Peace

I've posted before about the need for us to stop running so hard after the things that are here, but the thought continues to weigh on my mind. I want to be able to put this into words that make an impact beyond just saying, "Stop running so much after the world." That phrase sounds trite and overused. The fact is that I often hear it spill from the mouth of those that are running harder than anyone else, so it falls very flat. The great power of the book of Ecclesiastes is that it draws it all down to the bottom line:

For of the wise as of the fool there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How the wise dies just like the fool! (Ecclesiastes 2:16)

For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity. All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return. (Ecclesiastes 3:19-20)

The bottom line is very simple: Everybody dies.

That's right, everybody dies. Why are we running so hard after the things of this world when we all die? Of what use is a wonderful career when life is so short? Look, America doesn't help you with this. I'm not trying to be unpatriotic here, but shouldn't we be more concerned with what comes after this life than with what temporary things this life has to offer? That runs against the grain I think. Somehow we have convinced ourselves that good college and a good career is somehow commanded by God as being a "Good steward." The prosperity gospel is actually a few steps behind in this respect, it only promises wealth and honor - too many people are so far gone as to believe that the Bible commands such a thing.

Let's be blunt here, you are dying and the world is running down. If you believe in an afterlife then you ought to be doing whatever you can toward that and forget about the moldy things here. Do we think that Jesus is interested in our careers?

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matthew 6:19-21)

Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. (Luke 12:33-34)

Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days. (James 5:1-3)

You tell me. I don't know. I'm still looking for the passage where Jesus says, "Make sure you get into a good college and get a good job that you feel fulfilled in for this is important to me." If somebody finds it, please let me know.

Oddly enough, our lives would be so much better if we would stop rooting around in the dumpster and strive after eternal things. We say that we want peace and we believe it is around the next corner. We are running as fast as we can so that we can stop. On every lap God quietly says, "You can stop now if you want to and have peace" and we pant and say, "No, God, not yet, I'm almost there. *pant* *pant* I can stop after I get this next promotion or move to this other place or pay off this thing or ... " and on and on it goes. Thomas à Kempis knew this, he said:

Whensoever a man desireth any thing inordinately, he is forthwith disquieted in himself.  The proud and covetous are never at rest.  The poor and humble in spirit dwell in the multitude of peace.

We can run and run.  We will never find what we are looking for here.  You may disagree with me.  It is quite likely you think that you will find what you are looking for right around that next corner.  I doubt it.  On the next lap you could try listening to Jesus when you pass him by though.  He doesn't speak too loudly, but he does say this:

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."  (Matthew 11:28-30)

Confession

Augustine wrote The Confessions to God, not to us, although much of the book touched me like nothing else I've ever read outside of the Bible.  He had a good idea - confession is Biblical after all:

I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the LORD," and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.  (Psalms 32:5)

Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.  (Proverbs 28:13)

Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.  (James 5:16)

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.  (1 John 1:8-10)

Most of the passages that refer to confession throughout the Bible refer to confession to God.  James 5 was the only passage that I found directly relating confession of our sins to one another.  In that passage it is so that others can pray for you.  It is notably not so that others can act concerned and tell all of their friends the great tidbit they learned - that would be gossip of course and there are verses about that as well.  I say that latter part because I think that gossip is one of the great unacknowledged evils and I find that some people who want more confession one to another seem to want it for the salacious information rather than to be helpful to each other in prayer.  Any grocery aisle today will attest to the immense human thirst for salacious information on other individuals so denying that this motivation exists is nonsense.  I think that one of the reasons that gossip and slander is so evil is that it destroys confession and therefore it hinders our prayers for each other (because so much that goes on we never know about).  Nobody wants to say anything to anybody because we cannot acknowledge that we have this evil tendency and so we destroy our brothers and sisters with our tongues after we discover some juicy tidbit that was told to us in confidence or which we discovered from some other gossip when what we really ought to be doing is covering their sin and taking it up to God on their behalf.  Acting concerned when you spread it to another person is no substitute for love, either.  Francis of Sales in Introduction to the Devout Life discussed this like so:

Those who slander others with an affectation of good will, or with dishonest pretences of friendliness, are the most spiteful and evil of all. They will profess that they love their victim, and that in many ways he is an excellent man, but all the same, truth must be told, and he was very wrong in such a matter; or that such and such a woman is very virtuous generally, but and so on.  Do you not see through the artifice? He who draws a bow draws the arrow as close as he can to himself, but it is only to let it fly more forcibly; and so such slanderers appear to be withholding their evil-speaking, but it is only to let it fly with surer aim and go deeper into the listeners’ minds.

