The Hard Yoke of Judging and the Light Burden of Loving

As those created in the image of God, we desire to judge. This is part of what it means to "govern" or "have dominion", according to the creation story in Genesis. God's intention was that we would judge as He does: based on unconditional and impartial love (represented by the tree of life).

But when the first humans took the bait of the tempter and ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they opted for an alternative way of functioning  from the way God had set up for them. The tree of knowledge was attractive to them for various reasons, one of which was that it represented a way to make decisions based on their subjective and limited knowledge and wisdom. All they would have to do is to trust independently in their own thoughts and feelings and desires and not have to take the time and effort to consult a Person outside of themselves for knowledge and wisdom (which requires getting to know that Person which in turn requires dependence and time and effort). It wasn't that they didn't want God in their lives, but they saw this as a way of doing God's work more easily and efficiently.

The world system, the flesh, and the devil all agree that this is the way to govern and judge. As those who have given up personal independence to live and operate under the Lordship of God the Creator, we are faced everyday with the choice to make judgments and decisions based on one of these two trees - the tree of the knowledge of good and evil or the tree of life. The 'flesh' - that which wants to function independently of God - pulls us to make decisions according to what we subjectively believe to be 'right' or 'wrong'.

Most of us are unaware of how much emotional and intellectual energy is spent on fleshly judgments being made in a day. (Much of this happens in our hidden and often unconscious thought life and it seeps out into the open at times in judgmentalism of others.) Greg Boyd says, "Of all the sinful burdens that we place upon ourselves in our fallen state, none is weightier than the presumption that we can judge others."

Sizing others up to determine what's right and wrong about them is a hard yoke to bear; the light burden of dependence on God is loving others. Just as God's first and last response to all humans is that of love, so we are called to love all unconditionally and impartially, which turns out to be an easy burden! So in any given day when we are required to make decisions that affect others, our posture should be that of attentiveness to God and His love for the person(s) and acting accordingly.

Proverbs 3:5 sums up the two ways of functioning beautifully: "Trust God from the bottom of your heart (tree of life); don't try to figure out everything on your own (tree of knowledge)..." (The Message)

What Does it Mean to Love the Truth?

The apostle John's writings indicate to me that he was a lover of truth. His gospel and epistles focus on the word "truth" which is repeated many times. John says in his third epistle, "I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth."

There's a difference between being a lover of truth and being one who simply knows true information or correct doctrines. I believe that one thing that defines John as being a lover of truth is that he loved and knew Truth personified, the Lord Jesus. John's writings about Jesus are very personal writings. Much more than simply giving data and facts about the Man, John shares from a deep personal relationship with Him.

I want to suggest some characteristics of being a lover of truth:

• An ongoing and growing relationship with Jesus who is Truth personified; i.e., not settling for facts and doctrines about Him but asking His Spirit for encounters (whatever that may look like for each person) with Him and an understanding of Who He is and what He's like, how He feels and thinks about His creation in general and of me in particular.
• A holy desire for truth that is strong enough to be willing to 'unlearn' whatever you need to in order to continue to mature in knowing and loving the Truth. We should never be content with what we have learned. This can be painful for us because it disorients us to discover that something we were so sure of a little while ago isn't aligned with the full truth of the Kingdom of God. It takes great courage and humility and desire to love the Truth.
• Walking in the Truth; i.e., not being hearers only but doers of the Truth, obeying and imitating Jesus in our daily living.

We can't manufacture artificial desire but we can place our hearts and minds before Him and ask Him to awaken desire for Jesus to such a degree that we will embrace Truth even when it cuts across the grain of how we presently live and believe. May we, like the Apostle John, find great delight in loving the Truth and having many "children" who love the Truth.

GK Chesterton: Anything Worth Doing is Worth Doing Badly

Scripture is full of stories that show us that God doesn't expect great and perfect works from those who follow Him. However, it's common for us to have illusions of grandeur and perfection; i.e., we believe that the measure of approval we will get from God is dependent on how much we do and how close to perfection we can do it.

Over and over we read of those whose small sincere and often faulty obedience was all it took for God to do great things. The point of these stories is that it's God who does the great things with our small and inadequate actions because of His great care for humans.

One such story is that of the young boy's offering of his loaves and fish to Jesus (John 6). This was a poor inadequate offer on the boy's part in the sense that it didn't come close to meeting the need represented by the crowd's hunger. But Jesus, unperturbed by the tiny bit of food and caring that the people were hungry, unhesitatingly accepted the "foolish" offering and used it to satisfy the hunger of the large crowd.

Often in our lives we labor under feelings of inadequacy or guilt that we aren't fasting or praying enough or doing great enough things for God, but this kind of heavy burden indicates that our focus is more on how much and how well we're serving than on His desire and His ability to take our small and feeble offering and multiply it into blessing for many.

In our fallenness we are prone to look inward at how well we are performing for God rather than to look up and away from ourselves to Him and to His desire to do much with the little that we give Him in faith.

