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Humility Month: Part 2–God is God, and You are Not

Son of man, say to the prince of Tyre: Thus says the Lord God:

Your heart has grown proud,
and thus you say, “I am a god;
I sit on a godly throne
in the heart of the seas.”
But in reality you are a man, and not a god,
even though you compare your mind
with that of a god.
Are you as wise as Daniel?
Is no secret hidden from you?
By your wisdom and your intelligence,
you have amassed great wealth for yourself.
You have deposited gold and silver
into your treasuries.
Because of your skill in trading,
your wealth has greatly increased;
and as a result of your riches,
your heart is filled with arrogant pride.

Therefore, thus says the Lord God:

Because you consider your wisdom
to be equal to that of God,
I will bring foreigners against you,
the most barbarous of all the nations.
They will draw their swords
against the beauty of your wisdom
and defile your splendor.
They will hurl you down to the pit,
and you will die a violent death
in the heart of the seas.
Will you then still say, “I am a god,”
when your murderers confront you?
No, you are a man, not a god,
in the hands of those about to slay you.
You will die the death of the uncircumcised
at the hands of foreigners.

I have spoken, declares the Lord God.
(Ezekiel 28:2-10 NCB)

As our guest author Karen Pennington noted in part 1 of this series, “Simply put, pride involves the idolatry of placing ourselves in front of God, in any way, or for any reason.”

In front of God is bad enough. However, in the passage above, the prince of Tyre was making himself EQUAL to God. Definitely a career-limiting move on his part.

The word “pride” in verse five above is accompanied by the word “arrogant. ” These two words frequently hang out together. It is never a good thing when they do.

Arrogance is a rejection of wisdom. It results from a person elevating incomplete knowledge to a level it does not warrant.

Everyone knows a lot about a few things and a little about many things. A person blinded by arrogance does not make the distinction between knowing a lot and knowing a little.

Pride, then, is arrogance in action. This is when a person professes that their incomplete knowledge is equal or superior to Wisdom and Truth. When left unchecked, this pride can proliferate into a god complex, whereby a person esteems his own intelligence to be unlimited.

This is asking for trouble.

Only God is God

Now it´s not likely that you or I will ever find ourselves ruling a city-state in the Middle East, but pride can creep into the life of anyone in any situation. It rears its head not just when you´re on top, but even when you are at rock bottom. Consider the story of Job.

In a single day, Job lost all his children, all his property, and all of his servants. Everything but his wife and his life. Then, to make matters worse, his entire body was covered with painful sores. Yet, he never sacrificed his faith or integrity.

Even so, there´s only so much a man can take, even a righteous man like Job. He goes off on a six-chapter rant, justifying himself and complaining why he doesn’t deserve his circumstances. Then God answers, with seventy-two verses of sarcastic questions, ending with this:

“Do you still want to argue with the Almighty? Or will you yield? Do you—God’s critic—have the answers?” (Job 40:2 TLB)

After a bit more chastening, Job responds:

“You said, ‘Listen and I will speak! Let me put the questions to you! See if you can answer them!’

“But now I say, ‘I had heard about you before, but now I have seen you, and I loathe myself and repent in dust and ashes.’” (Job 42:4-6 TLB)

Job exchanged his unintentional pride for intentional humility. As a result, God restored to him double what he had lost, and he lived to a ripe old age to enjoy it.

Strength in Surrender

So as we can see, pride makes us enemies of God, but humility sets things right again. By surrendering our pride, we open up Blessing Blvd. to traffic. God hears our prayers and answers them according to His will.

This is what we need to remember when our circumstances go south. Because they will. In fact, if you take a look at the world around us, they already are.

It is so difficult to look at the chaos of our society and believe that God is in control. But He is. It is WE who aren’t. Because it´s not our job.

For only God is God.

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The Kids Aren’t All Right: Part 1–What We’re Up Against

Lord, save our children.

When did it become not OK for kids to be kids? There is hardly a child now that by the age of 14 hasn’t either cut themselves, questioned their sexuality or rejected God. Anyone that tries to lead them to Truth is labeled intolerant, hateful, an ignorant bigot, or worse.

