I’d like to share a few thoughts this morning about these verses from Luke:
“…great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, ‘If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.’” Luke 14:25-26 (ESV)
Did he really just say hate?
There is simply no getting around the fact that this is a very hard word from our Lord. Yes, it’s hard, but it’s not harsh. Look, as always, it is decidedly not the case that what Jesus says to us wasn’t thought through very well, or that it was uttered in anger or with malice.
The word is meant to stop us our tracks.
If we believe that Jesus wants us to despise those who by blood and marriage are closest to us, to turn and suddenly desire bad things to happen to our loved ones, frankly, we haven’t at all been paying very close attention. And it should also be readily apparent that, no, we are not being called to actively seek our own demise. Both would be quite unnatural. And wrong.
But it is true that Jesus is asking us here to do something unnatural: He is asking us to put him first. This is about inordinate loves, of putting good things ahead of the most important thing.
He does, however, want us to understand the very real possibility that in putting him first, we might very well lose our wife, our children, our brothers and sisters. And yes, even our own lives.
“For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Matthew 16:25 (ESV)
We’re all searching for what we believe will bring us life. In that search, we can look upward or we can look outward.
Think of the cross, that horrific tool used by the Romans to demonstrate — in no uncertain terms, in a very clear, physical manner — who was in charge (Rome, not you). It consisted of a long vertical wooden beam for the body of its victim, and a shorter horizontal beam for the arms and hands. Its two parts came together near the heart and head.
Though Rome is long gone, the cross lives on as a symbol: Focus your search vertically and you’ll have life to the fullest; focus horizontally and you will be left empty.
In a previous post (here), I argued that the Spirit is vital to understanding the Bible. I stand by those words — if you don’t invite Him to “clear your mind, open your eyes and ears” before reading, you’re looking at the party from outside, through a window. Come inside and feast.
I didn’t say nearly enough.
You’ll remember that God is a being comprised of three very distinct persons: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We tend to “lump” them all together by using the name “God,” and in a sense we are very right in doing so. But don’t forget Jesus’s words to us before He left this earth to be with his Father in Heaven:
I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth…. The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.
John 14 (NIV)
If you’re not daily — moment-by-moment, really, as we’re to “pray without ceasing” — in touch with the Spirit, you’re not fully “in Christ.” And — hear me on this — that goes not just for your Bible reading and prayer, but your church as well.
Does your church as a fundamental matter of principle and practice invoke the person of the Holy Spirit?
I’m about to say something that will either seem shocking or ridiculous. Hear me out; you owe it to yourself. It may be the most important thing you hear this year.
You’re feeding yourself poison if you attend to 99% of what goes as news.
Don’t buy the lie that you have to “stay ‘informed'” about “what’s happening.” The news is not what’s happening — it’s really not. It is comprised mostly of two things: 1. Super-selected utra-condensed contextless tragedy about which you can do nothing; and 2. trivia.
What are the effects of choosing to ingest this poison? From number 1 above, you get a) helplessness; and b) either a hardened heart (one that starts to enjoy tragedy, in a sick, voyeuristic kind of way — see “Darwin Award” types) or despair.
From number 2, you get preoccupied with things that don’t matter.
You don’t have to have it. Turn it off.*
*If you care to know more, see Neil Postsman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death.
“We may read many truths in the Bible, but we cannot know them savingly, till God by his Spirit shines upon our soul.” — Thomas Watson
I’ve long been amazed that there exist biblical scholars, those who are supposed to be most “in the know” about what the Bible is and is about, who just don’t get it. How in the world could a Bart Ehrman, world-renowned agnostic professor of New Testament at the University of North Carolina, seem so adept at missing the entire point?
We all do well to remember that the Bible is first and foremost a story. It begins with the creation of heaven and earth, and it ends with “happily ever after,” the final defeat of evil, the restoration of the cosmos, and the marriage of heaven and earth, God and His people living together in peace, joy, and intimate relationship for eternity. We have to enter our reading with that understanding. It is not primarily a recipe book for how we are to behave. It’s certainly not a book that’s there to reinforce our notions of how the world ought to operate.
Here’s my real point: I am ashamed to say that I used to kind of enjoy looking down on people like Bart Ehrman. But the truth is this: I’ve never had his level of knowledge of the Bible, and there’s an excellent chance I never will. And until very recently, I too had what I can only now describe as a wooden relationship with Scripture.
