The Pop Quiz

As the Disciples spent time with Jesus, they were watching their teacher heal the sick, cast out demons, teaching the people from the Scriptures, etc. Every now and then, their teacher gave them a ‘pop quiz’. Now when I was in high school and college, a pop quiz was intended by the teacher to encourage us to do our homework and sometimes, it was a measuring stick to see what we were getting or not getting from their teaching.

Jesus was on the move again and a great crowd was following him because they were enthralled by his miracles of healing. They wanted to see what he was going to do next. Here is the quiz Jesus threw at his Disciples: “Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?” John 6:5

Two answers are recorded. Philip’s answer was pragmatic. He was probably quite good at math. “Eight months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each one to have a bite!” John 6:7 Philip is a realist. He wasn’t thinking about why these people were following Jesus – miracles – but rather, he may have been getting caught up in the popularity of their teacher. He couldn’t even see that a solution was possible.

The second answer came from Andrew. We don’t get much information about Andrew in the New Testament. We know he was one of the first disciples to follow Jesus and the first thing he did was get his brother Peter to come see this amazing teacher who he immediately believed to be the Messiah. (See John 1:40-42) Andrew’s answer shows a little more insight than Philip’s. “Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?” John 6:9 Andrew does not see the solution, but he is able to see there is a possibility. He didn’t immediately write the problem off as unsolvable, but rather, saw there was something there.

Sometimes, my subconscious knows something, but my conscious part of me overlooks it because of the other things around me getting my attention. Later I say, “I knew there was something not quite right,” or, “I saw that, but it didn’t quite register.” I think that is where Andrew was. He was further along in the learning process than the others. But he wasn’t quite seeing the whole solution but he was thinking there might be one.

Now Jesus knew where the Disciples are at. And he proceeded to teach them their next lesson: Jesus is the source of all we need. He can take whatever we offer to him and make it into more than enough! How many times do we beg for an answer to a specific prayer and like Philip all we can see is the unsolvable problem? Or when like Andrew do we say, “I don’t see the solution, but here is what I have and I give it to you, Father. Bless it and multiply it to your honor and glory.”

I wonder if I will pass the quiz the next time.

Situational Tolerance

We live in an age where ‘tolerance’ is politically correct. Everyone believes whatever ‘truth’ he sees fit. That tolerance is usually not extended to Christians because they are seen as ‘intolerant’ because of their teachings about Jesus being the only way. I have friends that attend a Unitarian church which claims to be tolerant of all beliefs. But they have told me that even there Christianity is not tolerated very well. I call this ‘situational tolerance’ in that even those who are ‘tolerant’ of ‘all beliefs’ have a few places where they become ‘intolerant.’ Christianity just rubs those people the wrong way.

Jesus was confronting the religious leaders about their lack of acceptance of him as being God’s Son. He said, “I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me, but if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him. How can you believe if you accept praise from one another, yet make no effort to obtain the praise that comes from the only God? But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?” John 5:42-47

Just as these religious leaders were condemned by their own laws and teachings, so the ‘tolerant’ crowd are condemned by their own beliefs when they choose to not tolerate Christians. Come to think of it, they are not the only ones condemned by their own beliefs. It seems in interactions with others, many of us have more difficulty with people who have the same struggles we have, especially if we have not recognized our own problems or dealt with them. If we take note of what we judge in others, we will often find our own shortcomings being illuminated. Ouch!

When I recognize my intolerance of others as my own issues I need to deal with, it makes me more compassionate, forgiving, and accepting of the other person. Something that has made a difference for me when I find myself not liking a person or what they said or did is focusing on a couple of things Jesus said. “For God so loved the world,” John 3:16. “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” John 10:10

Jesus is always open and accepting of everyone. There is no one so bad that Jesus cannot love them.

In the end, I think that is really what the ‘tolerance crowd’ is looking for – Love! “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13

I need to get myself and my demands out of the way so I am free to love others. And with his grace and his Holy Spirit living in me, I can love those I find difficult to love as well as those who are easy to love.

May God give me the wisdom to love others well.

Not What You Know but Who You Know

I come from a family that values learning, but not necessarily institutional education. College was feared more than valued. Of 26 cousins, only 5 of us graduated from college. I think the fear came from watching so many young people from various churches ‘lose their faith’ as they went to college. So is being educated a bad thing? What happened to the 5 of us who went?

Seminaries are scary to me. I have watched so many go through seminary and come out believing less in Jesus Christ and the work he did here on earth than they did going in. What about seminaries does this to people?

“You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” John 5:39-40

The secret is in these words Jesus spoke about himself while discussing with the religious leaders why he chose to heal on the Sabbath. He made it very clear that study of the Scripture is not enough. If you could memorize the Bible from one end to the other, it would not be enough. In the end, it is not about how much you know, but Who you know!

The Scriptures are there to point us to God and let us know how much God cares about us and loves us. They are there to show us how God interacts with the world and its people. What God really desires from us is relationship. He wanted relationship with Adam and Eve – “Where are you?” he said when they hid after eating the forbidden fruit. He wanted relationship with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He wanted relationship with Joseph, Samuel, Saul and David. He wanted relationship with Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Zechariah. Those who chose to respond to God’s invitation to relationship did amazing things. They lived their lives with a capital LIVE!

