“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11

When I am worrying about my future and trying to get some kind of hint at what it holds, this is usually the verse that He patiently whispers to me. Call me blasphemous, sacrilegious, whatever, but sometimes this verse…well frankly, sometimes it’s annoying, like I’m being taunted that God knows what I want to know and cannot know. He staunchly refuses to tell me anything more. God will not let me know everything because He is asking that it be enough that He knows everything. Essentially, He is asking for faith, faith in Him and faith in His promises. 

“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of we do not see.” Hebrews 11:11 I am sure we are all familiar enough with that verse. But what does this really mean? Is faith truly blind? Are we merely groping around in the dark, trying to muster up belief out of thin air? I would say no. What I am learning is that faith is not merely walking down a path and blindly hoping that it takes us somewhere good. Faith is not ungrounded hope. Faith does not leap without knowing anything at all. Rather, faith is firmly grounded in what has been revealed so far. Faith leaps with a backward glance at what God has already done.

What I am getting at is that a key part of faith is remembrance. The reason we struggle with faith is because we have the memory of a gold fish. Like the Israelites, all we can focus on is the here and now. We step into the uncharted territory of the desert, immediately forget that God just miraculously led us through the Red Sea on dry ground, and begin to wonder if perhaps, it would not have been better if we had just stayed slaves and died in Egypt.

I am, too often, like the Israelites. Essentially, I doubt because I forget. I think that’s why throughout the Old testament, before He spoke to the Israelites, He would often remind them first, “I am the LORD, the God of Israel,” second, “who brought you up out of Egypt.” God’s call to faith, the opposite of doubt, is a call to remember who He is and what He has done.

So, when I find myself in moments of doubt or worry, I have found it helpful to recount His faithfulness thus far, to revisit times in my life which are clearly marked by His goodness. During many of those times, God’s goodness was not quite so evident as it is now. I could not see clearly at all, but now, I can see and very clearly. When I remember these things, my doubt falls away and my faith becomes grounded.  I know that God will continue to be faithful because He always has been in the past. 

I have been thinking that faith is like a tree. It does not merely blindly stretch up to the vast and unknown expanse of the sky. It also puts down roots. It finds nourishment in the soil so that it can grow higher and bear more fruit. Similarly, we must, as we take forward steps of faith into the unknown, simultaneously put down the roots of our faith into the known, into the rich and tangible soil of what God has already done. If we do that, our faith will not wither and die for lack of nourishment, but rather, being “rooted and established,” it will drink deep of the evidence of His love, flourish, and bear much fruit.

So, I would encourage you, if you find yourself struggling with faith and trust in God, to learn the art of recounting His faithfulness, for this is the food of faith. Before you look forward, look back. Take careful stock of who you have known Him to be and what you know He has done in your life. Tear your gaze from the stark, blank pages of the future and glance back at those pages that have already been filled. Mark the ones that commemorate His goodness and faithfulness and reread them often.

Oswald Chambers said that “faith does not know where it is being led, but it knows and loves the One who leads.” Basically, we do not know where God is taking us, but we do know Him. We know the sound of His voice when He calls and we follow. We don’t know our whole story, but we know that it begins with a cross, an empty grave, and a risen Savior. We don’t know what will be engraved on our final pages, but we do know that He has lovingly and sacrificially “engraved us on the palms of His hands” Isaiah 49:16 We do not see what lies ahead, but we do see what lies behind.  And by looking back on the marvelous tales of our lives, so indelibly marked by grace, mercy and love, we really do find assurance of our hope and certainty of what we do not see. We know Him and He knows the plans. And that truly is enough.

The Bible has been referred to as God’s love letter to us. Verse after verse assures us that His love is unfailing, unconditional, and unending. We are to be rooted and established in this love, the width, length, height, and depth of which surpasses knowledge. It is also promised that “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height of depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:39 If I’m reading this correctly, it appears that the God of the universe who never lies is promising to us that there is nothing, no sin, no failure, nothing that could make Him stop loving us. What an awesome truth this is.

Yet there are times I’m not quite sure I truly understand this or perhaps even really believe it in my heart. In moments of failure, moments when I see my faults with horribly clarity, I am actually quite nearly certain that God could stop loving me because these things are so totally unlovable. It is in those moments that I scramble to do better, to make myself more lovable or perhaps, just lie to myself and try to pretend that the less than lovable parts of me just really aren’t there. It produces in me a certain anxiety, an absurd fear that God might “find out” that I’m not really that great after all. I think what lies at the root is a misunderstanding of identity and why God even loves us in the first place.

