So Be Good for Goodness Sake

The "bad" kids had the stereotypical purple hair, mohawks, skull paraphernalia and skateboards. Of course, skateboards.  The "good" boy wanted to be like them and some how we ended up at Noah's ark. At the end of the movie, the "good" boy sees the bad influence those kids might be and walks away as if to say,  I'm better than them. Trust me, I'm all for wholesome Christian kids entertainment, but I have a serious problem with what we might be teaching them.

I asked my 8 year old son, Cannon, to come chat for a minute after viewing the show. I asked him casually, "So, do you think Jesus loves those bad kids?" "No!" he quickly answered as if disgusted by the very thought. "Does he love you?" I probed. "Yes." he replied. "Why?" I continued, "Does he love you because you are good?" "Yes." he said, a bit more sheepishly. And with that my suspicions confirmed and my work cut out for me.

There was never any mention of how God felt about those kids. Never any mention of how the "good" kid might influence their lives through the love of Jesus. Never any mention of being a light in the darkness. Just the same old, same old, Christian mantra, stay away from the bad, lest you become like them. Sure, I get all the age appropriateness and the nuances of teaching younger kids right from wrong, but we are raising them from a very early age to have an "us and them" mentality that when they are old, they will not depart from. 

I remember overhearing a conversation earlier this year between an older, male, Christian, blood relative (who shall remain anonymous) and my Christian nephew. My son also happened to be taking in this conversation. It went something like this: "So, you go to public school huh?" "Yeah." responds my nephew. "So how do you deal with the bad kids? You don't ever associate with those kinds of kids do you?" "I mostly keep to myself." said Nephew. "Good for you." Blood dude replied. At this point, I couldn't help but interject..."Unless you want to tell them about Jesus, huh?"A bit of nervous laughter ends the conversation. Obviously, in this person's mind, they were suggesting what was good and righteous, and I could not believe what I was hearing! What about the example of Jesus? What about those kid's souls? Again, what about being a light that cannot be hidden? You can't be a light that cannot be hidden while hiding!!!

This post is about to piggyback off my previous post "Beware of God", so this could be considered the continuation of. If you haven't read that, please go read it and come back, otherwise you will be lost. That said, at this point, we will take a bit of a detour on this current train of thought, but we will be back on the main track by the end. So hunker down, buckle up and stay with me.

The problem with the "knowledge of good and evil" that we picked up at the fall, is that we become the keepers of the standard of said good and evil. We define these in our minds based on our understanding of what is good or evil based on tradition, laws, common sense, customs, conscience and even the Bible. The problem with this is that we become our own moral compass and therefore perpetuate our hopelessly flawed ideology and often self-righteously inflict it on others. Christians are not the only ones with this mixed up notion. Even Santa Clause shuns the naughty ones. So this idea of good and evil changes from person to person based on their perspective. When Jesus died to redeem us to relationship with our creator, God, He provided a way of understanding His heart and mind and to have full revelation of what is truly good through the person of the Holy Spirit.

Funny thing - I know a lot of non-believers who are morally, not just good, but better than most Christians. They out give, out love, out serve, out sacrifice and out compassion some of the best of us Saints. So this actually proves my point. Good is not always good. In fact, Satan can use our idea of good for evil. He use our personal concept of good to deceive us, bind us and even use us to carry out his evil plans. (i.e. Oprah, Westboro) I actually believe he will use this very thing to deceive people into worshipping the anti-christ during the tribulation, but that is another post altogether. 

Need proof? Let me give you a few Biblical examples: Peter when Jesus told him about death, "took him aside and began to rebuke him. 'Never, Lord!' he said. 'This shall never happen to you!' Jesus turned and said to Peter, 'Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns." Totally legit that Peter would think it was good and right to say such a thing to Jesus, no? And when Mary poured out the costly oil on Jesus' feet in worship, Judas said it should have been sold and the money given to the poor. Seems good and righteous enough, but it was evil because he did not have in mind the concerns of God but merely human concerns. 

Still a stretch, you might say? Well, let me just say that there is a way that seems right to a man but it leads to death (Prov 14:12, 16:25). I know because for 35 years I lived to be "good" and it brought me nothing but death. At the end of those years, I could only describe myself as dead. I did everything on the list the "gatekeepers of good" laid out for me. I followed all the rules and suffered and sacrificed and gave and obeyed and obeyed and obeyed...and died. My color palette was black and white...no gray...God forbid, red, blue or yellow. I was being good for Jesus, for goodness sake. But it was all dead works (Heb. 9:14) motived by self (knowledge) not good works (Mat 5:16) which are motived by the Holy Spirit (revelation).

So while our source of good is self (the tree of the knowledge of good and evil) we are actually spreading death but when God becomes our source of good (the tree of life) we begin spreading life. Thus, as you may have gathered, the things we think and feel are good, moral and righteous may not be so much. Only God is good and anything that comes from Him is good. So to raise our children based on this fallen way of thinking about good and evil is, well, not good. It's really motived by fear. Fear that they may actually make a mistake if they get to close to "those" kids. God forbid our kids make a mistake...they might actually need a Savior. Yep, I said it. 

