A Christian Worldview from Silicon Valley

It is entirely possible to build a house on a foundation that seems solid, that will hold in most circumstances, and in fact may hold the house for decades. Likewise, it is possible to build a life on a foundation that has some good properties, but isn’t sufficient for the trials of life. Jesus knew both of those truths, and he combined them in one of the most famous illustrations of all time: building a house on rock, or building a house on sand.

That story is found in both Matthew 7 and Luke 6. The Bible in Basic English translates the Matthew passage this way:

Everyone, then, to whom my words come and who does them, will be like a wise man who made his house on a rock; and the rain came down and there was a rush of waters and the winds were driving against that house, but it was not moved; because it was based on the rock. And everyone to whom my words come and who does them not, will be like a foolish man who made his house on sand; and the rain came down and there was a rush of waters and the winds were driving against that house; and it came down and great was its fall.” (Matthew 7:24-27)

What does a life built on sand look like? In the world, it looks like relying on natural talent without adding hard work. As a former tennis professional, and even as someone who has a bit of natural talent, I know something about that. Natural talent — some people might call it a gift — is great fun at first. People praise you, you win quickly, and the sky seems to be the limit. But the missing link, the failure to work, keeps many naturals on the ground.

The corollary in Christianity is the one who has been in the church for a long time, for whom Christianity is “natural,” but who fails to work at following the teachings of Christ. As a minister — and a long time Christian myself — I know something about that, too. Jesus can be part of your life, you can be a declared Christian, and you may be able to quote a lot of the Bible. But the missing link is that you don’t consciously work at applying the teachings of Jesus in your daily life, because your “natural” Christianity already makes you better than most, and that is good enough for you.

If that sound like you, here’s the good news: the link doesn’t have to stay missing. Find it and you can be part of a modern day miracle — the miracle of turning sand into rock.

Praying that you do…

Did you ever have one of those days when you felt like Satan was getting through your e-mail spam filters, causing static on your phone calls, and stopping the mail man to hand him a few extra bills for the day’s delivery?

I had a day kind of like that today, and I thought all that was a bit ironic given that yesterday’s sermon was about the causes and cures for anxiety. “Oh yeah, Greer? Let’s see how you like a little bit of this.” Well, I don’t like it. Satan is craftier and stronger than I am, and he has a lot of resources he can draw on to remind me of all that, which he did today with, I suppose, great delight.

To be fair to the spiritual warfare going on in this part of Palo Alto today, God’s warriors got in some pretty good shots as well. I got a video mail message from our great-nieces that was delightful (I’ve watched it at least seven times already), I had a great conversation about church and church related things with a good friend and was able (I hope) to help him with some challenges that he is dealing with, and I got to fix and mail a card to some dear friends who are about to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary.

Does the day balance out? No, God wins. Even when it doesn’t look like it, God wins. But I recognize that I have a part in the battle, too, and not just as a punching bag, but also as a fighter. I have to leave it up to the Holy Spirit and God’s angels to be the real fighters, but one thing I can fight i the anxiety that is so easily created in my life. I’m not going to do that, because I’m choosing the best portion (fellowship with Jesus), the best conversation (talking with God), and the best priority (seeking first God’s kingdom and his righteousness).

My goal is not just to preach God’s way of fighting anxiety, but to practice it, and I’m thankful that I’m getting this chance. Not that I’m asking for more chances, mind you.

Under the mercy…

Which do you think is easier — to be a preservative for the world or to simply let it rot?

The world is rotting, you know, decaying morally and spiritually in many places in many ways, and it is happening all around you. Can you see it? Can you smell it? Do you even notice it in books, in magazines, on television, in movies?

The reaction I see from most Christians is hand-wringing, sometimes accompanied by a little bit of flag-waving. What I see too rarely is salt-shaking. But just the other day I came across a fairly long, obviously heartfelt, statement about language in movies that had me smelling the salt air, and it was as refreshing as standing on Carmel Beach. The writer was one John Ware, founder of the 168 Hour Film Project.

I’ve known about 168 for several years, and been on their mailing list for perhaps four of their five years of existence, but perhaps you don’t know them. Their web site states that “The 168 Hour Film Project is a competition where producers have 168 hours (1 week) to film and edit and 11-minute movie based on a theme and a Bible verse. All films are created during production week to premiere at the 168 Film Festival.” Pretty cool, eh?

But in John’s blog he wasn’t writing about film-making per se, he was writing about language. What should the judges do, he wondered, about film-makers who wanted to included bad language in their films? Producers could often make the case that such language was “necessary” to the film and the development of some particular character in the film, and I’m sure you can see that they could. But ultimately John decided to draw the line in the sand, and to deny any such film a place in the festival that included any such language. Not an easy call to make, I know, but good for him for making it and holding back the decay.