I have been a nanny for the last few years and it has led to several insights that I think are key to understanding God’s love for us. To put it bluntly, children are unabashedly selfish, vengeful, and irrational. They see small and think small, seeking to gratify only the impulse of the moment, without much thought to consequences or the future or anything lasting. Their natures are undeniably sinful and yet, they are also delightful things of beauty. Each one is a unique bundle of personality with the remarkable capacity for love, goodness, creativity, and growth.

Parents know all of this about their children, the good and the bad. They are completely aware of their sinful nature, all the gaps and flaws that come with it and yet, they love them still. They love them even when they are completely unlovable. How is this possible? How can someone love what is not lovable? It is possible because parents do not love their children because they are lovable but because they are their children.  Of course, I have never been a parent, but I can imagine what a thing of wonder it must be to look on a person, complete with a myriad list of faults and shortcomings, and know that you made them, that they belong to you in a way that nothing and no one else ever will. I can imagine how much love and delight I would feel for them, not because they were perfect, but because they were mine. 

God’s love is like this. He created our inmost beings, wove us together in the secret place, knew all of our days before one of them came to be. We are His idea, His workmanship. He delights in all our ways that make us unique because that is the way He designed us to be. He loves us unconditionally because we are unconditionally His.  We are His children and indeed, we are children in every sense of the word. We are selfish, small-minded, and often foolish to the point of destruction. We are inherently flawed, inevitable failures, and daily testimonies to our own imperfection.

God knows all of this, but He is not anxious. He is not wringing His hands, wondering if He’ll have to stop loving us. He does not despair and so, neither should we. Don’t be mistaken. Just like a Father, He will discipline us and He will mold us to work out those flaws of our make up, but He will do it within the boundaries of the unshakable realm of His love, boundaries preset by the very fact that we are His children whom He died to make His own. 

So, I have found that when I do feel a kind of anxiety over my “unlovableness”, it is because I have failed to grasp who I am and why God loves me. I am a child of God. My entire identity, all my hope, and all my assurance of His love rests in the simple, but profound truth that I am His and He is mine. At this realization, all doubts are silenced, all questions answered.

Therefore, be reminded of this: You are wholly, lavishly, and irrevocably loved by God. His love for you was sealed even before the day He created you and it really is a love that surpasses knowledge. It cannot be overcome, but it overcame death. It cannot be shaken, but it shook lose our bonds to sin.  It cannot be changed, but it changes us.  It is the love of God the Father for His children. So, if you find yourself in moments or situations when you are completely unlovable, do not be anxious. For you are not loved because you are lovable. You are loved because you are His.

“Christianity is the only religion whose God bears the scars of evil.”  -Os Guinness

This post is the compilation of thoughts that I have been chewing on for the past year or so which now have come together into what I hope is a cohesive and coherent message. It is good news. In fact, I think what I have concluded again and again and again–is the Gospel. It all began with the problem of evil. As some of my previous posts demonstrate, this has been a topic of particular interest to me over the past few years. It is funny, in a way, that this “problem” has driven me, not from God, but towards Him and into a deeper knowledge and appreciation of the Gospel. It is ironic that what the world intended for evil, God meant for good. Pun intended.

Like a good philosopher, I began with the problem posed. I then considered the two possible conclusions: God or no God. First, I examined the latter and quickly found that given the problem of evil itself, this could, by no means, be the logical conclusion. It reduces to absurdity. For if there was no God, there would be no so called “problem.” Evil would be a relative and meaningless concept. The problem itself was its own demise. And so, I found that I could with great rational peace deny that conclusion.

And that, of course, left the only other option: God. I think I would be both an irresponsible philosopher and an irresponsible Christian if I merely accepted this conclusion without considering its implications, especially in light of the problem of evil. Yes, I found that belief in God was more rational, but rationality really only gets you so far in life. What does this conclusion, this God with a capital “G” mean for our lives? What does it mean for both our joys and our sufferings? As Christians, it is not enough to merely answer negatively to the problem of evil. We must also answer positively. We must give an account, a humble account of course limited by our finite understanding, of how a good God can truly be compatible with the present evil and suffering.

