To Warn is to Love

“Keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.  Have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire.”  Jude1:21-23a

            When my younger brother Nate was a little boy, he wandered over and pressed his hand onto our wood-burning stove.  Naturally, his skin broke out into a cluster of sizeable blisters resembling something like mozzarella (I wasn’t able to eat grilled cheese for months!). But just moments before he touched the stove, I seem to remember my mom yelling at him, warning him not to touch the stove. Her tone was shocking to me at first, but after seeing the damage done to his hand, I understood that her response was warranted and appropriate. 

            How do we respond to the reality that people without Christ are entering eternity (perhaps this very day!) without God and without hope... forever? How do we feel about them entering a land with no trace of goodness or light or pleasure?  Or are we too busy to feel, too busy protecting our personal comforts and padding our bank accounts? Are we so caught up in even our Christian activities that we've forgotten what it means to be a Christian, what it means to snatch people out of the fire?  My mom was loud and, frankly, rude when she shouted at Nate, but that was a function of her love for him.  Would it have been better if my mom had first researched the danger of burns, talked to my dad about the possibility of warning Nate, started a home group study about burns, and concluded in the end that she didn’t want to startle or offend Nate by confronting him? Love and warning are conjoined twins. “Keep yourselves in the love of God...save others by snatching them out of the fire.” You cannot separate these thoughts. If you refuse to warn, then you've failed to love.  "Have mercy on those who doubt." Yes, mercy should pervade every conversation we have, but let us not mistake mercy for weakness.  Mercy is proactively stepping out in order to bless someone - often at great personal risk.  Mercy takes many different forms, but one thing mercy does not do is sit quietly by and watch someone march to their own destruction. In this culture of endless diplomacy and unqualified tolerance (which is a logical contradiction), we must remember that warning people of destruction, when done gently, is a function of love for people, not rudeness or bigotry.  "An open rebuke is better than hidden love, and wounds from a friend are better than many kisses from an enemy." Proverbs 27:5-6

Stand Out

(An entry from Ezekiel's journal):  "God's Message came to me: Son of man, I'm about to take from you the delight of your life—a real blow, I know. But please, no tears. Keep your grief to yourself. No public mourning. Get dressed as usual and go about your work—none of the usual funeral rituals. I preached to the people in the morning. That evening my wife died. The next morning I did as I'd been told. The people came to me, saying, "Tell us why you're acting like this. What does it mean, anyway?"  (Ezek 24:17-19, The Message)

These were a calloused people - so calloused, in fact, that Ezekiel couldn't just tell them God's messages... he had to act them out.  Earlier in the book, we find Ezekiel lying on his side for 390 days, shaving his head and scattering the hair around the city, and even cooking his food over cow dung! It's not hard to imagine then that the Israelites had long since written Ezekiel off as an old fool. They had quit paying attention.  But when Ezekiel seems unfazed by the sudden death of his wife, the people are perplexed.  Yes, they would love to keep ignoring this old man, but his behavior is just too bizarre. Nobody loses a loved one and then carries on like nothing happened!  So the people just had to know the reason behind Ezekiel's behavior. "Tell us why you're acting like this." Ezekiel proceeded to share God's message with the people, and no matter what they thought of Ezekiel prior to this event, you can be sure that for this message, they were all ears.

No one is perplexed when people mourn the death of a loved one because it's expected behavior.  The general principle is that when people behave in keeping with their culture and its customs, no one notices.  It's been argued that the church is rapidly losing influence in our world, and I think it's because Christians aren't often that different from the world. The world wonders, "What do Christians have that we don't?" Our joyous Good News is often invalidated by our lukewarm lives, and our world has stopped listening.  But people might start paying attention again if we, like Ezekiel, begin behaving in ways that confound our culture.  

One example of this is found in Philippians 2: "Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life." Do you want to stand out and shine in this dark and depraved culture?  Then stop complaining. Stop whining about your job, your president, your salary. Start praising God for his gifts. Replace your string of cynicism with a song of thanks. Then the world will take notice and your friends will start to wonder what's wrong with you.  They'll close the gap and start asking questions. It's at this point (and not before) that you'll have the open door to "hold out the word of life" to them.  It doesn't make any sense to boast of a joy-filled abundance while moping around like the rest of humanity in a dimly-lit existence, whining about world events and bemoaning your circumstances. If you really want to stand out, start reading your Bible and obeying it, because as Lecrae sings, "no one's doing that." For more ideas on how to shock your culture, check out the following scriptures: Matthew 5:38-48, Proverbs 15:1, 1 Peter 2:13-23

The Problem with the World

I  was speaking with a friend recently and discussing the matter of pride.  “One of the symptoms of pride," he said, "is finding fault with other people.” I promptly responded, “Yeah, I’ve noticed you have a problem with that.” Many of us are experts at spotting sin in others, but we often fail to examine our own hearts.  We’re quick to offer a mirror for our friends and family, but we refuse to turn the mirror around and look into it for ourselves.  I had dandruff in high school, and one day a girl I really liked walked up and pointed out that I had "saw dust" in my hair.  Yeah, I could have played it off as some wood shop experiment gone bad, but I was so sick of my dandruff that I looked up at her and said with cheerful sarcasm, “Oh no, that’s dandruff!”  I had tried everything and nothing seemed to work, so one day I began combing my hair in the dark!  I reasoned that if I couldn't see it, it would eventually go away.  But it didn't.

Many times we deal with our sin in this manner.  Our souls are overgrown with a cancer that's more insidious than anything this world can throw at us.  The Bible says that the human heart is deceitful and desperately wicked.  Some people acknowledge this truth and others try to hide it.  Jesus said in John 3:19-20, “Light has come into the world, but people loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.”  I hid my dandruff in darkness because I hated what I saw - but it didn't make the dandruff go away.  Many of us live in the darkness of envy, greed, lust, pride... and if we say we don’t, we prove that we do.  “Shutting off the lights” may hide the problem from our view, but it won't cure our disease or cleanse our hearts.  Only by facing our sin and letting the light of Christ shine in can we find healing and escape the pervasive darkness of our souls. 

One of my favorite bands, Downhere, sings a song called "The Problem," and in it they explore all the possible reasons for the evil in the world. They consider blaming history, the government, Satan... but what do they ultimately conclude?

Everybody's wondering how the world could get this way
If God is good, then how could it be filled with so much pain?
It's not the age-old mystery we've made it out to be.

Yeah, there's a problem with the world. The problem with the world is me.

The answer is to turn on the lights - no matter how much we may hate what we see!  We must stop playing dumb and start adopting a healthy and honest introspection, leading us to pray like David: "Lord, show me if there be any offensive way in me.”  For, as Downhere sings, "the sooner you can sing along, the sooner you can sing this song, the happier we'll be. 'The problem with the world is me.'"