Too many of us might have taken the easier path of allowing those producers to make the film they wanted to make. After all, what could be the harm in a little dirty language sprinkled here and there in a film? But how much better to have the salt sprinkled instead!

Try to do that in your life and work. Don’t be one of those Christians for whom “slightly rotten” is the new “fresh.”

Years ago I saw a science program on TV about vision. In one of several experiments that were conducted, volunteers were fitted with special “corrective lenses” that made them see everything upside down. The devices could not be removed by the volunteers, and although they were not allowed to drive, they were encouraged to live the rest of their lives as normally as possible.

Some of them got physically ill, which was pretty easy for me to imagine, and many of them stumbled and fell as they tried to do something as simple as walk down the street. Aside from various bumps and scrapes, headaches and feelings of nausea, none of them were really much worse for the wear. And not a single one of them “got used” to the idea of seeing the world upside down. No real surprises there.

But the test yielded one incredible — at least to me — result: within about 24 hours, every one of the volunteers saw the world as right side up. After that happened the scientists removed their special viewing devices so that the volunteers were all looking just through their own eyes… and the world was upside down again!

Add that to your list of amazing things about God’s creation: our brains can figure out that the image we are seeing is upside down, learn to make the correction, and change how we see everything.

Are we that adept spiritually? Can we see when things are upside down, or do we only look through the eyes of the world? Too many times I fail to use the vision God has given me to see things as they really are, and not as the world would have me see them. But when I do see properly, I fall down far less often.

How do you decide which candidate to vote for? If you really sat down and analyzed that process for yourself, you’d probably be surprised at all the elements involved. Just over a week ago, my wife, Judy, and I sat down and tried to make decisions about voting on at least one judge to be selected for our county, and on a few other folks. All in all, not that many choices, but still something to be taken seriously.

I try to be somewhat informed, but there was no information about some of the people running for various offices, so how was I supposed to make an informed decision? Well, I did what any red-blooded American would do, I looked at the list of names and picked out one or two that I liked and voted for them. They can thank their parents for getting my vote.

Somewhere along the line, I believe, I also asked God for guidance on all of this, but I did not lift up each name and wait for a word from God on how to cast my vote. Perhaps I should have, but I didn’t. Something else I didn’t do was try to figure out about their hearts. That might have been an important consideration, especially for the judge, but I went with the name thing.

As we begin the process of selecting elders for PACC, I hope to personally do better about making my decisions. I already know, though, even before one man has been nominated, that I’m going to be more inclined to support someone with a great name more than someone with a crummy name. After all, who would vote for Archibald Leach when they could vote for Cary Grant? Who goes for Marion Morrison when they can have John Wayne? And doesn’t Fred Astaire get your vote when Frederick Austerlitz does not?

My message here, of course, is that if we are sometimes swayed in our decision making by the sound of a name, think how much we should be on guard when it comes time for us to nominate and affirm those who might serve as elders.

Let us use our knees to decide, calling on God’s Spirit to guide us. Let us, wherever we can, not decide based on the things on the outside (reputation, accomplishments, degrees, appearance, or even name), but let us examine the things on the inside, especially the heart. That is a much better way.

When we are small we have little, if any, say on what we wear. As we grow we begin to make our own choices, and sometimes we choose poorly. Or at least it seems we do, based on what we hear from our parents.

“It’s raining, put on your boots.”

“It’s cold, put on your coat.”

“Put on a clean shirt before you go out.”

“Young lady, you are not going out looking like that!”

In every one of those cases (as I imagine them) the parent is trying to protect the child. Clothes can offer protection from inclement weather, protection from criticism, and they can even offer protection from unwanted sexual advances.

The problem is, we don’t always want the protection. Little boys run out into the rain without their boots because it’s more fun to splash in the puddles barefoot. And sometimes young women, who may not understand what they are inviting, dress to be noticed and desired.

I wonder if we fail to “put on the whole armor of God” for similar reasons. We don’t think we’ll catch a cold for a lack of boots or find ourselves in a dangerous situation because we dressed seductively, so we go for the short term pleasure at the risk of longer term pain. And we don’t think Satan will really bother us much if we sometimes leave the belt of truth at home, or “forget” to lug along that heavy shield of faith. Sometimes we don’t even want to carry the sword, which is the word of God. After all, we rarely use it even when we do have it with us.

Perhaps we need God standing at the door, reminding us to dress well, and not letting us go out until we are properly attired.

Polishing my armor….

I’ve been thinking for many years about the idea of freedom, and I’m certain that there are nooks and crannies I have yet to discover, as well as many rooms into which I’ve only glanced.