So the moral of this story, kids, is good does not equal Godly. Because of grace, we cannot care more about being "good" than we care about being like Jesus. And those "bad" kids? Jesus loves them because He made them and is wanting us to tell them so. They may only be "bad" because they don't know they are loved and important and valuable. Cannon now knows. He knows now that Jesus doesn't love him because he's good but because he belongs to Him. God loves His kids and wants a relationship with all of them...red, yellow, black, white, purple hair, mohawks and all. Now maybe Cannon will get to share that with the "bad' kids someday.

So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves. The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you are not free to carry out your good intentions. But when you are directed by the Spirit, you are not under obligation to the law of Moses. Gal. 5:16-18

Beware of God

One by one, as each 1 minute testimony unfolded, a common thread was weaving its way into a telltale tapestry of a broken church. I got saved as a child, grew up in church and in a very strict religious home and because of the legalism, I eventually hated God. Then when I got older, found out He actually did really love me and it changed my life. As I sat in that circle with other ladies Bible study leaders I was reminded of someone very close to me that recently came to Christ after loosing everything. They also had the same testimony. Unfortunately for them, it cost their marriage, their job and nearly their life to understand the truth of who God is and how He really feels about them. The God that had been presented to them their whole life was a lie. They also confided in me that when trying to reach out with the love of God to hurting friends, find it hard to break through because people say, why would I want God in my life when He hates me? When asked where they got this idea, they usually respond with, that is what everyone who says they know God or about God has ever said to me. 

What the what? God hates them?! Oh sure, maybe no one ever actually said those words, but point still taken. It seems to me we have a problem here. Seems a bunch of churchy people are out there with "expert" opinions on why the church is dwindling away. While there is a lot of clamor and commotion inside the church about what so and so is doing, what worship style their congregation is using, what this mega-church is hyping, what that micro-church is promoting, what this denomination is believing, people are blind to satan slithering through it all like the snake that he is. Bottom line is he has us bound and we are binding others right along with us. Blasphemy! Christians cannot be bound! I'm not even going to bother going through all the scriptures that say this is indeed possible and very real. I don't have time. Listen here, it will lay it all out. Back to my point. So what are we bound by? Sin. No news there. Well, here's a news flash, it's not necessarily that sin has us bound, it's the knowledge of it that has us bound... "the knowledge of good and evil" to be exact. It's a result of the fall the church, as a whole, has never rejected mainly because we don't even realize there is a problem. But it is a big problem that is leaving death in it's wake. (Gen 3:22-24)

Let me ask you a question...what is more important? Showing someone their sinfulness or showing them the grace that covers that sin? Sure, hit them with grace first, then when they love Jesus enough, hit them with their sin, right? No really, we can't have people in church who cuss like sailors, or smoke like chimneys or drink like fish! What would people think, what would God think? We have to be righteous, we have to be holy! God demands holiness! Right? We have taken the name of God and applied it to sin like a bandaid. We say, stop sinning or God will turn His back on you or bad stuff will happen to you or you will go to hell instead of Jesus died to save you from those sins and the way He loves you will help you stop doing those things in His perfect time. Oh and hey, I happen to love you too and if you need help with that in the meantime, I'm here for you. Can we trust God to handle the sin problem or do we need to make a citizen's arrest? While we are busy playing law enforcement, we are steadily creating lost generations of great Pharisees (Matt 23:15) or hopeless rebels. While we are preoccupied with blaming this church or that denomination for why young people are leaving the church in record numbers, they really are walking out wounded and bleeding. We are our own worst enemy and satan is loving it.

Yes, we are bound by sin. The preoccupation with it that is. By the way, sinners are not God's worst enemy. The power of sin was canceled on the cross. Jesus either paid for all of our sins or He didn't. The Bible says He did.  God either sent His Son to die for us because He loved us or He didn't. The Bible says He did. Either God loves us even in our mess or we will have to perform for His love. Maybe if we actually looked more like Jesus (the tree of life) than we look like Pharisees (that other tree) people would come running back to the church. Maybe if we stopped telling people how they need to behave as Christians and started telling them about how precious they are to the One who died to save them, they would want to get to know Him a bit better and maybe, just maybe they wouldn't have to try to fill that void by sinning. Hum...maybe.

Resource for further understanding of the two trees: The Problem Jesus Came to Solve

Sex Ed: A Conversation with my Young Kids

It occurred to me tonight that my oldest son is about to enter 2nd grade. I remember being in 2nd grade. Mrs. Butler was my teacher at Patrick Henry Elementary School in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I remember having a love/hate relationship with the opposite sex. Boys were mean...but some were cute. I don't remember anything I learned from Mrs. Butler that year but I did learn most of the major cuss words from my classmates. Nice. I'm so glad they didn't educate me on the subject of sex until 3rd grade. Yikes. 3rd grade. 