We are even accused of trying to indoctrinate our own children, but only because our parenting gets in the way of the attempts at indoctrination by our accusers. And they want to call US hypocrites!

How fortunate then, that God already has a plan for these people. He will have the last word, as he told His prophet Isaiah:

I stop the highbrow intellectuals in their tracks,
and I show the fault of their reasoning.
But I stand behind the words of My servants,
and I accomplish what they predict. (Isaiah 44:25b-26a VOICE)

We must endure. As righteous as our anger may be toward our antagonists, we must remember these things:

In our anger, we must not sin.(Ephesians 4:26)
Vengeance is the Lord’s not ours. (Romans 12:19)
We do have a real enemy, but it is not a human enemy (2 Thessalonians 3:15, 1 Peter 5:8)

Our job is to spread the Gospel. We can’t praise the name of Jesus and sully it at the same time. If we take our eyes off of Jesus and start worrying about what other people are doing, then we lose sight of our mission. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in his book, Strength to Love:

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral,
begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.
Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence, you may murder the liar,
but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth.
Through violence, you may murder the hater,
but you do not murder hate.
In fact, violence merely increases hate.
So it goes.
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness:
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

Our job is to bring the light of Jesus to a darkened world that does not know it is in darkness.

We shouldn’t be surprised when we encounter opposition to the Truth. This has been going on since day one. Jesus was crucified, the apostles were persecuted and martyred, and on and on through the centuries. There may soon come a day when preaching the word of God becomes illegal in this country, as it is in many communist and Muslim countries.

But here’s the thing. Even if they put us in prison, God’s word can not be bound. As Paul wrote in his second letter to Timothy:

Remember always, as the centre of everything, Jesus Christ, a man of human ancestry, yet raised by God from the dead according to my Gospel. For preaching this I am having to endure being chained in prison as if I were some sort of a criminal. But they cannot chain the Word of God, and I can endure all these things for the sake of those whom God is calling, so that they too may receive the salvation of Jesus Christ, and its complement of glory after the world of time. (2 Timothy 2: 8-10 PHILLIPS)

We are called to persevere under trial and not to give up. Even if we get tired and weak, God won’t. So if we trust Him to carry us when we can’t go on, He will be faithful to do it.

We must stand firm, not only for our children’s sake, but also for our own. Will you join me in praying for our youth today to be Truthseekers and not herd followers?

DN=: Part 16–Hypocrisy

I find it interesting that the Greek origin of the word “hypocrisy” comes from the theatre. You may know that ancient Greek plays were performed by actors wearing masks. These actors were called hypocrites, not because of any character deficiency, but because they were literally “pretending under a mask.”

This meaning makes sense when you think about people whom you may have considered guilty of hypocrisy. What they are doing is showing the world one face, their “mask,” while pretending to be something they are not. One of these masks is self-righteousness.

Why do you see the splinter in your brother’s eye but not notice the log in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the splinter out of your eye,’ when you have the log in your own eye? You hypocrite! First, take the log out of your own eye; then you will see clearly, so that you can remove the splinter from your brother’s eye! (Matthew 7:3-5 CJB)

Jesus’ warning against hypocrisy from the Sermon on the Mount is one of the most humbling passages in scripture. However, as is so often the case when people use the Bible as a defense mechanism, many of us want to put a period where God put a comma (or in the case of the translation used here, a semicolon).

Notice that Jesus did NOT say, “You hypocrite! First, take the log out of your own eye” PERIOD! There is a “then” after the “first” and a “so that” after the “then.” The purpose of taking the log out of your own eye is to clear your vision. And the purpose of clear vision is to successfully complete the task of helping get the splinter out of your brother’s eye.

Jesus is clear in noting that the fault does not lie with the person giving correction, but with the spirit in which it is given, namely that people with issues of their own ought to address those before pointing out someone else’s.

