Focusing on the greatest commandments

In good and bad times we are constantly pulled in different directions, struggle with priorities, deal with temptations – and receive no lack of opinions from others for how to deal with it all. Its good now and then to try to refocus and simplify. Let’s get back to the basics with Mark 12:28-31:

      28One of the scribes came and heard them arguing, and recognizing that He had answered them well, asked Him, “What commandment is the foremost of all?” 29Jesus answered, “The foremost is, ‘HEAR, O ISRAEL! THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD; 30AND YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH.’ 31“The second is this, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

It seems like Jesus is saying if you focus on these 2 commandments, you will be on the right path. Let’s break this up a little and give some thought to each aspect.

Focus point #1: All of Scripture in a nutshell – but nothing new

     Jesus responded by reciting Deut 6:4-5, words from Moses in the introduction to his giving of the 10 commandments. He then quotes Leviticus 19:18 from a section where Moses is giving laws about how to live with those around you. Both were well known to the Israelites, where  commandment #1 was part of the Shema -perhaps even written on the cloak the scribe wore. Although short, there is much depth in these words (Matt 22:40).

Focus point #2: All in

     You shall love God “With all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.” What more is there? There should be no area of our lives we hide from God. In everything we should be “All in” – 110%. Can this be hard? Sure – the concerns and desires of this world constantly try to gain our priority. 

When things are crazy in your life, how do you refocus?

• Are there any areas in your life where God isn’t #1? 
• What can you do to change that?
• What do you think actually demonstrates that you are “loving the Lord your God”?
• Spending time, prioritizing, obedience,…..what else?

Focus point #3: We are built to care for others

     “Love your neighbor as yourself.” This commandment goes beyond just being honest, kind, generous and respectful. It means to have a sincere purposeful concern (agapaó) for all aspects of your neighbor’s life – physical and spiritual. To “Love” infers the willingness to take action. Our supreme and uttermost love and devotion is for God, but next are those made in His image. 

     These can be tough words to follow, even for those closest to us such as a spouse or child – to love them as we love ourselves. Those attitudes we want removed from our lives- sin, greed, and selfishness – will always linger to some degree and be in opposition to this command. To love, doesn’t necessarily mean to always “like”. A neighbor’s attributes and character can be offsetting. 

So - How can we go about implementing “Loving our neighbor as our self”?

• Golden Rule Matt 7:12
• Remember that a neighbor’s needs may not be the same as ours, the focus is on them
• A lot of times when its hard to do this, perhaps focus on just being obedient to God

     Come up with some ideas on how you can recognize when your pride, selfishness, and greed are getting in the way of loving your neighbor – and how to take a step back, breathe, then try again.

     I’m sure each of us can think of someone we know or know of that has demonstrated their commitment to following these commandments. The Bible has many examples of those who drastically altered their lives due to loving God with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength (Moses, Paul, the apostles). Others demonstrated their sincere love for their neighbor (the good Samaritan, Queen Esther, and Ruth). More recent examples include Corrie ten Boom and The Village of Eyam (I encourage you to read up a bit on these two, very inspiring- just google it). 

     Two commands, simple – but can be hard to fully follow. God knows we are not perfect. He expects we will mess up. He knows each of us are unique in our own nature and gifts, and our fulfilling these commands may look a bit different from others. But, if these are the ruling principles inside us, naturally this will affect all aspects of our lives – engaging us in everything that will please God. He is after the sincerity of our hearts.

     When we are overwhelmed in life, when even the Bible seems a bit confusing, when there’s more advice from family and friends then we can take in – perhaps focusing on these words from Jesus can help us clear our heads, refocus, and find the peace obedience to these commands brings.

 -Ben

Whose Fault is it Anyway Part 3

Whose Fault is it Anyway Part 3

August 31, 2005

As Hurricane Katrina dissipated, millions of lives were shattered.  Homes and property destroyed, over 1,800 lives lost, countless animals lost as well.  American refugees lived in sports stadiums and arenas and tried to figure out if loved ones were safe and how they would rebuild what they had lost; namely their way of life.

