Dear Congregation

I have a real tendency to take the authoritative input of experts and to water it down into something more palatable and achievable for my own life. I currently find myself doing this with the advice of health experts who have years of data and experience which would tell me how to lose some weight, gain some muscle, increase my energy, and help me to function as slightly less of a slug. But, the stuff they say sounds hard to do, and would require discipline, endurance, sacrifice and a rethinking of priorities. I mean, I want to be healthy, but I also want to eat a Costco sized bag of Ruffles. Those are competing desires, and it would require some reorientation of what I value to choose anything over a Ruffle encrusted couch nap. So, when I hear that I should take ice-baths, and consume fewer than 1700 calories, and drink no coffee, and stretch for 45 minutes after both of my daily rigorous workouts, I tend to just water that all down into a response that involves something a lot less extreme. Like, how about a slightly less hot shower after a little stretching, followed by brunch with only two lattes? That sounds like my sustainable path to a Men’s Health cover shoot.

Of course, there are consequences to my rebellion. I don’t get to where I really want to be because I don’t fully believe that those people know better, or understand my life and will make it work.

What is more frustrating is that I do the same with Jesus sometimes. 

I was reminded of this the other day when my daily bible reading had me in Luke 16. This passage occurs in the midst of some of Jesus’ most difficult and confusing teachings, and I realized afresh that I have the tendency to water down His teaching and commands on life in order to make everything just a little bit more comfortable for me.

Here is the phrase that Jesus said that stopped me in my tracks. He was speaking to the Pharisees at the time, and they were extremely successful, zealous, ambitious and rich. They were seen as the religious success stories of their context. But Jesus, knowing that they loved money more than they loved God said, 

You are the ones who justify yourselves in the sight of others, but God knows your hearts. For what is highly admired by people is revolting in God’s sight. - Lk 16:15 (CSB)

I absolutely love the way Eugene Peterson translated this verse in The Message.

“You are masters at making yourselves look good in front of others, but God knows what’s behind the appearance. What society sees and calls monumental, God sees through and calls monstrous. - Lk 16:15 (MSG)

What is happening in this exchange is that Jesus had been teaching His audience the truth that you cannot love both God and money, and the Pharisees - who earnestly desired a real life of faith before God but weren’t willing to sacrifice their current way of life - were mocking and dismissing Him. It was in that context that Jesus dropped a truth bomb that I think many of us simply compromise away. He said that there are things that many people pursue in order to be admired, accepted, and seen as successful in this life, but these very things are revolting in God’s sight. There are values of success that society sees as monumental, but that God calls monstrous.

And this comes from the one who made us and who knows exactly what flourishing looks like for us. But we water Him down, and compromise Him away.

So, the question - which I had to answer for myself - and that I am asking you to consider now is … how much time, and energy, and emotion, and resource are you spending in pursuit of things that the world tells you are admirable but that God says are monstrous? Do we believe Him when He says that life is not made up of the abundance of our possessions, and that it is impossible to love both God and money? Or are we content to rationalize His commands away down into something that we can accommodate in our own current lives without causing too much disruption? Maybe the things that you strive towards are actually things that take you away from the life of flourishing that Christ has for you!

Will we listen to Him in His authority, or will we be like the Pharisees who mocked Him, and who spent so much time looking good in front of others that they missed out on God Himself standing in front of them.

Let’s trust the Lord friends, together, more and more each day.

Press on.
Ross