I mean, I got certain parts of it, but the great bulk remained sterile and unmoving. I could, with God’s grace, read John 3:16 and understand that this verse was vitally important. (There’s a reason our Sunday School teachers had us memorize it!) But then I’d read, I don’t know, about God’s leading the Israelites through the desert on their way to the Promised Land, and I’d feel that I was reading a history book about a group of people long ago and far away, unconnected to the life I was living out day to day.
I think that most Christians today way-underestimate the importance of the Holy Spirit. If we mention Him at all, even in a church setting, it’s often uncomfortable, sometimes even weird.
This is ridiculous. The Spirit is a person, a vital member of the Trinity, a person just as the Father and the Son are persons. He’s not this shadowy ghost who’s only incidentally, and on special occasions, involved in the life of the believer.
It wasn’t until the Spirit entered that the words of the Bible came alive.
Think of it this way: You can know all about a particular human being, their name, where they were born, where they grew up. You can read their writings, hear their speeches, be told stories about them. You can see photographs. But you’re still on the outside. And then one day you actually meet them, enter their life. Maybe you start by going to lunch or spending an hour with them around a campfire. Only at that point can you begin to say that you know them.
The Bible was like that for me. I knew a good deal about it. I had dutifully taken the time to read it, took classes in college, participated in Bible studies. I could relay lots of facts about it. But when the person of Holy Spirit came upon me, when I invited Him to my reading, I finally started to know the Bible in a shockingly personal way. This was no longer a book about them:I was in the story. Passages would now almostjump from the page, almost as if the words were illuminated in gold. True meaning arrived.
The next time you sit down with your Bible, start by inviting the Spirit to come, first to clear your mind of anything that prevents you from hearing what God is trying to tell you, and then to open your eyes and ears.
God is the source of all wisdom. He has a plan for you. But he’s not going to be slotted into that open space you have in your calendar the Thursday after next.
Remember, he comes first – before anything else. As the first psalm reminds us, you must seek him, put yourself daily in his path, and open yourself to “the law of the LORD,” scripture.
From that practice, you will be “like a tree firmly planted,” receiving confirmation, correction, and direction directly from THE stream of all goodness and wisdom. Not only will it set the tone for the rest of your day, but you’ll find with a little practice that it truly is a delight.
And above all, you’ll be honoring your Maker.
Contact me if you’d like a practical plan as to how to do this, how to engage in daily devotion and prayer. It takes fifteen minutes a day, tops.
God knows that when you eat of the Tree of Good and Evil your eyes will be opened, and you will be like him.
Genesis 3:5 (ESV)
Everything broke the day we believed this lie.
The insinuation (I use that world quite deliberately) is that we are fit to rule our lives independent of our Maker. We foolishly set ourselves up as heads of state of our little kingdoms of one.
Because God gave us free will, each of us gets to choose our life priorities. He will not impose Himself on us, a requirement of love. God doesn’t want us to be robots.
But because outrageous arrogance and stupidity are in our very DNA — not to mention the fact that we were made for community, for putting others first — we are not fit to be a king. The kicker: If we include the Lord at all in our lives, we try to go about assigning Him a support role.
Think about this! God made the universe and all that is in it. He holds everything together — not just this little ball of dirt and water, but all the planets, stars, galaxies, the “whole show” — with His little finger.
Is this the kind of being you expect to be your assistant to help you reach your life goals? Are you calling on the Holy of Holies to serve you in your little kingdom of one?
Hang with me here. I’m going to point out some things that will seem very elementary. And I’ll point out some things that might seem on their face to be problematic.
Let’s start by level-setting a couple of things about language, regarding both its proper uses as well as where it can go wrong:
First, words are used to point to reality, to what is. While we sometimes miss the mark in our pointing, that’s exactly what we’re trying to do when we use a word: point to what’s really there.
Second, words are not these static things. They have different uses and meanings — varying situational definitions, if you will. For instance, I can know a fact. And I can know a woman.
A good part of our disagreements are simply matters of definition.
Ok, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s talk about truth. Whether we have every really taken very long to think about it, we all know that objective reality exists. A particular rock is either there or it isn’t. We can say that a thing’s being is independent of our knowledge of or about that thing. A child can tell you – and he’d be right in doing so – that a tree that falls in the forest is really there,falling, whether we are on site to observe it.
