WINNING!

Actor Charlie Sheen has been making headlines for months now with his rants about what's wrong with everybody but him. He's coined several interesting catchphrases which he's trying to get trademarked so that he can use them to make more money, now that he's no longer the highest paid actor on television after getting fired from Two and a Half Men. One of Sheen's favorite new catchphrases is "WINNING!" This has caught on and now lots of people are saying it—some in jest and some in support of Sheen.

From where Charlie Sheen sits, he may actually think that he is a winner. After all, he's been earning piles of cash for years, he has access to all the drugs he wants and the delusion that he can "handle" their effects, and he's got two live-in "goddesses" who don't seem to mind that he's still married to Brooke Mueller. Big house, lots of money, lots of attention. Plenty to sate his various appetites. What more could a man want, right?

The sad thing is that there are actually people besides the drugged and delusional Sheen who think that he's "winning". Even those who don't think drug use is a good idea often agree that being famous and having piles of cash, a big house, and a hot girlfriend are goals to aspire to. Our society encourages to look up to the haves and to look down on the have-nots. People who can sell themselves effectively get admiration and people who cling exclusively to their integrity are labeled fools. American culture tells us that rich is better than poor (or even middle class), leading is better than following, praise is better than silence, beauty is better than kindness, having stuff will make us happy, and everyone prefers "winners".

But let us consider for a moment how these ideas compare to the goals of a Christian life:

As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 

“Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. ¹⁹ You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.’ ” 

“Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.”

Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” 

At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.

Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!”

—Mark 10:17–23

This young man would have been considered a winner both in his society and ours. He was rich and he was morally upstanding. He was young and presumably healthy, and he addresses Jesus with respect, not arrogance or sarcasm. He seems like a pretty good guy, doesn't he? Jesus even loved him—and that's why he tried to tell this young man about true victory and how to obtain it. The things that we think of as victories here on Earth—amassing wealth, fame, security, or public approval—can actually hinder us from reaching the true victory of eternal life with God. It's like winning a battle only to lose the war. What good is that? Where was this young man's wealth going to get him in the long run? Where is Charlie Sheen's "winning" going to get him? 

From a Christian perspective, the truth is that we have to be willing to be losers to find true victory. We have to be able to risk being poor or unpopular. We have to be at peace with losing our lives in order to save them. True victory comes from God and may not always be apparent here on Earth. John the Baptist, who prepared the world to receive Jesus, lived out in the wilderness and ate locusts and wild honey and dressed in camel's hair. A lot of people thought he was crazy. And yet Jesus said that "among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist." (Matthew 11:11) 

Would we be willing to leave everything we own behind and follow Jesus? Would we leave our families and our lives as the disciples did when they were called? Would we live out in the wilderness and preach a message that the respected leaders decry as insanity if God asked it of us? Can we give up everything we've gained in this life in order to inherit a better, truer kind of life, even if that life is invisible to most of the people around us? God is going to ask all of us hard questions, and every one of us is given tasks that challenge us. We will face hardships and temptations. But through all that we will gain a stronger relationship with God, and that will bring us true life. We will be REAL winners then.

You Are Qualified

Yesterday at Bible study, our small group was joined by a visitor I hadn't met before. At the end of our hour-long conversation, he asked me if I worked at the church. I told him no, and he said, "Wow! You can really testify!" He asked me if I was a minister or if I had ever thought about becoming one. I told him that perhaps I would be a sort of non-traditional minister. In a way, I already am.

Some of the people who have visited our Bible study have been a little intimidated by all the retired pastors in the group talking about old seminary classes or quoting Martin Luther. "I'm not a theologian," some of them have said. "I don't know if I can really add anything to the discussion." We would assure all of them that anyone can contribute something to a Bible study discussion, no matter how much (or how little) education or theological training they've had.

The truth is, anyone who approaches Scripture with respect and humility is qualified to interpret and discuss it with the help of the Holy Spirit. None of us, no matter how educated we are, are smart enough to uncover all of the wisdom God has hidden in His Word on our own, anyway. It's the Spirit who guides us to make sense of it all. Sure, any academic can tell you that secondary texts can be very helpful, but the most important thing is the primary text—in this case the Bible—and we all have access to that. Theological theories and writings can add depth to the discussion, or they can distract from key areas. The only absolutely necessary components to a fruitful Christian understanding of Scripture are the Word itself and the Holy Spirit. Lucky for us, the Holy Spirit isn't just reserved for the leaders and learned.

Just because you aren't a professional priest, pastor, or preacher does not mean you aren't a minister. Through the power of the Spirit, any one of us can minister to anyone else. When I inspired that man in Bible study with my insights and testimony, I was ministering to him, just the same as if I really had been an employee of the church as he initially assumed. When you take the words of Scripture to heart and live them out in service to others, you are ministering to them. When you share God's love or encourage someone's faith, you are a minister.

You are qualified to make a difference in the lives of others—not only that, but you're expected to. We can't just designate ministering to the paid pastoral professionals. We all have a role to play in the body of Christ—otherwise we'd just be dead weight. Each one of us has special God-given talents, and each one of us has access to the Spirit who will show us how to use them if we pay attention.

