The Real Hunger Games

Books are amazing things...
really because stories are amazing things.

Think about it.
Stories well-told keep the little ones in rapt attention on the laps of their parents. They can be made-up stories like the ones in our home (Yacov...or Chocolate EClaire...or Moldysocks). Or they can be true stories that chronicle family history like the ones I remember my grandmother telling. Or they can be stories of memorable heroes who overcame something--be it the enemy within or the enemy without--and were better for it.

The fact that there are good stories necessarily means that...
there are bad stories.
Oh, that doesn't mean that a bad story is a poorly told story, though that may be the case, too. In my book anyway (no pun intended), it means that the protagonist remained unchanged by his conflict. That is always sad because the only hero who never needed to learn anything was Jesus. The rest of us have a long way to go...which brings me to Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games.

I admit it. It was a page-turner. I wanted to see what would happen next. I cared about Katniss and Peeta. Rue tugged at my heart. Cato couldn't die fast enough or hard enough. I wanted to see Katniss take those games and shove them in the Capitol's collective face. I wanted to see It go down in humiliating flames. Oh yeah. I would have stood up and cheered for that one.

But she didn't.
And I didn't.

Written on a fourth-grade level, complained one of my friends. And no doubt about that one. None. I don't think there were any words over three syllables long. Interesting story line? Sure. I wanted to stick it out for the next canon fire. I wanted to peer into the night sky with Katniss. 'Good' literature. (cough) Make me laugh.

Message?
There was precisely one memorable line in the whole 273 pages. One. Katniss observes, quite astutely, "Destroying things is easier than building things." Amen to that, sister. Our fallen state makes it much easier for us to be image-bearers of the Destroyer than to be image-bearers of the Creator. And that problem goes back as far as Eden. As my friend Susan lamented the other day, (in another context),"Stupid Eve."

To be sure, the entire tale is a treatise on senseless destruction.

But when I read the book jacket comment, "Unsettling parallels to our times," I rolled my eyes. Nice try at making this story 'relevant.'

Characters?
Give me dynamic characters. Give me a character with arrogance or ignorance or bitterness or give me the most wretched bottom-feeder humanity has to offer. Couple him with a conflict that makes him face down his rottenness, see his fallenness, his need, the fruit of his life. Walk him through a change that couldn't have come any other way, and we've got a story worth telling and re-telling. Give me Austen's Darcy or Dickens' Scrooge or The Wingfeather Saga's Igiby children. But write about a character who starts with no hope and ends with no hope...and I'm not sure why we wasted good paper and ink, let alone my time.

The Hunger Games offers no hope.
The characters find no hope.
The games will go on; the tributes will acquiesce; the Capitol will win.

If stories can't offer hope, they shouldn't be written--and they shouldn't be read.
Where's the growth? the lesson? the salvation?
And for the readers, where's the 'wow' moment?

Pointless at best; nihilistic at worst.
But hardly the poignant tale our culture would lead us to believe.
Unsettling? Nah. Far too incredible for that.

But as a parent, I'll tell you what I find unsettling.
The real hunger games.
The appetite that this generation has for this kind of story.

And as a parent, I ask myself, "What are these children feeding on that makes them read a story like The Hunger Games and say, 'Oh, that was so good!'?"
I don't think the answer is difficult. This is the generation, after all, raised on a sponge in underwear. This is the generation who thinks Lady Gaga has talent. This is the generation who texts at the dinner table. And this is the generation who is in serious danger of being called The Dumbest Generation, as is evidenced by a book of the same name.

It falls to parents to cultivate in our children good appetites for good things. We need to start when they are young. It is possible. It is possible for a four year old to hear the finale to Les Miserables and break into spontaneous applause. I know. My first four year old did just that. We need to feed them good things which are worthy of their time and their intelligence. That's hard work. But we don't have a choice.

If  The Hunger Games is the epitome of good literature for this generation, we are in for a world of hurt.

Do Hard Things

I stare at my five-year-old for the eight-millionth time as she offers the eight-millionth excuse for why she is disobeying in some fashion. (And there are many fashions: sassing, bickering, teasing--your typical laundry list of five-year-old depravity) And I ask her The Question.

"What is your job?"

She gets it right on the first try. (I must have pounded it into her head.) Without hesitation:
"Do hard things."
"Righto," I respond. "So...why are you bickering? Again???"
"Because (insert current justification for current indignation)."
"You can't bicker just because he (did whatever he did)," I say with eyebrow raised for appropriate emphasis.
"But he--"
"Yep," I cut her off. "He did. He was wrong. You still have to treat him right."
She splutters, "But that's hard."