 I have attempted to do this, and as I have turned to scripture and thought and pondered, the final answer I’ve arrived at is that God allows evil because it brings Him glory. On this point, He is emphatic and unapologetic. It is a simple, straightforward statement, but it is not a simple, straightforward answer. It is packed with meaning and complexity. Of course, we say it all the time. God does whatever will bring Him the most glory and He is justified in doing so because He’s God and all the glory is His due. But as I related this to the problem of evil, this became a hard pill for me to swallow. I sensed some tension. Can a God truly be called good when He brings Himself glory at the cost of such suffering? Could He not have been glorified in some other way?

 Indeed, the ways of God often seem incredibly strange to our human hearts. It is tempting to simply wave the white flag, to begrudgingly surrender God the right to His glory. Okay, God You win. You’re God, so You get to do whatever You want. But to do this would be to miss a great truth, a precious gem of understanding. Scripture doesn’t say that we give up and surrender to the glory of God. No, it says that “werejoice in the hope of the glory of God.” Romans 5:2 God’s glory is not something we begrudgingly submit ourselves to. It is not merely okay, it is wonderful and liberating for it is at the beginning, the middle, and the end of the Gospel, the good news for the sinner’s heart and this fallen world.

 God is unabashed about His love for His own glory. Throughout scripture, He adamantly declares “I am the LORD; that is my name! I will not give my glory to another.” Isaiah 42:8 Everything He does, He does for His name’s sake. Why is this good news? Why should we rejoice to have a God that is so in love with Himself? It is because God’s quest for His own glory is at the center of the Gospel. It is the ceaseless fountain of our salvation and hope, the bedrock of our faith in Him. For consider the nature of God’s glory.  When has He been most glorified? Surely, it was in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The cross is the place where God’s glory is most clearly revealed. What I have also begun to grasp is that the cross is the single most evil act in history. The crucifixion of the holy and spotless Lamb at the hands of wicked and filthy sinners epitomizes the evil of man as well as the glory of God. What a strange pairing…  

 Essentially, God is justified in allowing evil and suffering for His glory because the nature of His glory, shown at the cross, is so amazingly selfless and sacrificial. Accusations of heartlessness and cruelty simply cannotbe maintained when one truly understands the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the glory of God. “He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed.” Isaiah 53:5 At the cross, we witness the heart of God and we are dumbfounded, first by the evil wrought by our own hands, second, by the fact that He would take that evil, “the iniquity of us all” Isaiah 53:6 upon Himself. And then, subsequently we are blown away by His glory. Somehow, in a mysterious and wonderful way, this strange combination of our all-surpassing wickedness and His all-surpassing love becomes an incomprehensibly beautiful story…

 So I do not pretend to understand the mysteries of God, precisely why the world had to be just this way, why He could not have been just as glorified in another way. But I can understand very clearly the sacrificial love of Christ on the Cross. I can grasp Isaiah 53. And I find that that is enough. With this understanding, the Gospel becomes more powerful and awesome in both its cosmic scope and personal meaning. God’s commitment to His glory rings out in all the earth, speaking of hope to all Creation and it also whispers quietly to the sinner’s heart that He will never forsake us or cease in doing good to us because He will bring glory to Himself. This is His great purpose and we can rejoice in that for “the plans of the LORD stand firm forever, the purposes of His heart through all generations.” Psalm 33:11

 What a wondrous truth. God’s glory is both the input and the output of our salvation and our lives. All creation sings of His glory, for “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands. Day after day, they pour forth speech; Night after night, they display knowledge” Psalm 19:1-2 and yet, apart from Him, we cannot hear and we cannot see because “our thinking became futile and our foolish hearts were darkened.” Romans 1:21 We stand at the Cross, witnessing the glory of His love displayed, and we are unable to perceive it. We scoff. We jeer. But now, we rejoice for God has opened our eyes and drawn us near. He has “removed from us our hearts of stone and given us hearts of flesh.” Ezekiel 36:26 For the sake of His name, He has delivered us from the depths of the grave and He Himself has put a new song in our mouths. Where once we stood and spat His name with contempt and condemnation, we now stand and sing His name with reverence and worship. Where once we stood and scorned Him as He gave His life for our sins, we now look upon His sacrifice with tears in our eyes and are moved to repentance. We once mocked His wounds, but now they have become so dear.

