Let me get the rulebook

I laughed when I recently saw someone try to to find the loophole in an employee handbook that would cause them to get promotion. The only problem is the person they were trying to appeal to wrote the book.

Christians are kind of like this.


We don't want to sin if we're going to get punished. But, what if the bible doesn't say anything about it, its probably not wrong, right? Or maybe something is only wrong if you go all the way and not if you do everything, but? So, we live our life doing things exactly what the bible says and nothing else, but that's our rulebook.

This is all true, but sin's not that simple. Sin is not really about exactly what we can find in the bible. Imagine explaining to your wife that you weren't technically cheating, you weren't doing anything that wasn't clearly stated as being wrong in your marriage vows. It wouldn't change the feelings of betrayal and hurt. Yet, we do this to God all the time.

You see, when we really love God it stops being about "technically" and starts being about "because I love God". I do things and not do things not because I'm obligated to, but because I love God, and I want to do things that please him and don't hurt him.
In fact, if we just thought this and believed this we'd probably save a lot of debate over what's right and wrong.

This motivation alone, it would change everything. Everything.

Grace: It's Not What You Think

Grace is a hard concept to figure out.

Here's what I know so far. Man sins. Man sins again. And again. It starts out that God makes people atone for their sins by offering sacrifices in the form of food or dead animals, but after a while it's clear that the compounding problem of sin, cannot be made amends by a few meek sacrifices. So, we change the rule book. Jesus comes down to earth, takes a brutal punishment, and makes amends for every sin that has been or will be committed. Done. Well, I guess. Except that there are still questions like, why even be good at all it's all forgiven? Is there something that can't be forgiven? Can I sin too much?

It seems necessary that the only way to understand grace is to understand relationships. Do your purposefully try to hurt or let down your spouse, kids, or family? Most people would and should give a resounding no to this question. But, that doesn't mean that we don't still let down and hurt the people we love. In a healthy relationship, we forgive and move on. There is no amount of times that it's too much, and even though we're forgiven we rarely desire to repeat the situation. Perhaps, this is the same attitude that we must take with God. Do we desire to let him down? Do we desire to hurt him? If we really love God, we will do the things that make him happy! However, the great thing about grace is that those time when we do make him unhappy, he forgives and keeps no records of wrongs.

I understand all this, but maybe the issue if I'm honest is that when I'm sinning I don't think about how this is hurting God. In fact, I'm pretty good at separately God from parts of my life. But, that's the issue. If I really loved God I would let him into every area of my life, and I probably would have a harder time sinning, knowing that I'm hurting God.

Grace is being able to have second chances that make us able to do something differently the second time.

Jesus said "If you love me, you'll obey my commandants"

So, maybe it's not grace or sin, but being able to realize that the more we have God in our life, the easier it is to give and receive grace. Grace is the gift that God has given to us, but to fully understand it we must focus on learning to love God, then we will truly know what it means to be forgiven.

Individualism: I don't think so

Make no mistake I think that every person that walks into the church ought to be allowed to come exactly as they are. No matter what they look like. Or what they dress like. Jesus cautioned us to be like this and to accepting of all people or we would be judged. I get all this.

But....

This is about accepting people in the church, not about allowing people do whatever they want whenever they want. Let me explain. Suppose you decide to wear an ugly pink hat with an animal on it to church. It's your choice, right? Why do you wear the hat, because its you and you want to express your individualism. During the service, people constantly look and stare at your hat. In fact, after church no one remembers the message, just the hat. No one gets saved, no one get set free, because they are paying too much attention to your terrible hat. Yes, its true you got to express your individualism, but what did you accomplish? Everyone was distracted. This is a pretty extreme example.

I'm not against people expressing their style. I do it all the time. It's not just about what you wear either. It's how you talk, how you act. Is it really worth it for me to express myself at the cost of distracting the gospel? I'm not really talking about people in the church, but people on the platform or the worship team. It seems people get so offended by some small guidelines when their on the platform. But, at the end of the day I want it all to be about people encountering God and hearing the gospel. Well, it's there fault if they get distracted. You think, is it really worth it?

The church is about us depending on people to enhance our life. It's not about us going at it by ourselves. So, really our life is not about individualism, but interdependence. We need other people. And. Shock. Horror. Sometimes we'll change a little bit for the people around us. We're not losing ourselves, we're just becoming a part of the community.

But, that's just what I think