Blog Archives - Grace for Law

Grace for Law

Hope Springs Eternal

11/28/2011

It was "Rivalry Week" in college football this weekend. What this means is that a lot of "traditional rivals" play on Thanksgiving weekend. These are teams that have played for many years and normally are close geographically. In the south, we have Georgia playing Georgia Tech, for example, and Alabama playing Auburn.

The two Rivalries I have seen the most are Washington and Washington State and Georgia and Georgia Tech. The odd thing about these rivalries is that they are unbelievably one-sided. Georgia has won 10 of the last 11 against Tech. Since I got involved in the rivalry (1974), Tech has won only 10 games (counting that year, of course). This means they have lost 28 times (it's been 38 years and they play every year). Washington has a similar advantage over Washington State. Yet, they remain rivalries. Other such rivalries remain even when one team wins year after year.

From the dominant side, this is not really a hard thing to understand. What is hard to understand is the dominated side. Every year, they hope. Even if it is clear that the other team is generally a "better" team (and always a more successful program), they continue to hope. It is really kind of inspiring.

We often hold on to these kinds of hope. One "great year" makes us assume that we can be great all the time. One great shot on a golf course will make us think we are getting better and bring us back to play again. We are suckers for hope.

This, I believe, is a sign of common grace, God's goodness to even the unsaved among us. Life without hope is a dreadful thing, as we all know. We all know people who have no hope. We have all known someone who is always sure that tomorrow will be a disaster. We know people who hide and fear from morning to night.

Hope is a good thing for us. It keeps us going when things around us appear bleak. It clings to us when we are tempted to despair. It comes back to us even when we give in to despair, as we sometimes do.

In scripture, we are told that we have been born to a great hope, that we live in hope, that the hope we have is an anchor for the soul. Our hope, of course, is Christ.

Whatever your team does this weekend (if you have a team). Whatever happens with your children or your job or your finances, do not give up your hope.

"Next year" is an odd cry in sports. It means we lost this year but we have not lost hope. One day, we will win.

The 10,000 Hour Rule

11/25/2011

Perhaps you have heard of the 10,000 Hour Rule. This is the generally accepted notion that the only way to be really good at anything is to spend 10,000 hours doing it. This is why some people can be professional golfers and others cannot, because they have spent so many years doing golf. The same is true in most professions. You cannot simply "pick up" a profession later in life and be as good as those who have spent so much time on it.

We see this, occasionally, in sports. Michael Jordan, a great basketball player, tried to play professional baseball and failed. He had not spent his childhood becoming a great baseball player and it was too late. He could have been a great baseball player if he had started that way, and invested the time, but he could not be that person anymore. The 10,000 Hour Rule meant that he would never be great at baseball.

We see great athletes in one sports (baseball, football, etc.) suddenly decide they want to be professional golfers. Again, they do not succeed. They have great talent but without putting in the time, they can't be that good at their second sport.

The 10,000 Hour Rule is very important to us. The principle is certainly true -- we get better at things as we do them more often. We become better workers the longer we work, we become better accountants and better lawyers and better machinists and better receptionists by spending more time doing the job.

We become better parents as time passes. One of the joys of being older is listening to all the bright young people with their clever ideas, which you know will fail. In our world, young people don't listen to actual, experienced people they know, they listen to strangers who write books and get on television or the internet. They ignore the 10,000 Hour Rule, just as we did when we were younger.

We become better preachers and better teachers as well. Churches often hire young pastors, hoping to get energy and reach "young people," but find they are not great preachers. Why not? Because they have not preached very often. Occasionally, we find a great young preacher, but very very seldom.

So, what are you spending your time on? How much time I need to spend on something is determined by how important it is to me. I cannot decide to spend my time as I prefer (because I would do useless things so often), but must spend time on what matters most.

Have I spent my 10,000 Hours doing something worthwhile? Have I gotten better?

If not, then today is the day to get focused.

Who are these people?

11/23/2011

As we head into Thanksgiving, I am struck by how little we really know about the people around us. One of the things that strikes me is listening to the envy of people and, of course, dealing with envy myself.