 Before the Cross, we find that the conductor of the universe is fine tuning our hearts to join in the song of Creation and of the Cross. He is tightening the strings of our hearts that they might move from the dissonance of their godlessness and sinfulness to the harmony of their redemption and righteousness. As he opens our eyes to the hope of His glory, we stand awestruck, not only that we are forgiven, but that we are also laden with the riches of His grace. Our hearts ask in wonder, “What on earth did we do to deserve this?” To this, He responds, “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.” And that is the wonder of His Gospel. In the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has sent His glory out to achieve the work of the redemption of sinners and as it does, it also returns to Him in waves of amplified glory on which we ride with joy. And unto God be all the glory, for it is He who opens our eyes to His glory, He who brings us near and forgives for His glory, and He who beckons us onward towards His glory.

 “ And so we do “rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character, and character hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts through the holy spirit whom He gave us. You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:2-8 We rejoice because this is our assurance that God will continue to do good to us, that He will again arise to show us compassion, that he will never leave us nor forsake us. For now that He has taken us from under His wrath and placed under His grace, we are called children of God. We bear His name and we know that He will never see His name dishonored. He will not yield His glory to another. And that, my friends, is Good News.

The phrase “follow your heart” has become ubiquitous in our society.  We hear it in movies and media.  Parents raise their children on this supposed wisdom.  If we just follow our hearts, we can’t go wrong and we can do anything.  The 90’s kid within me is jamming out to the 98 degrees song...”Be true to your heart. Just be true to your heart. Your heart can tell you know lies…”  I guess it worked for Mulan.

But is this really good advice?  Should we just accept it because it sounds so inspiring and makes for a good bumper sticker?  Shouldn’t we analyze it, examine the evidence to see if it’s even true? No one else seems to be preoccupied with this question, but it troubles me greatly.  I do not think it’s good advice.  In fact, I think it’s the exact opposite of good advice.  Here’s why.

First of all, there is a deeper, underlying meaning to the seemingly harmless phrase.  The language of “rights” and “free will” have become the language of our society.  Personal autonomy, the freedom to do whatever we please, has become the unquestioned cultural ideal.  “Follow your heart” is just part and parcel of this.

We view our hearts as inner guides that, if we listen to, will lead us to our ultimate destiny and happiness.  And we have a right to this happiness and no one else has a right to prevent us from obtaining this happiness.

Sounds like a pretty sweet deal, but do you see where this leads?  Basically, it means we can do pretty much whatever we want as long as it was our heart that led us there.  That doesn’t sound so bad, until you get people saying things like this:  “I knew I shouldn’t be having an affair.  But I love her.  I had to follow my heart.”  

The truth is, the real reason we celebrate this ideology is not necessarily because we believe it, but because it absolves us from guilt and moral responsibility.  Ironically, we turn following our heart into some kind of ultimate ethical imperative that trumps all other ethical obligations.  No matter what we do, or who we hurt doing it, we get a free pass as long as we claim we were “following our hearts.”  Believing that our hearts are faultless guides allows us to leave our desires unchecked and our actions unquestioned.  It’s easy to see why people sign on to this idea.

However, there is one hitch.  Ironically, people seem determined to believe in this myth of the human heart as a true and faithful guide despite staggering evidence to the contrary.  Why?  Because their hearts have deceived them!  You don’t have to look much past your own nose to see that our hearts do lead us astray.  Contrary to the wisdom of 98 degrees, they do lie to us.  But we willfully ignore this because we want to believe that our desires are always pure and our actions never condemnable.

Our hearts deceive us into believing that our hearts are pure precisely because our hearts are not pure, because “the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.” -Jeremiah 17:9  Despite what the world tells us, following our hearts does not earn us an absolution from guilt.  God declares that He will “search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve.”  -Jeremiah 17:10  

Talk about counter-cultural.  These are tough words.  This is not the easy path.  But I would rather have God’s truth than the world’s lies.  I would rather be like the man “who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in Him.  He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream.” -Jeremiah 17:7-8  I would rather be like him than the “one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strengths and whose heart turns away from the LORD.  He will be like a bush in the wastelands; he will not see prosperity when it comes.  He will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt man where no one lives.” -Jeremiah 17: 5-6

In wisdom, let us heed the words of the LORD rather than the enticing lies of the world so that we may never hear Him say to us, “If only you had paid attention to my commands, your peace would have been like a river, your righteousness like the waves of the sea.” -Isaiah 48:18  For “this is what the LORD says–your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: ‘I am the LORD your God, who teaches you what is best for you, who directs you in the way you should go.” -Isaiah 48:17  It is God and not our hearts who will never lie to us, nor ever lead us astray.  Let us then, not follow our hearts, but follow God.

