Human?

So, what do we do with our humanity? If God demands perfection then is all that is "human" wrong? That seems to lead to aestheticism.

I am just trying to find where they ground is between hedonism and grace-less legalism. I think it might be this little tiny strip that we only find when we pass over it while switching from one end of the spectrum to the other.

Origins of Sin Management

Alright, so the question is, "Is this sin-free expectancy purely a man-made, self-imposed mechanism?"

To the discussion I will quote several scriptures, which, thoughout the years, have been used as passages indicating that we should strive to be sin-free. All are from 1st John (Tim knows where this is going).

First, 1 John 2:1 - "My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One."

Second, 1 John 3:6 "No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him."

Third, 1 John 3:9 "No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God."

I have various opinions concerning the meanings of these verses that are still in formation, but at a cursory, context-less glance, it seems John the Elder is advocating a sin-free existence as evidence that we are followers of Christ.

How about that to kick-start the discussion?

D

The Box of Sin Management

I don't have very good answers to your questions. But here's what I do know. Its very easy for me to get my attention caught up into a life of what I've come to know as "sin management". That basically is where I really have my eye on the ball of sin. From a spiritual perspective, it feels like I am living in some kind of box. I'm focused on doing the "do's" and avoiding the "don'ts".

At times, I wonder if I am so focused on the sin, that I miss out on what Jesus describes as one of His purposes of coming to the earth: to bring us abundant life. Its hard for me to feel the gentle breezes of the Spirit when I'm caught in the box. Its hard for me to enjoy the rhythms of the waltz of life.

We Evangelicals are quick to assert that following Christ is really not a "religious" experience, but a "relational" experience. But so much of our self-talk as a community undermines that assertion.

Question on Expectation

After reading a question arises for me:

Is the urge/motivation/conviction to head towards the "sin-free" end of the spectrum from God or from man? I know you guys have felt that expectation that you must do what is right and anything less is not acceptable. In thinking about it a little deeper my question becomes three-fold:

1. Is this common? Does everyone feel that?
2. Is this from a warped perception of God's mercy and grace? Maybe he is totally cool with us being, oh, I don't know, human?
3. Is this expectation not from God at all but from the mentality that Dave was talking about that puts leader right up there next to Jesus, the sin-less man?

If the answer is "Yes" then what do we do with that. Do we teach that sin is ok? Probably not. Do we teach that fallen-ness is ok? Possibly.

When I first really met God I was in a really Pentecostal church that has the idea of "backsliding." For those of you unfamiliar with the term I understand it as the idea that the line separating heaven from hell is very narrow. If you sin in thought or in action you are officially "backsliding." You are sliding right back into hell. The crazy part of it is that you can backsliding and not even know it. Or you can backslide at some really inopportune times. You can be driving down the road, completely holy and sanctified, and then all of a sudden, a car comes out of nowhere. You speak some choice words and are now are "backsliding." Then you die and go hell.

And that is unfortunate.

I don't want that mentality at all. I don't think that is from God. But I don't really know where the scriptural alternative lies because of the fog of culture.

Maybe a sinful life ending in purgatory where we are cleansed isn't such a bad concept. But that is a whole different discussion.

Fountain of Grace

I have read your entry a couple of times, and have been reflecting on it. I am formulating a response that carries forward the idea of how attractive God finds it when we come with a heart of humility. Admitting our own brokenness instead of trying to put on a good face. And how that's what activates His soothing fountain of grace. And how that re-energizes us to offer that grace to others.

Key verse from Luke 7 about how the man who was forgiven the large sum loves the one who pardoned him exponentially more than the one who was forgiven the pittance.

The ironic truth is that we have all been pardoned the $100 million. Its only when we come honest about it that we are able to fully experience the overwhelming head over heals love for the God who is doing everything He can to woo us to Himself. The Romance of the Ages.

Perfection Paradox

Great first post!

Well-worn words roll off my tongue, "For by grace are you saved, through faith". I smile, reveling in the notion of undeserved redemption offered freely by God. And, to my denominational upbringing, a smug "and this not from yourselves - it is the gift of God" (a pause for the finale) "not by works, so that no one can boast." Applause! Applause! I bow.

A metaphorical "finger" to the stuffy Right who plagued my childhood. A shout-out to cheap grace? Let's hope not. Oh man, and God LOVES those Right-folk. Wow. I suppose my attitude needs to be checked, and now I understand the dilemma.

All this was staged to demonstrate the reality of the "perfection paradox". No extremely conservative religious folk were harmed in the writing of the previous paragraph. The perfection paradox is simply this: I want to live for Christ. I sin, which makes me less like Christ. So, I try not to sin. But I still sin anyway, which makes me even less like Christ. As I feel the needle on the "Christ-like" gauge dipping lower and lower, I begin to ask questions like "Am I really a Christian" and "Do I really believe any of this?"

