Thursday, March 28, 2024

Uncontrollable

Superstition is about our efforts to control God. But, as we said yesterday, God cannot be controlled. 

And as we think this time of year about a God who came in flesh to walk among us and let us lead Him all the way to Calvary, I have to ask the honest question: why would you want to control Him?

What do you want from God that He's not already giving you? 

You want Him to love you. He already loves you. 

You want Him to be with you. He's already with you.

You want Him to bless you. He already blesses you.

You want Him to set things right in the world. He's already setting things right in the world.

You want Him to heal you. He's already healing you.

You want Him to speak truth to power. He's is truth.

You want Him to speak grace to brokenness. He is grace. 

Everything we think we want from God - everything we need from God - is already a free gift from God. He's already giving it to us. 

So much so that He sent His Son to live among us here on earth, wrapped in our flesh, our dust on His feet. He sent Him to break bread with us and pour out His blood for our lives. He sent Him to not only enter the grave of darkness, but to walk out of it, and to go and prepare a place for us. 

What, exactly, do you want from God besides everything He already promised and everything He already is?

All you must do, friend, is believe and accept it. If this is who God is, He cannot be any other than this. He will always be this. 

And I'm telling you right now - He did not send His Son to us so He could change His mind later. That's not how this works. Even if God could change His mind, that's not the kind of thing one changes their mind about. 

So stop trying to control God and instead, just live in His love. He loves you. He really does. 

If you need more evidence of that, just look at your life and see Him poured out in it already. 

Black cats, mirrors, cracks in the sidewalk...and broken rings...aside.  

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Misguided Faith

Still, when we think about superstition, it strikes us as predominantly....faith. It's something to believe in, and if we're Christians and have "Christian"-sounding superstitions, it's easy to convince ourselves that we're really just trying to get faith "right." We're trying to believe the right things in the right ways. We're trying to honor God. 

So...we're Pharisees. 

That's really what it amounts to. It all boils down to the fact that we are trying to demonstrate our faith in the smallest of all details by keeping to the very letter of everything. We're trying to demonstrate that we, alone, "get it" and that our lives, which are full of all of the good things by very nature of our "getting it" are the evidence that all things are well. 

We have put our faith in our ability to keep the faith, and in doing so, we have lost faith in anything and everything at all. That is, we no longer believe in God; we believe in ourselves. 

And that spirals down into something else entirely: we believe that we can control God. 

We believe that by doing the right things, we get the right outcome. We believe that by not breaking mirrors or walking under ladders or crossing paths with cats (or whatever Christian language we want to put on all of this), we live in God's favor and He doesn't have a choice but to bless us. 

We're in, whether He likes it or not. 

Because we've done all of the right things in the right ways. 

Do you see how quickly this takes us away from faith? 

All of a sudden, we are in the good graces of God not because He is good, but because we are. Not because He loves us, but because we are forcing Him to be good to us. Not because His ways are right, but because we are right. And now, our "faith" is no longer God loving us or even us loving Him, but us controlling Him....or so we think.

But here's what we have to remember - God cannot be controlled. 

God's blessings cannot be controlled. God's goodness cannot be controlled. God's love for us cannot be controlled. There is no crack in the sidewalk that we can either step on or avoid that changes one ounce of God's love for us, that changes anything at all about the relationship we share...except perhaps to damage it by drawing us further away from real connection. 

The very moment that we are most certain that we have God wrapped around our finger is the moment that we could not be further away from Him if we tried. 

So let us put away our superstitions - even our so-called "Christian" superstitions - and simply soak in the knowledge that God really is good and He really does love us. 

Plain as that. 

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Consequences

There are some who say that there's evidence in the Bible that our faith is a bit superstitious - that what happens to us is directly related to how well we're keeping the faith or not. As evidence of this, they usually point to Old Testament passages where God pronounces curses on His people, Israel. 

And it's true - there are verses in there that seem almost superstitious. "If you don't keep the law the way I commanded you, then your enemies will chase you, your crops will fail, you will be taken into exile, and your lives will be ruined." Certainly, that sounds like enough to make any person of faith double-check their every step, making sure they aren't walking under any ladders or crossing paths with any black cats. It certainly makes it seem like we must take careful measure with the way that we are living and the things that we are doing, lest we make one little mistake and ruin everything. 

But that's not really what those verses mean. It's not even really what they say. 

When God says those things will happen to His people, He's right. They will. But not because God will inflict those things upon Israel. Rather, those are the natural consequences of living out of fellowship with Him. 

To understand the difference here, think of a very common human example. There comes an age when young children get very curious about everything, and they require a little more careful supervision. So it is common for parents of young children to warn them, "Do not touch the hot stove or your hand will get burned." 

Now, this makes obvious sense to us - touching a hot stove will cause a burn. We understand that the parent is not planning on burning the child's hand as a punishment for touching the stove; the stove is going to burn them because it is hot. 

So why, then, do we read God's statements to this effect any differently than we hear them from earthly parents? If you live out of fellowship with God, you no longer dwell behind His hedge of protection, so no wonder your enemies will find you. No wonder they will chase you. If you break fellowship and are not on God's side, then He's not on your side and the consequences are that your life appears to be cursed. 

Not because God is going to curse you, not because He's going to burn your hand, but because the thing He's warned you about will burn you...you just didn't listen. 

See the difference? 