At 22 years old I was working at a resale shop in Pickerington and I got an important phone call that couldn't wait until my break.  It was my squad leader from my Army unit calling to tell me that my company had been put on alert to activate for duty in response to the hurricane.  We would be potentially going to Gulf states to help in any way we could.  It never happened, and I was very sad about that.

Not since September 4 years prior had such a disaster happened and everyone was left wondering why?  In August of 2005, I had been a follower of Christ for only a month or two but I remember people saying that Katrina was God's judgement on the city of New Orleans.  Over and over I heard this said by the "nonsecular" talking heads.

But what about the places that were not New Orleans?  The supposed most vile neighborhood in New Orleans, Bourbon Street, wasn't even hit very hard.  I believe the same people who claimed that Katrina was God's judgement on the USA are the same ones that say that Corona virus is God's judgement on the world.

Last week, I drew your attention to some calamities listed in the Bible that God seemed to be silent about the origin of.  Things like famines, which are listed many time.  Terrible things, for sure, but God is never mentioned as sending most of them.

Sometimes, bad things just happen.  Lightning strikes, tornadoes are formed.  Diseases spread and kill crops or people.  Earth is a pretty great place to live...sometimes.  The perfection of Eden is long gone and we basically live in a beautiful wasteland of what God originally created.  God is still sovereign and is still in control of all things, however, what we tend to see more of in the "Church Age" is God's allowance.

For God's wrath is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth since what can be know about God is evident among them, because God has show it to them.  For His invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what He has made.  As a result, people are without excuse.  For though they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God or show gratitude.  Instead their thinking became nonsense, and their senseless minds were darkened.  Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, birds, four-footed animals, and reptiles.  Therefore God delivered them over in the cravings of their hearts to sexual impurity so that their bodies were degraded among themselves.  They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served something created instead of the Creator, who is praised forever. Amen.

Romans 1:18-25

The New Testament is full of wording similar to this, and frankly so is the Old Testament.  God lets things happen sometimes, often to those who don't have an interest in His involvement in their lives.  That flat tire we talked about about; maybe I ran over a piece of road garbage.  But MAYBE, the life of the tire was simply complete.  Things have expiration dates.  The world isn't an icebox, the climate is going to change.  Why are we shocked when in late August, there are hurricanes in the tropics of Haiti, Cuba, and Florida?  It happens every year!  Things just happen and some are worse than others.  If we blame God for these things, we might as well blame ourselves for picking ourselves over our relationship with God in Eden.

The idea of Eden was that God and man would live in perfect relationship; that all was right in the world.  Because of Christ, that is the kind of future we have with him.  When things go wrong, it is just a reminder that we haven't reached the finish line yet.

Things to Consider

1. In what ways have you seen God mend the broken-hearted when tragedy strikes?
2. In what ways have you seen the Church do their part?
3. When something like a hurricane or a virus comes, how is your faith impacted?

Whose Fault is it Anyway Part 2

Whose Fault is it Anyway?

Hello friends, I hope you've had a productive week!  I also hope you were able to interact with the post from last week.  I want to let you know that I am aware that the material I am presenting can be controversial and inconvenient.  I also want you to be aware that I am in no way attempting to provoke, insult, or chastise anyone or their families.  I believe these are issues that we each consider in our own minds every day and I am merely bringing them to light for the purpose of critical thinking and deeper fellowship.  That being said, let's take a look at this weeks discussion.

Could we be to blame for the calamities of the world?

Last week I outlined a few of the "great interventions" of the Lord; the times when He proverbially said "Enough is enough!" can caused terrors and wonders in order to get the attention of the world and turn their hearts to know that He is real and He is in charge.  This week, let's take a look at our involvement.

Look at these events:

• Ejection from Eden (Gen 3)
• First murder (Gen 4)
• Famine in Abram's day in Negev (Gen 12)
• Famine in Isaac's day in Beer-lahai-roi (Gen 26)
• Famine in Joseph's day in Egypt (Gen 41)
• Israel enslaved (Ex 1)
• Personal afflictions [demon possessed, blindness, leprosy, etc.] (Gospels)
• Famine in the Roman world (Acts 11)
• Christian suffering and intolerance (New Testament)

These are all troubling things NOT caused by God.  Do you think that sometimes a flat tire is just a flat tire?  I do.  And SOMETIMES a flat tire is because I wasn't paying attention and I ran over something.  Who is to blame for that?  It's me!

