“The Word became flesh and made
His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only,
who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
-John 1:14
“That’s ridiculous!” was the cry
of the crowd.
“That man should respect
boundaries. I have no problem with religion, but when someone tries to talk to
me about it is when I get annoyed. Stop trying to shove it down my throat,”
said one highly opinionated and cynical gentleman.
But then, like a sudden calm
before the storm, an eerie silence swept over the room. With shifty eyes the
friends shot glances at one another. Yet while they were exchanging looks, not
one of them dared to glance my direction. They were fully aware of the elephant
in the room- that I was a Christian. It would probably be too much of your
dismay that I did not respond to the conversation. It was not right at the
moment for me to sling my convictions around like stones defending against an
attack. I was outnumbered by people feeding off each other with their shared negativity.
But half of me sought to figure
out where they got this notion that Christians are out there trying to shove
religion down their throats with force. From where did this hostility arise? It
wasn’t a hard question to answer. Flip on the news and you see headlines about
Christians’ judgmental antics, but rarely do you see anything about their love.
I can just envision the newscaster yelling to our face, “And in other news,
those crazy Christians are at it again saying that God desires that we need to
kill all the gays, fornicators, adulterers, and dirty politicians!” What? Since
when did Jesus say that?
The problem is that with
Christianity there is always this question of how we are to interact with the
world. It is right to say that we, as disciples of Jesus, are set apart from
the world, but where do we go from that? Often the only Christians that get
publicized are those that take this question to the extreme and give their own
conception of the ideal standard and place that over the world. But the true
disciple realizes that the standard is not to be found in the self, but in
Christ. As disciples we are conforming to His likeness (Romans 8:29), and that
is what we should strive for.
Here is my interpretation of how
to interact with the world:
We are not to lift ourselves
higher than we are to look down on the world. We are not to forsake our
convictions by tolerating everything. We are to strive for Christ who exists as
the perfect balance between flesh and Spirit.
In John 1:14 it says that The Word
became flesh. Jesus Christ, in all His perfection, bound himself within flesh,
yet was still God. He stood for us as the new standard to a depraved and
desolate world, the perfect balance between flesh and Spirit. The verse above
says He was full of grace and truth. Being full of grace and truth is
synonymous with the balance between flesh and Spirit because Jesus needed grace
to redeem the flesh on one side and then on the opposite side needed the truth
of the Spirit to speak direction and vision to a lost people.
How do we apply this? Well you
often get perversions of the Gospel and false teachings from distortions of
grace and truth. For instance, ministries that preach that we need to be
concerned about all this political and social activism has an overemphasis of
spirit leading them to believe that they have the truth of God when in reality,
through their perversion, they are preaching their own truth. With this truth,
there is no grace for anyone on the outside. But then on the opposite side of
the spectrum we see ministries saying that everything is permissible, much like
the church in Corinth. They tolerate anything and everything, but without any
guiding truth from the Spirit, their church merely becomes a social club that
gives them an excuse to gather once a week to gossip, slander, etc. etc. The
extremes are the ones that get publicized to my friends mentioned above.
Yet we find Christ in the middle,
with the fullness of grace in one hand and the fullness of truth in the other.
Being the perfect balance between flesh and Spirit, He gave us the standard
with which we are to approach the world.
But then comes the question on
the side of grace: how tolerant are we to be before we become too tolerant or
too intolerant? Where is the balance? Just consider this: Christianity is NOT a
tolerant religion. It is an intolerant religion in the sense that its values do
not function in the operations of this world. If Christianity were a “tolerant”
religion, there would be no impetus to preach the Gospel. The Gospel would
merely become pillows in a coffin meant to comfort a decaying corpse. It would
affirm all the actions of the world. But the fact that the Gospel inspires
change shows that it is not tolerant to the state of this world. So the answer
to the question is this: everything that affirms Jesus Christ as the truth. Jesus
Christ didn’t say, “I am the WAY, the TRUTH, and the LIFE” (John 14:6) for nothing. He said this
with the desire that we filter our life, our goals, our values, and our
direction in this world through THE TRUTH of Him. Anything that affirms the truth
is true, and anything that doesn’t is simply false.
But then this leads us to the
other question, on the side of truth: How are we to bear this truth before we
become very dogmatic and hostile with it? Think about it like this: the truth
is like dangerous material in a chemical plant. You handle it with caution,
discernment, and gentleness for it is very powerful. If you go throwing it
around, it ceases to become truth and just blows up in your face. Look to how
Jesus handled the truth. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said this, “The love of Christ for
the sinner is in itself the condemnation of sin and expression of His extreme
hatred of sin.” Jesus handled the truth with love and care, not forsaking it by
hurling it around to obliterate the people. Think about it like this: if
someone throws a stone at you, you’re naturally going to want to throw it back.
That’s what happens when you force truth upon people. But when you treasure and
love the truth it is like passing precious pearls. The receiving party does not
dare retaliate in a hostile manner, but rather, feels humbled accepting your
treasure. That’s how Jesus handled the truth.
You see what I did with the
questions of grace and truth? There is a relationship between the two. Grace is
only formed upon finding the truth and the truth is only conveyed through
grace. They cannot exist in the right manner outside of each other. They exist,
to us, perfectly bound together in the figure of Jesus Christ.
Never find yourself in a position
where you misrepresent or pervert Christianity through a willing flesh and weak
spirit. That where most miscomprehensions come from: people who desire their
own ambitions outside of the truth of the Spirit conveyed through His Holy
Word. They will with the flesh and their own weak spirit. But we know that is
not how things are to be. Flesh and spirit were meant to be perfectly married
together when we, fleshly humans, commit ourselves to the True Spirit, Jesus
Christ.
0 comments:
Post a Comment