always fit in with the rest of the world while I’m doing what He has asked of me. You might want to whisper about me or tell me that I’m crazy. That’s okay. You might have questions about our relationship and I’m more than happy to answer them as best I can. But if your question is why I’m trying to obey this incredible guy, then the answer is easy.

LOVE. Pure and simple.

Rules & Obedience: Part 2

So back to the obedience topic. I was trying to establish that when you’re immature in your understanding, like a child, you are basically coerced into obedience. If you were fortunate enough to have loving and mature parents this coercion was for your own good. In my personal observations, coercing children, though not as pretty of an experience, seems to have a much better long term effect than bribing children into obedience (which is what we tend to see a lot of these days in public; but I digress :).

There is no "right way" when you've
 been told to stop :)

Anyhoo, as you get older you start to understand how obedience, trust and rewards can become intertwined. I sincerely wish more teens would figure this out earlier - it would make the beginning of their adult lives so much easier and enjoyable 1.If you continually do as your parents ask, even when it doesn’t suit what you want to do, they notice. 2. They suspect you have developed maturity. 3. When your parents sense maturity coupled with obedience they develop trust in you. 4. Because they trust you, they let you do more without fearing for your safety. 5. You get to do fun stuff with your friends and develop a trusting relationship with your parents. Some teenagers go around trying to be stealthy and secretive - already having decided that their parents are unfair creatures. When teens are hiding parts of their life from the people that love them, parents get suspicious and they crack down. They can’t help themselves - it’s not in parental nature to trust a child that has not proven that they are indeed trustworthy. Teens that think that trust should be inherent are kidding themselves. Parents used to be teens too - of course they’re going to suspect you’re up to something if you are not being transparent. Teens often don’t realize that trust starts with obedience and is maintained with transparency. It sucks to be those teens. 

The teens that do figure this out reap the rewards of obedience. A fairly common rule in our house was that you had to have your homework done before you were allowed to do anything else. If you procrastinated about doing your homework, complained incessantly about having to do your homework or lied about doing your homework you could plan on being harped on, grounded and experience a lot of discord with Mom. On top of that, you missed whatever it was you were supposed to do with your friends and instead were stuck inside figuring out algebra. When I started a practice of coming home from school and immediately sitting down at the kitchen table, opening my books and getting my homework done and then getting any chores done before supper, my mom noticed. After a few months of my mom seeing me carry out this routine every day I never got asked the annoying question “is your homework done?”. She trusted that it would be - just as it had been every day for the past three months. She would also see the check mark beside my chores on the list and trusted that I done my share around the house. The results were phenomenal! I wasn’t continually feeling harassed by my mom to do my homework and chores and I felt like a good daughter for getting them done before being asked. Because I was consistently studying my school marks soared, and so did my social life and extra-curriculars because I was always able to attend. I liked these rewards - being obedient was pretty easy when you knew something good would come of it. By the time I was 17 years old and in Grade 12 I had an apartment and was living on my own two hours away from my parents. All just because I had been obedient to them and had earned their trust. 

This is no longer obedience through coercion. This is obedience through logic and reward. It’s efficient but it’s only effective when a certain maturity level is reached that allows you to figure out the logic behind obedience. This comes back around to why I’m inclined to think bribing your child with a reward in exchange for obedience is a bit lack lustre in effort.

I really am going somewhere with this, I promise. I realize it’s a bit of a strange topic. Hang in there with me. There’s at least one more part, if not two more in this strange little series.