Brian Castelli – With His Heart

I came across an article on MSNBC today. I was intrigued by the title: One tiny truffle may lead to more indulgence. The article sites the work of a couple of Florida researchers, Juliano Laran of the University of Miami and Chris Janiszewski of the University of Florida Gainesville. The bottom line: Giving into a small temptation may be the first step down a slippery slope of indulgence. Are you surprised? I doubt it. You and I live on the same planet, after all.

I think it’s safe to apply the slippery slope rule to sin in our lives. A man know used to be a decent, stand-up guy. Then his wife left him for another man. For a while he seemed like the same guy. Then he started messing around with other women. Then I began to observe hints of other immoral behavior. He even started lying to me to cover it all up. A new man emerged – one that seems to have gone deeper and deeper into a lifestyle that does not suit him. I believe he is on the slippery slope.

Laran and Janiszewski characterize their research in terms of goal conflict. Their study shows that whether people give in to that first temptation and how they react when they do corresponds to how firmly held their goals are. A person who has strong convictions about eating healthy will be less likely to indulge in the first place and more likely to return to healthy eating habits if they do. I can’t resist the urge to tie this conclusion to sin in our lives as well.

One of my firmly-held beliefs is that we ought to have good reasons for our choices. When we understand why we make the choices we do we are more likely to be consistent with our goals. Let’s use the example of a young woman who refrains from having sex before marriage because she’s afraid of what her mother will think. Under constant pressure from her boyfriend, she may give in and discover that her mother’s reaction isn’t so bad. She becomes more and more willing until pre-marital sex becomes a “natural” way of relating to the men she dates. The slide down the slippery slope began because she didn’t have a really good reason for her behavior. If, however, the young woman understands that pre-martial sex is wrong – not just because her mother says so, but because it is against God’s plan for her life, that it is a violation of the purity she brings to her marriage, that it is a betrayal of her vows to her future husband, and is a step of disobedience to her Lord and Savior – she is less likely to give in to her boyfriend’s advances.

Translate this into what it means for us. If we are living our lives to please Jesus, we will be less likely to give in when temptation comes our way, and, for those times when we do give in, we will be quick to repent and return to Him. If our world view is consistent with the truth found in scripture, we are much less likely to make choices that involve us in sin.

Yeah. I agree. Weird title.

Two notions collided in my head this morning. I was listening to a sermon titled, “The Whole Christmas Story.” One of the strong points that was made was that if we don’t understand the bigger picture – the back story – it’s hard to understand the significance of Jesus’ birth.

Jason, one of our Elders, asked us to consider a contrast. We were invited to compare the joy we feel when we hear the news that a couple we barely know has delivered a child with the incredible joy we feel when we hear the news that a couple we know well, a couple that has struggled with miscarriages, pain, and suffering, has delivered a child. Because we know the back story of the couple we know well, there is greater significance and greater joy when we hear the news.

When we read the accounts of Jesus’ birth in the New Testament, we might feel joy akin to the joy we feel when we hear the news of that couple we barely know. We know it’s a good thing – birth, that is. We might also recall that Jesus is headed for the cross, therefore we know that it’s important. But without knowing the back story we might miss the incredible joy that comes from understanding the significance of that birth.

The reality is that Jesus’ birth was a huge deal. It was a birth long awaited and hoped for by the Jews. As we read through the Old Testament, we find an amazing story of a people that kept going their own way and God who wouldn’t abandon them. The Jews were waiting and hoping for a Messiah who would accomplish that which they were incapable of doing for themselves. In the dark days prior to Jesus’ birth even the prophets had been silent for some 400 years. It was as if God had turned his back on the nation. I’m told that the rabbis writing in those days wondered what God was doing. They worried that Israel had, at last, exceeded God’s patience.

But in the darkness there was hope. Jesus quietly burst onto the scene to begin a journey that would fulfill God’s promises of blessing to the Jews (Israel) and the Gentiles (the rest of us).

How does this fit with the Matrix?

In the movie, the people living in the Matrix don’t know the back story. What they see is a facade, a mere shadow of the reality behind it. I believe that many of us – Christians and non-Christians alike – look at the Christmas story through Matrix-colored glasses. It’s a nice story. It makes us feel good because it means that God loves us. But we don’t understand the back story. We don’t understand the significance.

In The Matrix, when people finally know the back story, their lives are radically changed. It’s not possible to go back to business as usual. This kind of radical change can be yours, too, when you know Jesus’ back story. Read the Old Testament and the gospels. I believe they will open your eyes to the bigger picture.

A weird little thing happened this week.

I was browsing at the local game shop on Sunday evening. I found a used copy of Madden 2008, last year’s version of the football franchise game I’ve heard very good things about. $10. I bought it. Of course, the game container I brought to the counter was empty. I guess it’s far too easy to steal a DVD. They keep the DVD’s in a drawer behind the counter. The young man took the container, removed a disk from the drawer, inserted into the container, and handed the container back to me. I paid and went home.

The game sat on the shelf until Tuesday. I loaded the game in my console without giving the disk even a second glance. The logo for Madden 2009 filled my TV screen. Woo-hoo! A $50+ game for only $10! My daughter and I played through one game – Bears (my daughter) vs. Panthers. She crushed me 36-12.

