A New Freedom

It has been nearly two and one half years since my last post for this blog. Life changes and that has included my life as well. My last entry was soon after my mother at the age of ninety-three passed away. Since then my life experiences have included celebrating my seventy-first birthday, drawing my first Social Security check, retiring from my life vocation as a Christian minister, and beating cancer for a second time.

Now I look at life from a different perspective on freedom. For most days I decide when I get up and when I go to bed, when I eat meals or if I eat at all. Meetings are few and far in between, and most are occasions for voluntary participation. It seems the only required ones are the occasional doctors’ appointments and my volunteer work at non-profits.

 There is, however, one major stressor. That is accountability. Does that sound strange? I have a new source of accountability. It is neither an organization nor a time clock. It is neither a human boss nor a set of laws. I am accountable to my sense of self-worth.

 In John 8:32 Jesus said, “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." We all know we are never truly free. Laws in the natural world limit us in one way or another as do political laws. If we intend to stay alive, growing older is one of the big ones. Freedom has to be seen in a different light. Part of that different light is who will hold us accountable.

God has said and shown I am worth the life of his Son Jesus Christ sacrificed upon a Roman cross, the innocent for the guilty. In that act of love I see myself having tremendous worth, and therefore I must live a life that reflects that worth.

In the remaining years of my life, however many that may be, my love for God must reflect that self-worth. My love for mankind must reflect that sense of self-worth. My love for myself and how I care for myself must reflect that sense of self-worth. This includes not only caring for my physical being, but also being careful about what enters my eyes and ears and then into my heart.

God will hold me accountable for the commitment I have made to him. It will shape the use of my time and material resources. It is a commitment to be revealed in my roles as husband, father, grandfather, friend, and as a member of the Body of Christ.

The changes that have occurred over the last two and a half years have made me even more aware of how I must make decisions based upon who I am and not who others think I am. Always that self-worth is based upon what God thinks of me. There provides me with true freedom.

John 8:36 “If the Son sets you free, then you will be really free.”

The Age-Old Game of “Pass the Buck”

In many ways this is a game similar to “The Gift of Blame”. When we’re not sure what the right decision would be, we leave it for someone else to decide. We don’t want to take responsibility for a potential wrong decision. This might be seen as wise. In reality we are letting someone else make the decision and be held accountable for the results.

 The active way to do this is hand the decision to someone else. Tell them they are blessed with the authority to make the decision, and in unspoken words tell them they are responsible for any mistakes. The passive way is to leave the decision on your desk until the deadline passes, and by default the decision is made. I’m really good at the latter. In fact this is such an acceptable way of making decisions we have it built into our executive branch legal system. A law can sit on the governor’s desk long enough, and it will become law without a signature.

How old is the game of “Pass the Buck”? It’s old enough to be seen in the Bible. The case in point is the Apostle Paul as we discover in the book of Acts, chapter 23.

Act 23:26-30 "Claudius Lysias to His Excellency, Governor Felix: Greetings. The Jews seized this man and were about to kill him. I learned that he is a Roman citizen, so I went with my soldiers and rescued him. I wanted to know what they were accusing him of, so I took him down to their Council. I found out that he had not done a thing for which he deserved to die or be put in prison; the accusation against him had to do with questions about their own law. And when I was informed that there was a plot against him, at once I decided to send him to you. I have told his accusers to make their charges against him before you."

Lysias wouldn’t make the decision about what to do with Paul. Paul was a Jew which made him of little importance to the Romans. Paul was a Roman citizen which made him extremely important to the Romans. What did Lysias do? He passed the buck. The same thing happens again at the end of chapter 24 between two Roman representatives.

How often do we do this in our personal lives? How often do we do it in our churches? Taking responsibility for making a decision can be a scary thing. When we claim the authority to make a decision, we are also putting ourselves in the position of being held accountable for the results. That is not always a comfortable situation.

Asking for advice upon which to make a decision is a wise move. Taking time to weigh all options is also wise if sufficient time is available. The bottom line is someone has to make decisions. That’s why they get paid the megabucks. Those who refuse to make decisions stay on the bottom rung and do what someone tells them. It’s safe, it’s comfortable, and it’s nearly free from the pressure of accountability.

Daily we must make decisions some of which involve significant consequences. What kind of education will we seek? What kind of job will we take? Will we marry and if so whom? Will we uproot our family to take a different job? How will we handle our material resources? How will we prepare for retirement and end of life events? Sometimes it would be so nice if someone else made the decisions for us, but alas.

In the church how much does not get done because someone believes a decision is not necessary? A more common statement is, “That’s not my job.” That’s called passing the buck by default. It’s not my responsibility so no one can hold me responsible.