We need to understand that our knowledge of others is actually very limited. I know only what I, well, know. I do not know nearly as much as I might think. I am never at their homes when they get home from work. I do not sit and listen as they deal with their children at home (which can be very different from public settings). I do not know how they were raised or how they are raising their children.

I know that a person who seems very nice to me may, in fact, be cruel at home. I also know that a person who seems cruel to me may be very nice at home. So even how they treat me tells me very little about how they actually live.

I can see, to some degree, how much money someone seems to have, but that is a lie as well. I am regularly surprised to find that someone is in bankruptcy when I think they are prospering. Or, on the other hand, to find someone with real money who lives very simply.

In short, I don't really know anything. I cannot envy someone "because they have money," because I do not really know how much they have or how it affects them. I cannot envy someone's "great home life" when I really do not know what their home life may be. I cannot envy someone's "great marriage" when I, again, do not know their marriage at all. I only know what I see and I only see what they want me to see.

Who are these people?

Paul, I think, has a great lesson for us in all of our judging and envyings. In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul talks about the immense change that happens in us through Christ. Then, he says this:

From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we
once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore,
if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new
has come.

Therefore, he says, "we regard no one according to the flesh." This does not primarily mean how I feel about me, but how I feel about others. Anyone who is in Christ is not to be judged by the flesh any longer. Whether he is a doctor or a lawyer or a preacher or a plumber or anything is of no importance to me. I judge him only in Christ. Whether he is married or single or rich or poor means nothing to me, in that regard. I judge him only in Christ.

I think, and I know, that we are not very good at this. We still judge by the flesh. We still respect doctors more than plumbers. We still respect preachers more than laborers. We still judge according to the flesh.

But, as I become more convinced of how foolishly I have judged, I am more drawn to the truth of God. Every man's life is a hard life, filled with challenges and fears and doubts and weaknesses. Let me judge my brother and sister only in Christ, in Whom they are complete, not on the basis of their flesh or on the basis of mine.

New creatures in Christ. That is all I can really know for sure.

Our Conversations and Our Interests

11/22/2011

I have been thinking lately about our conversations, what we talk about. I participate in a lot of conversations, of course, and hear many others. Here is what concerns me.

What do we talk about? Now, I do not mean the usual "we should talk about Jesus" cliche sermon, I am serious. What do we discuss. It varies in places around the country, but I think my general observations are probably pretty accurate everywhere.

We talk a lot about football. Where I live, the American South, football is the largest topic of male conversation. We meet and talk about football. It's kind of amazing, to be honest. We talk about the last game and the next game. We talk about future games and past games. We discuss counterfactuals (what if x had happened instead of y). We even discuss high school players who might become college players and wonder how they will do as professional players. We talk a lot of football. By the way, women talk football as well down here (very different from Washington state, by the way, where women never talked football).

We talk about baseball and basketball as well. We talk about coaches and we talk about offensive systems. We discuss possible trades or changes. We talk a lot about sports. We talk about sewing and television shows and movies and music. None of these things have any eternal value at all.

We talk about politics. There is a presidential election next year and we talk about possible nominees, even though there are no votes for at least two months and no local vote for four months. Four months. We do not even know who will be on the ballot by that date.

We talk about local politics and gossip. We talk about celebrities and gossip. We talk and talk and talk. We talk some about our children and families, of course, but this is really just about their trivialities - sports, band, etc.

I am not here to tell people to stop talking about such things, but they do worry me. Why? Because they are so trivial. All my concern about this year's football team is meaningless two months from now. All these things are, by definition, trivial. Or, to put it in Biblical terms, they are vanity.

I wonder what people talked about in the mid-1800's. When you sat down to dinner, what did you discuss? I remember reading, once, that the Reformation came to Scotland not through preachers, but through sailors, who brought the ideas from the continent of Europe. As they sat around bars, they talked about the things of the Reformation.

Now, we cannot imagine anyone talking about theology around a bar with sailors. They would be hard to hear over the televisions and music.

We have, in short, lost something. We talk about (and think about) trivialities. What would our forebears think of us?

Cranberry Sauce

11/21/2011

When I was a child, there was one thing about Thanksgiving I never understood -- cranberry sauce. No, seriously. What was that all about anyway?

