Good News Sense

What makes a man? The answer might be integrity or character, and those are answers worth discussion. My interest here is to address the mistaken approaches that are easy to see among Christian people, especially noticeable in leadership. The particular focus here will be strength, a quality that is generally associated with manliness. This quality is equally important for a spiritually mature woman, for godly people in general; however, the influences of feminist teaching and its backlash make this especially important for men. Due to a sort of feminizing of hurchmen, this message is of particular urgency if the Church is to appeal to manly men.

Recently, I wrote about Wild at Heart, and this lesson is complementary to that. Here I want to address a one of a simple set of values or characteristics of spirituality—gentleness–out of the 9 fruit of the spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control). In total, these qualities are the product of the Spirit’s fruitful presence in a life; they are the goals of spiritual growth. The first in the list is the mark of a Christian disciple, the fruit of obedience to the Great Commandment, and the one enduring quality of the earthly life of a believer, after faith and hope are no longer necessary. The remaining eight are applications of love, positive relational qualities, virtues that make good, enduring, profitable relationships work. Their opposites, the sins of the flesh, are unloving, conflict producing, and relationally destructive; sadly, these qualities reign in much of the Church and, in some form, may even be celebrated as admirable leadership traits.

Far too many leaders in church and family perceive manly leadership as powerful, abusive, domineering, and ultimately distant and unloving. Like a politician, some learn to use the vocabulary of caring and compassion, but their lives are not consistent. It is not unusual for pastors to have few real friends. Often, lay leaders are similarly strong-willed, aggressive, and opinionated, so that pastors who attempt to be friendly and open find themselves in contention, not unlike rams fighting for leadership of the flock. Leaders are not to be rams but shepherds with an entirely different style of leadership (Psalm 23). To complete the cycle, young Christians with strong wills and vocal opinions arecommonly the ones recruited to ministry, suggesting that such traits are the most important in leadership and, by extension, in being a Christian man.

Consider the spiritual fruit called gentleness, which is meekness in older English. The model for this is Jesus himself: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Of course, if one’s image of Jesus is wimpy, then this will not be clear. “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild” conveys his lamb-like quality, but this applies only to him as sacrifice. Otherwise, C. S. Lewis’ image of the Lion of Judah is better, powerful yet gentle. After all, this too is Jesus: I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war. His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. ‘He will rule them with an iron scepter.’ He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: ‘KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.’”

He is strong and powerful, yet capable of incredible sacrifice. He is the shepherd of the sheep who leads with the crook and drives off beasts with the rod. In his touch is compassion and healing; he speaks words of comfort and encouragement more often than rebuke but never, ever shames or belittles. His desire and purpose are to keep the flock together and safe. He emptied himself of glory and leads without dominating or demanding obeisance. He earned respect; he did not demand it. The purity of his life convicted Peter of sin without a word, such was his example.

This is the image of gentle strength, and this is the quality of manhood and leadership we Christian men should aspire to have. The same quality will give women the ability to encourage without becoming shrill or whiny. If a person has gentile strength, he or she will be confident without demanding agreement, one of the worst and most divisive sins, and the one most typical of our splintered Church. With gentle strength, a person may tolerate without yielding to those who ideas might otherwise threaten. This is the spirit that enables a person to walk among those who differ in confidence without discomfort or fear. If more of us had gentle strength, the Church would be a very different body of people.

I try to be a good citizen of my country. I listen to the news, find reliable sources to help me sort out the lies and distortions, make sure I understand the Constitution and how our government is supposed to work, and vote wisely. These days, paying attention to what is going on can be discouraging and depressing. We plainly do not live in a Christian nation, truth and honesty are rare commodities, and one easily wonders how grim the future might be. With such things to consider, how does a person keep an upbeat, godly perspective?

Perhaps this account of Paul will help:  “So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there.  A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to dispute with him.  Some of them asked, ‘What is this babbler trying to say?’ Others remarked, ‘He seems to be advocating foreign gods.’ They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.”