As that first game wore on, I grew increasingly uneasy. I was upset about being beaten, of course, but I was even more upset by my conscience. I didn’t pay for Madden ‘09. I paid for Madden ‘08. The more I thought about it, the less I had to think about it. There was one clearly right path. There were other paths I could have taken, but each of them required some kind of justification or excuse. I took the game back to the store last night.

The guy at the store was impressed. He was clearly surprised by my action. I would have gotten away with it. No one would have blamed me for keeping it. But it wasn’t right. What kind of example should I be for my daughter? The guy who did the right thing or the guy who got away with it?

I didn’t write this post to build myself up or to make you think I’m all righteous and everything. I wrote this post because of my initial reaction. When I discovered the error in my favor, I was all about keeping it. My first, strongest and most natural reaction was to, of course, keep it! Duh! What else would I do? What would you do? In the end, though, it wasn’t *me* who decided to return it. It was really the Holy Spirit of God working through my conscience that drove me to do the right thing. This is yet another example of how following Jesus Christ makes a difference. Not by my power, but by His!

I shared the “I was wrong” part of the Be Still post with a friend of mine. With all sincerity, he told me, “You can’t discount the leading of the Holy Spirit. Maybe that is the meaning the Holy Spirit wanted you to take from that passage that day.” I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to hurt my friend’s feelings, but I believe he was very wrong.

As I’ve recently been learning, scripture is composed of words arranged in sentences and paragraphs. “That’s obvious,” you might say. Yes, but the implications of “words on the page” are sometimes thrown out the window when we look at scripture. A single word in scripture has no meaning on its own. It’s meaning comes from the context of how a word is used along with other words to form the sentence. The sentences (verses in this case) cannot derive their full meaning apart from the larger context of the paragraph, chapter and book.

To take a verse and derive what it means to me without the context of the verses around it is dangerous and often wrong. The words on the page mean something. They meant something when they were written, and they mean the same thing today. Meaning does not change. Truth does not change. Application may change as the culture changes, but I can’t claim that any verse means something different to me that it did to the original author.

Our only clue into the minds of the authors of scripture is what they wrote. Cults have been founded on claiming the right to decide what scripture means apart from that.

I have been wrong!

I have been challenged by the teaching of the leadership of my new church. They are showing me that the casual way I had been interpreting the Bible is error prone and can lead to some crazy interpretations. I am guilty of using some of the misinterpretations that were used as examples. Oh, no!

The best example of my failure is Psalm 46:10a. In the NIV, it reads:

Be still and know that I am God

I love the Steven Curtis Chapman song, “Be still.” The lyrics include the phrase, “Be still; be speechless.” The interpretation of the song, and the interpretation that I had been using, including the interpretation that I have taught in small group Bible study, is that we are to be quiet before God. We are to put aside our busyness, our hustle and bustle, to turn down the volume and just absorb who God is. While all of that is good and true, it isn’t what the verse means!!!!!

If we look at the verse in the local context of the rest of the psalm, it becomes pretty clear what it really means. Psalm 46 is all about God as warrior, God as our refuge and strength. We need not fear even the destruction of the earth because we know God. The imagery is of war and destruction. Then the quote from God in verse 10:

“Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.” (NIV)

“Be still” in this context is really something like, “Stop striving, stop trying to be God, stop worrying over how you’re going to handle the uproar in the world around you.” God is going to exalt himself. We are to get out of the way and let him be God.

This correct interpretation is far from the one I had been using. I am glad to have had the opportunity to learn the truth.

I recently rented the movie, “Hancock,” starring Will Smith as John Hancock, reluctant super hero. (Using RedBox for the first time! $1 a night! Try it!) In entertainment terms, it was so-so. The special effects were good, the acting was fair, but the story had holes a mile wide. At the center of it all, though, was the story of John Hancock’s redemption. When the movie opens, we find that Hancock isn’t well liked. Many of the people in the city want him gone. Along the way, Hancock saves the life of a professional PR man who, in return, helps Hancock with his image.

At first the changes are superficial. Hancock sticks to the script he’s been given and pretends to be different. Through a series of events, however, he goes through a true transformation – one that enables him to lay his own life on the line for someone else.

I like redemption stories because they strike very close to home for us. At some level, we’re all messed up like Hancock. John Eldredge in his book, “Wild at Heart,” says that we’re all posers, hoping that no one gets a peek under our fig leaves. In the movie, Hancock is, in a way, running from himself. He knows that he has flaws, and he protects himself from that knowledge by adopting a, “I don’t give a hoot,” attitude.

Isn’t that just like us? I mean, aren’t there times in our lives when our #1 goal is to cover our weakness in order to appear strong? And, although I like redemption stories, Hancock falls well short of reality. That is, we actually can’t fix ourselves. on our own power, we can change for a time and even make steps in the right direction. But it takes something outside of us, something greater, to affect true change.

Here’s the bottom line: We’re all the same. We’re all messed up. In fact, we’re messed up beyond our ability to fix it. We can’t do it on our own power. This is where Jesus steps in. Romans 5:8 tells us that God loved us so much that he saved us while we were still sinners. No clean up required. No perfect saints in this church. Just saints that have been cleaned up by God.

Jesus changes things. That’s true redemption.