Nowhere in the passage above does it say that it is OK to have a splinter in your eye. It also does not state that one must be perfect to remove a splinter. After all, no human was ever perfect besides Jesus. And since He is clearly advocating the removal of splinters from eyes by people who are less than perfect, it should be equally clear that imperfect people, under the right conditions, are qualified to remove eye splinters.

IMPERFECTION DN= HYPOCRISY

Have you ever tried to be perfect or maybe felt that you wouldn’t measure up if you were anything less than perfect? It’s stressful, isn’t it?

Many Christians fall into this performance trap. Sometimes we get the impression that in order to be worthy bearers of the name of Christ, we can’t slip up, lest the onlooking world accuse us of hypocrisy.

I would like to do my part in helping break this cycle by saying that it’s actually a good thing for the world to see us fail. It doesn’t seem so at first, when we are enduring the taunting, the ridiculing and the finger pointing, but when the dust settles, we have a unique opportunity.

We have the chance to publicly demonstrate personal responsibility by swallowing our pride and owning our fail as well as the consequences thereof.

In other words, we can take off our masks and show the world what’s underneath.

He turned now to his disciples and warned them, “More than anything else, beware of these Pharisees and the way they pretend to be good when they aren’t. But such hypocrisy cannot be hidden forever. (Luke 12:1b TLB)

The few of you who have stuck with me during the LONG pauses between posts in this series may have wondered what the delay was all about.

I knew that I was going to be closing out my series exposing the hypocrisy of the “=” movement by talking about hypocrisy itself and how those who bring that charge the most strenuously seem to be the guiltiest of it themselves.

Then I looked in the mirror one day and saw the log. So I’ve been spending the past several weeks trying to figure out what to do with this log in my eye.

You see, the thing is, I’m a wanderer. I guess we all are, because we are all susceptible to sin in general and the sin of pride in particular, but I’ve been doing quite a bit of wandering lately. I can totally relate to what Paul was feeling when he wrote this to the Romans:

I don’t understand myself at all, for I really want to do what is right, but I can’t. I do what I don’t want to—what I hate. I know perfectly well that what I am doing is wrong, and my bad conscience proves that I agree with these laws I am breaking. But I can’t help myself because I’m no longer doing it. It is sin inside me that is stronger than I am that makes me do these evil things.

I know I am rotten through and through so far as my old sinful nature is concerned. No matter which way I turn, I can’t make myself do right. I want to but I can’t. When I want to do good, I don’t; and when I try not to do wrong, I do it anyway. Now if I am doing what I don’t want to, it is plain where the trouble is: sin still has me in its evil grasp.

It seems to be a fact of life that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. I love to do God’s will so far as my new nature is concerned; but there is something else deep within me, in my lower nature, that is at war with my mind and wins the fight and makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. In my mind, I want to be God’s willing servant, but instead I find myself still enslaved to sin.

So you see how it is: my new life tells me to do right, but the old nature that is still inside me loves to sin. Oh, what a terrible predicament I’m in! Who will free me from my slavery to this deadly lower nature? (Romans 7:15-25 TLB)

I think at some level I just knew that I wouldn’t be able to finish this without dislodging my log.

But then I considered the question that ends the passage above. Who will free me from my slavery to this deadly lower nature? Well, duh. Jesus already did. I’m still working on my wood-vision, but at least I’m aware of it. The fact that I want the log out of my eye is the evidence that it is possible. Especially when I consider the alternative:

If anyone sins deliberately by rejecting the Savior after knowing the truth of forgiveness, this sin is not covered by Christ’s death; there is no way to get rid of it. There will be nothing to look forward to but the terrible punishment of God’s awful anger, which will consume all his enemies. (Hebrews 10:26-27 TLB)

The unfortunate fact that I am prone to wander from the Truth does not make the Truth any less true. Therefore, it is not hypocrisy for an imperfect messenger to deliver a perfect message to someone that would benefit from it.

For this reason, I will press on, and continue doing what I have been called to do.

Because falling down DN= falling away.

DN=: Part 4–Holy

Another troublesome churchy word is “holy.” Like “righteous,” the word “holy” also has some unnecessary baggage attached to it. Just as some people see the word “righteous” and think “self-righteous,” some people see the word “holy” and think “holier-than-thou.”

