Monday Morning Quarterbacks ...

Hindsight is 20:20.  If you knew what was coming, you could avoid it, make better plans, execute better, and generally make the outcome much better than the history you now review.  Once the event is over, we talk as if we would have taken that uncharted course.  We speak as if somehow, we would have known what the people involved clearly did not.  Thus, we speak as if our decisions would have led to a much better outcome even though common sense dictates this is doubtful at best.  It is in fact only history that can demonstrate folly, usually our own.  But what if you could know the facts as they were occurring?  What if someone told you what was happening, and what was going to happen, during the event in question?  Would you listen?  Would you believe them?  And most importantly, if you acted on that real-time feed, would the outcome actually be significantly better than the ones history most commonly reveals?

Having someone, or even a team, report the facts as they are occurring is one thing.  We used to call that “the news”.  But having someone tell you what was going to happen; that, is something considerably more rare, and considerably less believed.  But here is the tricky part.  It did happen.  And stick with me on this, it is still happening.  Matthew writes his gospel to the Hebrews, to the Jews of his day.  He writes to a proud people, with a proud faith rooted in traditions, grounded in the scriptures passed down in written form from Moses to his own day (what we now refer to as the Old Testament).  Jesus, was the New Testament in 4D living color, in real life.  What Jesus did, as He did it, was a real-time feed of The Truth.  Jesus was telling the people who would listen to Him, what “was” happening, but beyond that, what was going to happen.  Modern Christians read the gospel of Matthew, and in our brains, somehow we think that real-time and predictive feed of the words of Jesus is now past.  But it isn’t.  It is still both real time, and futuristic, even for us.  We have just stopped seeing it that way.

Consider what Matthew writes in his gospel in chapter twelve, continuing an encounter between Jesus and the Sanhedrin bent on His destruction.  Matthew sets the encounter picking up in verse 38 saying … “Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee.”  How many times have you heard these words today, in your real life, from folks who do not share your faith in a risen Lord?  Or worse, in your own moments of doubt, desperation, or sadness, have you considered them yourself?  This was Jesus.  The same Jesus who had been preaching recorded in the gospel books of the New Testament.  The same ones you read, and this audience, had a front row seat to.  After all the miracles of Jesus they had already witnessed (and you have read about), they persist in asking for “a sign”.  After all of it they saw (and you know from reading the first person accounts inspired by the Holy Spirit), what more could have been offered that would have met that need?

That particular question or request, cannot really be answered, because the one asking will not believe the answer given.  Atheists are forever asking for “a sign”.  They purport to believe in the science of facts.  Yet when those facts point to God, they look another way.  They demand the miraculous in the here-and-now, in front of their eyes, “in order that they might believe”.  But should that sign be given, the outcome would not change because the heart of the asker will not be influenced by what it chooses not to believe.  But even to these Israelite men sworn to the destruction of Jesus; Jesus refused to be their enemy.  Instead He longed for their redemption, so in His answer of Truth, is found the glimmer of hope.  Jesus responds in verse 39 saying … “But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas:”  Here Jesus gets a little metaphorical in His response.

Jonah the prophet spent time in the belly of a whale, a place where no one usually gets out alive again.  But beyond that for which he is famous, Jonah the prophet, was also dispatched to preach to the people of Nineveh to save it from the destruction its embrace of evil was insuring.  Jonah was dispatched on a mission of salvation, on a mission of redemption.  The Sanhedrin asks Jesus for a sign, and in His response Jesus offers them an allegory to Jonah the prophet whose mission was one of redemption, even for men who were bent on His own destruction.  Jesus continues in verse 40 saying … “For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. [verse 41] The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.”

Jesus begins with His own journey into the earth in death which none other ever escaped on their own.  But Jesus also offers a picture of last day events, of a resurrection (sorry Sadducees) where the men of Nineveh by comparison did repent at the preaching of Jonah, but the men of the Sanhedrin refuse to repent at the preaching of God Himself in human form.  Notice that these dead men of Nineveh “rise” at the end of all things, they do not descend and re-inhabit human form.  These men have been dead, asleep in the earth, and only then are awakened in a resurrection where they discover the men of Jesus’ time were so stubborn against repentance when they themselves repented at the word of Jonah.  The men of spiritual privilege fail, where the men of pagan poverty did repent.  The similarity of the story might also be found in its ending, as even those men who did repent initially did not sustain that repentance very long, and the doom Jonah predicted found them after all as they returned to the evil they were intended to abandon.  To repent only casually was not was needed in the men of the Sanhedrin, and to we who stare into the mirrors of our homes.  In our day, is it only the homeless who truly find Jesus; while we of spiritual privilege who claimed to know Him, never really did?