God made the decision to send his Son to be our Savior. He took the responsibility. He paid the price. We are the recipients of the divine love. We are also recipients of the responsibility to pass the love on, the best kind of passing the buck.

Evil Is Real

I plead ignorance, thankfully, as to the history of evil among mankind. The story of the first man and woman deciding to disobey God (Genesis 3) is good enough for me to speak of when evil came into our midst. Since then we are left with the simple statement occurring at the end of the book of Judges (Judges 21:25) to explain why things have turned out the way they have. Choosing what is right and wrong has been in the hands of the individual from the beginning.

All the blogs, all the news articles and commentaries, and all the psychological profiles created in the last few days will not remove the grief, the agony, the emptiness, the anger, and the desire for revenge felt by the families of Newtown, Connecticut. All of our analyzing and hypothesizing will not bring one single innocent life back to the loving arms of its family. This terrible tragedy becomes another statistic in the history of evil’s destructive power.

Most of us remember all too well the Virginia Tech Massacre. I had never heard of the Bath School Disaster in the Bath Township of Michigan before now. Yet it remains the worst act of school violence in American history when 38 school children and four adults were killed by a man filled with rage against his community. Evil knows no bounds.

In the early American West, laws were established to stop horse and cattle rustling. The penalty was often death by hanging. Yet people continued to steal horses and cattle. Today 33 states have the death penalty (deathpenaltyinfo.org). Nine out of the top ten cities recording the highest rate of violent crimes in our country exist in those states (Forbes Magazine). The threat of violence rarely prevents violence.

Passing more laws may create a climate in which a more violent and authoritarian response to crime is permitted by the citizenry, but more laws rarely reduce evil in a society. In our Judea-Christian history beginning with the start of human relationships, God’s forbiddance to touch the Tree of Knowledge did not keep the first man and woman from choosing to follow their own desires. The Ten Commandments and accompanying clarifications (Exodus-Deuteronomy) did not stop the Israelites from following another system of morality.

As I grew up in rural Kentucky, our school recited the pledge to the American flag, read the Bible, and had a prayer each day. That did not eliminate the need for our principal to sit on the front steps of the school each Halloween with a shotgun in his hand to prevent local “citizens” from coming by and breaking out the windows with rocks and guns. The façade of school morality does not stop school violence.

The Old Testament reveals a progression of God’s efforts to bring his wayward people into an understanding of his nature and will. The Ten Commandments are recorded on tablets of stone (Exodus 20, 32, 34). In Jeremiah 31 the prophet tells the people the law would no longer be external, but it would be written on their hearts as the original commandments were carved in stone. The prophet Ezekiel says God will remove the stony heart and replace it with a heart of flesh made alive by his Spirit (Ezekiel 36).

This thought is reemphasized in the New Testament in the Person of Jesus Christ, Emmanuel-God with us, as he tells his disciples just before his death (John 14) he would not leave them alone. In the Person of the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, he would live within them. He would guide them as they sought to fulfill the greatest law of all, the law of love.

Laws, an armed citizenry, prayer and Bible reading in schools will not stop evil. Evil is sin. We are all guilty of sin (Romans 3:23). The only answer is the power of Jesus Christ within us (Romans 6:23) and our willingness to forgive those who sin against us. Perhaps the final answer to evil in our world is contained in one of those last statements of Christ from the cross, “Father, forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing.” Luke 23:34

Who Needs the Truth?

I’m glad I was developing the idea for this entry before the election. I can say with all honesty that the victors in our elections did not affect the content. I felt this way before the results came in. I still feel this way.

The Greek dramatist Aeschylus (525 BC – 456 BC) is quoted as saying, “In war the first casualty is the truth.” Political campaigns are not what we first think of when we hear the word war, but it is a definite conflict of wills and words. They involve offense and defense. They always involve high emotions and lots of pain, mental and emotional. We hope in our free country they never involve physical violence.

Yet there are casualties, and truth is the first. I have been voting in presidential elections since 1968. Never have I witnessed such campaign rhetoric as I have heard in this one. Locally we here in North Carolina were spared the extremes in our gubernatorial race. The candidates addressed issues and not each other. They kept the campaign focused on the needs of North Carolinians and not on the personality traits of their opponent. It was a most gentlemanly contest.

This could not be said for the national elections, especially the presidency. The truth was a victim from the very beginning, and neither side had a monopoly on crude and useless language. I got tired of hearing the concluding statement in most ads, “and I approved this message”. My first thought was generally, “You ought to be ashamed of approving that message. Did you watch it before it was sent out?”

The truth is all true. That sounds weird until you hear people saying things they consider mostly true or half true or containing some truth. Such statements are not made to convey truth, but to deceive. A statement that is not all true is false. Yet how much of our conversations involve statements that we know are not all true, but we hope the listener will accept it all as truth.

