The Contents Are All that Matter

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3rd Grade Faberge EggThe old saying, “you cannot judge a book by its cover” has the ring of truth. Jesus said essentially the same thing, “Do not judge by appearances….” (John 7:24)

One difference between God and people is that God sees the heart; we only see the deeds. “I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve.” Jeremiah 17:10 When we judge others, we can’t see what God sees. We enter dangerous territory. We tread into the territory of God. Indeed, we trespass on the province of God.

Even though we cannot see into the hearts and minds of other people, we sometimes act as if we can. We spend much time and energy analyzing and dissecting the specs in other’s eyes, ignoring or missing the logs in our own eyes. We go where angles dare not tread.

At the same time, we spend much time and energy making ourselves look good. We do things for others to see because we want approval and a pat on the back. Jesus judged the Pharisees for doing exactly that. He called them “whitewashed tombs”. They looked good on the outside, but they were dead on the inside. The people who pray eloquently for others to hear or give publically for others to see have received their rewards, Jesus said. The approval, acceptance and praise of other people is the reward, but the ultimate reward from God is lost in the process.

Does that mean that any public prayer or gift is of no consequence? I don’t think so. It all depends on the attitude of the heart and mind. It depends on the things that only God sees. God searches our hearts and examines our minds to judge our deeds. If the heart and mind is right when we pray and when we give, our blessing comes from God.

It seems to me that the same principle must work in reverse: that a person who only prays alone and only gives when others are not looking, but does it out of a heart and mind of pride and self-righteousness, is no better off than the person who prays and gives in public to be recognized by others. Again, what matters is what God sees, not what other people see or do not see. What matters is the heart and mind. Our deeds will be judged and rewarded according to the attitudes of our hearts and minds.

If we are honest with ourselves, we would have to admit that we do not always do what we know we should do. We fail to do the right things sometimes even when we want to do the right things (or at least think we want to). We sometimes have a hard time recognizing the truth about ourselves. We condemn ourselves when Jesus says there is no condemnation. We judge others when we are quick to forget our own shortcomings. Frankly, we are not well equipped even to judge ourselves accurately. Who, then, are we to judge other people, let alone their motives?

If we are trusting in ourselves and the good things that we do and have done, we are trusting in the wrong things. Yes, God judges and rewards us according to the things we do, but God searches our hearts and examines our minds in order to reward us according to our conduct. It is not the conduct, itself; it is the heart and mind of the person that counts. We can’t even be certain of our own motivations. Thus, we must pray: “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! … see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” (Psalm 139:23-24)

What a state we are in? But that is precisely where God wants us. “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” (Eph. 2:8-9) If we could judge ourselves accurately, wouldn’t we also become proud of that fact? The truth is that we are utterly dependent on God even for the most basic of things.

Jesus said, “Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.” (Luke 6:37-38) Jesus suggests that we will be judged and measured by the same standard we judge and measure others. If we live our lives by that premise, we will give generously and forgive unconditionally and spend no time judging or condemning others.

If God is in the business of rewarding people according to their deeds, we can trust the judging to God. We are not in the position to judge even ourselves. That will free us up to get about the business of doing what God wants us to do: love God with all your heart and mind and love your neighbor as yourself. There is no higher calling. It does not matter what is on the cover; the contents are all that matter.

Being Honest about Who and What

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Photo by Amanda Leutenberg
Photo by Amanda Leutenberg

Part one of two – let’s be honest about the who and what of our underlying presuppositions…

“[Christ] told us to be not only ‘as harmless as doves,’ but also ‘as wise as serpents.’ He wants a child’s heart, but a grown-up’s head. He wants us to be simple, single-minded, affectionate, and teachable, as good as children are; but He also wants every bit of intelligence we have to be alert at its job, and in first-class fighting trim.” C.S. Lewis ~ Mere Christianity

Many believe that people must check their intelligence at the door of faith in order to be a Christian. Certainly atheists and agnostics think so, but believers also act as if intelligence is something that must be discarded or even worse, not to be trusted.

A read through the Bible, however,  reveals that God is as concerned about a person’s mind as He is about a person’s heart. In fact, the mind and the heart are often mentioned together. (See Matthew 22:37; Mark 12:30 and Luke 10:27)

If we believe in God, and believe He created the heavens and the earth, then we can trust the intellect He gave us. In fact, if He gave it to us, does He not expect us to use it?