That does not mean that they had cushy lives of luxury. It seems the closer they were to God, the more willing they were to risk their lives. Abraham left all his wealth and status and set out to begin a new nation. Joseph left the comfort of his family (via his brothers’ violence) to enter the training camp of slavery and prison before becoming 2^nd only to Pharaoh and saving several tribes and nations from starving to death during a famine. David faced Goliath and many battles after that with confidence that God would give him the victory. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Zechariah experienced persecution as they spoke out loud what God was telling them about the future of the nation of Israel and of the world.

All of these ‘stand outs’ in the Old Testament Scriptures were seeking after God with all their hearts, minds, souls and strength. Come to think of it, Jesus own words confirm what he wants from us. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:37-40

If we don’t get the relationship part with God through Jesus Christ, none of the Scripture will be enough. It will just be words that we discuss, argue, believe or don’t believe, teach or ignore. In the end, college and seminary can’t make or break the relationship. It may point out the lack of faith that is already there. Many young people are simply going through the motions taught to them by their parents. They haven’t built their own relationship with God. Being in an intellectual environment may cause us to examine ourselves and test our faith, but it doesn’t give or take away our faith. Our faith is based on relationship. If we are developing a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, that will stay with us whether we fill our heads with more knowledge or not. Knowledge can be useful, but it can’t replace relationship.

So to answer the question about what happened to the 5 of us who went to college… We pretty much came out with our faith that we went in with. It may have been more defined. We may have looked at other beliefs on the way through, but if we had a relationship with God going in, we had one coming out. I had no fear sending our children off to college. They understood relationship with God. My confidence was in God – not in how many hours my children had spent in Sunday School or how much Scripture they had memorized.

Walk A Mile In My Shoes

We don’t receive judgment very well from another unless we believe they understand what we are going through. Even as a parent disciplines their teenager, they hear, “But you don’t understand!” because the teen has forgotten that the parent was once a teen. Or the front office worker mutters under his or her breath as the vice-president walks away, “He has forgotten what it is like to be here. He sits back in his cushy office and doesn’t have to deal. with this stuff.”

The origin of the phrase, “Don’t judge until you have walked a mile in their shoes,” is unclear. It is credited to early Americans or Native Americans (walking a mile in their moccasins) in the reference materials. However, I believe the concept was there long before that. “Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father.” John 5:22-23a.

Isn’t it interesting that God, the Father, who has every right to judge the world, has given that over to his Son! Why? Because the Son has walked a mile in our shoes. He was here in the flesh eating our food, drinking our water and wine, walking our dusty roads, dealing with difficult people, being persecuted by religious leaders, being subjugated to a political power that was unkind to him. There isn’t much we experience that he did not. There is nothing he cannot understand. We know we have a compassionate judge – one who has walked a mile in our shoes.

That brings me great comfort when I think about the end times and judgment day. What brings me even more comfort is knowing that because of Jesus and what he did while here on earth, I don’t need to fear judgment day. He already has taken my punishment for me and cleared me of all the things that made me unacceptable to be in the presence of a Holy God. I can walk with confidence as I walk before the judgment throne. Jesus will look at my account and say, “All clear. Welcome home.”

They Want Him Dead!

Why did Israel’s religious leaders want Jesus dead? Of all the people in the world, they should have recognized him as the Messiah. They should have been anxious to learn from him.

But he kept breaking their rules by healing people on the Sabbath. Their rules started with the very laws God had given them through Moses. But somewhere through the generations, their laws had grown and been twisted until they were no longer helping people see God and understand his best for them, but the people were ‘worshipping’ the laws rather than the Giver of the laws. In fact, they had become so blinded by their own version of the laws that they couldn’t see the Giver of the laws when he came in person.

“Jesus said to them, ‘My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.’ For this reason the [religious leaders] tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.” John 5:17-18

By this time, Jesus was making it very clear in his conversations and teachings that he was indeed the Messiah, that he was God’s Son, that God was his Father. That was blasphemy from the religious leader’s point of view. Jesus needed to be killed – done away with before he led all the people astray! The problem was that they did not believe that he was the Son of God. They did not believe that he was the Messiah.

So why do I believe that he was the Messiah? Why do I believe that what he said about himself is true? Why do I believe the writings of his followers?

Because as I read the stories of the people through the Old Testament writings, I believe that God is a God of love, that he is a Holy God, that he is the Creator of all, that he has the authority and power to do whatever he pleases and it pleases him to love us, to discipline us, and to save us. When I read about the life of Jesus, I see that same God working. No one could do what Jesus did unless he was God in human flesh.

And more than any of that, I believe that he is the Christ because he has made a difference in my life. When I submit to his authority in my daily living, I experience inner peace. When I follow his teachings of loving others as I love myself and of loving God more than anything, other things in my life fall into place. I am drawn to his love for me. I am drawn to his teachings. I am filled with a sense of completeness and purpose when I allow him to be my guide. I don’t feel like I need to keep searching for answers in my life. I am content. My heart is at rest.

I am grateful that his followers took the time to record their interactions with him and his teachings along the way. They have given me a leg up in understanding who God is and how he interacts with me. But nothing can take the place of personally meeting with God and hearing his voice speaking into situations throughout the day. “You know I love that person too and I’d really like you to love that person for me. Can you do that today?”