Growing Pains

I do not like pain. Really. I do not like it. But they say pain serves a purpose: Pain tells us when something is wrong. Pain also occurs when drastic steps have been taken to fix something that was wrong. Everyone who has ever gone through major surgery understands this.

You face double the pain when the two come together and that is bound to happen for anyone seeking to live a Christlike life. First, there is the pain of identifying something specifically wrong with your life in spirit, thought, and/or deed. Sometimes the error is so deeply engrained that it is a tangible part of what defines you. Next is the pain that comes with making a clear, meaningful, and permanent correction. Then, and only then, healing and recovery can occur.

Here is an example in down-to-earth terms: 

1. We love God and we love our country.

2. No matter how many good people immigrate into our country, some bad ones slip in, too, and it only takes a few of the bad guys to do a lot of damage (witness 9-11-01).

3. A conflict arises (or should) when we seek to be Christlike but desire to "protect" our country by turning away immigrants because some might do us harm (rather than recognizing where our real safety lies as revealed in 2 Chronicles 7:14).

4. You have to make a decision to be totally Christlike or seek a worldly solution to national security. 

It isn't pretty but it is true. Denial only cancels the hope of change and healing.

Final note: I am not a fan of the modern Episcopal Church. But I do have respect for a recent stand they have taken and thank Tom Wiles* for sharing it. You can read it here.

*Tom Wiles is Executive Minister for the American Baptist Churches of Rhode Island. We were also roommates our Senior year at Oklahoma Baptist University. I had the great privilege of having his mother-in-law, Marilyn Bryant, as pianist when I served in my first staff position out of college at First Baptist Church, Lindsay, OK.

When Hermeneutics Don't Matter

The problem with attempting to share insight gleamed from tried and true principles of biblical interpretation, i.e. hermeneutics, is they are often nonessential to those who believe in the sufficiency of their own strong personal opinion. It is nothing new but recently it was resolutely stated to me that Jesus was not crucified on Friday but on Thursday based entirely on Jesus' own words recorded in *Matthew 12:40 – "For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth."

As we discussed it, the friend would not accept the explanation that in the reckoning of the original audience, "three days and three nights" was a reference to three distinct days or any part of those days. This person refused to view it in any context other than the way it sounded in English and would be understood in our culture, namely, Jesus spent three full twenty-four hour periods in the grave. I should add that observations of scholars who write commentaries have little bearing on this person. Among my own references were the Word Biblical Commentary, the Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, Matthew Henry, Commentary On the Whole Bible (Unabridged), and John Wesley, Wesley's Notes On the Bible.

If it comes up again, and it very well may, I will probably just refer to six passages from the gospels themselves, including Matthew, which are even clearer in plain old English. They are as follows:

• From Matthew 27:62 – The next day, that is, after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate
• From Mark 15:42 – And when evening had come, since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath,
• From Luke 23:54 – It was the day of Preparation, and the Sabbath was beginning.
• John 19:14 – Now it was the day of Preparation of the Passover. It was about the sixth hour. He said to the Jews, “Behold your King!”
• John 19:31 – Since it was the day of Preparation, and so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away.
• John 19:42 – So because of the Jewish day of Preparation, since the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there.

Those would seem to be rather overwhelming. But, in this case, I suspect my friend will gladly use an uninformed, albeit steadfast, interpretation of one verse to essentially ignore six with clearer meanings.

A Pastor's life has these moments.

*For the sake of consistency, all scriptures are from the English Standard Version (ESV).