I just stare at her.
Ah, yes. There is is. She has just connected the dots.
"Helen, the right thing is often the hard thing. That's just how God's world works."
She nods. She's not happy, but she gets it. We've had this conversation too many times. Yes, she gets it.
Sadly, sometimes she gets it better than I do.

Destroying things is easier than building things. (Katniss)

Such a stunning observation.
Simple, bordering on simplistic.
Yet so epically true of the human condition.

Here we are, created in God's image, made to be image-bearers of the Creator.
Made to build.
Yet, even in my redeemed state, I am more often an image-bearer of the Destroyer,
because, frankly, that's easier.
I don't even have to think about it.
I can destroy in my sleep.
I can destroy with one hand tied behind my back.

Building, though.That's a whole other story.
Building requires grit because it must oppose the forces of time, gravity, entropy.
Building makes us sweat because it is always laborious, often tedious.
Building is hard.
And being image-bearers of the Creator is hard.

And I am like my five-year-old. I can see where I have chosen the easy road of destruction over the hard road of construction, even just in the last week or so.

For what more important things are Christians called to build than relationships?
What harder things are there to build than relationships?
They require so much work.
And they require sweat equity which few of us are willing to invest,
just because it's painful.
And when relationships hit a snag, we must choose.

Will I destroy?
Will I close my spirit like so many Maxwell Smart gates, up, down, across, CLANG!
Will I let a veil drop behind my eyes?
Will I hear--but stop listening?
Will  I see--but stop looking?
It is much easier to lock down my heart and shut down my spirit and walk away.
That will destroy the relationship.
But it's, sigh, so easy.

Or will I build?
When I am the offended, will I have the guts to confront and the meekness to do it gently?
Will I cool off and take the time to make a humble appeal rather than a stormy condemnation?
Am I willing to make the investment and trust the strength of the friendship and say, "You hurt me"?
When I am the offender, will I be humble enough to quickly acknowledge my fault?
Will I be contrite enough to offer a no-excuses apology and mean it with my whole heart?
(Let me pause here to discuss apologies. When you are offended, there is nothing worse than getting a simpering, "I'm sorry if I might have offended you." Sorry is for sympathy, as in:
I'm sorry you lost your loved one.
I'm sorry you lost your job.
I'm sorry you lost your leg.
I was wrong is how to acknowledge fault, as in:
I was wrong for offending you. Please forgive me.
I'm sorry is a big no-no in our house; even my five-year-old gets that.)
Will I take full, broken-hearted ownership of the offense I caused?
This is what relationship-building looks like
if it is built with excellence,
if it is built to last.

Destroying things is easier than building things.
But destroying things brings death and ashes, whereas building things brings life and joy.

Lord, help me to build.
Help me to do hard things.

The Redneck and the Blueblood

When my little sister got married a couple years ago, the wedding was held outside--on my parents' hobby farm. The reception was in the barn. Drinks were served in plastic baby swimming pools. When the thunderstorm began, the boxes of wine ... (Boxes. Of wine.)...began to disintegrate...so my dad duct-taped them together. The mud created from aforementioned thunderstorm meant that all the big trucks got stuck in the pasture. So the wedding party and various and sundry wedding guests had to push, pull, and haul cars out of the mud. One particularly macho truck--belonging to one particularly oafish redneck--required the help of a towtruck...which also got stuck in the mud. After two towtrucks failed to remedy the situation, a bogger was sent out. A 'bogger' is a lightweight vehicle with big wheels and amazing towing capacity driven by men who work for beer. No kidding. And by the hoots coming from the pasture that night, as I gazed on in dignified horror from the front porch, they were having a great time. 

Mud.

Beer.

Trucks.

It was a marriage made in redneck heaven.

And that is my family.

Then there is Brett's family. They are all college educated. They wear oxfords and penny-loafers. They listen to Handel's Messiah at Christmastime. (We listened to Elvis.) They've been to placed like Broadway and the Eiffel Tower. They use cloth napkins.  They sing in harmony and play the grand piano. 

So when we got married, it was like the redneck meets the blueblood. 

A fairytale, really.

Last week, both of our families gathered here in our home for Luke's high school graduation. The house was abuzz with activity and family and games and laughter. 

And the Holy Spirit.

My dad led us in communion in church on Sunday with a beautiful,choked-up prayer of thankfulness.