We each have a choice in every situation we are in; we even have the choice of how to perceive and respond to situations we don't like.  What would your life and mine be like if the first people would have simply said "No, I trust my Maker and not this snake"?  Surely, God can't be to blame for this can He?

I bet you know someone who has or has had or has died from cancer.  My wife had melanoma several years ago.  According to cancer.gov, only 5-10% of cancers are caused by hereditary traits.  So let's say that we could blame God for how He made us, so we could say that God can have the blame for cancer 5-10% of the time (nature).  That means that 90-95% of the time, cancers are caused by lifestyle choices or other exposures (nurture).  So 90-95% of the time, if I get cancer it is because of something that I did or something I was exposed to, or allowed myself to be exposed to inadvertently.  Does that math sound right?  My grandmother died a few years ago, just days before her 90th birthday from mesothelioma.  My parents and relatives joined a class action lawsuit again 3M for asbestos exposure from the home she lived in for decades.  They are still receiving money.

Now before you get upset about these facts that seem accusatory, I want you to know that epigenetics/gene expression is something that interests me greatly and I've done quite a bit of learning on this over the years.  Everything has an effect on you in some way from the air you breath to the foods you put in your body.  Yes it's true, everything kills you (or brings you life!) and it is a tragic thing.  If a life-long smoker gets cancer, no one is surprised and yet when a person who spent their life consuming harmful foods gets cancer, we are asking "Why, God, why?"  Even a lot of infant disorders can be linked to the lifestyle choices of both parents.

Who picked your parents?  They did!  I, through no fault of my own, have a higher than normal risk of alcoholism.  Lineage, for will or for woe, is simply a matter of historical choices.  While I can think of merely a few times when God has ever said, "go marry that girl" (Gomer the prostitute!), the choice we have in a mate is our choice, making it a lifestyle choice.  Some people even choose to be with an abusive mate; could we pin that on God?  Hereditary traits are a gamble that we take, not a curse of God.  If we think of it this way, surely God can't be to blame for cancer or other disorders can He?

The trouble with choice

Just the sight of this picture make bring up in you emotions that you have worked hard to put to bed.  In a little more than a year we will think about on the two decades that separate us from the tragedy that we each remember in a different way.  While I'm sure that some said at the time that this was "God's wake-up call" or some other such nonsense.  Think back to the flat tire, which is a microcosm of a tragedy such as this were two groups of people intent on violence got what they came for and thousands upon thousands of lives were destroyed, and the millions and billions not touched directly felt the water ripple and their lives change in some way or another.  Was it God's fault? 

If someone had no opinion of God at all, they couldn't even call this evil; just survival of the fittest.  Thank you Mr. Darwin.  And yet a person like that might blame God all the same.

When I was a kid, I listened to a rock band called P.O.D..  In one of their hits "Youth of the Nation", the singer describes instances of violence involving kids.  Amazingly, the album "Satellite" on which this song is listed was released on September 11, 2001.  You can't make this stuff up.  The Columbine Massacre in 1999 and other acts of violence had us all wondering when the next shoe would drop, and then the TV came on that day to show us.  I want to share with you some lyrics in the song:

Who's to blame for the lives that tragedies claim

No matter what you say

It don't take away the pain

That I feel inside, I'm tired of all the lies

Don't nobody know why

It's the blind leading the blind

I guess that's the way the story goes

Will it ever make sense

Somebody's got to know

There's got to be more to life than this

There's got to be more to everything

I thought exists

P.O.D. was actually taking a empathetic look at the world when they wrote this as they as a band claim Christ.  When the bad things happen, who do we turn to?  Instead of blaming our Father, could we run to Him for comfort?  God made man and woman clothing in the wake of their disobedience.  He honored David as a friend even after he chose to take another man's wife.  Christ bound up the broken-bodied and brokenhearted.  He is God in the pain.  If you remember Pastor Mike's message from a few weeks ago, Jesus was in the boat with the frantic disciples during the story, not outside looking in.  I truly believe that when we make choices that harm us and the world around us, the tears of the Father fall just like ours do.  Whose fault is it?  Sometimes it is yours and mine.