Jesus extends the comparison further continuing in verse 42 saying … “The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here.”  The subtilty is lost on His accusers.  Jesus compares missions of salvation that were targeted at Gentiles, at the citizens of Nineveh who would be largely Assyrian, and to the Queen of the South whose people were likely ancestors of Kenya or Ethiopia.  People not born to the gospel, but who find it none the less.  People who the gospel was brought to them even when uninvited, and people who sought the gospel and were willing to travel to the ends of the earth to find it.  And in both scenarios those listeners were willing to repent based on the words of human messengers, yet these men of spiritual privilege were stubborn against repentance in front of God Himself.

And how are we different?  Whether by invitation to God, or by the pursuit of God even though uninvited, Jesus offers us reformative love, transformative love, love that can make us different than who we once were.  And somewhere on our journey we look away from it, and begin to question it, and doubt it, and presume to ask for a miraculous sign in order to believe in it once again.  Has your life changed nothing at all from the love of Christ?  If so, perhaps you have yet to surrender to it.  But if you have surrendered how “you” think things of salvation should be done; you will most certainly find a progression of who you are from sin-infected vessel of evil, to repentant servant of Christ who is beginning to love others more than you used to love yourself.  That transition “IS” the miraculous sign you seek.  It is hard coded into who you are, and cannot be taken from you by any in the world, though it can be discarded by you if you choose to pull away your focus and surrender from Jesus, its source.  Your life “IS” the miracle, no matter where you are, or what condition you find yourself in.  What bigger more meaningful “sign” could Jesus ever offer you.

Compare where you are, and who you are, with who you used to be, and what you used to value.  For a Christian who has surrendered to Jesus, there “IS” a difference.  You cannot explain “why” there is.  But you surely will be able to see it and notice it.  The work of changing you belongs to God, and it is why you cannot explain it.  But you can certainly see the difference.  This is what transformation is all about.  You may not be perfect yet, but you are on a journey to perfection.  The closer to perfection you come, the more you realize the need of repentance; for the more heinous you find the sins you once embraced.  The more you surrender the closer to perfection you will find yourself, and the more the mystery of how it is happening will boggle your brain.  This is Jesus in real life, in your real life.  This is the testimony you have to offer, no one else’s, just yours.  It is unique to you.  It cannot be faked, or falsified.  People will see through that in a New-York-Minute.  But a real connection to Jesus that transforms you from who you were to who He intends you to be, is equally undeniable, by anyone who knows you.

Those who attempt to hold control to themselves in matters of salvation; those who fake the idea of transformation because they do not know how to surrender, nor are they inclined; have a different fate to await them.  Faking transformation leaves one empty, hollow, and not in harmony with God’s laws or His ideas of loving others.  A person so hollowed out is susceptible to things they will wish they never encountered.  Jesus begins talking about a man who has been freed of demonic possession.  But a onetime event, is not the same thing as a life-long commitment to the Savior who can truly keep you saved, and perfect His ideas of salvation within you.  He picks up in verse 43 saying … “When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. [verse 44] Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished.”

The demon is forced to leave the man.  But the man, while grateful, is content to work on cleaning himself up, effectively saving himself in his own eyes.  The vessel of our bodies (and souls) is then un-equipped to withstand the supernatural no matter how strong we think we are.  We are hollowed out, empty Christians, who know nothing of real transformation.  We may know doctrine.  We may know “about” Jesus, but we have never surrendered and trusted Jesus to save us, so we have no personal experience with Jesus.  We clean ourselves up, with the strength of our wills, dusting and sweeping, but unable to clean the motives that underlie our desire to sin.  The fate of men & women like this is enumerated further in verse 45 saying … “Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation.”

Superficial encounters.  Emotional highs.  Shared experiences of others that become co-opted as our own, but in truth are not.  These are not the hallmarks of deep encounters with Jesus of a personal nature; they are instead earmarks of “religion”.  Tradition and repetition do not save, Jesus does.  Personal will power to resist sin and remain pure does not clear out defective motives, Jesus does.  Trusting in Jesus, something bigger than ourselves, to truly save us, works – everything else does not.  It is Satan’s crowing achievement to seduce men into believing that men have control of their lives, when he knows there are only willing servants of God, and bound slaves to himself.  “Control” is not in the province of men.  We surrendered it at the tree of knowledge of good and of evil.  Once Adam broke trust with God and ate the fruit, the fruit owned him not the other way around.  Salvation must come to man from outside of man.  You must be saved from yourself by Jesus, or not at all.