My mom sat with Zach at the kitchen table one day, their Bibles each opened side by side as they had an animated conversation about what they were learning in the book of Daniel.

My father-in-law shared what he was learning about godly beliefs.

My mother-in-law prayed for my mom when she was down with a headache.
My sister and my mother-in-law went for a long walk together.

And there were giant family meals

and charades

and walks around the neighborhood.

There was even one dinner that went long into the evening as the adults lingered around the table, talking about worship and other kingdom matters.  

And there was love...

the love that comes from the fellowship of the Holy Spirit,
the love that transcends tractors and cellos

and unites us under our King.

Over the years, we've had people compliment our family. But what they don't understand, and what I began to get a better picture of over this past week, was that our family, the part that people see...

our marriage,

our kids...

this is just fruit.

But the roots began a long time ago.

They began when our parents were young.

Our parents took their role as parents seriously.

They took their job of raising up a godly generation seriously

so that we could raise another godly generation.

And each generation can stand on the shoulders of the generation before it.
As grandparents, they are still very much involved.
They pray for us and for our children.
They pursue relationship with every one of us.

I look at my house, and I can see a sink that needs to be replaced.

A dishwasher that doesn't work.

A doorjamb that is rotting and leaky.

A van in the driveway with a dented door.

A child who needs braces.

And I could start to think of myself as needy.

But I look at my home, and I see my husband who loves me and lays his life down for me,
I see my children who love the Lord and love each other.

I see my parents and my grandparents.

I see Brett's parents.
I see God's grace pouring forth from generation to generation.

And I know the truth.

There is the kind of  heritage that gives us our blue eyes or freckles.
There is the kind of  legacy that pays off our mortgage.
And then there is the inheritance that steeps me in God's grace and undergirds me with generations of godly men and women.

As the psalmist wrote, "You have given me the inheritance of those who fear Your name." Psalm 61:5b

I am a wealthy woman.

The Social(ly Acceptable) Gospel

Two weeks ago, I was standing in the kitchen with my five year old daughter, Helen, and my two-year old, Josiah. He was squawking over something he couldn't have, and Helen stepped in with her wealth of five-year-old wisdom to save the day.

Helen: Josiah, you know...you'll go to Heaven if you stop doing bad things.
Me: Whaaaa??? No, that's not right.
Helen (anxious to get it right): Josiah, you'll go to Heaven if you love everyone.
Me (facepalm): Noooo, that 's not right either. How do we get to Heaven?
Helen (aware she was standing on theologically shaky ground now): Josiah, you'll get to Heaven if you believe in Jesus as your savior and obey Him.

Ah. There we go. Finally.
But it got me thinking.
Isn't it just like the heart of man to avoid the issue itself, this pathway to Heaven, and create trajectories (as Al Mohler calls them) off the true Gospel?
In two seconds, my little daughter revealed that she is Everyman in her effort to preach a civil Gospel.
And in two seconds, she totally missed the Truth by landing on either side of it.

For the Gospel is not civil.
It is not complimentary to us.
It makes much of our sin.
It makes much of God's holiness.
It makes little of man's filthy efforts to rectify the situation.

Anything that calls itself a gospel which does not climax at Calvary is an inferior gospel.

Helen's first effort at trying to preach the Gospel, that we must stop doing bad things, results in a works-based Gospel. It is, in fact, the idea preached in all other religions: that to be right with God, we must behave a certain way. Judaism, Islam, and Catholicism all preach this kind of end, that we obey a law or add our own righteousness to God's to achieve right standing with God.

Helen's second effort in trying to preach the Gospel, that we must love everyone, results in a social gospel. It gives the idea that we can love people into the kingdom in place of telling them the truth about who they are, who God is, and what He plans to do about it. It's the 'if necessary, use words' approach. This one is more subtle because it seems so civil, so dignified, so kind.

But it is sooooooo wrong.
Words are always necessary to communicate the Truth.
Always.

The social gospel is really the socially acceptable gospel.
It recoils from icky things like wrath, blood, sin, and death.
And that is precisely what makes it an inferior gospel.
It diverts the purpose of Jesus' coming away from salvation and toward holy volunteerism.
But not once did Jesus feed the poor
or build a hospital
or advocate for the disenfranchised.
Not once.
Not once did He enter a town with the purpose of healing.
Oh yes, He did heal. But that was to testify to who He was.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are downtrodden, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord. Luke 4:18-19

He came to feed the poor?
No.
He came to preach the gospel to the poor.
He came to heal the blind?
No.
He came to proclaim sight to the blind.
Proclaim,
As in, say something,
As in, do more than simply restore ocular function.