...................

“Dear Sir: Regarding your article 'What's Wrong with the World?' I am. Yours truly,”

― G.K. Chesterton

...................

Questions for Interaction

1. How can we come to grips with the fact that a lot of reasons for the "wrongs" in the world are because of human choices?  How does this fit in with the the story of redemption through Christ?

2. What do you think is the purpose of pain, if there is any at all?

3. Based on what you have heard and researched, do you believe that Corona Virus could be the result of human mistakes?

Whose Fault is it Anyway? Part 1

Whose Fault is it Anyway?

What a crazy world we are living in right now; but I have to say, as a lover of history, that all times are pretty crazy for one reason or another.  Now just seems the worst because it is happening to us right now.  I have heard some theories about how Corona Virus Disease '19 (COVID-19) came about from accidents to animals, to bio-weapons.  Whatever the case, here we are stuck in our homes for the foreseeable future praying that God would just get our lives back to normal.

Listening to more nonsecular sources, I have heard tell that is possibly God's "wake-up" call.  Maybe it is, maybe it isn't His construct at all.  If it is of His design, does that mean that the poor souls who have succumb to this illness have done so at the Hands of our Creator?  Questions such as these are among those I want us to explore, in three examples, for the next three weeks in a discussion series I want to call "Whose Fault is it Anyway?" 

Can God be "held responsible" for the World's calamities?

As Christians, we believe that God is sovereign over all the earth; that which He created both belongs to Him and is His to do with as He chooses.  If you read any of the Old Testament especially, you can see the tremendous works of God bring calamity upon His creation:

• The Flood (Genesis 6-8)
• The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18-19)
• The plagues of Egypt (Exodus 7-12)
• Poisonous vipers (Numbers 21)
• Power over Job (Job 2)
• Removal of God's protection (Judges)
• Storm on the high seas (Jonah 1)
• Saul's evil spirit (1 Samuel 16)
• Death of an infant (2 Samuel 12)
• Plagued with enemies (Kings, Chronicles)
• Babylonian Exile (Daniel, Jeremiah, Nehemiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel)
• Various calamities sent by God (Amos 4)
• Jesus' suffering and death (Isaiah 53)
• Paul's suffering (Acts 9)

How can we reconcile these things with the God of love?  The fact that He is also the God of justice.  Many of these disasters had the purpose of turning the hearts of the people back to God, or giving them reason to revere Him for the first time.  Each of us demands justice in the world; I believe it is part of what it means to be made in the image of God. 

Can we hold Him responsible?

In the best timeline we can put together from Biblical and extra biblical dating, in the year 2065 BC, Abram petitioned a mysterious group of three visitors to save the twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.  These "cities of the plain" were wealthy and wicked; so much so that the surrounding people begged God constantly to do something about it. (Genesis 18) When I was completing my Bachelor's degree at Liberty University I took a biblical archaeology class and this particular event had plenty of evidence of it having taken place.  Archaeologists found skeletal and architectural remains of a great burning; evidence suggesting that huge balls of fire were hurtled at the unsuspecting city.  Utter destruction.

Scripture is not private on this; God took full responsibility for the judgement of these two cities and their unrepentant inhabitants.  This is a great calamity, among others, when we can say that yes, God stepped down and wrecked the place for His namesake.  No one bats an eye at this, especially when we read about how wicked they were, instead we say "Yes! They finally got what they deserved!"

While we will approach the topic more in-depth in the next few lessons, I want to leave you with a few questions for interaction:

1. Do you believe that God still does/should step down into His creation to punish sin?
2. If you were God, what kind of interventions would you perform?
3. Do you think that we can hold God accountable for global calamities, or is that something reserved for biblical history?
4. If God can be held accountable, how does that change your opinion of Him (check out Job 2:10 for Job's opinion)

Please answer some or all of these questions in the comment section below.  Be sure to sign your name  as a poster or at the bottom of your comment so we know who you are as a classmate!