The two groups who argued with him, the Epicureans and Stoics, are well-represented in our culture today. The first followed Epicurus, who believed that “the greatest good was to seek modest pleasures in order to attain a state of tranquility and freedom from fear as well as absence of bodily pain through knowledge of the workings of the world and the limits of our desires. The combination of these two states is supposed to constitute happiness in its highest form.” How many of our fellow Americans seek not to be afraid, escape pain, and be happy, although perhaps without their commitment to limiting desires.

Stoicism taught “the development of self-control and fortitude as a means of overcoming destructive emotions; the philosophy holds that becoming a clear and unbiased thinker allows one to understand the universal reason (logos).” At the other extreme, in many respects, the represent those who any idea apart from what the human mind can perceive. I suspect that many in our culture think like Stoics but act like Epicurians. On the one hand, they reject the revelation of God I favor of human reasoning; on the other, they live very narcissistic lives, seeking mostly physical pleasure.

Much of what we read and hear represents these two goals, rejecting both truth of Scripture and the Law of God, as they relate to what people think and do, respectively. Those ideas are very persuasive, and many Christians slip into thinking and living as they do, while trying, at a different level, to be Christians. People who do have trouble looking at the world with hope; the “good news about Jesus and the resurrection” seems less relevant than the news that threatens our earthly comfort. Sadly, many preachers have slipped into a role that puts more emphasis on the earthly future than our heavenly future. The distinction rests in a simply question, “What is you only comfort in life and in death?” ()

The answer to that questions, taken from the Heidelberg Catechism, is th key to our perspective: “That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Savior Jesus Christ; who, with his precious blood, hath fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, and therefore, by his Holy Spirit, he also assures me of eternal life, and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him.”

In other words, we must maintain a perspective that looks beyond this world and its problems to see things as God sees them. No one can predict how the affairs of this world will work out except that, in the end, they will fall before the plan and purposes of God. We may be blessed with a good life on earth, but we must not allow our vision to become earth-bound. We may save our retirement from the crash of the Stock Market, but that will not save us from our sin. We may manage to have a good life on earth, though only if we live in the will of God, but life eternal is our ultimate goal. The choice is whether we choose to live for ourselves, like Stoics or Epicureans, or live for God. If we live for him, then we will have a heavenly perspective that will enable us to cope most effectively with the the troubles we face here below.

Does life seem bleak and grim?  Do you find yourself worrying about how things will turn out?  I do, sometimes in a blue funk, at other times simply looking at the state of the world around me.  Don’t you?  How could it be otherwise in a fallen world.

My pastor preached today on Romans 8:31-39.  As always, the thought begins earlier, at least to verse 28, although it probably includes all the previous chapters.  “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him…” “If God is for us, who can be against us?” and nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

So which is the reality?  Is it the gloomy outlook we fear or Paul’s optimistic vision.  Perhaps it would be better to ask which way we live and act.  Indeed, Paul’s upbeat sounding words include some pretty dark realities; trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, and sword are all things we’d prefer to avoid.  Paul does not promise we’ll never face these things’ he promises that they will not separate us from God’s love.

Faulty optimism is harmful to faith.  It makes us doubt God or doubt that we are worry of his love, doubting his grace.  The first promise says that God uses everything we experience to make we who love him Christlike.  The second promises that no one can overpower our infinitely powerful God in his work in our lives.  Finally, he promises that none of those bad things can separate us from his love.  Along the way, he also assures us that we will overcome every hardship and threat and become “more than conquerors.”

Bad promises and wrong interpretations can threaten our confidence and hope; even those things cannot endanger our final victory.  I wish I could promise that we will prevail in our earthly struggles, but I cannot.  In the ebb and flow of history, we see great accomplishment and terrible mistakes in the name of Christ.  For many of us, personally, the same is true.  The great good news is that, regardless, God loves us, keeps working on our growth in Christ, and we will indeed prevail overwhelmingly!

What is a child thinking when it runs into its father’s arms?  Does a little girl thing of how big and scary her daddy it?  Is a little boy afraid of the man who towers above him and perhaps lifts him high into the air?  I don’t remember that about my own childhood nor am I a father; but I have watched countless children run into the arms of a loving father, without fear, with little thought of how terrifying he could be.

Too many people imagine their heavenly father as terrifying judge, master of the universe, and all-powerful God.  Of course, he is all of those and much more, but he loves his children, as does any loving father.  When I heard Rick Heil, lead singer of Sonicflood, compare welcoming his own child with how God welcomes us, it seemed so simple.