My 5 year old daughter Kylie came home saying the word "sexy" earlier this year and I sorta freaked a little on the inside. Really? All ready? When I asked her what it meant, she really didn't know. So I told her that was not really a word children should use, and I told her to say "sassy" instead. Phew, potential public humiliation in the check-out line at Kroger temporarily avoided. 

Honestly, I don't really buy into the idea that the world our kids are going up in is so much worse than the one we grew up in. Sure it's a lot easier to see and hear about the bad, but the Bible says that "there is nothing new under the sun." So that is my truth. Sex has been misused and abused since the fall and will be until Christ's return. The intention for which God created sex has not changed and won't until that same moment. 

We didn't talk about the subject in our house growing up and it seemed like there were only two schools of thought: "Sex is dirty and bad" from the Church and then the rest of the world. So, that being said, I can't sit here and pretend to be any sort of expert, in fact, I didn't fully understand sex as it was intended by it's Creator until about 2 years ago when my much beloved church posted a class on the subject. It rocked my sexy world! As a result, I believe if we, as Christian parents, would get over our completely distorted view of sex, we could start the next sexual revolution through our kids and it would be the opposite of the first. They need to know the truth about sex and their parents need to be the first to bring it up! So there begins the line of thinking that has birthed the imaginary conversation below. Soon we will probably have to have this conversation for real but hopefully my kids will be better off than I was for the education. Mind you, this is a layered, on-going conversation, so this is just the early elementary introduction phase. Here's a practice run:

Sex is a wonderful thing that God created for married people. He made it so that a husband and wife can show each other how much they love one another with their bodies and also have lots of fun together. You know how we are always telling you to protect your body and how no one is supposed to touch your private places? Well it's because your body is a gift from God to you that you will someday give as a wedding gift to the person you marry. We also need to make sure that we don't allow anyone to have that gift before we have committed our lives to loving and serving them. It's one of the greatest gifts you will ever give and it is a beautiful way to serve the person you love most. God is honored when sex is part of your life as a married person and pleased when we respect our bodies and respect the bodies of others. He made you perfectly suited for that special person we choose to marry and that person is perfectly made for you! The world does not understand that God created sex and that He wants us to enjoy it the way He created us to. In fact, sex is so wonderful that it is how God chose for us to be created in our mommy's tummy. The world will lie to you by telling you that you can be disrespectful to your body and to others. But God always gives us the best plan because He is the one who made us and He already knows the person you will marry. He already sees them and has a plan for you to meet someday. So when the world tells you to do whatever you want to do, whenever you want to do it, with whoever you want, remember, that the wedding gift you are holding right now belongs to one special person and never let anyone try to take it from you before it's time. It's too valuable and expensive to just throw away. So what questions do you have about?  (This is when they hit us with the hard stuff, and I look over at Jason and say... take it from here, I'm out.) Until then...

Beautiful Scars

Every women dreads the mirrors and lighting in a dressing room...well maybe not if you are a fitness model. No, actually, I'm pretty sure they even find flaws they don't like under those conditions. But there I stood, taking in my reflection - buck naked, and what I saw made me want to cry.

I need to be completely transparent here... my physical appearance was always very important to me. I think it had a lot to do with insecurities I pick-up in elementary school. There were times when I was told something about me was ugly. This only furthered my already excruciating timidity, causing me to feel nearly invisible on the playground. I thought I wasn't special enough to get the kind of attention other girls in my class got. We girls all wanted to be their BFFs and all the guys wanted to be their boyfriends.

Fast forward a few years past braces and satellite bangs and I discovered just how significant being physically attractive can make you feel. Suddenly I became that one of "those" girls and it felt amazing. When I would go out, I could even get stuff for free if a guy was working the register. It made me feel valuable, powerful and the kind of "special" I had always hoped to be. Needless to say, this lead to hyper self-focus and actually multiplied my deepest insecurities. It became all about me.

Super fast forward once again to the dressing room. I was now a mom of 4. This was no longer the girl who could turn heads at the beach staring back at me. Gone were toned, tight abs now. No more picture-perky hiney.  I glanced down to the skin on my stomach which looked like the folds of an accordion...and that was only if I was sucking in...hard. The cha-cha's? Now "socks and rocks". The stretch marks, the cellulite, the c-section scar. They were all scars. I wasn't what I used to be and never would be again. Why Lord, why?" I whined in my self pity. For someone who found so much of their value in how they look, this moment was about to be devastating. Until, He spoke these words into my heart...

"You see, your body bares the scars of giving life...
and so does mine." 

Whoa...Wait a minute. What? Did He just say that?

I never looked at it that way. Now I have no excuse! I can no longer whine or complain. I can not look in the mirror with dread and disgust. I can only see these scars as beautiful reminders! If there was ever anything in life worth the price of these scars, it was my own precious children's lives. I would die for these little people just like He did for me! These scars represent death to self and life to others! Reminders that Jesus loved us so much that He was willing to die for us, and He bares the scars to prove it!  Could there ever be anything more beautiful? 

"Her children arise and call her blessed; 
her husband also, and he praises her: 
'Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all.' 
Charm is deceptive, and beauty does not last; 
but a woman who fears the Lord will be greatly praised." Prov. 31:30