April 10, 2001
If you get email, you probably get junk mail, virus hoaxes and assorted electronic chain letters. Some of them are humorous, others not worth the electricity it took to send them.
Occasionally some of this flotsam looks like hate-mail circulated by disgruntled employees. One arrived last week. It seemed to be copies of an exchange between the sender and a person who worked for a well-known television network. The sender had complained about a particular episode in a show that network carried. He took a biblical perspective on a certain issue and his letters were polite. The person who supposedly answered his complaint did so in a crude manner. He used lines like: “Get your nose out of the Bible . . . . treat people as equals . . . . try thinking for yourself and stop using an archaic book of stories as a lame crutch for your existence.”
Keep in mind that these ‘letters’ may been fabrications. Junk email is often like that; however, it did touch on a topic worthy of consideration. When some Christians speak about their faith as it applies to current controversial issues, we often are told that our religion is a crutch. The implication is that Christians are weak and their faith helps them limp through life.
It is true that crutches support people who are injured or disabled but there seems also to be a suggestion by these accusers that no one needs crutches. They seems to believe that all human beings can think for themselves and that our own ideas are all we need to live and solve every problem. In other words, we can do it without religion, faith or God.
Maybe that is true in limited situations. I get up every morning and brush my own teeth without help — but a quadriplegic cannot. Not everyone is self-sufficient in everything. Besides, the Bible says it is because of God that we “live and move and have our being” so without common grace from God, I could not get up in the morning and brush my teeth.
As I watch the nightly news, I cannot help but conclude that even if we human beings have the capacity to think through our problems, many of us do not. A certain percentage of the population is doing the opposite: thinking up problems.
Add to this the mistake factor. A corporate executive can make incredible and sincere decisions but are all his decisions beneficial? What about leaders of universities? Is every idea sound and positive? If the best leaders and thinkers can make mistakes, what about you or me?
Since lameness is the inability to function correctly, then everyone is lame, at least part of the time. We mess up, no matter how good we are at “thinking for ourselves.” This includes presidents, professors and thinkers as well as you and me. Even by our own standards of measurement, there is no perfect person who is limp-free all of the time.
So how about the standards of a perfect God? How does He measure our lameness? Solomon, a man noted for his wisdom, wrote this: “There is not one person that does good and never sins,” a theme that is repeated throughout Scripture. God can say that because He measures us by the standard of His Son. Jesus was a perfect man. He never did anything that violated the standards of His Father. Oh, on a human level some might find fault. If perfection is monetary, then Jesus failed. If perfection is popularity, then Jesus limped. Yet God says His Son passed all the tests.
People who tell Christians to stop using the Bible as a crutch do not realize that they themselves have crutches. Why else does society gobble up Valium, booze and excess food? What are those cravings but an attempt to hide a limp?
God knows our lameness but rather than ridicule us for it, He offers us His crutches. Anyone who tries them learns that with God, it is far better to be lame than blind.
Showing posts with label crutches. Show all posts
Showing posts with label crutches. Show all posts
Monday, March 5, 2018
Friday, February 5, 2016
Christians and Crutches ............. Parables 389
September 28, 1993
Nearly every school has one or more students hobbling the halls on crutches because sport programs starting in September, after a summer without them, usually mean injuries. Some sprain their ankles or break bones; others tear ligaments or dislocate a knee joint. At first, many injured don’t mind the attention their injury receives; however, the novelty of being a cripple wears off quickly. No one likes using crutches for more than a day or two.
Perhaps that illustrates why those who disdain faith in God sometimes call it a “crutch.” No doubt they remember times when life’s problems loomed large and they were helpless. At those times, they may have cried out to God for help, such as when the tornado ripped through an industrial building in Edmonton a few years ago. One survivor told me workers clutched to whatever seemed solid and everyone was praying aloud. Even though most had not prayed before (at least publicly), they desperately grabbed for some “crutches” as the building came down around them.
Who can fault them? No one. There is nothing wrong with acknowledging to God our utter helplessness and crying out to Him. They did it, at least for that moment. But their memory of a time when faith was needed reminds them of their own weakness, and who wants to think about that, hence faith is only a crutch.