*This is a re-post of a facebook note I wrote when I was in college.

     If the man in front of you drops a one hundred dollar bill, you give it back to him.  If you run over an old woman with your car, you stop and help, no matter if you may be charged with vehicular manslaughter. You may be wondering where I am going with this.  These choices seem obvious enough right? Well, that’s what I thought, but I sat deeply troubled and my mouth probably agape in my Ethics class recently as I listened to my peers denying, nay mocking these moral conclusions. I was astonished as one boy dressed down another for foolishly thinking that instilling principles of integrity in our children is more important than helping them get ahead because, of course, it’s our animal instinct to get ahead. You can also probably imagine my indignation as the pompous guy next to me turned to me and condescendingly said, “I already know what you’re going to choose” as the class began to deliberate over the pros and cons of saving the last surviving book of Shakespeare or a woman from a burning building.

     As I sat there, I wanted to argue. I wanted to tell them they were wrong. I wanted to tell them that you should save a person over a book. You should tell the truth even if it costs you. You should give the man his one hundred dollar bill that he dropped. I wanted to cry out, “Have you all gone mad?!” And then I realized…they had. Scripture tells us that “The hearts of men, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live and afterward they join the dead.” Ecclesiastes 9:3   “ They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.” Ephesians 4:18  Truth that is so evident, so resoundingly obvious to me is as foolishness to them. It has been revealed to me, but it has not been revealed to them. I cannot reason with them because their reason, the very way their minds perceive and operate is fundamentally messed up and in complete opposition to truth.

     Underlying all of our disagreements about lying, and stealing, and killing, are two irreconcilable world views. All of it, all the copies of Shakespeare, all the injured old women, all the moral dilemmas we face in life can be reduced down to a single question:  God or no God? Why should you save a woman over a book? Because it’s right. Why is right? Because human life is sacred. Why is human life sacred? Because it was created and sanctified by God, the holy God, the living God, the just and righteous God who will one day call all of us to account for our deeds on this earth. I can perceive this truth and recognize it as truth because I have been saved by grace and “transformed by the renewing of my mind.” Romans 12:2

    It is not so for them. They are literally incapable of perceiving truth or even the madness and folly of their own beliefs. They live their lives with an egoist mindset. Survival, getting ahead, self-preservation are the foundation of their world view. Without a God or consequences for life, I suppose I can see how this makes sense. Yet, I can’t help but wonder…what exactly do they think they are preserving themselves for? They strive to gain everything, but they will lose it all. They grasp this life and all this world has to offer with everything they have, but to what end? We all meet the same fate. We leave this world as we entered it, empty-handed, and helpless. It is so blatantly obvious that it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. Do they not perceive it? No. They do not due to the hardening of their hearts, but to me, the truth that “whoever wants to save his life will lose it and whoever loses his life for [Christ’s] sake will find it”  Matthew 10:39  has never been more clearly perceived or resonant in my heart and mind.

      As I witness all of the debates on what they have the nerve to call “Ethics”, I am, first of all, stunned by their lack of morals, perhaps more than I really should be. Then, I am prideful and eager to debate, particularly with the aforementioned pompous boy next to me, because I know what the truth is. I can see what they cannot, but then that fades when another realization sets in as I listen to my fellow students continue to mock those of us who dare to suggest that perhaps Ethics are not just about what is best for yourself. Yes, I am upset that they make such a mockery of my morals, but then I see that it goes deeper than that. It is not just me being scoffed at. They not only mock my ethical system, but they mock the very heart of Jesus. To deny oneself, to lay down your life for others, they condemn as foolishness. In that instant, I see what is really happening. They are spitting in His face, laughing at Him as He takes up His cross, their cross, paying their price.