I remember cranberry sauce often being around on Thanksgiving, but cannot remember ever trying it. I am sure I tried it once upon a time, but I cringed at the very thought of it. I really hated cranberry sauce. I remember it like many people do, an odd, jello-looking substance shaped like the bottom of a tin can. I never figured it out. Why would we eat it? I finally concluded it was there for looks, like parsley sprigs in restaurants.

As I grew older, I kept my anti-cranberry sauce attitude. I ate turkey and wondered why it was so dry (white meat is always dry, it seems). But I still liked it.

Then, late in life, I was served turkey with cranberry sauce. I mean that the server put the sauce on the turkey. I was appalled but, being raised to be polite, I had to try it. It was great. The cranberry sauce tartness worked great with the turkey flavor and got rid of the dryness. I was amazed. All those wasted Thanksgivings. :)

So, what is your cranberry sauce? You, undoubtedly, hear lots of suggestions from your preacher or your teacher or someone in authority. Some of these suggestions you know are foolish and not worth your time. Some of them you know are good and useful. But, what about the others? What about things you don't know?

I have, over the years, learned that there are lots of things like cranberry sauce in my world. There are writers I never thought I would like, but whom I end up really enjoying. There are movies and songs I don't think I will like, but I do like them. There are activities I am sure I will dislike, but end up enjoying.

Cranberry sauce looks kind of odd and I never really understood it before. My Thanksgivings are better now. You can be quite surprised by little things that add a lot to your life.

Meeting My Older Self

11/20/2011

It is interesting to watch all the different television shows and movies that have some "time travel" aspect to them. A frequent theme is the "older self" coming back to advise the younger self. The idea of meeting an older version of ourselves is kind of fascinating, despite the inherent absurdities in such plots. There is the idea of possible changes and alternatives to your lives involved in these things.

I met my older self the other day.

I was standing in a line at a store when the person behind me suddenly called me by name. He was an old acquaintance of mine whom I had known pretty well 30 years ago. He is a great guy and it was good to see him, but also rather surprising. He looked so old. He is just a year or so older than I am.

For the first time, it occurred to me that "that is me." That's who I am. I am an older man, just as he is. I am in my mid-50's.

Everyone who sees me knows that I am an older man. I remember being "the young preacher." I remember having people wonder if I was "old enough" to do certain jobs. I remember those days like they were yesterday, but they were long ago. I remember when people saw me and were struck by my youth, but those days are gone. Now, they are struck by my age.

I have met my older self. He is me. I see him every day in the mirror, but never think about it. I used to wonder how older people felt when they looked at the mirror. Now, I know. They do not think about it at all. That is just who they are. They may notice a new wrinkle or something, but they seldom look at themselves and think how old they look.

I have met my older self. I know, now, what he thinks of me. I know what advice he would give me today, which is the only day that matters. I know how his children are doing. He has nothing to tell me that I do not know. I know the sadness he will suffer (to this point at least) and I think I know a lot about how his hopes have worked out.

But it is not like television. There is nothing he can tell me except what I already know. My older self is there, here, living my life. I hope he does well.

Getting Cold Again

11/18/2011

It's getting cold down here again. This morning, we have ice on the cars and 36 degrees. Doesn't sound like much to northern folks, but it is a big deal to us.

It reminds us of the round-and-round world we live in. No matter how hot it gets in the summer, it gets cold again in the winter. No matter how cold in the winter, it is hot in the summer when summer comes around. Except for those who live in the Tropical regions, the seasons are as close to eternal as things get on earth.

We try to make everything seem special and new, but it really does go around and around every year. Sometimes, it can become a real downer for us. It seems like we fight the same fights over and over. We deal with the same problems and face the same concerns. There comes a point where you are tired to eating the same foods and just walking through the routine of life.

The is the point of the first chapter of Ecclesiastes. The Preacher begins his whole sermon with a section on the repetition of life.

"What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?
A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.
The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises.
The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north;
Around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns.
All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full;
To the place where the streams flow, there they flow again.
All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it;
The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is said, "See, this is new"?
It has been already in the ages before us.
There is no remembrance of former things,
Nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be
Among those who come after."

As we age, the futility of the world, as shown in his sermon, becomes clear to us. Every election is "the most important election in our history." Every year there is another "game of the century." Every year there is another attempt to make us think that something new is happening, but life continues anyway.