Final point for now: Everyone knows that while our senses are imperfect and can fool us, it’s not a very common problem if we are reasonably well in body and mind. So I can rightly say that I know this particular rock is hard, white, slightly abrasive, cool to the touch (though I know that that will change when the morning sun hits it), and about four feet from that small tree (now three and a half after I’ve picked it up and put it back down).
Why on God’s green earth am I taking the time to point out such obvious things?
I bring up these obvious things because in our current culture, we often get confused about the word “truth,” seeming to speak sometimes as if we can make a rock or a tree appear or disappear based on whether we want it to exist.
In the next post, we’ll continue our exploration, starting with the idea of preferences.
Brink of the Lower Falls, Yellowstone National Park. August 2023.
Knowledge is good, for many reasons. But it is not wisdom. Insight is similar to wisdom. Insight comes from inspiration.
Wisdom is knowing what to do when the right rules aren’t apparent, or perhaps don’t directly or obviously apply.
This book is practical in its instruction. But since the wise know that all men are fools — never forgetting the possibility that they themselves may be the chiefest among them — it is wisest perhaps to remember that we fools by our very nature despise wisdom and instruction.
We’re all in our “terrible twos”: We don’t like being confronted, contradicted, being made to feel powerless, small, like a fool.
However, we must ask God’s power to set these things aside, grow up enough so that we can receive the words of this book, treasure up its commands, make our ears attentive to wisdom, and incline our hearts to understanding.
In part one, I told you that it’s entirely possible to find peace on the roads, that the stress of driving comes down to an animal/biological/physiological response: Fight or Flight.
The question is this: Can we, how do we check out of this game?
First the bad news: Just like everything else Jesus tells us, it’s hard work and requires continual awareness. But freedom is on the other side, folks. It will be worth it.
Let’s talk about fear first.
Fear is an appropriate response to danger. The roads are sometimes dangerous. And yet we’re very clearly told to “fear not.” What this does not mean is that we are to go doing stupid things like jumping off of cliffs. What is does mean is that if you do everything you can to be safe but still cannot avoid a potentially dangerous situation, do not worry, for God is with you.
We have to drive: You gotta go to the store and get food for your family or yourself. You have to go to work to provide for your family or yourself. On vacation, you need to get out of town to see God’s creation, to renew. You need to visit your parents. Etc.
So drive carefully and wisely. Beyond that, do not fear.
Ok, that’s flight. What about fight? What about anger?
I am convinced that as Christians we do not own anger, except in the rarest of situations: righteous anger (e.g. somebody is about to hurt a child and you need to step in to stop it).
Almost all of our anger comes from ugly places. For instance, pride says, “I would never do such a thing!” Truth is, yes you probably would if you were in their shoes, if you had their upbringing, life circumstances, etc.
Let’s talk about a situation you know far too well: Let’s say you’re going to a concert and there’s a very long line to exit the freeway. Somebody in the lane to your left speeds all the way down the line as far as they can, and then pulls into a gap near the front of the line. Infuriating, isn’t it?
It shouldn’t be. You don’t know their life situation overall, and you don’t know what’s going on with them right that moment. You really don’t.
A quick story: Many years ago, my dear wife was in the car rushing my son to a place where he could get medical attention because was having great difficulty breathing. She didn’t have time to get an ambulance. She had to hurry to save his life. Someone, most probably thinking they were going to “show” my dear wife and not let her speed, repeatedly pulled in front of her to prevent her from proceeding at that pace.
Ok, you say, that’s for sure a cautionary tale. But that kind of situation is, like what, one-tenth of a percent of speeders? What about the other 99.9%?
Easy answer, tough to execute: Jesus tells us to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” If a person is simply an idiot, I mean really an idiot with little regard for others, they’re not going to repent and change their lives because a stranger is angry with them.
Give up judging aggressive drivers –turn that over to God. Drive wisely and carefully. Get out of people’s way. Swallow your pride and anger*. Admit that you don’t know everything. Pray for those who persecute you. Take comfort in knowing that God’s got it all covered.
*Regardless of how long you’ve been driving, you will almost certainly have a very large amount of built-up anger, fear, frustration, and disappointment. You have to find a way to get that out so that you can find peace! Cry it out, talk it out, whatever it takes. Counselors can help.Identify it and do the work to remove it from your life.