      It is then that all the pride and indignation dissipates and I am humbled as I realize that this is who we are and that I am not exempt from it. I am counted among the redeemed, but by His grace alone. If He had not deemed to reveal Himself and His truth to me, I know that I would be right there among the scoffers. This is in all the hearts of men, not only to deny God, but to disdain all that He is “for the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” 1 Corinthians 1:18   We are lost and sinful before His grace finds us and not only are we not seeking it, we are in fact, totally resistant to it. We laugh at it.

     Through this, I see even more clearly the wonder of God’s love for “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” 1 John 4:10  What manner of love is this? It is a love that has redeemed me, healed me, cleansed me, saved me from my own madness when I did not want to be saved nor was I worth saving. This is the love I am to extend to those in my Ethics class, to everyone I am in contact with. How often, in my own selfishness and pride, I fail to do this. Yes, I am called to defend my faith and to defend it well, and I am called to speak boldly, but first and above all else, I am called to love as I have been loved for I was once as they: stubborn, hardened, and in complete opposition to God. 

     With this deeper understanding, the Gospel is more powerful, grace more amazing and Romans 5:8 suddenly says much, much more to me.  “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners,…” while our hearts were still hardened towards Him, while we were still lost in the utter madness of our ways, while we still denied, mocked, even hated everything that God is, “Christ died for us.”  Surely, this is the true madness, the madness of His love. 

“I will make rivers flow on barren heights, and springs within the valleys, I will turn the desert into pools of water, and the parched ground into springs. I will put in the desert the cedar and the acacia, the myrtle and the olive. I will set pines in the wasteland, the fir and the cypress together, so that people may see and know, may consider and understand, that the hand of the LORD has done this, that the Holy One of Israel has created it.” -Isaiah 41:18-20

There are times when I think fall is my favorite season.  I love the crisp weather, beautiful leaves, thanksgiving, pumpkins, good books by warm fires.  Every year though, about this time, I remember that nothing beats spring.  The days start to get longer.  The trees begin to bud.  The earth begins to stir from its winter slumber, new life waiting to come forth.  There’s something about it that is good for the soul, something that brings hope.

Of course, I don’t think that this accidental in the slightest.  Creation is God’s tablet and the seasons are the story that He has written on it.  “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–His eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen being understood from what has been made.” -Romans 1:20  Spring stirs our souls because God intended for it to stir our souls.  Essentially, He shares the Gospel with us every year, using daffodil blossoms and budding willow trees to paint the most beautiful story board.  He brings life where there has been death, light where there has been darkness, and beauty where there has been ashes.

Spring is beautiful but it is only a reflection, a mere shadowing, of the beauty of what it represents: the Gospel.  Unlike spring blooms which will eventually wither and fade once more,  for those who have been saved by the Gospel, new life has come to stay.  The miracle that God works on the earth is nothing compared to the miracle He works on the souls He saves.  God chooses people, He saves people, and He changes people. Forever.

I was reminded of the beauty of this at Church last Sunday where we had several Baptisms.  The people were all different ages from different backgrounds with different stories of how God saved them. But as they stood up to give their testimonies, they all had a common theme:  God had brought them from death to life and they now lived to love, serve, and glorify Jesus Christ, the King.

As I sat and listened to their testimonies, I thought about how the Gospel never gets old.  Seeing and hearing stories of how God saves and changes people never, ever gets old.  It struck me that maybe heaven will be a little bit like that.  Of course, the most wonderful thing about heaven is that we will be with God forever, but we will also be with each other forever.

Perhaps, part of the joy of heaven will be like the joy of Baptism Sunday.  Perhaps, part of the glory will be in hearing all the myriad of ways that God has saved all different kinds of people from all different times in history.  We’ll all  be there, each with our own story of salvation, declaring together that we were lost, but now found,  condemned, but now forgiven, dead but now alive, overflowing with praise and every tongue confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.  What a joyful and victorious celebration that will be.

So, as I look forward to spring of 2013, I await it with a special delight.  I praise God for the way He uses all of His creation to speak His message of love and grace to us.  I thank Him for the spring He has brought to my own life and many others, making ways in our deserts and streams in our wastelands.  And I eagerly look forward to that glorious Day when life will never fade, to that spring which will never end.

One of the main objections and roots of hostility toward Christianity is the claim that Christians are hypocrites.  Many people disdain Christians because they supposedly claim one thing and do another.  Because of this, they reject Christianity and the Christian message.  I would like to explore this thought process and examine whether or not it is legitimate.