This temporary faith is relatively common. The first time I grabbed that crutch was when my favorite childhood pet went missing. After a tearful but unproductive search, I prayed God would help me find it. I even promised to believe in Him if the kitten showed up. It was a clear case of a temporary “limp” because I didn’t keep my promise, at least not at the time.
In contrast, the Bible tells us we are to “pray without ceasing” because we trust Him without ceasing. That means we call on Him daily, crisis or not, and even implies we need crutches a lot more than we think we do.
From this, I see faith has at least two dimensions. There is trust in God for the crisis situations only, which I have already called “temporary faith” and trust that is more permanent. It could be called “eternal faith.”
Eternal faith could be further defined as a trust that understands we have a permanent limp. (Those who accuse us of needing a crutch are right but not exactly.) Eternal faith realizes there is a crisis not directly related to falling down under the trials of this life. It is a large problem that looms ahead and all are helpless to solve it. This unseen calamity requires more from us than a now-and-then cry for help when we feel weak.
This unmanageable crisis is rooted in the past to another kind of Fall, unlike those that merely break bones and scrape knees. Romans 3 says it like this: “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” Because of that Fall, we are without strength to meet the inevitable, the crisis of God’s judgment.
Those with eternal faith know we limp. We cannot walk like we ought — the standard of measurement is Christ — and we cannot make our way into eternity with God after we die. Heaven is a place of perfection and we are spiritual cripples; heaven’s door slams shuts in our faces. But He opens it for a faith that goes beyond an occasional plea for help.
Our choice is simple, but not easy: do we limp on — with or without a sense of having fallen? Do we cry out only when we feel weak and ignore Him when we feel strong? Or do we step into a walk with Him — happy that He offered us a crutch?
Nearly every school has one or more students hobbling the halls on crutches because sport programs starting in September, after a summer without them, usually mean injuries. Some sprain their ankles or break bones; others tear ligaments or dislocate a knee joint. At first, many injured don’t mind the attention their injury receives; however, the novelty of being a cripple wears off quickly. No one likes using crutches for more than a day or two.
Perhaps that illustrates why those who disdain faith in God sometimes call it a “crutch.” No doubt they remember times when life’s problems loomed large and they were helpless. At those times, they may have cried out to God for help, such as when the tornado ripped through an industrial building in Edmonton a few years ago. One survivor told me workers clutched to whatever seemed solid and everyone was praying aloud. Even though most had not prayed before (at least publicly), they desperately grabbed for some “crutches” as the building came down around them.
Who can fault them? No one. There is nothing wrong with acknowledging to God our utter helplessness and crying out to Him. They did it, at least for that moment. But their memory of a time when faith was needed reminds them of their own weakness, and who wants to think about that, hence faith is only a crutch.
This temporary faith is relatively common. The first time I grabbed that crutch was when my favorite childhood pet went missing. After a tearful but unproductive search, I prayed God would help me find it. I even promised to believe in Him if the kitten showed up. It was a clear case of a temporary “limp” because I didn’t keep my promise, at least not at the time.
In contrast, the Bible tells us we are to “pray without ceasing” because we trust Him without ceasing. That means we call on Him daily, crisis or not, and even implies we need crutches a lot more than we think we do.
From this, I see faith has at least two dimensions. There is trust in God for the crisis situations only, which I have already called “temporary faith” and trust that is more permanent. It could be called “eternal faith.”
Eternal faith could be further defined as a trust that understands we have a permanent limp. (Those who accuse us of needing a crutch are right but not exactly.) Eternal faith realizes there is a crisis not directly related to falling down under the trials of this life. It is a large problem that looms ahead and all are helpless to solve it. This unseen calamity requires more from us than a now-and-then cry for help when we feel weak.
This unmanageable crisis is rooted in the past to another kind of Fall, unlike those that merely break bones and scrape knees. Romans 3 says it like this: “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” Because of that Fall, we are without strength to meet the inevitable, the crisis of God’s judgment.
Those with eternal faith know we limp. We cannot walk like we ought — the standard of measurement is Christ — and we cannot make our way into eternity with God after we die. Heaven is a place of perfection and we are spiritual cripples; heaven’s door slams shuts in our faces. But He opens it for a faith that goes beyond an occasional plea for help.
Our choice is simple, but not easy: do we limp on — with or without a sense of having fallen? Do we cry out only when we feel weak and ignore Him when we feel strong? Or do we step into a walk with Him — happy that He offered us a crutch?