We read the gospel of Matthew and do we see this as nothing but hindsight.  The trust, or lack of it, that plagued the Sanhedrin, a group of men (and women in our day), who are the spiritually privileged but refuse repentance because they refuse to yield even the ideas of control to anyone other than self.  This group heads on a freeway towards doom that cannot be reversed.  Do we see this as nothing but hindsight for them, or is this real-time for us?  It is still counsel as relevant now as it ever was, and to the audience of one who stares back at you from your mirror.  It is also predictive now as it ever was.  The future of this fate and these choices has not changed.  As you live you remain open to change your fate and trust that what God predicts, God can guarantee.  Jesus saves, nothing else, no one else, especially not you.  You need saving, you are not the vehicle of it.

It is not just the danger of trying to fake salvation we try to avoid.  It is the actual bliss that comes from truly surrendering a life to Jesus.  Emptiness is replaced with fulfillment.  Worry is lifted away and peace given in its place.  What Jesus does in your life is not just remove the bad, He replaces it with a level of good your mind is ill equipped to even imagine.  This is the beauty of salvation, of the journey to perfection, of the transformation of who you were, into who you are becoming.  Your house is not made empty, but filled to the brim with the furnishings of joy and true cleanliness you could have never put there on your own.  Understanding what harmony with God’s law looks like is not reserved for you after death.  It is available to you in the here-and-now.  It is offered to you by Jesus who so longs to bring you this level of real-time salvation.  Jesus is working so hard to reconcile you back to Him, to the Father, and to the Holy Spirit.  Do you intend to play Monday Morning Quarterback with His efforts, or do you want to get into the game for yourself, and see what it looks like on the field in real-time as “your” journey unfolds?

 

Obsessed with Control

Do you believe in fate?  How about destiny?  Predetermination anyone?  Most folks I know do not like the idea of our future being beyond our control.  We make decisions.  We make choices.  So why is our fate up to debate?  If I choose to go left at the stop sign instead of right, won’t the final outcome be different, surely the short term results should be measurable.  Yet despite our ability to decide to go left at the cross roads, there are many other factors that remain out of our direct control.  Large items like the weather and gravity come to mind; but many other smaller items are equally impossible to mandate such as the behavior of others and unforeseen events.

We are faced with the unpredictable all around us, and so rather than allows ourselves the truth of the uncertainty of our continued existence, we decide to cling to an illusion of control.  The idea that despite what we are unable to control, there are still many things we can control, has greater appeal to us, than the truth of how limited our ability is to even influence an outcome, let alone control it.  Those fortunate few who have developed a strong will in their lifetimes by being able to exert a measure of control over their actions, have an even firmer grasp on the illusion of control, than those less fortunate few who realize their own behavior looks more like addiction than self-control.  But what remains in us all is a shared belief that we have at least “some measure” of control in our lives.

This thinking however, infects our spiritual desires as well.  The ideas that we somehow control our lives, invades the ideas that we should equally be able to influence our spiritual lives.  “Obedience” becomes the spiritual mantra for our conservative brothers and sisters.  Not obedience found in the converted heart, but rather obedience for the sake of obedience; sometimes presented as a prerequisite of God’s approval, or even worse, as a prerequisite of coming to God.  Indeed, scriptures are full of texts outlining why obedience is so important to us and God.  But it is our illusions of control, that lead us to believe we are simply capable of obeying or not.  Similar to the alcoholic who believes they can quit drinking anytime, but just never seem to get around to making that decision – so Christians seem to believe that they can stop sinning anytime just by choosing to do so.  And like the alcoholic, they just never seem to finally get around to making the sin-stopping decision.

Evil is like cancer, in that it spreads when it left unchecked.  Note that the identification of cancer does nothing to cure it, that would require treatment, perhaps surgery.  But just saying to the patient, “Yes, you sure have a nasty case of cancer” does nothing to actually help the patient.  Condemning cancer also does nothing to cure it.  Telling a patient … “if you had made better choices, lived a healthier life, and essentially gotten my approval, you might not have this terrible disease” does nothing to cure cancer, and may even make an enemy of the cancer patient.  Telling the patient about how “bad” the pain is, seems a bit redundant, and again does nothing at all to help the patient get better.  Ever even met a cancer patient whose first thought was not about getting better?

Yet we treat fellow Christians who are found in error, the same way.  We judge them according to our own standards of Biblical morality.  We ridicule their life choices, and blame them for the conditions they find themselves in, taking no personal accountability for their conditions.  Then instead of focusing on a cure for our erring brothers, we instead focus on the disease, all the pain they should be feeling, all the desperation, none of the hope.  The best Christians have been able to offer the world, is forgiveness after the fact, but seldom a cure to eliminate the need for forgiveness, and to live a healthier life in the first place.

