The Picture Frame Makes a Difference

Many years ago, I discovered that the frame around a picture makes a big difference. Framing, as well as painting, is an art. The color and design emphasize certain aspects of the painting and causes the person viewing the painting to focus on particular parts of the artwork.

As I'm rethinking different parts of the picture of God's story and His love for His creation, I'm learning to re-frame that picture, and it is helping me a lot. The Lord is using many means to help me re-frame the story. One means is through the writings of authors I have discovered, one of which is Richard Beck. In his very interesting and wonderful book, The Slavery of Death, he presents why he believes that humanity's predicament has more to do with our mortality than with our morality. In other words, our fear of death is the better framework for the picture of humanity's basic problem than is sin.

Beck says: "Death, not sin, is the primary predicament of the human condition. Death is the cause of sin. More properly, the fear of death produces most of the sin in our lives."

As I have read Beck's work and looked into some of the theology of the early church fathers, I've come to appreciate this framing of humanity's problem over the framing that many of us in the western stream of Christianity have been given. Many of God's people in church history and today as well understand humanity's need to be more a need for a Deliverer than for a Judge. In other words, we are born mortal and fearful of death rather than sinful. Sin is the result of fear of death which has us hopelessly trapped and in need of a Deliverer.

This in no way denies that we all sin, but it sees sin as the symptom of something more profound.

In a society in which lack of food is not a threat to physical life for most people, the fear of death takes on the form of neurotic anxieties, such as fears related to self esteem or having significance and acceptance from others. In our desire to be immortal, we attach ourselves to causes or organizations or religious groups that will last beyond our lifetime; or we place our hopes in our children's success as a way to ensure our success; we compete for positions and for recognition...etc.

I can see advantages to framing humanity's primary problem in mortality and fear of death rather than framing it in moral behavior. I'll share 3 reasons I like this framing:  first, it highlights God's graciousness and compassion towards humans.  The legal framework emphasizes God as angry Judge who demands that law-breaking humans be punished; but God is loving Creator and Father who in great compassion for His creation comes in His Son to rescue humanity from the grip of this fear of death by defeating it in His flesh (Heb. 2), forgiving and healing and reconciling us back to Himself to live in fellowship with Him; in that living fellowship we are empowered to walk free from anxieties that drive us to sinful practices.

The second reason I think framing the story of man's predicament in mortality is better is that it doesn't pit Jesus against God. In other words, it doesn't present Jesus as taking our side against God's anger towards humans; but rather it shows that God and Jesus have always been of one mind in unconditional, unchanging love for weak humans and that they are in agreement about our need for deliverance from the one who holds the power of death over us: (Heb. 2:14,15) "By embracing death, taking it into himself, he destroyed the Devil’s hold on death and freed all who cower through life, scared to death of death."  (2 Cor. 5:19) "In other words, God was reconciling the world to himself through Christ, by not counting people’s sins against them."

The third reason I believe framing humanity's predicament in this way is good is that it sees humans through a more compassionate lens and moves us away from our tendency as western evangelicals to see people primarily as sinners who ought to know better and so should be judged and condemned. Rather than seeing ourselves and others as primarily law-breakers of God's holy law, we see humans as born fearful and driven to sin because of the desperate need to escape death in its many forms. In my own experience, since changing how I frame the picture of humanity's fall, I find myself slower to judge and condemn others because I now see them (and myself) as captive to a fear that only Jesus can deliver us from. This awakens compassion and desire to help people know that there is freedom from the fear of death.

(Much of the way we frame God and His story is rooted in our beliefs about the atonement. If you're interested in viewing an interesting presentation of the eastern and western views of the atonement, you can go to this link:  The Gospel in Chairs.) 

What Matters Supremely...