If you’re not familiar with the term, “holier-than-thou” describes the attitude of a Christian condescending to someone else. Naturally, this attitude is very off-putting.

HOLY DN= HOLIER-THAN-THOU

The word “holy” simply means “set apart for God’s purpose.” It can refer to a day, a place, a nation or an individual. Mostly, however, it refers to God Himself. As Isaiah wrote:

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

(Isaiah 55: 8-9 NIV)

God is holy, or set apart, simply because He’s God, and we’re not. When people put their faith in Jesus Christ, trust in His saving work on the cross to make them righteous, and make Him the Lord of their lives, then they also become holy. They are still human beings, but now they are set apart from the world to do God’s work.

It is critical to understand the progression here. God makes us righteous through JESUS’ work, not ours. In the same way, God makes us holy only when we realize that we AREN’T made righteous by our good deeds.

If a person claims to have faith in Jesus, but still lives as he did before being saved, then how has that person been set apart?

He hasn’t.

Christians are SUPPOSED to stand out. We are SUPPOSED to be different from everybody else. Otherwise, what would be the point of being one?

The irony of holiness is that just as we were set free in order to become servants, we were also set apart to become unified—not to the world, but to each other. As Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus about Jesus:

The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love. (Ephesians 4: 11-16 NRSV)

When Paul refers to “saints” in this context, he is referring to all believers, not people (such as himself) who are referred to with a St. in front of their name. The “work of ministry” for which said saints are being equipped is the service to which we are called upon having been made free. Still with me so far?

In addition to the gifts Paul mentions above, there are many other spiritual gifts that believers receive when they are made holy. I’m not going to go into all of them here. However, in light of the sudden aggressive turn our culture has taken, I feel it necessary to expound upon one of them—discernment.

(And I will do that in Part 5–Discrimination)

DN=: Part 3–Righteousness

One of the pitfalls of using churchy jargon is the proclivity for misunderstanding by those outside the church. (For more on this topic, check out this post.) One of those commonly misunderstood words is “righteousness.”

To be “righteous” is to have “right standing” with God. This is not a status that can be achieved through human effort. As Solomon pointed out, “Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins. (Ecclesiastes 7:20 ESV).”

This concept is explained further in Romans 3:

What shall we conclude then? Do we have any advantage? Not at all! For we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin. As it is written:

“There is no one righteous, not even one;
there is no one who understands;
    there is no one who seeks God.
All have turned away,
    they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
    not even one.”

Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.

But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

(Romans 3:9-12, 19-26 NIV)

The passage above contains the word “justify” a couple of times. Justificiation is the act of being made righteous by one who has the authority to do so.

In other words, since we can do nothing to make ourselves righteous, God makes us righteous through faith in Jesus.

Redemption

When we were slaves to sin, we were lawbreakers and were therefore under the penalty of the law. That penalty is death. Jesus paid that penalty for us in order to pay our debt to God. This is the “redemption” the passage above refers to.

The danger for Christians, having been made righteous by faith, is to forget that we had nothing to do with being forgiven. Sure, we made the choice to follow Christ. However, we are forgiven because HE says so, not because WE say so.

If we become too accustomed to our view from the mountaintop, and forget how we got there (by God throwing us down a rope, not by our climbing), it is all too tempting for us to look down on the people still “down in the valley.”

Basically, if you ever find yourself looking down on someone else from a position that you have not earned, you have crossed the line to self-righteousness.

RIGHTEOUSNESS DN= SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS

For Christians, self-righteousness comes from the mistaken idea that we are somehow better than other human beings are because of our relationship with Jesus. For a non-Christian, self-righteousness occurs when they must put another down in order to elevate themselves.

Since true righteousness comes from faith in Jesus alone, a person without that faith would have no means of being made righteous. Since no one can earn the favor of God by good deeds, anyone who boasts in those deeds would be self-righteous as well.

Simply put, self-righteousness is unrighteousness.

(For more clarification of church jargon, come back for Part 4–Holy)