Building a hospital
or working a soup kitchen
or rescuing trafficking victims will alleviate temporal suffering.
Doing a skit for a nursing home will entertain the forgotten elderly.
Working in government will preserve common grace and civil society.
But none of these things will save souls.

Not ever.

Who we are doesn't matter a fig to God's plan of salvation.
It never has.
Consider the angel of death sent by God in Exodus.
Consider the Israelites.
Enslaved.
Brutalized and impoverished by their captors.
Attempted genocide by the Egyptians.
Strikingly similar to many third-world nations today.
Did their position as the tormented and disenfranchised keep them from the angel of death?
No.
It did not.
The only thing that spared anyone was the blood of the lamb.
The fact that their lives 'sucked' did not earn them special protection.

(Let me pause here. I hate that word: 'sucks'. But I can't find another one that communicates quite the same essence.)

In reality, their plight looked like this:
Your lives 'suck' AND the angel of death is going to kill you...
unless you are covered by the blood of the lamb.
And to know God's requirements about the lamb, Moses had to tell them.

Only preaching the Gospel will save souls.
And to preach, we must open our mouths.
We must tell men they are not, will never be, good enough to go to Heaven.
We must tell them they, like us, are sinners in need of a Savior.

(And we must build hospitals
and work soup kitchens
and rescue trafficking victims.
BUT...
That was not Jesus' mission.
And that is not our mission.
It is downstream of our mission...
but it is not the mission.)

The social gospel is not a gospel at all because it does not save.
Here we must take our cue from the Lord Himself.
The Holy Spirit anointed Jesus for His earthly ministry.
And his earthly ministry was to preach and to proclaim...
not to heal or feed or advocate.

Jesus came to share the bad news:
You are poor AND you are going to Hell.
You are abused AND you are going to Hell.
You are blind AND you are going to Hell.
You are all lawbreakers no matter how much you've been someone's victim AND you are going to Hell.

And He came to share the good news:
You may still not have enough food, but I will be your Bread of Life.
You may still never see this world, but you will see God.
You are still a lawbreaker, but I will be your Lamb of God...
Because I will die for you, and I will secure for you forgiveness,
and I will bring to completion the good work I have begun in you.
And I will go to prepare a place for you in Heaven with my Father.
And I will return one day to take you there....
IF you are covered by the blood of the Lamb.

Then He did what He came to do.
He died.
He rose.
He imputed.
He justified.

It is finished.

This is the superior Gospel because this is the Gospel that saves souls.
And no social gospel will ever achieve that because no social gospel can.

(Many thanks for What is the Mission of the Church? by Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert.)

Free to Be...

I see a woman in a head covering, and, suddenly....
I'm hyperventilating.
She has a head covering. He must be a command man.
If he is a command man, he must be a hyper-patriarch.
If he is a hyper-patriarch, he is a mysogynist.
If he is a mysogynist, she must be in a lot of pain.
Yes, in one nanosecond, my eyes see headcovering, and my brain thinks 'tyranny.'

I find myself praying silently with Tevye of Fiddler on the Roof:
"God bless the family-with-head-coverings and keep them FAAAAAAAAR away from us!"

Then I remember my own time off in the weeds, and I do my best to back the condemnation truck up.

But I admit I'm still inching my way to the opposite corner of the room.

At the other end of the standards spectrum, I recall sitting in the back of a class of 'homeschoolers' where I got waaaay too much of an eyeful from a young woman's choice of jeans. This wasn't a church gathering in the sense that God's Word would be preached, and there would be worship and prayer. BUT...it was a church gathering in the sense that most of the folks congregated there would make some claim to Jesus as Lord. And, frankly, that young lady's style was unbecoming for a Christian.

We need standards. The case of the young lady above makes that obvious.
We need standards in the home because our children are too young to know prudence.
We need standards so that when we remove the scaffolding from these children we are building, they will understand what prudence looks like and how to set standards of their own.

Standards are tricky business.
Some believers have a tendency towards rules.
Some believers have a tendency towards no rules.
Standards are family business, too.
We can't hold other people to our standards. House rules, after all, are just that, and not God's Law.
But that does not mean we are free to have no standards.

"I will set no unclean thing before my eyes."
The implication is that there are unclean things, that I can choose to look at them, and that the godly man will choose not to. The application, though, is for the Holy Spirit to make.
So maybe I can watch Pirates of the Caribbean. And you can't.
Maybe you can read Harry Potter. And I can't.
But we should both agree that anything that strikes us as unclean should not be entertaining to us.

"Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence or anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things."
The implication is that the man of God must make a conscious decision to take out the garbage.
The application is that we must define within our own households that what qualifies as true/honorable/right/pure/lovely and what qualifies as false/dishonorable/unrighteous/impure/ugly.

Having no standard is a standard. Don't fall for the idea that no standard is freedom. It is not. With every book, every movie, every song, every thought, we have to weigh its worth.
And we have to remind ourselves that the standard is not:
"Whatever is a classic, whatever is new, whatever is popular, whatever is a box-office smash, whatever has a cool soundtrack, whatever is cinematic genius..."
We're not called to be relevant; we're called to be holy.

We are a free people. Christ died to set us free. And Christian liberty is a wonderful thing.
My family is a free family. It isn't often that people toss the label 'legalist' at us. I am in no way advocating that we start searching for lines to draw.
No way. I am of the firm belief that we should start by assuming all things are permissible and have a reason--a very good reason--for determining something is not permissible.
But perhaps it would be more helpful to ask ourselves, "Where would I draw the line?"
"What would a movie look like that I would not watch?"
"At what point would I decide a book is not worthy of my time?"

A few years back, we had a hair crisis in our household.
The men all liked women's hair to be long, the longer the better.
The women liked our hair to be short and chic.
And suddenly, we had a need for a standard.
Brett wanted a standard that would be glorifying to God without writing a new law. After days of weighing our appeals and his tastes with God's Word, he came up with this: Be feminine. If you look like a female and like you appreciate being a female, wear it. If you look masculine or like you wish you were masculine, it's off-limits.

And with that one standard, the winds of freedom were blowing once again.
I think that's what good standards do.
They set a boundary that makes us at once achieve love and liberty.

Sometimes, standards can be too dogmatic.

There are scriptural principles that tell us that...
iron sharpens iron...
and don't let anyone despise your youth...
and spur one another on to love and good deeds.
But...
our concerns regarding the youth group movement (and they are valid concerns) can cause us to reject these scripture and set an extra-scriptural, overly-dogmatic standard.
So we let our kids discuss everything...but Truth.
That's just weird.
Not only that, but for this mama who prays that her children will have a hunger for spiritual things and that their friends will have a hunger for spiritual things...
it's puzzling.
We end up forfeiting koinonia in favor of dogmatism.

When we elevate our standard so that it is equal to a biblical principle,
we harm the parties involved and breed disillusionment.
Surely, we sola scriptura types are aiming for a more excellent way than that!

Or sometimes, in our quest to have Godly standards, we let others set the standards for us. Then one day we wake up and realize we've been too rigid, too wooden. I was visiting a few weeks ago with some friends in another town. I was sharing what we were learning about having adult daughters, contrary to the more popular family-integrated standards in this area. Our friend smiled lightly and remarked, "Yeah, we can get a little dogmatic about that, can't we? We've been talking about that, too." It was nice to know we weren't the only ones re-evaluating.

So, setting standards is delicate.
The road to setting them has ditches of legalism on one side and lawlessness on the other.
The road is pock-marked with needless wounding and pointed fingers.

But, as with everything else in the Christian life, we aren't off the hook just because it's difficult.
We are a chosen nation, a holy people, a royal priesthood.
We must aim to have standards that reflect the Lord we serve and our identity with Him.

Wouldn't It Be Great if Everyone Was Just Like Us?

We have some old friends who are the kind of friends you let your hair down with. We share a glass of wine and share our hearts. We laugh and enjoy each other's company. The conversation will inevitably turn to the Kingdom, and often, in moments of shared exasperation over some Church issue ("Church" as in the worldwide Body of Christ, not a specific local church), we roll our eyes and lament, "Wouldn't it be great if everyone was just like us?!"

I know. It sounds arrogant, doesn't it? But what we really mean is that day-to-day Body life can range from purely joyous to neutrally peaceful to mildly irritating to downright toe-stepped-on offensive. And if everyone was just like us, we could avoid those more uncomfortable moments. We'd share the same convictions. We'd have the same rules. Life would be a piece of cake.

But, noooooooo.
God made it more complicated than that.
We have to put on compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.
We have to bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things.
We have to count it all joy when we encounter various trials.

Sigh.
Body life is good; I don't mean to imply it is not.
The rich friendships I have been blessed with in the Body are priceless.
But Body life is hard.
And that's a fact.