Religion requires perfectionism; God asks for trust. Perfectionism focuses on my offering to God and on getting it right (self-rightness); trust focuses on God and how perfectly He did it in the Lord Jesus. Perfectionism attempts to compete with God's work; trust responds with utter dependence on God's self-giving work.

We've all heard the saying, "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well." G.K. Chesterton reworded this to say: "Anything worth doing is worth doing badly." This isn't advocating sloppiness or carelessness but simply acknowledging that God desires our inadequate offerings of love and that we must not allow perfectionism to paralyze us because we can't "do it well".

The young boy didn't allow self-conscious fear of inadequacy keep him from giving what he had, trusting that Jesus would do well with it. He had his eyes set on Jesus rather than on the insufficient lunch in his hands.

Injuries Hinder Our Ability to See God Correctly

As I struggle to regain the ability to walk normally, I'm spending a lot of time doing water exercises. The pool that I visit is at the local YMCA, and as soon as I get into it, the first thing I do is walk across it a couple of times before doing other therapy exercises.

I've been doing this for some months, and since the start I've felt like the floor of the pool was not level. I couldn't imagine that such a new and well-made pool would have a floor that was uneven so I continued to walk it as though it was level. Nevertheless it felt so uneven to me that it was hard for me to shake that idea.

Recently my sister took me to the pool and got in with me. I asked her to walk across it and tell me if it felt even to her. She walked it and assured me that the pool floor was level.

That was my confirmation that the problem wasn't the floor but my disability, particularly the injured leg that keeps me from walking properly.

This is an example of how easy it is for us humans to misread God. In areas where we suffer from emotional or mental or spiritual 'disability', we easily misread or misjudge the truth because it feels so wrong, so "uneven." Consequently, we continue to walk according to our personal 'injuries'.

Our brokenness as humans causes us to misjudge God's goodness. Our notions of Him are often distorted because of our 'disabilities'. Only in Jesus can we get the full and true version of the Father. As we place our faith in Him as the perfect reflection of God, we can "exercise" according to what He shows us in spite of our internal injuries that would guide us to exercise incorrectly.

Just as my sister and my therapist and others can reassure me that the pool floor is level, so those around us who don't have the same emotional or mental or spiritual disability that we have can be a help to assure us that God is like Jesus no matter how much our subjective experience may tell us differently. With that assurance we can align our 'exercises' with Truth, and over time the crooked part in us becomes straight and in agreement with that which is true/level.

Psalm 27:11 (NET) Teach me how you want me to live; lead me along a level path because of those who wait to ambush me!

Macro-skies, Micro-self and God's Presence

Greg Boyd has written a book on practicing the presence of God (Present Perfect: Finding God in the Now), and one of the features I like so well about it is that he includes a number of practical exercises that the reader can do in becoming more aware and awake to the reality that God is with us every moment.

One of these practices is what he calls "standing in the middle of infinity", and I want to share this practice with you. Boyd says the following:

"...Over the last century science has discovered that we live in a mind-boggling universe that is virtually infinite above us as well as below us. Above us, the universe is unimaginably large and expanding at ever-increasing speeds. It contains billions upon billions of galaxies, each spanning hundreds of millions of light-years and containing hundreds of billions of stars, many of them much larger than our sun. The universe below us is equally unimaginable as we are discovering particles so tiny they could pass through light-years of solid steel before they'd likely collide with another particle. There is, in fact, as much 'small reality' beneath us as there is 'large reality' above us.

...we can think of ourselves as situated in the middle of a virtual infinity extending beneath us into incomprehensible smallness and above us into incomprehensible vastness. To remain aware of the awesomeness of the God whose presence engulfs me, I find it helpful to remember this fact as I experience events around me."

Here is the exercise Boyd suggests: "Sit in a comfortable public place and simply observe events around you...try to remain aware of the virtual infinity extending above and beneath you and everything you observe...

I find it helpful to zoom out past innumerable gigantic galaxies as I observe things while I also mentally zoom in on a particular tiny segment of what I'm observing (a blade of grass or a pebble, for example) and envision a veritable universe of particles  flying around inside the tiny segment...I then remind myself that however far out and far down my mind may go, God is present there...

The incomprehensible greatness of God's glory expressed in the unfathomable vastness of reality above us and unimaginable smallness and complexity of reality below us is exceeded only by the absolutely unlimited, unending, and unwavering perfection of God's love, revealed on Calvary...

As you engage in the discipline of situating yourself in the middle of infinity, therefore, be sure to remain aware that you are surrounded every nanosecond by the infinite intensity of God's burning, perfect, Calvary-like love."

The language of Psalm 8:3,4 (from The Message) captures the essence of what Boyd is talking about:

                               I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous,
                                     your handmade sky-jewelry,
                              Moon and stars mounted in their settings.
                                    Then I look at my micro-self and wonder,
                              Why do you bother with us?
                                    Why take a second look our way?