God has placed us in a world of repetition and, yes, boredom to anyone who thinks about it. We try to bury this reality with television and movies and games and activities, but it remains as fundamental to our lives.

But the repetition is a gift to us. The fact that the years repeat again and again allow us to plan, to prepare, to know what we can expect. The cycle of water and wind keeps our weather interesting.

But, most importantly, we know where to look for eternal value. We look to God, the one eternal factor in our lives. Water and wind are not eternal. The sun is not eternal. The things that we deal with all the time are not eternal. God is eternal.

As we enter winter, yet another cycle, we are reminded that it is God who has established everything this way. God has created all of this for us and has made a promise. The repetition reminds us of His faithfulness to His word. In Genesis 8, we are told this:

"And when the LORD smelled the pleasing aroma, the LORD said in his heart, "I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease."

As we enter the cold, let us remember that the seasons remind us of God. He is still there, it is by Him that all things continue. It is for Him that we are to live, in cold and in hot weather.

Tebow, Celebrities, and the Essence of Christianity

11/17/2011

We once again find ourselves in the midst of a Christian Celebrity Circus. This time, the "celebrity" is a very young man who plays football. Tim Tebow, of the Denver Broncos, has become a center of a small storm of dispute. It is an interesting view of the foolishness of modern American Christianity.

He is both an outgoing Christian (one who publicly embraces his faith) and a very odd football player. He has had a lot of success in college, not so much in the professional ranks, but has become a serious celebrity because of his faith and his college success. His football skills are not the usual ones that succeed in the NFL, but Christians urge the league to change in order to fit him.
You can find discussions of Tim Tebow on websites, on television, on radio, and anywhere you go. It has become amazingly central to sports programming.

What a shame.

The Bible makes clear that Christianity is, first and foremost, about Christ. Christ is not "at the center" of our faith, He is the center of our faith. Christ is the only Christian celebrity. Everyone else is a believer in Christ or an unbeliever. Christ is our Celebrity.

Secondly, Tebow is not to blame for any of this. He is a faithful believer (based on everything we can see) and has not created this celebrity status. He is not like Deion Sanders, a very talented player who made the decision to be famous. He is just trying to play.

The shame is on the Christians who have made Tim Tebow central to their belief. There are news stories of people buying jerseys with his number and putting "Christ" in the name spot, as if Tebow were Christ. There are Christians who turn every question about Tebow into a question about Christianity, which is entirely irrelevant to the actual question of whether he can play NFL quarterback.

When he wins, Christians have the idea that "God is with him" and when he loses they blame the coach or the other players. This is nonsense, of course, but not uncommon in American Christian circles.

We forget how young he is. We forget that he knows much less than many of us know. We forget that he, like every Christian, is living his life day by day without knowing what will happen tomorrow. We stifle him by our focus on him, almost a worship by some folks.

Why do we so love Christian celebrities? I think it is because, deep down, we have too little faith in Christ Himself or in His gospel. We have the idea that having a famous quarterback will convince people to accept Christ, which is foolishness. We have the sense that having a famous quarterback be a Christian makes us better or more acceptable, in the same way that we will cheer for someone who went to our college or who comes from our home town. We become tribal about our faith and we look for human beings to carry the torch for us. We reject what God tells us to be.

We are not willing to live quiet lives. We are not willing to be overlooked. We are not willing to be humble people. We are not willing to quietly serve God. We want to be famous. We want everyone to respect us. We want people to think well of us. So, we love it when a brother in the faith becomes famous and we cling to his fame. When they fail, we have to find an excuse because we don't really believe in God's sovereignty. When they succeed, we pretend it has something to do with their faith, the thing we share with them, even though nothing else about them is anything like us at all.

The ultimate foolishness is the idea that NFL success is "God's plan" for Tebow. Really? Is it God's primary concern that he have a Christian NFL quarterback or that the gospel be faithfully preached? What if God's will for Tebow is failure in the NFL and success in the mission field? Will the Christians who support him accept this result? If he is injured in tonight's game, will they accept this or "blame" the player who injures him? If he ends up living a quiet life of Christian service, will they accept that?