So the impact of changing our understanding is that we stop tiptoeing around life, afraid to trip things off. Afraid to encounter the ladders and the black cats and the broken mirrors because it feels like they have some kind of power over us. Rather, we live our lives understanding the natural consequences of breaking fellowship with God, which means that we can use the events of our life as sort of a guidepost to let us know how our faith is going. Are we living within God's hedge of protection? Or are we exposed somewhere? What is a weak area that we need to shore up? Where is our faith not as strong as it needs to be? 

Where do we need to know more/learn more/love more about God? 

Monday, March 25, 2024

Very Superstitious

As we enter into Easter week, I've been thinking quite a bit about Jesus. That's probably no surprise. But what I've really been thinking about is the way that we believe in Jesus, the message that we have of Him. And that's led me to think more about superstition. 

Superstition is basically magical thinking - ascribing power to where it doesn't belong and holding onto some very irrational ideas about the way things might be connected in the universe. And it's not limited to unbelievers; Christians, too, have a fair amount of superstition in our lives. It's simply an easy trap to fall into. 

For example, I will give you a fairly recent story from my own life. Several years ago, I acquired a sterling silver ring that I wear every day on my right hand. The ring is carved out to say, "Blessed." I have worn this without any particular magical belief in it; rather, I have appreciated the reminder of my belovedness that goes with me everywhere I go. I have liked being able to look down in hard times and remember that God truly does love me. That's what this ring does for me. 

Then, a few weeks ago, it broke. (For a second time.) The thin space between the "l" and the "e" cracked, making the ring completely unwearable. So I sent it into the shop for repair, since it came with a lifetime warranty (because of course, God's blessings also come with a lifetime warranty). 

And then, weird things started to happen. Not horribly bad things, just weird things. Things that don't normally happen in my life. And I was thinking to myself, "This is strangely weird. Must be a weird season." 

Until unexpectedly, the image of that broken ring popped into my mind, and I laughed to myself. "Of course. I'm not blessed any more." 

It's a silly thought. Things in this world break. It doesn't necessarily mean anything. I would not have previously put any magical power into that ring or thought of it as anything more than the reminder that it was. Yet, I laughed at myself because it was so easy for this kind of superstitious thought to pop into my head, even as a person of faith. A thought that, I confess, I don't believe. But here it was, intruding into my belief system. 

The truth is that it's an easy trap for Christians to fall into. We know our faith is not a faith of works, but of grace, but we spend so much of our lives still searching for works, trying to justify our faith. Trying to justify ourselves. And it is this searching for works that leads us into things like superstitions. It is this kind of searching for works that leads us to magical thinking - to putting power into things that have no power at all, even when we would confess that thing's impotence if you asked us on a perfectly rational level. 

It doesn't take much from here for us to be convinced that our works are failing us, and that's why our lives are a mess. It doesn't take much from here to convince us that we are doing something wrong, that we are broken sinners, completely hopeless. It doesn't take much from here to convince us that God is disappointed in us. And now, here we are, wrestling with failure and feelings of inadequacy and looking at the broken things in our life and thinking they must mean something. They have to, right? 

But what if they don't? What if things just break? 

Friday, March 22, 2024

Bread and an Unholy Kiss

When we talk about Communion and the last meal that Jesus shared with His disciples, I think it's fair to say that we could talk about Judas Iscariot for a really long time. There's just so much in this story. 

It's easy for us to want to write off Judas pretty quickly. He's a turncoat. A betrayer. Selfish. He was there, around Jesus all the time, but he never seemed to "get it." It wasn't for lack of opportunities; it seemed to be just lack of heart. We might even call Judas a "bandwagon" disciple - it seems sometimes like maybe he was bored and got into this Jesus thing because it was a popular thing going on, and he wanted to be involved in it somehow. So he just joined up. 

But to Jesus, Judas was a disciple. 

Don't mistake this - Jesus knew exactly who Judas was. Jesus knew Judas would betray Him. Jesus knew Judas had his eyes on the money bag more than on the opportunities in front of him to invest in better things. Jesus knew that Judas was really interested in being a disciple only because it seemed like something cool going on to get involved with. Jesus knew that Judas wasn't taking His teachings to heart in the same way that the other disciples, or even the general public, were. 

Jesus had Judas at the table anyway. 

Not only did Jesus have Judas at the table, but in the very breath that He declared that He knew one of His disciples would betray Him, Jesus indicated that betrayal by giving Judas a piece of bread. 

The last thing Jesus did for Judas while He had him was to feed him. Knowing all that was coming, Jesus still took a piece of bread, tore it, dipped it, blessed it, and gave it to his betrayer. 

And that betrayer? He ran off into the night only to come back with an unholy kiss. 

That's how Judas betrayed Jesus. As a side note, this has always intrigued me. The guard had been after Jesus for a long time. Jesus's ministry was extremely public. Everyone seems to recognize Jesus as Jesus (not necessarily as Christ, but as the Jesus everyone is talking about) no matter where He goes. And somehow, when the armed forces come into the garden to finally arrest Him, there has to be some sign given to them as to which man is the one they are after. Judas says he will tell them with a kiss.

There's something about the juxtaposition of these two things that just gets me. Something that strikes my heart and makes me think more deeply, even when I don't really know what it is that I'm thinking about. Jesus gives bread to His betrayer - an honest meal, a good bit of food, deliciously dipped into the oil and vinegar that was available and customary. And that man, the one who has taken the bread straight from Jesus's hand, leans forward and kisses His face...but not in thankfulness. 

Two symbols in one story. 

I wonder what we make of them.