Deep down we all want to be fully known and still loved. J.I. Packer says the following:

“What matters supremely is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it — the fact that He knows me. I am graven on the palms of His hands. I am never out of His mind. All my knowledge of Him depends on His sustained initiative in knowing me. I know Him, because He first knew me, and continues to know me. He knows me as a friend, one who loves me, and there is no moment when His eye is off me, or His attention distracted from me, and no moment therefore, when His care falters.

"This is momentous knowledge. There is unspeakable comfort — the sort of comfort that energizes — in knowing that God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love, and watching over me for my good. There is tremendous relief in knowing that His love to me is utterly realistic, based...on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench his determination to bless me. There is, certainly, great cause for humility in the thought that He sees all the twisted things about me that my fellow-men do not see, and that He sees more corruption in me than that which I see in myself.

“There is, however, equally great incentive to worship and love God in the thought that, for some unfathomable reason, He wants me as His friend, and desires to be my friend, and has given His Son to die for me in order to realize this purpose.”

For this truth to transform us, it's important to actually embrace it, accept it and practice it; one way to practice accepting this love is to pause a few moments during your day (doing this regularly) to listen for the Father's affirmation of you. For example, you could take these words of J.I. Packer and turn them into a personal statement by God to you, saying something like this:  

"(Your name), what matters supremely is not the fact that you know Me but that I know you. You are engraved on the palms of My hands, and I never stop thinking about you; I'm thinking about you right now. You know Me because I knew you first and continue to know you. I know everything about you, the good, the bad and the ugly, and I still want you as My friend; I want this so much that I went to death to win you for Myself..., etc."

I Am His House

I wanted to quote a poem this week by George MacDonald and came across this beautiful and powerful poem from his book, Diary of an Old Soul. To get the impact of his words, I encourage you to take a little time to quietly ponder them. The form of English is a bit difficult but worth struggling to grasp:

"Too eager I must not be to understand.
How should the work the Master goes about
Fit the vague sketch my compasses have planned?
I am his house - for him to go in and out.
He builds me now - and if I cannot see
At any time what he is doing with me,
Tis that he makes the house for me too grand.

The house is not for me - it is for him.
His royal thoughts require many a stair,
Many a tower, many an outlook fair,
Of which I have no thought, and need no care.
Where I am most perplexed, it may be there
Thou mak'st a secret chamber, holy-dim,
Where thou will come to help my deepest prayer."

Amen, dear Lord...may it be so.

To Make Converts to a Doctrine is to Make Proselytes

As I have often made reference to, I believe that part of what God is doing in the world now is breaking up the religious systems and practices that have become hindrances to people seeing Jesus and what God is like in Him. Our preoccupation with ensuring doctrinal correctness has become a stumbling block to our making disciples/followers of Jesus.

In his outstanding book, The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church and the Causes that Hinder It, Roland Allen addresses the desperate need for preaching Jesus rather than preaching Christianity. In the following quote, he critiques western Christianity for worrying more about getting our "doctrine" correct than about preaching Jesus. Jesus ends up being relegated to a secondary place. He is the First Cause but we tend to stress the secondary causes (doctrinal beliefs):

"...We speak as if the Gospel and the doctrine, preaching Christ and preaching Christianity, were identical terms.

"There is a difference between the revelation of a Person and the teaching of a system of doctrine and practice.

"...our doctrine so dominates our mind that we can scarcely believe that men can love Christ and be saved by Him unless they know and use our doctrinal expressions. Because we find this difficult we inevitably tend to give the teaching of our doctrine the first place in our work...But the Person is greater and far excels it.

"When we fall into this error, we inevitably tend to make the acceptance of the shadow (the doctrine, the system) the aim and object of our work. In doing that we are doing something of which Christ spoke in very severe terms. To make converts to a doctrine is to make proselytes."

Jesus recognized this in the religious leaders of His day, condemning them for making converts instead of disciples (Matt. 23:15). Only as we make Christ crucified our theme and passion will others become true followers of Jesus rather than mere adherents to certain prescribed beliefs.