Don't Give Up

As humans, we have limitations. Our bodies and our minds can only take so much stress before we become sick or injured. We generally don't like to get anywhere close to our breaking points because it's excruciating. We are more inclined to stop when we get tired, to quit if our task becomes to punishing. In many cases, this is a very reasonable thing to do. If we commit to something that we cannot do, it could destroy us. In general, we only push ourselves to go past where it hurts, to work through the exhaustion, when it's something that we feel is genuinely important, something that matters more than any price we could pay to achieve it.

Following God is one of those things. Sometimes being a Christian is downright exhausting. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes we American Christians mistakenly believe that it should be easy for us since we don't face much in the way of direct persecution, but being a Christian will always be hard, even if we live in a community full of other Christians. When we invest in God's work, our hearts will hurt when we see people suffering. We will cry when we want to do more than our resources will allow. We will be frustrated when there aren't enough hours in the day or enough volunteers to help with important work or enough ideas to solve every problem. It might feel tempting sometimes to give up, to say we don't care, to argue that the things that are going wrong aren't our problem.

It is true that all of God's workers need a little rest sometimes. Jesus went off by himself to pray on occasion, and the apostles must have put their feet up from time to time after a long day's work. But they didn't exit God's kingdom or leave their paths when they took a rest. They didn't throw up their hands and say, "I quit!" or decide that it just wasn't worth it anymore. If they had, their stories might have gone differently.

God charges each on of us with two things: love him and love our neighbors. God leads each of us on a personalized mission to fulfill those two commandments in a way that utilizes the gifts and spirit He gave each of us. But Satan doesn't want us to follow God's plan, so the number one thing he can do to stop us is convince us to give up. Here are a few of the lies he uses to try to do that:

• Something else is more important. So God wants me to give to those in need—what about my retirement savings? So God wants me to spend time supporting other people in my community—what about how I want to spend my time? So God wants me to stand up for marginalized people—what if that destroys my precious popularity? So God wants me to leave everything behind and follow Him—what if I don't want to? We may find ourselves tempted to give up on God's plan so that we can pursue our own plans instead, but nothing we can devise will be of any lasting help to us if we shut out God.

• I can't make a difference anyway. The problems of the world seem so big and we seem so small. We may not feel smart, talented, our powerful enough to make a real difference, but that's exactly why our participation is so essential. None of us can change the world alone, so it only works if we all work together. The more of us there are, the better work we can do. Every act of love counts. Every time any one of us helps someone else, we empower that person to make a difference too. We feed off each others' faith, and we all grow in God's spirit together. Every person makes a difference.

• The world is nothing but pain, and I just want out. Sometimes we may feel like nobody loves us, that the world is a dark place, that there is no hope that things could get better. We stop working for the future because we don't believe that it holds any promise. We become depressed or bitter. Some of us may even attempt suicide. We don't just want to give up on God, we want to give up on life. We don't want to hurt anymore. But God is good, God is love, and He is moving through the world and in our lives even when we cannot feel Him. God loves us. Our brothers and sisters in Christ love us. There is a lot of violence and pain in the world, but there is also love and kindness and hope. There is the promise of a future in heaven if we can only persevere to the end, and there is also the promise that the Spirit will sustain us along the way and will heal our pain and sorrow little by little. 

• I'm a screw-up, so I'd just mess it up. Well, yes, you will—but then God will fix it. Nobody but Jesus was perfect. All of us move both forward and backward on our faith journeys. We will do some really helpful things and we will also make mistakes. God will use all of our earnest efforts to create something good. Nobody is a total screw-up. God made all of us with special qualities and talents, and He imbued us all with the potential to do good in this world. So what if you've done a lot of bad in the past? That doesn't inhibit your ability to work for good in the future. God will stick with you, so stick with God.

What I write here I write for myself as much as I write it for anyone else. We mustn't give up. I have fallen prey to every lie I've listed above from time to time, but God always pulls me back to a more peaceful and productive place. I trust God. I know that somehow He's going to take all of the mess I see around me and make it right. I know He's going to give me the strength and the will to persevere, even when part of me wants desperately to give up. I believe even when I don't want to, and that's why I never give up entirely. We must all cling to God's love and use it to banish the lies of the devil.

I want to end with a link that a friend shared with me this week when I was hurting and I felt like giving up. I hope it touches you like it did me: "You Are Loved (Don't Give Up)" by Josh Groban

The Dangers of Prooftexting

Last Sunday, my pastor was preaching on the gospel account of Jesus's temptation in the wilderness and how the devil tried to use passages of scripture to lead Jesus astray. "The devil was slinging scripture like a preacher," he said, "and that is an important lesson to all of us. Just because someone knows the Bible chapter and verse doesn't necessarily mean that person is up to any good." There were a lot of chuckles from the congregation at that, but the pastor had no hint of a smile on his face. "No, it's not a joke," I whispered to my husband. "He's serious." And, frankly, he should be.