And now for the paradox: None of this internal struggle matters, because we are saved by grace, not by the things we do.

So I know that grace is the answer. I know God's free gift was extended to me along with everyone else. I accepted it, and now my sin is no longer reckoned against me. But I still have this desire to be more perfect. But what am I supposed to DO? I mean, don't I have to DO something?

I picture the whole thing as a continuum in my head. It looks something like this:

Cheap Grace-----------------------------------Sin-Free Expectation

I have met folks on both ends of this continuum.

A friend of mine once espoused the "cheap grace" doctrine. It did not matter what he did as long as he meant well and had a roughly God-ward trajectory in his living. All of this was because of grace, and a longstanding bitter wound inflicted by purveyors of a theologically legalistic lifestyle.

I remember being in his room one day, and he had just said something terribly offensive to me, so I told him what he had said was terribly offensive to me. He looked at me and said "If the things I say offend you, then that is your problem. I speak my heart and my mind." It dawned on me, as I stared at my friend in utter disbelief at the profound selfishness of the statement just made, that the logical furthest application of "cheap grace" is "it does not matter what I do". Without much effort, one can extend to "It does not matter how my actions affect others", and suddenly we have something that has so little in common with being Christ-like that the only resemblance remaining is that it came out of the mouth of a man, who just so happened to be molded in the image of his Maker.

Likewise, the "Sin-Free Expectation" extreme is represented. My denominational upbringing called for the leaders of the church to be "pure" and "righteous" men (sorry ladies - no women allowed). Any expression of personal sin was viewed as weakness which rendered your leadership qualifications questionable and would likely result in disciplinary action. So the leaders strove to live as close to the "sin-free" zone as possible. Grace was acknowledged as a theological concept supported in Scripture, but it was really best to play it safe and just don't sin. Or if you do sin, don't tell anyone about it.

We know now that a leadership model that suppresses genuine expression and allows no outlet for accountability is best described as "toxic". But they didn't seem to know that back in my childhood days, and it still appears to be a prevalent viewpoint.

My mother is still in the church I grew up in, and she still holds to many of these thoughts. I love her dearly, so don't get this wrong. I told her about my accountability partner, and briefly explained the concept. She looked at me with concern and said, "Why do you need that?" The concept that a leader would need to be accountable to someone for spiritual matters was foreign to her. The subtext of the discussion was "David, what problems are you having that you feel you need a confessor?"

There is no wonder that so many conservative leaders in the church have fallen. It is an inevitable outcome of an unrealistic expectation to not sin. The pressure must be immense to maintain the swagger of the undaunted spotless hero. Any crack in the armor, and the pressure causes the whole thing to explode. I can imagine a situation where it would feel better to fail, to pass into ignominy, so as to be free of the ten-million-ton burden of sin-free expectation on your back.

And so the perfection paradox rolls on, unanswered. Obviously, the gold-star answer is that the middle path is the way to enlightenment. Cheap grace is empty and can barely be identified as belonging to species "Christ-like". Sin-Free Expectation is slow death and utterly demoralizing. The answer must lie closer to the center of the continuum.

But this realization doesn't make it any easier to live. At any given time I will find myself inexorably drawn toward one poll of the continuum or the other.

Attempts at right-living can be exhausting. I like to think of it as a computer that has too many monitor programs running. The virus program is monitoring for viruses, and the ad-ware program is monitoring for unwanted ad-ware, and the firewall program is monitoring for external attacks, and iTunes is monitoring waiting to tell your mini-store what mediocre single you should buy this week. And on and on and on. And the net result is that your computer gets slower and slower and slower until it eventually grinds to blue screen and you reboot.

MAC and PC disputes aside, monitoring for sin is much the same way. If we are always watching for the sins we commit, a couple things can happen. 1) You can get really weary and worn down, which in the long run can expose you to even greater attacks. 2) You spend all your time focused on your sin, so you do not get relational mojo from your friends, or a spiritual recharge from God, or even a simple physical recharge from taking your Sabbath (whatever that may be for you).

On the other hand, turning all the monitors off means the viruses, ad-ware, attackers and sub-par pop music will make into your system. I think you know what these guys represent.

So maybe the balance looks something like this: You have all of those programs installed, but you don't have them running all of the time. They aren't constantly requiring resources to run. You simply check in with them on frequent, but not too frequent, intervals to check how things are running.

In practical example, you have time for prayer and meditation set aside every day. You are preventive in praying for God's blessing and grace over your day, but you also maintain by checking in at the end of the day to see how things went.

Now, for those of you testing my metaphor, we do need to know if a virus got through during the day, but you really need to make sure your virus detector is strong enough to keep out the really bad ones without you having to do anything. Here's what I mean: If you check in at the end of the day and you gossiped against someone maliciously - confess it and cut that one loose. However, if you check at the end of the day and realize you robbed a bank at some point after lunch, well, there may be deeper issues.