Matters of conscience.
They are frequently the vehicle which transports us from the neutrally peaceful to the mildly irritating...or worse.

The Word of God,
The Counsel of the Holy,
is endless in its depths of wisdom.
We can mine it our whole lives and never exhaust it,
never reach the end of our learning curve.

But it is a Sword.
And we could all use a little weapons' training before we start swingin' that Thang around...
It is possible to hurt someone by improperly using the Word of God.

I admit it.
When I set standards regarding media (books, movies, music)
or style (hair, clothing, makeup)
or food (alcohol, pork, whole foods)
or health (homeopathy, birth control)
or more serious things (remarriage, baptism)...

...I have a strong tendency to make my conviction a universal law.
I am, after all, a black and white girl living in a gray world...

Ironically, I really don't like being held to someone else's standards.
However, I can't think of one single time when someone got in my face for enjoying a beer or wearing pants or cutting my hair.

So, the corollary issue regarding matters of conscience is that while I can't force my standards on someone else,
I also can't flippantly charge them with legalism.
Oh, they might be legalistic.
In their hearts, they might be trying to be right with God by their own virtue.
And that's a private form of legalism, for the Holy Spirit to judge in them.
Nevertheless, I can't say they're being outwardly legalistic if they are quietly living lives of conviction and are letting me also live a quiet life of conviction.
Oh my goodness. I can't even begin to count the times I have done that.

But HOLY HEAD COVERINGS, BATMAN!
We do need standards.

...which brings me to my next point...
Stay tuned.

The Lawgiver

"Mom, who did the Pharisees believe in?" Jacob asked from the backseat of the car.
"Themselves," I answered. "They believed in themselves, in their ability to keep the law." And it was one of those moments when teacher and student were learning together because as the answer was coming out of my mouth, I was having a God moment. It was like a word of wisdom, and the words were not mine.

God is the Lawgiver.
He has created this world and set it in motion.
In Him we live and breathe and have our being.
And from this incredible, eternal Mind comes Law which sustains His creation.
He wrote scientific laws, like gravity.
He wrote economic laws, like supply and demand.
And He wrote moral law, which He originally entrusted to Israel.

His Law cannot be broken without serious consequence.
And therein lies the irony...
because break it we do.
Daily.
Hourly.
Minute by minute.

In short, He wrote a Law we cannot keep.

This Law that is impossible to keep demonstrates to us what is right and what is wrong.
The Law reveals to us our sin,
which reveals our dead-ness,
which reveals our need for a Savior...
someone who can keep the Law,
and pay our penalty,
and make us right with God.

That is the function of the Law.
And in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, He interprets the Law to implicate us all.
If there was any doubt as to our ability to achieve right standing with God through the Law,
it was all cleared up then.
"Think you've kept the whole law? Let's talk about calling your brother 'Raca.'"

No wonder the Pharisees were mad.
They thought that Jesus was making the Law impossible to fulfill.
But He wasn't adding new requirements.
He was acting the Judge, interpreting for the people what the Law had always meant to the Lawgiver.
The Law had always been impossible to fulfill!

Being the Lawgiver is serious business.
And it is a job reserved for God Himself.

But over the last few years, the Lord has been showing me how much I like to play Lawgiver.
I write new laws
and hold others to them
and make judgments based on whether they 'keep' them.

What is 'sin' but the failure to keep the Law,
literally 'missing the mark?'
So when I write a new Law, and others fail to keep my law...
I'm really saying they are sinning, because they're missing my mark.

I can think of laws I've written regarding all kinds of issues of conscience:
homeschooling
birth control
youth groups and children's church
nose rings and tattoos
women working outside the home.

(We need to have standards. 
Christians are notorious for feeling, rather than praying and thinking, their way through life.
We need to be in the Word, applying the Word...
and I'll get to that.)

I can have a value on homeschooling and commit to it, come hell or highwater.
I can define what I think it is and what I think it's not.
I can even assess, based on my definition, "I don't think X is homeschooling."
But I cannot say that not homeschooling is sin.
I cannot say that because God does not say that.
Ever.

I don't want to write any more Law.
I am a worm.
I am but dust.
I am not qualified to write Law.

God is holy.
God is perfect.
God is the author of Creation
and the source of all knowledge
and the source of all wisdom.
He alone is qualified to be the Lawgiver.

"Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen."  (I Timothy 1:17)


Lord, help me to remember that You alone are the Lawgiver.
And I am the sinner--saved by grace.

(Up next, what I'm learning abut issues of conscience and setting standards...)