The best lies have a little truth mixed in with them, and the devil provides an excellent example of the dangers of prooftexting. The devil does not arrive in the desert with a flaming pitchfork in an attempt to openly beat Jesus into submission. He comes with arguments that he hopes will sound well-reasoned and convincing. Jesus is not fooled because he knows the mind of God so well that he can see how the devil is misusing scripture. But the devil is not content to lose to Jesus—he comes after us instead, trying to lead us astray by twisting God's truth.

Knowing the Bible chapter and verse, as my pastor put it, is not enough to help us identify and rebuff Satan's lies. Memorization won't cut it. We have to understand the underlying meaning of Scripture and have a feel for the unified message of God in order to spot a faulty interpretation. That means that if we don't want to be led astray by lies, we are going to have to invest some serious effort and prayer into grappling with Scripture and working through ideas together to reach a fuller understanding of God's will for us. It's hard work. It's much easier to be ignorant or content to follow any strong leader who takes us by the hand without thinking things through for ourselves. But we must take the hard path of discipline and discernment, because the stakes are very high.

Right now, a Christian somewhere is telling a young girl that she's a whore who will certainly go to Hell because she had sex outside of marriage. (Never mind the story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery.) Right now, a Christian somewhere is claiming that the earthquake and tsunami in Japan must be the direct result of some evil on the part of the Japanese people. (Never mind the entire book of Job.) Right now, a Christian somewhere is turning away another Christian from fellowship or worship because he isn't the "right kind" of Christian. (Never mind Paul's assertion that we are all one body in Christ.) The list could go on and on.

And perhaps most dangerous of all, right now there are an alarming number of Christians who are smug in the belief that they don't need God's forgiveness or despairing in the conviction that they are too terrible to receive it. In the wilderness the devil was trying to convince Jesus to break away from the Father's plan and take action on His own. Today Satan is playing the same game with us, trying to tell us that we are or should be separated from God, trying to get us to leave the sheltering arms of the Father who loves and protects us.

We must not be taken in by this lie, even—and most especially—if it's couched in Biblical language. We are not beyond redemption. We are not doomed (or privileged, as the arrogant would assume) to get what we deserve. We should not be scattered to the winds and left to face our enemy alone. We must hold fast to the truth, the real truth, that is embodied in the entirety of Scripture. We must not take the bait of trying to proclaim right and wrong for ourselves but must remain obedient and diligent servants committed to earnestly seeking the will of God. And when we are taken in by the lies—as we most certainly will be from time to time—we must humbly ask God to set our feet on right paths once more.

Choice

A few hours ago, I was at a weekly Bible study I attend at my church, and we were looking at the readings for this Sunday, the first Sunday in Lent. We covered the temptation of Adam and Eve in Eden, the temptation of Jesus in the desert just after his baptism, and Paul's explanation about how Adam's sin brought death to all people but Jesus's sacrifice brought the free gift of redemption to all people. In the course of the discussion, a very interesting question came up.

"Why was the tree of good and evil even in the garden?" Why did God put something there and then ask Adam and Eve not to touch it? Why was the temptation to fall there in the first place? Later we remarked upon the fact that it was the Holy Spirit that led Jesus out into the desert where he was tempted by the devil. There was the question again: why? Why does God let us be tempted?

I think the answer is that God wants us to choose Him, and without temptation there is no choice to be made. God made us all in His image and endowed us with free will. Then He set us free to choose good or evil, and He's been working hard ever since to convince us to choose good, to choose Him. God could have made Eden without the tree of good and evil. He could have made a robotic Adam and Eve who only smiled and did exactly as He asked. But how can one truly love a machine with no independent thought? How could a person with no freedom to choose otherwise truly love God?

So choices are introduced. We have the chance to fail—to disobey, to eat the apple, to believe the devil's crafty lies. But then, through the free gift of Jesus Christ, we also have the choice to accept forgiveness and be reconciled to God. I find it heartening that when God threw Adam and Eve out of Eden, he did not destroy it—to me that symbolizes the hope that one day, thanks to Jesus, we can return.

Not one character in the Bible except Jesus chose God and righteousness every single time. Many of them made mistakes. But how glorious it was when they chose to follow God! Miraculous things happened. Difficult and tragic situations were turned around. Hope was restored. That is the power we have in our choices.

Temptation is real, and God is not the only being who wants us to choose Him. Satan is also trying to win us over to his side, and we have to be aware of the reality and impact of our choices. Both God and Satan are trying to convince us that theirs is the best way, and God is not going to make us deaf to the devil's cajoling. There aren't "good" people who always do good or "bad" people who always choose sin.

Every one of us has the chance—and the God-given right—to choose. We make thousands of these little choices every day, some for righteousness and some for sin. But there is a larger choice that transcends all of that, that defines who we are and where we are going. Do we choose to follow Jesus and to belong to God, or do we choose to follow Satan in an attempt to belong only to ourselves? That's a big choice, and it will guide everything we do in this life and beyond. We need to make sure that we are informed and that we are making the right choice. It's a big responsibility.