Continue reading “Being Honest about Who and What” →

Like a Child

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We go about our days. They seem like a blur. Days turn into weeks. Weeks turn into months. Months turn into years. Life comes at us faster and faster. As we get older, the pace of time seems to pick up. Life seems like a blur.

Time does not speed up of course. We just settle into routines. We keep busy. We move from one thing to another while we are thinking about the next thing and the next thing.

We have little space in our lives, like those endless summer days as children when we would spend an afternoon watching the clouds play across the blue screen of the sky. We race from one moment to the next. We fill our pauses with the white noise. Preoccupation and busyness, television and radio, noise and activity, the moments of life rush at us. They rush past us.

Our minds even race when we lie down to sleep or rise from the anxious edge of sleep in the middle of night, unsettled by waking, unable to fall back to sleep, unable to abide the quiet, unable to rest, unable to quiet our restless minds, unable to be still.

We throw the occasional payer up to God, like tossing candy at a parade. There is no stopping. Life must move on, and we move with it, carried on the current of the momentum of our lives.

Jesus took time out.

God gave us the Sabbath (rest) (Mark 2:27), but do we take it?

As children we are anxious to become adults. As adults, we long for those endless summer days.

Children play hard and sleep well. Adults hardly play and fitfully sleep.

Jesus said, “[U]nless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt. 18:3)

Bias is Revealed in What we Consider and Fail to Consider

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Siloam Tunnel inscription records
Siloam Tunnel inscription records when workers from the 8th Cent. B.C. met when digging from opposite directions. The inscription is now located in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum

When skeptics claim that Bible believers are biased, they are right. The truth is we all are biased, skeptics included. Some may be more aware of their own bias than others, but we all have our biases.

I am fascinated with stories of people who had one “bias” at one time and changed to the opposite “bias”. It happens both ways: atheist to believer/believer to atheist. Someday I will explore the similarities and the differences in those stories. There are some common threads, but that is a topic for another day. Continue reading “Bias is Revealed in What we Consider and Fail to Consider” →

Lighting Out for the Wild West

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A number of significant personal “revelations” mark my way in life. Among them is one that occurred in college during a combined history/literature class. It was literally a turning point for me.

Among the books we read in that class were the Pioneers by James Fenimoore Cooper and Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. All the books we read explored the line between wilderness and civilization, the tension between man’s indomitable quest to conquer and civilize nature and his longing to be free of modern complexities and problems and return to nature.

Cooper wrote the Pioneers in 1823. It was fiction based on the “western frontier” of his time, with the setting in upstate New York in the finger Lakes area. The main character (the Leatherstocking, Natty Bumpo) was a grizzled old man who was more comfortable with the Indians on the other side of the lake than “his” people. His people were recklessly intent on taming the wilderness. He had more of a kinship with the Indians who respected nature and did not desire to tame it.

Cooper was among the earliest environmentalists. He was concerned about preserving the wilderness. In one of the most memorable segments of the book, he described the wanton abandon with which the pioneers heartily shot the slow Passenger Pigeons for sport, leaving destroying entire flocks at a time. The Passenger Pigeon has since gone extinct due to that kind of behavior.

Bumpo was not comfortable with his own crowd. He yearns to leave “civilization” and live in the wilderness. The book ends with him heading west to find untamed land.

Huckleberry Finn, of course, is the story of a young man cut out of a similar cloth. The time period is 1845, and the setting is much further west – along the Mississippi River. Just twenty something years after the Leatherstocking left upstate New York to find untamed country, Huckleberry Finn is struggling to conform with the “civilized” society of Hannibal, Missouri.

Huck had no more affection for the polite society of Hannibal, Missouri than the Leatherstocking had for his kind in Upstate New York. To Huck’s chagrin, the sliver of wilderness that he knows, the Mississippi River, is increasingly congested with paddleboats, commerce, and the constraints of civilized society. At the end of the book, Huck is last seen “lighting out for the west” just like Natty Bumpo, seeking untamed territory where Huck can live in peace the way he wants to live.

These books stirred a similar longing in me, but I realized that Huck’s westward trail would become a well-beaten path. The pioneers blazed the trail, but wagon trains and the Pony Express followed, then the railroads, then the transcontinental roads, then the highways, and then airports and jetliners. The sadness of having nowhere to run to hit my viscerally, and that visceral reaction led me to a turning point.

Continue reading “Lighting Out for the Wild West” →