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Simple Simon

Monday, December 19th, 2011 | Author:

My little children, I am writing these things to you that you may not sin.  And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.  1  John 2:1  NASB

May not sin – Either John was delusional or he was the greatest simpleton the world has ever known.  How could he possibly imagine that simply writing these words of advice would make us capable of not sinning?  Didn’t he know that every human being sins every day in word, thought and deed?  Didn’t he comprehend the enormity of the effects of the Fall, defacing our intellects, our wills and our emotions?  How could anyone be so unaware of the great burden of the Law?  When you read this verse, you must shake your head in disbelief!  It just couldn’t be so simple.

Before you allow thousands of years of Augustinian-Luther depravity to shape your understanding of the text, notice John’s actual words.  First, he addresses us as teknia.  He does not expect to deliver sophisticated theological texts of intricate arguments concerning harmartiology or tomes of ethical definitions and exact behavioral prescriptions.  Adults might be able to handle just volumes, but not teknia.  Children need simple instructions, instructions that they can actually understand and do.  Fathers do not hand children instructions manuals for flying Cobra attack helicopters.  Fathers give children remote control toys with “Up,” “Down,” “Forward” and “Backward” levers.

Put aside the hundreds of lessons you have heard about how complicated it is to live righteously.  Put away all those sermons that taught you to believe you could never actually do all that God wanted you to do.  Scratch out every mistranslation of sarx that reads “sinful nature.”  None of that fits John’s context.  Or Moses’ for that matter.  “These things are not too difficult for you nor are they too far from you.”  Torah is easy.  It’s clear.  It’s direct.  It’s simple.  And doing Torah produces righteousness.  John writes that we might not sin.  That means he must think it is entirely possible to follow his instructions.  Is that what you hear him saying?

Oh, yes, John also recognizes that sometimes, occasionally, every once in awhile, we mess up.  If anyone sins, not when everyone sins.  Sin is to be the exception to the rule.  Once in awhile a child can’t quite get the hang of it and the remote control helicopter crashes.  But, not to worry, just pick it up and go again and pretty soon that little child is flying around the helicopter like he was born to it.

Then it’s time to move up to the big boy toys.

Topical Index:  sin, children, amartete, 1 John 2:1

 

Category: Today's Word  | Tags: , , ,  | 11 Comments

My Way or The Highway

Sunday, December 13th, 2009 | Author:

Dedicate a youth according to what his way dictates; even when he is old, he will not depart from it.  Proverbs 22:6 (NIV)

Dedicate – Solomon was a very wise man.  His wisdom penetrated the essence of things.  His sayings often reveal what we do not see on the surface.  So, when we read this mashal (Hebrew – proverb), we should be careful not to think of it as merely commonsense.  Why would Solomon bother to tell us that you can discipline a child to do what you want?  That’s obvious.  The King James idea of “training a child” sends us in the wrong direction.  Proverbs is not a book for parents.  It’s a book for youth.  This mashal isn’t about making a child follow a path determined by parents.  It’s about directing the child in a path essential to who the child is.

The imperative chanok (dedicate) means “to start the youth off with a strong and perhaps even religious commitment to a certain course of action.”[1] But what course of action?  Waltke writes “[the child] must be assessed individually to design personally the appropriate moral initiative.”  In other words, the course of action is determined according to the individual makeup of the child.  It is tailor-made to fit the essential character of the child.  “One rule fits all” is not the process Solomon endorses.  It can’t be “My way or the highway.”  That isn’t what Solomon (or God) has in mind here.

OK, so it’s about unique, individual courses of action.  Does that mean parents have different “rules” for each child?  No. Rules can still be the same.  But this verse is not about rules! It’s about parental dedication to understand your child so deeply that you see what the child was born to be – and then designing a course of action to allow the child to become what God designed into him or her.  God designed each of us to fit perfectly into His delightful plan for creation.  Parents have the responsibility to discern what God has in mind for their children and do everything they can to bring that about.  When they set a child on a course of action that is in alignment with the way the child is designed by God, the child will never depart from it.  “Born to be me” is the operating principle.

So, if you have children, are you able to answer this question:  Do you know (from God’s perspective) what your children were born to be?  If you don’t, how can you possibly fulfill the role of parent according to God’s design?  If you don’t know who your child was born to be, you are more than likely to send that child down your path, not God’s path.  And when they are older, they will depart from it because it wasn’t who they were.

This is not commonsense!  This is godly instruction.  It is dedication to “what his way dictates,” not what you desire.  It’s action after homework.  And homework for parents is all about God’s design for your child, not your wishes for your child.  Maybe it’s time to take a much deeper look at that little person running around your house.

Topical Index:  children, discipline, Proverbs 22:6, chanok, dedicate

[1] Waltke, Proverbs, Vol. 2, p. 204.