Christ is our celebrity. No one will be saved because of Tebow's NFL career but only by the preaching of the gospel. We preach Christ, not football theory or the lives of men.

Leave Tebow alone. Let him try and either succeed or fail, glorifying God all the way. If he becomes a great NFL quarterback, it means nothing to the gospel of Christ, which rests on the greatness of Christ not the greatness of Tim Tebow. We do not want people claiming to believe because of Tim (he doesn't want that either) but because of Him.

Old Habits Die Hard

11/15/2011

Well, they have made the newspaper smaller again. My local paper continues to get smaller and smaller. The pages are smaller, the sections are smaller, everything is smaller. I am afraid it will all be gone very soon.

This is a real problem for me because a newspaper is a habit with me. I love to sit and read a newspaper in the morning. I enjoy it with breakfast or just on a break. But, this is going away, too, I suppose.

Actually, I have come to the stage where I barely read the newspaper at all. I read the front section (to some degree) and flip through the "Metro" section. I go through the sports pretty quickly, looking for anything I might be interested in. Ultimately, I end up with the comics (very important) and the sudoku (even more important).

Soon, it will all be electronic. I do not read the newspaper for news, because I have already gotten the news online. I do not need it for comics (I can read those online). But I want it anyway. It is comfortable. It is normal. It is the way I do things. But it makes no sense.

Really, it does not make any sense. I have read more recent news before I leave the house in the morning than any I can find in the newspaper. The process of producing a paper is expensive and wasteful of natural resources. The costs go up while the product becomes less and less useful and interesting. Oh, well. I'll cling to it while I may.

How much of your Christian life is like this? You keep doing things that make no sense just because you are used to them. Churches are filled with things that we do only because we are used to them. Having preached in a lot of churches, they are almost all the same. The order of service is the same (songs, greeting, songs, prayer, offering, "special music," sermon, invitation). The time is the same. The Sunday Schools are the same. Even so-called "contemporary churches" tend to have the exact same pattern, just using different songs. Oh, sure, we can move the offering until after the sermon or some such little thing, but it is never a real change.

The church routine is, for many of us, like my newspaper routine. We are comfortable this way. It is our way and feels good, even if it really doesn't make much sense anymore. Maybe it is time to give up my newspaper, as well as my Sunday routine. Perhaps my time in the morning could be better spent, just as, perhaps, our time in church could be better spent.

Mark Twain (through Pudd'nhead Wilson) had it right long ago: "Habit is habit and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time." The gradual reduction of the newspaper is, gradually, coaxing me out of my newspaper habit.

What will coax us out of our desire to make church "comfortable" rather than a living event?

The Oddity of "Retirement"

11/14/2011

I have now reached the stage where people I know are "retiring" and people with whom I associate discuss their plans for retirement. It's a real oddity.

The concept of retirement, of course, is very new. It really arose only in the last century (the 1900s) and primarily in the last half of that century. Prior to that, no one retired who could physically remain active. People lived all of their lives, not just the first 65 years or so.

How do we look at this new idea?

Certainly, there is much to be said for not working any more. We would love to be able to sleep in and play golf and do such things rather than go to a job. Sometimes, our jobs are physically too demanding for us when we are older and we feel forced to retire, but sometimes our jobs are just kind of annoying. We would love to get out of having to go do them every day.

On the other hand, there is certainly no reason to retire from anything else. Too often, our entire lives are filled with our work and, when we retire, we find ourselves at loose ends. The statistics on how quickly men die after retirement are frightening and are usually tied to the fact that a man without anything to do is, in a real sense, no longer a man at all. Men were made to work and designed to work and, somehow, just aren't the same with nothing to do.

God did not design us for retirement but for work. If we are no longer to work for our income, then we need some other work to do. We need to be active every day, doing something worthwhile. We need to get up (not sleep all day) and get out (not sit at our computers all day). We need to do work of some kind. Some men are good with their hands and fix up their homes (and the homes of their children) during their retirement. Some men are good with gardens and keep the grounds around their homes and grow food to share with friends and family.

The very first command given to a man was to work, to take care of God's creation (the Garden). We were never designed to sit idly while others do all the work.

Thinking of retirement entails many things, but it must entail work. We are not "retiring" from everything, but only from our jobs. We should never retire from our work.