Friday, October 11, 2013
Need crutches? ....................... Parables 030
Every now and then, someone says “Christianity is just a crutch.” The implication is that a strong person doesn’t need crutches. Only the weak should have to rely on God.
Self-reliant, capable people, and people who are satisfied with their own moral condition, will definitely see no need for Christ in their life. They may not deny that others need “that sort of thing” but they consider themselves above moral or spiritual crutches. Surprisingly, Jesus Christ doesn’t offer them any.
A New Testament passage in Matthew 9 reveals his response to the self-reliant . . . He had been eating with “sinners and tax-collectors,” and was being criticized for it. His critics could see no point in His actions. Why would this man, who claimed to be sent from God, want to associate with a mixed group of prostitutes and assorted riffraff, including those despised tax collectors? They were the weak people, the people who did not live upright lives, who did not keep the Jewish laws, and who lowered themselves to take jobs for their oppressors, the Roman government. The critics were the moral elite, the teachers of how to live right. It made no sense to them that this person, who claimed to be God in human flesh, ate and drank with the bottom level of their society.
In response to this criticism, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ for I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Jesus didn’t come to call those who feel no need. He didn’t come for the strong, the self-confident, the capable, those who scorn weakness and consider themselves morally and spiritually healthy. He can do nothing for them.
But He, quoting an Old Testament prophet, did say something to the “crutch-rejecters.” “Go and learn what this means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice.”
This command was originally given to a rebellious and unrepentant nation. They knew of a sin-hating God, but they didn’t take Him seriously. They thought He overlooked their sin because they were successful, at least in their own eyes. But they were ignorant of the nature and desire of God. God wanted them to acknowledge Him, and to show mercy to others. Mercy is “undeserved kindness.” Instead, they continued to do as they pleased, thinking that their occasional sacrifices would make up for their selfishness.
Those who say they do not need God, or Christ, are also ignoring the desires of God. He is not impressed with self-reliance, and the ability to be strong. Instead, he desires a people for Himself that acknowledge their utter dependence on His mercy, recognizing that they do not deserve it. And He desires that we show the same mercy to others. He wants us to do good to those who do absolutely nothing to deserve kindness.
Can you do that without a crutch?
Self-reliant, capable people, and people who are satisfied with their own moral condition, will definitely see no need for Christ in their life. They may not deny that others need “that sort of thing” but they consider themselves above moral or spiritual crutches. Surprisingly, Jesus Christ doesn’t offer them any.
A New Testament passage in Matthew 9 reveals his response to the self-reliant . . . He had been eating with “sinners and tax-collectors,” and was being criticized for it. His critics could see no point in His actions. Why would this man, who claimed to be sent from God, want to associate with a mixed group of prostitutes and assorted riffraff, including those despised tax collectors? They were the weak people, the people who did not live upright lives, who did not keep the Jewish laws, and who lowered themselves to take jobs for their oppressors, the Roman government. The critics were the moral elite, the teachers of how to live right. It made no sense to them that this person, who claimed to be God in human flesh, ate and drank with the bottom level of their society.
Jesus didn’t come to call those who feel no need. He didn’t come for the strong, the self-confident, the capable, those who scorn weakness and consider themselves morally and spiritually healthy. He can do nothing for them.
But He, quoting an Old Testament prophet, did say something to the “crutch-rejecters.” “Go and learn what this means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice.”
This command was originally given to a rebellious and unrepentant nation. They knew of a sin-hating God, but they didn’t take Him seriously. They thought He overlooked their sin because they were successful, at least in their own eyes. But they were ignorant of the nature and desire of God. God wanted them to acknowledge Him, and to show mercy to others. Mercy is “undeserved kindness.” Instead, they continued to do as they pleased, thinking that their occasional sacrifices would make up for their selfishness.
Those who say they do not need God, or Christ, are also ignoring the desires of God. He is not impressed with self-reliance, and the ability to be strong. Instead, he desires a people for Himself that acknowledge their utter dependence on His mercy, recognizing that they do not deserve it. And He desires that we show the same mercy to others. He wants us to do good to those who do absolutely nothing to deserve kindness.
Can you do that without a crutch?
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