I fear I have strayed too far into sounding like an advice column, so I will now quickly wrap-up and make my final cliff-hanger point.

The middle path (the "Radical Middle" as it was dubbed by the Vineyard folk) is the place where we try to exist, but it is not easy. At any time we can be pulled into unrealistic expectations of being sin-free, or we can lose our grip and slide into cheap grace. Both extremes are to be vigorously avoided.

In closing, I find many scriptures that support my love of the fact that Jesus accepts us not based on performance but based on grace. "God looks on the heart". "Go into your closet and pray". But there are some passages that seem to indicate some expectations, although cryptic, being placed on man. As a cliff-hanger, here is the excerpt from Jesus' wedding banquet parable in Matthew 22. After the king deals with those who rejected his invitation, he comes to his son's wedding banquet and the following takes place...

"But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. 'Friend,' he asked, 'how did you get in here without wedding clothes?' The man was speechless. Then the king told the attendants, 'Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' For many are invited, but few are chosen."

It seems some requirement is made on behalf of those who are invited.

That's it for tonight - time for bed!

D

The Pedestal Life... aka Christian Perfection

Recently I have been struggling with the idea of Christian perfection. The idea that if you are Godly enough you will not really sin. And the idea that if you really are a good Christian and a good Christian leader then perfection comes easy.

I am definitely not perfect in any way. God shows me that ever single day. If I ever think I am humbly reaching that state of perfection he makes sure all doubt is removed. Usually the removal process has something to do with choice words and/or restraint over a particular finger in direct reference to the car in in front of me that seems to have some confusion over which petal is for the gas. Or sometimes events that are a lot more drastic. I will be going along thinking that I am doing pretty well in my walk with God. I think I have things generally figured out and I am not all together bad. Then God lets me know that I am still human and I still sin. I am still capable of simultaneously really loving God and really screwing up. The problem is that when that occurs I don’t enter into a place where God can help me grow but rather I feel I must pull myself up, clean myself off, and then re-approach God.

Why do I feel like I must be perfect before God and man. Is it pride? Is it perfectionism with a little bit of OCD? Do other people feel like that or are they ok with just being a faulty, sinful human. What is it?

I think part of my issue is that somewhere early in my walk towards God there was a verse in scripture that was branded into my soul. Matthew 5:48: “Be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect.” Seems like a nice sentiment, perfection is good, God is good, being perfect and Godly and all that is great, right?

That verse totally screwed me up. In the past 11 years of my life as a believer the idea that we must be something good, we much be clean and shiny and perfect to please God has become one of my main unconscious beliefs. It is not something that I have read in a doctrinal statement or picked up in a bible study but rather it is a concept that has grown within me as I have grown in leadership within the church. Maybe I shouldn’t say the verse itself messed me up because it probably isn’t the scripture itself. It is the interpretation I learned of that verse that really screwed me up. It was the church trying to superimpose that verse over faulty, messed up, people that really screwed me up.

God says, “come as you are” but the church says “appearances matter.” God says, “while you were still a sinner, when you didn’t know me or love me, I loved you.” The church says that your actions must be Godly or your probably not really “saved.” I suppose in some ways I have stepped up this role by taking a few steps up the pedestal of leadership in a my church. But I have yet to determine when, on that staircase, human nature ceases and divine perfection of the sinless leader who has “it” all together begins.

Apparently I missed that step.

So, in trying to get a grasp on perfection as stated in scripture I wanted to take a look at what this verse really says. Being the nerd that I am I looked it up in the Greek and spend a lovely evening doing a word study. I will spare you the details but this is my translation of the verse. (If you have any doubt about my translation abilities keep in mind that I am well qualified after an entire 13 weeks of Greek.) This is what I came up with:

“Therefore, you will be complete (mature) as your father in heaven is complete (mature).”

The word “teleios” that is translated as “perfect” is actually more like mature or “having reached it’s end.” In other verses like 1 Cor. 14:20 or Phil 3:15 it is translated as “mature.” Also, there is one more crucial difference. Telios is first in the future middle tense and the second time around (in reference to God) in the present active indicative tense. We are going to be while God is.

The verse never says “Be perfect now.” That makes me feel a little better.

I should make the disclaimer that I am not pushing the idea of what Bonheoffer calls “cheap grace.” Basically, do whatever you want because God has mercy and grace for it. I think we should seek after God the best we can. We should attempt to love him with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength. But I think what we are doing is merely an attempt. To say that by our attempts we can be perfect seems somewhat absurd when you think about it, look at the world around us, and look inside yourself.

Becoming, not being, perfect is possible and what we are called to do. It is all a process. It is all a walk towards God.