All in the Family (1)

Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.  For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household.   Matthew 10:34-36 NASB 1995

Household – For half a century I lived within the accumulated expectations of my relatives.  They watched me grow up, earn degrees, create a business, fall apart more than once and do things that I now very much regret.  I became identified by the history of my behavior.  Everyone could say, “That’s sounds just like him.”  They drew conclusions based on my past.  They assumed, just like we all do, that my past actions would simply continue into the future.  How could they think otherwise?  We are all products of our own history.

Until God makes something new.

God decided I needed a new family.  To get that new family I had to have a new identity.  After years of struggling with God in the presence of my natural family, in a matter of days God changed everything about me.  Suddenly all those identifying marks that made me part of my family on earth didn’t seem to fit.  I discovered that what I tried to find in other relationships was replaced by a deeper satisfaction and confident identity I had never experienced but only glimpsed.  I was thrilled.  God became real.  I couldn’t wait to greet Him each new day.

But my old family had other reactions.  One member asked me to stop communicating about the change in my life.  It was upsetting her religious assumptions.  Another person told me that these changes were too much to deal with.  “Please don’t tell me any more,” was the message.  “I just have too much trouble handling it.”  Someone else was a bit less kind.  “Don’t bother me.  I don’t believe it anyway.”  One suggested that if these changes were real, I should make amends to everyone.  Most just said nothing.  They would rather not confront the possibility of real change.  It left too many question marks.

Now I understand why Yeshua made such a shocking statement about family relationships.  He knew that radical change would upset all the previous dynamics. He knew that people don’t like change.  Actually, I’m not surprised.  If I had no real experience of the power of God to change people, I would be the first one to say, “That stuff Skip is saying is just fake.  He’s grasping for anything to help him feel better about his circumstances.  I know him.  Pretty soon we’ll be hearing that he is back to his old ways.  People don’t change.”

From our natural perspective, meaning is derived from the past.  We live in a world of cause and effect.  The natural direction of cause and effect is toward the past.  What has already occurred becomes the basis for explaining what will occur.  The fact that the sun came up every day for the last ten thousand years becomes the basis for claiming that it will come up tomorrow.  Past dictates future (except in the stock market, of course).  As a result of this orientation toward the past, we assume that the meaning of a man’s life can be explained by his past behavior, environment, and experiences.  This is not a “nature-nurture” debate.  Both nature and nurture lie in the past.  Both are subsumed under the banner of cause and effect.

But God’s point of view is different.  From His perspective, the past is no indicator of the meaning of my life.  The past is only the process by which I arrive at a turning point.  The meaning of my life in God’s world is found in the future because the meaning of my life is what God intends to do with me, not what I have already done to myself.  This is the message behind Yeshua’s declaration in John 9.  The blind man is not blind because of some occurrence in the past (although, of course, from the cause and effect perspective, there must have been a reason in the past for his condition).  The blind man is blind because his blindness is about to become the opportunity for God to demonstrate his compassion and His power.  The reason for this man’s condition has nothing to do with how he came to be blind.  It has only to do with what God will make from his blindness.  What matters is why and the answer to the why question is future directed.

A change in direction is the essence of forgiveness.  Unless God is able to alter the sequence of cause and effect, forgiveness is impossible.  Forgiveness implies a new beginning, and an inexplicable interruption in the natural chain.  Forgiveness is an opening to a new future, a future that is no longer determined by what I have been but rather by what I will be.  God doesn’t care how I got into the ditch.  He wants to show me why being in the ditch can change everything about me.

But those of us who live in the cause and effect world cannot understand this break in the chain.  How could we?  Cause and effect demand uninterrupted compulsion.  Why would anyone believe that life patterns could be dramatically altered?  For many years I was someone who claimed to be a Christian but acted in ways that denied any real inner transformation.  It was a sham.  Perhaps not deliberate, but certainly obvious.  That is the tragic verdict about most “Christians.”  We claim to be followers, but if we really took a hard look at our lives, we would not see anything substantially different between how we behave and how the most ethical non-believers behave.  We lack the power of God coursing through us because we live as though cause and effect rule us.  We just try to be good people, not holy people.  We just try to get by, not die completely to self.  We just try to help out, not sacrifice.  So the world takes a hard look (as it did of me) and says, “Well, he’s a nice guy but . . .”  Yeshua was not a nice guy.  He was a radical disruption to all expectations.  And he asks us to follow him.

Topical Index: household, family, change, transformation, John 9, Matthew 10:34-36