One of those rooms is human slavery, a condition in which one person becomes the legal property of another and is forced to obey that person. On my own I can only explore this room intellectually, having never been a slave or a slave owner. I can explore it emotionally with the help of those who have known slaves or been slaves, and one who has helped me do a little of that is the poet Elma Stuckey, mother of my friend Sterling Stuckey. Her work in The Collected Poems of Elma Stuckey has touched me and taught me.

But there is one room at the intersection of freedom and slavery that I do know something of, and that is the spiritual room. The apostle Paul knew about it too, and what a person to write about it! He was, of all men, most “free.” He was an Israelite, a Pharisee, highly educated by the best of Rabbis, and he was also a Roman citizen. In his culture, in his time, no one could be his master.

Except that he made himself a slave to Christ, because he realized that otherwise he was a slave to sin.

There is amazing freedom in being a slave to Christ, and it is a condition I highly recommend. Most of us don’t, of course, think of our relationship to Jesus Christ in that way. We think of him as our brother, our savior, our friend. We sometimes even say that he is our Lord or our Master, but that doesn’t mean we are his slaves.

Or does it?

I was fairly young when I first heard someone say, “The only way to be free is to be a slave.” The person saying this was someone I trusted, but I didn’t understand what he meant. Let me correct that — I understood all the words, but I didn’t understand how his statement could be applied in my life, or in anyone else’s life, for that matter.

The idea that to be free you must be a slave is what is known as a paradox. My first encounter with that word was in the old joke, “What do you get when you put Dr. Harrell and Dr. Brickman together?” The answer, of course, is “a pair o’ docs.” Eventually I grasped the real definition of paradox as a seemingly self-contradictory statement that when understood proves to be true.

Being a slave to be free certainly fits that. I had read Huckleberry Finn, and I knew that Jim was running away from slavery because slavery was bad. I also knew that Jim eventually got caught by a “slave catcher,” and that Uncle Silas (who would be Jim’s master) was the embodiment of evil. So why would I want to be a slave, and how could that make me free?

Paul writes about this in several of his letters, including a passage in Ephesians we examined in part last Sunday. I’ll come back to this topic, but for now let the paradox of being made free by becoming a slave roll around in your mind and in your heart.

Paul writes to the church in Ephesus (and, by extension, to all churches) that they should be about “redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” Just what does that mean, and how do we redeem the time?

Let’s start with two phrases that are common to our vernacular. The first phrase, which corresponds closely to redeeming time, is “buying time.” We use that in all kinds of ways, and what we usually mean is that we are holding off some undesired outcome for a while. A judge may order a cooling-off period for a union, for instance, before they go on strike, thus “buying time” which might be used to reach a settlement. A student may have a paper due but not be ready, and may “buy time” by seeking an extension.

The second phrase is “spending time,” and that is one we know well. Most of us prefer to spend time in the presence of people we like, and in activities that we like. I’d rather spend time reading, walking with my wife or playing golf than I would paying bills, being yelled at, or listening to bad music.

The common thread in both buying time and spending time is that they are often centered on our own desires. Redeeming the time, at least in a Biblical sense, is far less self-centered and far more God-centered. What Paul is encouraging us to do is to use time to do things that God wants us to do. Many of those can be found throughout scripture, but they include encouraging one another, teaching one another, being filled with God’s spirit, acting wisely in all things, and being thankful in all things.

You see, redeeming the time is not about a particular activity, it is about a particular attitude. With the right attitude, even spending time can be redeeming.

Under the mercy,

Lewis

For two years in the late 1970s I was the tennis pro at a small club in Quincy, Illinois, a town on the Mississippi River not far from St. Louis, Missouri. One of the best tennis players in the world at that time, and certainly one of my favorites, was an Australian named John Newcombe, and when I learned that “Newk” was going to be playing in St. Louis, I arranged to take some of my better students and go see him.

The trip was great fun, the tennis was excellent, and I absorbed it all with excitement and joy. It was late at night when we got home to Quincy, but I was anxious to get back on the court myself, and fairly early the next day I did just that. Now here is the good bit… no one could touch my serve!

Normally my serve was adequate, but after watching John Newcombe serve in the tournament, my serve became instantly (though temporarily) far better than it had ever been. For the rest of that day and even part of the next, I was a reflection of John Newcombe. And I loved it.

In Ephesians 4 Paul writes that we are to help each other grow up into Christ, and then he tells us to “walk no longer as the Gentiles walk.” How can we do that? By setting a John Newcombe kind of example in areas where we are strong, and by watching for John Newcombe examples in areas where we are weaker.

If you want to walk in the way of the Lord, if you truly want to “walk the walk” of a disciple of Christ, then follow Christ’s example. Perhaps if we watch closely enough we will learn to serve like Jesus.

Under the mercy,

Lewis