That is what sent my emotions through the ceiling so often during this campaign. Half the story was told. Half the statement was used. The context was ignored so as to change the intended meaning. The campaign was a war, and truth was its first and primary casualty.

Have we reached the point in our country that not only is such rhetoric accepted, but even expected? Have we decided that in a process of deciding who will lead our country that truth is not an essential element? Have we become so amoral that anything goes when it comes to convincing the public our side is right and the other guy’s is wrong?

What is truth? Pilate asked Jesus that question (John 18). The gospel writer had prepared his reader throughout his book to see that the answer was not a philosophical statement but a Person. Jesus had said a few chapters earlier (John 14) he was “the way, the truth, and the life.” An enlightening study is to read the Gospel of John, underline every time the words "true" and "truth" are used, and ponder their context.

Truth is a Person and our use of the truth should reflect the nature of that Person. He is compassionate. The truth should not be used to hurt. He seeks the best for others. Truth should build others up. He is perfect. Truth should lead people into constant improvement. He is God Incarnate, Emmanuel, God with us. Truth should point us to God, his nature, and his will for our lives.

Truth should do these things, but only if we think the truth is of any value other than when we use it to support our agenda.

The Cost of Controversy

One of the most awesome statements of divine wisdom I find in the words of Jesus are "...not to give offense to them,..." (Matthew 17). Reading the gospels does not reveal in Jesus an individual who worried about causing offense, irritation, or hurt feelings when he felt it appropriate. Even those who vehemently disagreed with him recognized that he spoke from the heart and did not mince words. How did Jesus know when it was time to "shoot straight and let the bullets fly" and when to decide "this is not a hill worth dying on"? When was a controversy worth the conflict sure to follow and when was it not worth giving offense? How much simpler life would be for us if we knew the answer 100% of the time!

Jesus' standards though high were simple. Glorify and honor the Father in all that you think, say, and do. That sounds easy enough. Jesus was perfect at the process. Even when he might have preferred a different path as in Gethsemane, he still put obedience and honoring his Father first in his decisions and his actions. The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) stands as a great statement of the ways we can honor the Father in our daily lives. Jesus' response to questions raised by the religious rulers of his day also reveal his perception of how to glorify the Father. (Matthew 12; 15; 19; 22)

The two Great Commandments are described by Jesus as a summary of all the law and the prophets. (Matthew 22) We don't have much of a problem in understanding what Jesus meant by the first and greatest commandment: love God with your total being. Of course following through has always been limited by our sinful and self-focused natures. Loving something other than God as the focus of our lives or even in the momentary decision is a constant problem. It is the second commandment about loving our neighbor as we love ourselves that gives us fits.

We make jokes about it. "Love your neighbor, but don't get caught." We try to qualify it under such phrases as "tough love". We even try to compartmentalize our expressions of love by "loving the sinner, but hating the sin." (guilty as charged!) Are any of these wrong? I would avoid the relationship with your neighbor that your safety would demand be kept secret. The other two expressions we often try to live out in our dealings with others.

In both cases the effort is being made to express a love that includes acceptance, the opportunity for forgiveness, and a realization there is a right and a wrong choice being identified. Anytime we identify a right choice and a not so right choice in a situation made by someone else, we are called upon to decide how we will respond in love. We must love our neighbor as we love ourselves. It is the only way we can allow the Father's forgiving love shown to us to flow through us to others who also need it.

Jesus made his decisions about controversy based upon the Great Commandments which have their goal of honoring and glorifying the Father. He recognized that decisions pertaining to the law had right answers and wrong answers. He also knew that not all legal decisions had any bearing on how we might glorify the Father. It was these questions that Jesus disdained to give the importance needed to raise them in a discussion.

There is a cost to controversy. How high a price should we be willing to pay? If God is honored when we take a stand, then the price we are called to pay is worth it, even required of us. If God sees the controversy as of significance to man alone, then the answer is to seek peace, go catch the fish, and pay the tax. The Pharisees saw the tax as important. Jesus did not. Love for God and fellow man were not a part of the equation. Causing a stir just wasn't worth the price.

Christian Tension

A recent conversation brought up the idea that Christians live with the tension between grace which they cannot provide and divine law over which they they have no control. Grace has no meaning without the presence of law to define right and wrong. Neither can law provide a perspective of hope without the presence of grace, the idea of a second chance. Christians must live with this tension because of the need to but who continue to fail to keep the demands of the law and must live with a dependency upon grace.

In the secular world there is a parallel concern between personal freedom and government control. A free society must be defined by the freedom exercised by its citizenry. Its freedom is maintained, however, by the control its government is able to provide. A free citizenry is under the constant tension of deciding how much control it can give its government to maintain the freedom demanded by its citizenry.