To do this, it would be helpful to break down the argument in order to understand and investigate what those opposed to Christianity are actually saying.   It seems to me that the general argument can be broken down into two separate claims: 1) Christians are hypocrites and 2) Because Christians are hypocrites, the Christian message is not true.  I will examine each of these claims separately.

Claim 1) Christians are hypocrites.  

• What is a Christian and What is a Hypocrite?

It seems to me that before you can determine the truth of this claim, you must understand the terms you are using.  For our purposes, a useful definition of hypocrite is “one who acts in contradiction to her stated beliefs or feelings.”  A Christian is, essentially a “Christ-follower” or “one who professes beliefs in the teachings of Jesus Christ.”

So if a Christian is one who professes certain beliefs and a hypocrite is one who acts in contradiction to those beliefs, it is easy to see that Christians easily could be hypocrites.  However, we cannot draw conclusions on these facts alone.  If the determining factor of whether or not a Christian is a hypocrite is the message that they profess, we must know what the Christian message actually is.

Working with the aforementioned definition of Christian, Christians profess beliefs in the teachings of Jesus Christ.  I think here, we have reached a point that is critical to our examination.  Before labeling a Christian as a hypocrite, we must determine if we can truly label them as a Christian.  In other words, is what they proclaim truly the message of Christ?  There are a lot of people in the world claiming things in the name of Christ that do not in any way, line up with the true message of the Gospel.

• What is the message of Christianity?

This leads us to another critical point.  If Christians are Christians because they preach the message of Christ and others label them as hypocrites because they preach the message of Christ, but don’t live it, it follows that both the Christian and the accuser must know what the message of Christ really is.  If the “Christian” does not know it, he is not truly a Christian.  If the accuser does not know it, he cannot legitimately accuse the Christian of hypocrisy.

The message or Gospel of Christ and, therefore, true Christians, is often misunderstood.  This in turn, leads to confusion and sometimes, inaccurate accusations of hypocrisy.  There are certain things that the Gospel is and is not.  Establishing these distinctions will provide clarity.

 The Gospel of Christ is not “total tolerance.”

The Gospel is, without a doubt, a message of love and grace.  However, I think this aspect of the Gospel has been interpreted to mean something that it does not.  What the love and grace of Christ does not mean is “total tolerance” in the sense used today.

In today’s world, tolerance means absolute acceptance of anything and everything.  If it makes you happy, it’s right.  Ironically, tolerance claims to welcome any and all beliefs, yet adamantly rejects those who have beliefs that necessarily make other beliefs wrong.  In short, tolerance is intolerant of the intolerant.  To “love” someone and accept them, you cannot make any moral assessments of their life choices.

This is not the love and grace of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, for it is not love or grace at all.  Grace itself implies that there is a debt to be paid for a wrong committed.  If it is not possible for an act to be wrong, there is no need nor even possibility of grace.

The Gospel of Christ is total forgiveness of and freedom from acts that are inherently sinful. 

What the love and grace of Christ does mean and what the message of Christ really is, is this:

1) There are acts that are inherently wrong (sin).

2) We have all committed such acts (Romans 3:23).

3) Therefore, we deserve death (Romans 6:23).

4) However, Christ died to pay our penalty (Romans 5:8).

5) Thus, if we believe in him, we are justified before God and saved from His wrath (Romans 5:9).

6)  Now, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ (Romans 8:1.

7) And finally, we are set free from sin and bound to righteousness (Romans 6:18).

In short, the Gospel is that our sin is great, but that God’s love was greater in sending His son to pay our penalty so that we could be freed from sin in order to live lives of holiness.  If the Christian lives a life of utter licentiousness because he can always  “fall back” on the grace of God, he is not truly a Christian.  The crucial point here is that the grace of God is not a ticket to continue sinning as we please without fear of punishment, but a means of forgiveness and empowerment to put our sin to death.

The Gospel of Christ is not self-righteousness but Christ’s righteousness.  

This is where I think things get tricky and where we Christians really do need to listen up.  We are most certainly called to stand for the truth of God.  Contrary to the world’s “tolerance,”  we must be those who claim that certain things are not right, no matter how “happy” it makes someone.  However, we must be careful how we do this.

