A reminder to remember God's Priorities

My favorite tenet of religion is that God gets to do whatever He wants. It's part of His job description. He makes the rules. He never has and never will conform to what we think He should do. He works to fulfill His plan and His agenda, not ours. It is good to keep this in mind as we read scripture. I have seen many well-intentioned pastors totally mangle a verse or passage by approaching it with misinformed preconceptions.

A well-known and widely read pastor of a large New York church once preached a sermon on Proverbs 29:7- “The righteous are concerned with doing justice to the poor, the wicked have no such concern.” He preached a passionate message exhorting his flock to go out and help the destitute and the homeless, charging them that this was their mission.

He communicated a great sentiment, but he did not communicate the meaning of the verse. There are multiple words for “poor” in Hebrew, including one for the destitute and another for the working poor, those who constitute the lower middle class. Proverbs 29:7 uses the working class word for poor. Oops! The passage speaks more to how employers treat employees than it does to how we treat the homeless!

Several years ago I listened as a pastor of a large church in southern California mangled the parable of the Good Samaritan. He so desperately wanted to encourage his listeners to love the unlovable that he made the Samaritan the victim in the story instead of the hero! Oops again!

I have seen these types of mistakes a lot lately when it comes to the issue of social justice. Because the American Church is wealthy it is popular to emphasize our need to share the wealth with those who are less fortunate in the world. This is a noble effort, but it is not God's top priority. God's top priority is eternal, not temporal. The Great Commission is not to go into all the world and share the wealth. It is to go into all of the world and make disciples. To train others to follow the teachings of Jesus

Just a reminder! Social projects and material gifts are easy when compared to the serious time investment required by discipleship. As human beings we have a tendency to try to reset God's priorities to match our own. God's priorities always require much more of our time and energy.

When You Look Up, People Let You Down

It always hurts when people let us down, but there is a special sorrow that comes when we discover that someone we have looked up to and emulated is not the person we thought they were. A friend of mine recently shared a particularly sad story. He met his wife at a small church in Huntington Beach. Friendship became romance and they were soon serious. Desiring to lay a good foundation for marriage they sought out a mentoring relationship with a  respected couple in the church. They met together regularly with the mentor couple, learning all they could.
The friend had tremendous respect for his mentor, so much that he asked him to perform the wedding ceremony. The man agreed and conducted the service. A few weeks after the wedding came the devastating news- The mentor had abandoned his wife and moved in with a girlfriend! He had been carrying on an affair for months, during the entire time he had been doing marriage counseling for my friend! He was devastated. What stunned him the most was the hypocrisy. It was one thing to be unfaithful. It is another thing to be unfaithful while at the same time counseling others on how to have a good marriage!

I wish stories like this were rare, but they aren't. Leaders, especially spiritual leaders, often let us down. So how do we protect ourselves from hypocrites in positions of authority?
In many ways we can't. On this side of heaven everyone we meet is a broken person with the potential of doing terrible things, each a reminder that there is only one perfect person, and that He is the only one worthy of our devotion and praise.
 

The One Truth you Can NOT ignore on Easter

Jesus died. It is an historical fact. He was betrayed by a friend, rejected by his countrymen, and brutalized and murdered by the Romans who ruled over the land. His limp and battered body was taken down from the cross on which he had breathed his last, wrapped in burial cloth and placed inside a cave-like tomb, his story to be added to the list of those who failed in their opposition to power. He was dead.

Death can change the course of history. We can only wonder how different the world might have been if Abraham Lincoln, John Kennedy and Martin Luther King had lived longer. World War I erupted after the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. The Greek Empire split soon after the passing of Alexander the Great. The death of leaders has a profound impact on those who follow.

From the Gospel accounts, the death of Jesus Christ was devastating to his followers. His closest friends fled the scene when he was arrested, leaving him to face his execution alone. While a few of them showed up to watch his final hours on the cross, most of them are not mentioned in the story. A few days later the friends were together but seemingly in hiding.

Reading through Scripture we can guess at their thoughts. From the recorded conversations we see that they had a typical Jewish understanding of Messiah. They expected Jesus to lead a military revolt against Rome and restore Israel to prominence in the world. While Jesus is described as making multiple references to his coming death it seems that his words were lost on his disciples. They clearly did not get it. The death of Jesus shattered all of their dreams and illusions.

And then Sunday came. The tomb was empty. Some of Jesus' female followers came back to the group with a preposterous tale of an empty tomb and Jesus alive. Two of the male leaders, Peter and John, ran to the tomb to see for themselves the massive stone moved and the revealed tomb empty. Later that night, Jesus appeared to them all. He was not dead. He was alive.