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Without History

Sunday, February 22nd, 2009 | Author:

Our Father in heaven  Matthew 6:9

Our Father – The usual interpretation of this opening phrase focuses on fatherhood.  Questions are raised about how we can understand God as Father if we lack examples of human fathers.  This is, of course, a monumental problem in our culture today.  With more and more children raised in the absence of fathers, and with the sinful passion to simply eliminate the need for a father, our children are pushed one step further away from embracing the true Father.  We need to be reminded of the importance of godly fathers. 

But this is not what I want to look at today.

You may have been taught that the concept “our Father” was new to Jewish ears.  Not so.  It was not at the forefront of Jewish thinking, but there are plenty of examples of the collective understanding of God as our Father in Jewish thought.  Nevertheless, there is something here that shines a new light on this divine connection.  When God is our Father, none of us have any history.

Here’s what this means.  We are all connected through some link in the history of our past.  Somewhere back there, we all came from the same beginning.  The Bible certainly emphasizes our common legacy.  No man is radically separated from any other man.  Enemy or friend, we are all still brothers.  But Yeshua suggests something deeper.  When we pray, “Our Father,” we stand in direct relationship to God.  We no longer depend on our human ancestry to establish our relationship with Him or each other.  He is our immediate Father.  We stand before Him without any legacy or ancestry.  He conceived us (that’s what Jesus says in John 3) and we are His direct children.  This is commonly expressed as “God has no grandchildren.”  That’s true.  But what it implies is pretty deep.

If God is my immediate Father, and He is your immediate Father, then we are bonded together by spiritual blood ties.  We belong to each other.  Yeshua makes that abundantly clear in the pronoun, our.  He is the Father of each of us, all together.  And when we approach Him, we do so as part of His immediate family.  Our presence before Him is not individualistic.  We represent each other.  We are His children, plural.  We need to think of ourselves as His children, plural.  This concept runs deep in Scripture.  When one sins, all are affected.  When one hurts, all cry out.  When one rejoices, all dance.  When one is lost, all are grieved.  After all, He is our Father.

This is the opening thought of the model prayer.  Did you get that?  The very first thing in prayer is to realize our common bond.  Prayer begins with “us,” not “me.”  I have no history to rely on.  I have only you, my brothers and sisters.  We come to Him together.

Maybe we should start praying all over.

Topical Index: Our Father, history, community, children, Matthew 6:9

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Kingdom Qualifications

Friday, February 20th, 2009 | Author:

But Jesus said, “Leave the children alone, and don’t stop them from coming to me; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such people.”  Matthew 19:14 (translation R. France, NICNT)

Kingdom Qualifications

Such People – R. T. France has an excellent commentary on Matthew.  In a footnote to this verse, he points out that there is no noun after the Greek word for “such”.  The object of Jesus’ comment is implied, not stated.  But clearly Jesus is not saying that only children will enter into the Kingdom.  What Jesus is conveying has to do with status, not with age.  If we want to know who will enjoy the presence of the Father, then we better take a closer look at the qualifications Jesus proclaims.

Little children.  That’s the example Jesus uses.  Now, what is it about little children that sets them apart from the rest of us.  Well, for one thing, they are vulnerable.  They are not in control of life – and they know it.  If they are going to survive, they must depend on someone else.  The fact that we are amazed at news stories about children who exhibit survival characteristics in the face of great threat only emphasizes how much we assume that children cannot care for themselves.  Most children, left alone, die.  That’s the harsh reality of this world.  Just look at what’s happening in Somalia, Darfur or Haiti.  

Do you think Jesus’ didn’t know about these kinds of conditions?  He lived in a brutal era too.  Children are always the first to suffer.  So, when Jesus speaks about the qualifications of the Kingdom, he must have in mind the dependency, vulnerability and risk of being a child.  God cares for those who are in desperate need.  Jesus reiterated the thought in the Beatitudes.  “Fortunate the poor in spirit.”

What else do we find in children?  Perhaps we should pay attention to their relative unimportance.  Of course, in a culture affected by social evolution, we have been seduced into believing that the child is the next great savior of mankind.  But history shows us something else.  Children don’t matter.  They are the first on the expendable block.  They represent the fragile future in a world that is consumed with the breakable now.  We might not send them to the gas chambers, but we certainly have no problem saddling them with lives of poverty.  Who else will pay for our addictive indulgence? 

Finally, children have no voice.  They are the epitome of those who are ignored, dismissed and forgotten.  After all, they can’t even vote!  Who really cares what they would like to say?  No, it’s more important that adults take charge.  We know!  We do our very best to uneducate God’s gifts by forcing them to fit the intellectually, morally and spiritually bankrupt society we so generously bequeath them.  They can’t refuse. 

Vulnerable, dependent, unimportant, taken advantage of  . . .  If these are the qualifications Jesus has in mind, we might find ourselves outside the door of the banquet hall.  Maybe we need to ask how old we are before God and forget about the calendar.

Topical Index:  kingdom of heaven, children, belong, Matthew 19:14, R. T. France

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