The important key here is humility.  If we make claims condemning certain acts in a way that exalts ourselves and magnifies our own righteousness, we have missed the mark and misrepresented the message of Christ, no matter how truthful our claims may be.  In defending the truths of God, we must certainly be bold and unyielding, but we must also be humble and meek, not self-exalting, but Christ-exalting.  The crucial point here is that the Christian message is not “Christians are perfect, so be like Christians”, but the Christian message is “Only Christ is perfect, but we strive, and sometimes fail, to be like Him.”

• So…are Christians hypocrites or not?

This leads us to what we have been trying to answer, the question of whether or not it is true that Christians are hypocrites.  The answer, I think, is yes and no.

First, the answer is no, at least not in the way that many people think.  I think many people accuse Christians of being hypocrites on false grounds.  As established above, the Christian message is not a message of “total tolerance.”  However, many people confuse the Christian claims of love and grace with total tolerance.

To them, it appears inconsistent for the Christian to preach the love of Christ while at the same time, preaching the inherent sinfulness of certain things.  So, they accuse the Christian of hypocrisy.  However, this is a fallacious argument because, as shown above, the love of Christ is not equal to total tolerance.  Thus, it is not inconsistent for the Christian to proclaim that Christ loves the sinner and also claim that the sinner’s sin is really sin.

Secondly, I think the answer is, in a sense, yes.  Christians sometimes are hypocrites. In their sin, they can misrepresent the Gospel for what we have said that it is not, a message that exalts their own, albeit false, righteousness and condemns others for their sin.  We all, to our chagrin, have a little bit of the Pharisee in us.

However, I believe that this in no way discredits the message of Christianity and plan to show why.  This leads us to the second part of the argument.

Claim 2) Because Christians are hypocrites, the Christian message is not true.  

• This is not a valid conclusion.

In a strictly logical sense, this is in no way a valid conclusion to draw from the premise that Christians are hypocrites.  If it is true that Christians are hypocrites, that is, they don’t always adhere to the message of Christ that they preach, it still remains to be shown how this has any bearing on the actual truth of the message itself.

The smoker will probably say that they believe that smoking causes lung cancer and often, death and that death is something they wish to avoid.  Yet, they continue smoking.  In this sense, the smoker is a hypocrite.  Their actions are not in line with their professed beliefs.  However, this does not in any way change the truth that smoking causes lung cancer and often, death.

In the same way, you cannot logically conclude that because a Christian’s actions do not always line up with their professed beliefs, their professed beliefs are not true.

Furthermore, I would say that we are all guilty of hypocrisy.  Most of us would profess beliefs, Christian or not, that we should live lives of love, goodness, fairness etc.  However, none of us live these beliefs out all the time, every time.  In all of us, there is a divergence from what we wish to do to what we actually do.  Call it sin or not, we all fall short of our own standards.  We are all hypocrites.  To judge people for being hypocritical would be…well, it would be hypocritical.

• More than Logic. The Heart of the Message.

Logic only gets us so far.  Even though the truth of Christianity may be logically preserved apart from the lives of its followers, it cannot be authentic and powerful without Christians who walk the walk.  Those real Christians are out there, but as I conceded, there will inevitably be times when their walk doesn’t match their talk.  However, in that instance, they are most likely presenting the distorted Gospel of self-righteousness instead of Christ’s righteousness.  As outlined above, this is not the true Gospel.

On the surface, it seems that the fact that Christians make these kind of errors weakens the message of Christianity.  In a sense, it does.  To be sure, it is certainly a hindrance in trying to present the true Gospel to a lost world.  However, in another sense, I think it actually reinforces the message of Christianity.  In falling short as they do, true Christians are showing they are nothing more than what they have professed to be–sinners.  It shows that Christians are merely sinners who have seen their need for the grace of God and though forgiven and justified before God, still have the struggle of flesh against spirit (Romans 7:21-24) and desperately need that grace from day to day.

As Christians, we must keep this in mind.  Ours is a precarious calling.  We are called to condemn sin as sin and yet love sinners as we ourselves have been loved.  We preach a message that is unapologetically offensive as well endlessly loving and we must not compromise either aspects of this message.   We must continually bring ourselves back to the pure Gospel.  If we do, we can, with boldness and yet humility, declare the absolute sinfulness of sin as well as the infinite love and grace of God, using our own stories of utter sin and total forgiveness as witness.  We must humbly admit our own sinfulness that we might exalt Christ’s righteousness.  In this, there can be no hypocrisy.