How much control will we as Christians give our Creator-God in determining the lifestyle we his creation will follow? How much freedom must we demand in order to be able to respond to our Creator-God as independent thinking individuals? Surely the answers to these questions bring in the awesome concerns of the sovereignty of God, the freedom of man, the consequences of actions, and the inherent power of anyone to decide them.

Though we may struggle with these questions for a lifetime, each day we must make decisions based upon our limited understanding of their interplay. We are limited by our inability to comprehend the infinity that describes the God we say we worship and to whom we are called to give obedience. We are limited by our own mortality and the sinfulness that we have placed upon it. We must make decisions each day based upon an inability to understand the "omni's" of the God we follow and our own limitations as imperfect creatures. It is in this tension that we are forced to deal with issues related to human freedom and divine sovereignty.

In our republic we make laws to protect our freedoms. We seek to play the role of both creator and creature. We seek to create that under which we will require ourselves to live. We govern ourselves. We control ourselves. We control the extent of our freedoms. We freely assert our self-control. In the process we try to determine what will be the guiding principle that determines the laws we make to control our freedoms.

We reject the idea of a theocracy. In doing so we join the ancient Israelites who said they would have a king as did all the other nations around them. They rejected a Divine ruler who spoke through his judges and prophets (I Samuel 8). In doing so we join the crowds led by the Jewish rulers who boldly told Pontius Pilate they had no king but Caesar (John 19) in the midst of their demand that Jesus be crucified.

Rejecting a theocracy, however, is not the same as rejecting a moral basis for law. The matter only focuses upon what moral system we will choose. In the political realm that system will be determined by our grasp of the tension between law and freedom. For the Christian seeking to live in a fallen world, it will be the understanding of the relationship between law and grace.

If our Creator declares laws based upon his nature, then those who claim servanthood before him are obligated to follow those laws. When failure comes, consequences follow and with that grace may also be found. When a nation passes laws based upon its understanding of an orderly and desirable society, then its citizenry are called upon to follow those laws or face the consequences and find at the same time that a second chance might be offered. In neither of these situations, however, is the law abrogated, but it may mediated.

Whether theocracy or otherwise, laws exist to guide a society. Those laws must be based upon an underlying system that defines right and wrong. Who determines that system will reveal who is the ruling body for that society. In our republic there are checks and balances. With God there are no checks and balances. There is only his nature and the consequences of our actions based upon obedience and disobedience - and also that thing called grace.

Four Big Words

A phrase that has come from days gone by is "the power behind the throne". The meaning is revealed as we consider that the one who sits on the throne may have the titular authority but does not or cannot exercise the power to accomplish his will. The king may be said to have the authority to run his kingdom, but if there is a second personality who makes the actual decisions and sees to it that they are carried out, then the true power is out of sight or "behind the throne.

Power and authority are not always in the same hands. Likewise responsibility and accountability at times are left to fend for themselves in the process of accomplishing tasks especially if they are separated from the first two concepts. We may all have experienced at one time the frustration that arises when we are given the responsibility to accomplish a task only to be denied the authority and power to guide it to completion.

Authority without power is a mockery. Power without authority often becomes self-centered and cruel. Power without accountability is synonymous to a dictatorship. Responsibility without power is frustration. Responsibility without accountability will often result in nothing accomplished.

Relationships and social designs are perhaps often, even always, defined by how these four words interplay. As soon as two individuals meet, these four words take on a role in the relationship. Cain asked if he was expected to be his brother's keeper. He had already exercised the power to kill him even though he had not been given the authority to do so. Now he was asking if he was responsible for his brother and would be expected to be accountable for whatever had happened to him.

The Model Prayer of Jesus leads one to see a recognition that power and authority belong first and foremost to the heavenly Father. The self-focused requests point to an acknowledgement that daily needs must be met by the hands of the Father. At the same time we are responsible for and will be held accountable for the way we are willing to forgive those who have sinned against us.

The individual's use of power must be controlled by the understanding that all power ultimately resides in the hands of God. He has that power by virtue of his nature, who he is, and with that power comes the authority to use it. The power and authority that individuals seek to exercise are by permission only and will come under the divine judgment as he holds us responsible for what he has placed in our hands and will hold us accountable for their use.

Our freedom as individuals in general and as Christians in particular must be seen in this light. We are free to act but our freedom both in the present and in eternity is limited by the nature of God and we will be held accountable for digression from that nature. We can use our freedom to live and make decisions being guided by that nature or we can use our freedom to live contrary to it. Having the power to do either does not remove the fact that we are responsible for our actions and will be held accountable.

Therefore it is of critical importance that we understand the nature of God, his own power and authority, and the grounds by which he will hold his creation responsible for its actions. We will be held accountable. Making up our own sets of rules will never change God and his plan for his creation. He will declare the last judgment.