Why are we afraid of God?  Perhaps, too much preaching has emphasized judgment, sin, and hell.  Is that possible?  After all, we are sinners in the hands of an angry God…without Christ.  Are sinners terrified into heaven?  Doesn’t that seem an odd irony?  Those who reject God have good reason to fear, but is fear the best way to reach people?  More importantly, wherever the fear may have come, believers, now children of God in the truest sense, need to let that fear go.

I distinguish here terror from awe.  Many children live in awe of their fathers, especially when they’re small.  That awe is part of the love that flows between father and child, an awe often reflected back.  How many faithers have I heard comment on the amazement they felt when they first held their child!  To live in awe of God, to love him, and to enjoy his love are perfectly compatible.  Terror and fear are not.  Indeed, John wrote, “And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us.”

I am aware, somewhat from personal experience, that not everyone has ideal memories of father love from their earthy fathers. That provides all the more reason to learn of the love of our heavenly father. My thanks to Rick Heil for a mental picture I intend to hang on to.  I hope you will, too.

“Let us hold fast the confession of your hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more, as you see the day drawing near.”—Hebrews 10:23-25

“Never give up.  Never surrender.”—Galaxy Quest

I seem to observe two kinds of Americans, of late.  One group is filled with hope and optimism in an Obama presidency; the other is filled with despair and pessimism in an Obama presidency.  Both are wrong.  Both imagine the future rests, significantly, in the hands of one man.  That, of course, is true; but the man is not President Barack Obama!  He is neither savior nor devil; he is one man, not yet, if ever, a great man.  History will judge his success or failure.  God will judge his heart.

I would prefer to give less power to any man or woman.  Power corrupts; the more power, the greater the potential for corruption.  Even the possibility of power corrupts, and the American presidency is a temptation to great power.  The temptation isn’t just for those who would become President.  The lust for what that power might give tempts voters to hope some of its benefit will fall to them.  The fear of its power tempts others to doubt God’s sovereignty overall.  None of this represents godly character or faithful dependence on God.

No man possesses power unless God allows it.  It is a puzzle for believers to understand why God has allowed certain evil men to have and abuse power.  In the Bible, we have the benefit of  explanations, which God has provided.  Sometimes, he has used the power of one nation to humble or discipline another, only to later punish that same nation for what it did.  Egypt served as a protector for Israel during a famine and as a virtual incubator for the the nation until the Egyptians began to fear the growing population in their midst.  God has used one of his own, Joseph, to preserve Egypt through years of famine; a later pharaoh had the opportunity to escape the hand of God but chose to release the convenient slaves Israel had become.

We cannot so easily explain Hitler or Stalin, Pol Pot or Mao.  Genocide seems to make no sense from any perspective, none more senseless that the Holocaust of God’s Chosen People.  Israel birthed Christianity, the Roman Empire facilitated its growth, Europe hosted the Reformation, and Great Britain spread Christianity throughout its Commonwealth including North America.  Each of these have thrived and then fallen.  The United States has exported Christianity through the greatest missionary enterprise in history, provided a laboratory for the development of liberty and democracy, and yet now seems destined to suffer the same decline as those that have gone before.  Is there no hope for another outcome?

Believers have a certainty to which they must cling, that God is faithful in keeping his promises.  This certain hope should guide our attitudes about everything we do.  I think it likely that if we seek to save our country, as a first priority, we will lose it.  I doubt a country or an idea is much different than a person, in this sense.  If we make it our goal or purpose, to the neglect of our higher purpose in Christ, we will fail; if we seek to serve Christ in working toward other objectives, they we may succeed. 

Personally, I have not given up on the United States or the culture of faith and freedom that once thrived here.  However, it must be secondary to an even greater commitment to serve God, to love him, and to love his children.  It seems to me that this is much easier under the freedoms provided by our Constitution, but I cannot deny that faith often grows under oppression.  As a citizen of the Kingdom, it doesn’t matter because in either situation the charge is the same:  hold fast to the confession of faith in Christ, never stop supporting each other (which requires being together), continue challenging each other to love and good deeds, and encourage each other till the Lord comes.