But if we know this about the nature of evil, and cancer, and how they both spread – then why are they still spreading?  The answer is painful.  It is because we have chosen our illusions of control, over the truth of total dependence found in the word of our God.  In the Garden of Eden, Adam bit the forbidden fruit, and in so doing, he ceded control to Satan over this world, and over himself, and all of mankind.  It is not just the dirt, Satan gets to rule over.  It is the hearts, minds, and inclination of the people God created in this world.  From that moment on, Adam put all of mankind into slavery.  We are NOT free.  We are BOUND to the will of our own carnal natures.  If left to ourselves, we will choose to act in our own self-interest even when that conflicts with the needs of another.  What are the famous slogans we see around us – “who is looking out for number one”, “do unto others, then split”, “God helps those who help themselves”.  All designed around the idea that man must be self-focused before he can be externally focused, even in the case of spiritual concepts.

The illusion of control is a form a self-worship.  It is a form of exalting our decisions, our choices, and our supposed capabilities above even Satan or God.  We somehow think we free of our own accord to choose to follow God or not.  Even this is untrue.  Adam entered us into slavery.  Our chains prevent us from making a truly free decision.  So even in this, our God must elevate our minds, and balance the scales of our lives in order for us to get even enough to make the decision to choose Him.  Otherwise we would every one of us default to our evil natures and choose what is natural over what is not.  The idea that we control our world is as silly as believing we can cure cancer in ourselves, simply by deciding it will be so, no matter what chemistry says.

In order to treat our disease of evil, we must as Yoda says, “unlearn what you have learned”.  We must begin by embracing the truth of our existence, that we have NO control over it, we have at best the ability to influence it slightly.  Our greatest abilities to influence our existence come only in regards to how much worse we can make it, seldom in how much better.  We can elect to kill ourselves, but we cannot decide to make ourselves 100% cured over every medical ailment we suffer from.  We can elect to cut ourselves, but cannot decide to simply undo the damage to our bodies we inflict while making such a deranged and negative decision.  It is easier for me to destroy your sandcastle on the beach, than to spend the hours it takes creating one with you.

We must continue by rejecting the connections we have formed between God and patriotism.  The American Dream as most define it, is a lie.  Owning your own home, 2 cars, a spouse, 2.1 kids and a white picket fence does not define the ideals of our success, nor does it measure the contributions we are capable of making as citizens of this or any other country.  The idea that through hard work, anyone can succeed is simply false.  It takes more than just hard work.  And the ideas of self-reliance we have been taught must be rejected.  We are rather, and in fact, fully dependent on our God for our lives, our sustenance, and our success.  And by allowing our God to mold our characters into His image, we will be better prepared to sacrifice for the sake of others, including our fellow citizens in this, or any other nation.  The truth would make us better citizens and patriots of our native lands, than the lies we embrace today.  Our nation, and our world, needs those who would by example serve others and enrich the lives of others; than merely another generation out to find only the maximum fun they can derive before dying.

And finally we must reject the god of self we have allowed to creep into our Christian philosophy, and realize we are slaves bound to self, that self is the enemy of our God.  We must begin to see that “I” truly am my own worst enemy in the spiritual realm.  We must embrace the words of Paul when he writes … “I die daily”.  This is not a rerun of an old SouthPark episode where they kill Kenny every week.  This is rather the mantra of Christians who understand that self is the enemy of the entirety of God’s government, and “service to others” is the only real heroic aspiration.  We must submit our will to our God each day.  We must give back to God the life we wake up to each morning, and ask that He alone be in charge over it.  To do with our lives as He alone wishes.  To make any changes He sees fit.  To use us in His own good service as He would envision, but not merely as it is convenient to us.  We must ask to “want” what He “wants”.  We must ask that He teach us how to “love” like He “loves”.  In this our earliest morning prayer, we are able to echo the words of Paul and join him in dying daily.

To witness true obedience in our lives, these are the “choices” we must make.  It begins with the abandonment of lies and illusions of control, it ends with promised work of the Messiah in our hearts and minds.  This is the cure of cancer and evil we have sought and has so long eluded us.  This is the promise we can cling to without reserve.  This is the way that Christianity can once again return to the prominence it experienced in the Apostolic days.  For in those times, as in this age, we must focus completely on Christ as the ONLY solution to our lives.  For it is He alone who can rid us of the evil we embrace, and He alone who can further eliminate the natural inclinations that drive us.  It is Christ who can finally and fully set us free.