We have such a problem with this and we try to counteract the destruction of confession in the churches, not by acknowledging and working against slander and gossip, those pests at the root of the tree, but rather by simply pushing everyone harder to confess, confess, confess.  This will do no good.  We have to get love correct and confession will come from it.  That connection is important.  The gossip and slanderer does not love the object of their tales, they love the sin they are committing.  I'll tell you this, I have confessed all of my struggles and sins to my wife - she knows everything about me, all that I struggle with and all of my failures but there is a reason for this: she prays to God for me, of this I am certain, but she does not take my confessions to her friends and I don't take hers to mine, so I trust her in everything.  I have no fear with confessing to her because I know this about her (it is one of the main reasons I fell in love with her).  I tell you this because if we were all like this with each other - that is, if we all went to God with each other's sins rather than each other - we would find confession comes naturally as a result.

The Call of the World

Lately I've been appreciating Ecclesiastes a great deal more than I used to.  The book just confused me for so long.  Consider this passage right at the beginning:

Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.  (Ecclesiastes 1:2-4)

I never appreciated that until I started stopping the toiling and running.  That's an awkward sentence, I know.  I'd say that I have "stopped" toiling and running but I haven't so that would be wrong - but even stopping it a little tiny bit has helped.  When you stop running for even a little bit you look around and everyone around you seems very silly with all of their striving after the things in this world that just end so quickly.  I want to be free from that same striving but I admit that I'm not and that frustrates me.

Tomato Soup

I have to start this by saying that I never liked Tomato Soup as a kid. It was a toss up between that and cooked spinach as my least favorite food so when my six year old didn't want to eat hers at lunch it was tough to make her do it. You could really tell that she didn't want that soup but I don't want pickiness encouraged in my kids and I wasn't asking her to eat the whole thing, just some.

After much cajoling and telling her that she wouldn't get any cake at the birthday party we are going to this afternoon if she didn't at least make an effort she choked down 3 more spoonfuls and I asked her to do 5 more to finish. She did it and I was proud of her and she didn't try to "cheat" (you know, dribble half the spoonful out the back of the spoon on each bite, things like that). Anyway, the best part came after I told her she was done and you could tell she was so happy and then she started to brag about eating those 8 more spoonfuls as though it was an amazing thing. It was then that we told her that she probably shouldn't boast about it since it was only by our grace that she didn't have to eat the entire bowl. Eight bites wasn't so impressive to me and in fact I felt a little like I had let her get away with something but then to hear her brag about it really made me wonder if we are like that to God when we talk about how good we are or how little sin we commit:

For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it-- the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. (Romans 3:20-28)

Recently I read a Newsweek article talking about Billy Graham. In the article I read this:

A unifying theme of Graham's new thinking is humility. He is sure and certain of his faith in Jesus as the way to salvation. When asked whether he believes heaven will be closed to good Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus or secular people, though, Graham says: "Those are decisions only the Lord will make. It would be foolish for me to speculate on who will be there and who won't ... I don't want to speculate about all that. I believe the love of God is absolute. He said he gave his son for the whole world, and I think he loves everybody regardless of what label they have."

The interesting part of this is not so much what Billy Graham answers but the assumptions in the original question. The question was whether he, "believes heaven will be closed to good Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus or secular people..." The question itself entirely misses the point. There are no good Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, secular people, or Christians. "God alone is good" and our goodness is like filth compared to his standard. We had to have help which is what the Bible is all about. God had to send his Son to die on a cross because none of us was good and we have got to remember that. We ate our eight spoonfuls of Tomato Soup and we are so happy for ourselves so we wonder if we might get cake based on our own actions, but thanks be to God that he didn't make us eat the 8,000 gallons of Tomato Soup that we would need to because we never could have achieved it and our efforts are so very unimpressive. Make no mistake about it, heaven will be closed to all who do not try to get in by the "Way, the Truth and the Life" which is Jesus Christ. It is that simple and thankfully it has so little to do with our "goodness."