History changed in dramatic fashion. Within just a few years the message of this resurrection had spread throughout the Roman empire. Churches sprouted up in cities that were dominated by the worship of Roman and Greek gods, churches that continued to exist in spite of severe prosecution. 2000 years later the message continues to spread into areas where it is unwelcome, into cultures in which the prevailing ideology is opposed to it.

While deaths can change the course of history, nothing has change history as much as resurrection. Jesus the Christ through His resurrection declared to the world that He is not just another man. His resurrection allows no room for those who desire to simply add Him to history's list of great moral teachers and prophets, does not allow him to be classified as just another great man and leader. The resurrection declares that He is far more. The apostle Paul states it clearly in his letter to the fledgling church at Rome, saying that Jesus was “declared the Son of God with power by his resurrection from the dead.”

Indeed He was.

Happy Easter.

Be Careful Who You Trust, 4 rules to Avoid Being Hurt

It is the people we trust the most that can do us the greatest harm. So often the warning signs are there but we just don't see them. I learned the lesson the hard way.

I thought I knew him, but I was wrong. We had spent hours together and had deep conversations about faith, family, personal failures and life in general. I supported him, encouraged him and defended him against criticism. I held him out to the world as a quality man, someone to be listened to and respected. He seemed to be a man of insight, a man whose life was filled with remarkable experiences and amazing stories.
Sadly, the stories he shared did not actually tell the true story of his life. Over time I learned that the stories he chose to tell and the secrets he chose to reveal were not the open and honest disclosures of a great man but instead were part of a false persona, stories designed to lead others to falsely assume goodness and stability that did not actually exist.
As so often is the case it was adversity that revealed his true character.  Some bad decisions left him indebted to others, and instead of doing what he could to make amends he just walked away.
While his actions revealed the fraudulent nature of his personal claims, they did not stop him from continuing to make them. In post after post in social media he continues to make assertions of faith and statements of deep family commitments, implying he is a humble man working on the problems in his life. The false persona is continually on display.
In thinking about his story I am reminded that it is more normative than exceptional. We live in a world where people exhaust great amounts of energy creating false, praiseworthy images of themselves, where words and actions coexist in contradiction. We strive to put on a good face for the world, often showing who we hope to be instead of who we are.
Problems such as these are not new. 2000 years ago Jesus attacked this character flaw when he observed it in the religious leaders of His day. He called them "whitewashed tombs", beautiful on the outside but empty and dead on the inside. Like my friend, these religious leaders seemed to get away with it. They built a following of people who believed their lies, people who would defend them against criticism. They mastered spiritual language and used it to support their actions and to quiet any who dared to disagree.
So what do we do with such deception? while it is hard to stop it and difficult to correct, we can limit the negative impact on personal lives.

Here are a few rules I am setting for myself.
1- Avoid superficial praise. People love to look good on blogs and on Facebook. If they are truly worthy of praise they can get it in real life from people who know more of the story.
2- Look to actions over words. Not just momentary acts of goodness, but a track record of consistent goodness over time.
3- Look for lasting relationships. People of Good character do not leave a trail of broken relationships behind them.
4- Watch out for excuses. Quality people own mistakes, work to correct them and seldom play the role of victim.

A lesson I learned from being on a TV Game show

Life lessons can come at unexpected times. For me, one came while standing in line waiting to audition for a television game show.

Game shows have been a huge part of my life. I have been on five shows, losing on a show called Hitman in 1983 and on Scrabble in 1993. My first new car was a truck I won on Wheel of Fortune in 1984. I paid for most of medical school with my winnings from Super Password in 1986. In 2002 I was a contestant on Pyramid with Donny Osmond and won $50,000!
While waiting for the Pyramid audition I was conversing with other contestant wannabes about the tryout. I was standing next to a young woman who was extremely nervous. She desperately wanted to be on the show and was afraid that when the time came to play the game that she would not be able to hold it together.
In the course of the conversation I shared that I had been on four previous shows.
"Oh my gosh! Don't you get nervous?"
"Not really, no."
"Why not?"
"Before I came here today I told a 27 year-old woman that she had cancer. That was a life. This is a game."
And that was the difference between us. She placed a tremendous amount of importance on a game, got nervous as a result, and did not succeed. I played the game like it was a game, knowing that the outcome would not change my life. In that context it was easy to remain calm, and I was able to do well. Perspective is everything in life!
I think about how much time and energy we waste worrying about things that in the long run really don't matter.
What matters? Faith. Family. Friends.
What doesn't? Almost everything else!