Legalism?

One day a talented engineer kicked the bucket. Although he was an exceptionally good person, nobody can really be good enough to earn a place in Heaven, and unfortunately He didn’t have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ either. So he went to Hell.

Of course he didn’t like it much, and he (being the talented engineer that he was) decided to do something about it. He drew up some plans, put ‘em on blueprints, and started installing things like escalators and air conditioning.

God up in Heaven was like, “Hey, this can’t be right! That guy’s pretty cool, I think I want him up here.” And He says to Satan, “There’s been some mistake. That talented engineer guy belongs with Me.”

And Satan’s like, “No way, Dude! He’s mine, and I really like him.”

So God says, “Hey look! If you don’t send him up here right now, I’m gonna sue!”

So Satan replies, “Yeah? And where do You think You’re gonna get a lawyer?”

Ha! There’s another great lawyer joke for ya’! I just heard it a couple weeks ago. Sorry to all the lawyers out there, but you can never hear enough great lawyer jokes. For me, this joke came at a peculiar time in my life. Over the last many weeks I’ve been rethinking my ideas about that nasty word: legalism. I’ve got a few cool quotes from other sources, and even a few quotable sayings of my own that I want to get out there. I’d really appreciate your feedback.

You see, I used to have a pretty limited idea of “legalism.” The word reminded me of the Pharisees in Jesus’ day. They had like a million stupid little rules which they imposed on everyone which made them feel good and others feel bad. Today that might look like a church that monitors every minor detail of the members’ lives in order to critique and judge them. I heard a friend recently talk about how his mother was once kicked out of a church because she didn’t tithe. Gimme a break! That’s legalistic.

But I’ve also been learning that legalism can be a rather subtle attitude as well. One can preach gospel truth, but with this attitude or approach it can come across as condemning. And the trouble for me has been that it can be difficult to identify. Call me crazy, but I like to focus on God’s grace and mercy. I like to talk about how we’ll never really be good enough, but that God loves us just the same and has a great plan of living for us. Unfortunately, this approach can be confused and abused by those with a different attitude.

A friend of mine recently handed me a pamphlet on the topic, called Law and Grace: Conscience & License. One point says:

Grace is a dangerous doctrine. It is open to gross misrepresentation and involves God in the risk of his own reputation. This does not make it any less true. In fact if it is not preached in a manner which does not raise this danger it is not being preached in all its radical truth.

I like that part about God risking his own reputation. I think a lot of Christians talk about God’s holiness, and justice, and his hatred for sin because they’re trying to make sure that they don’t give God a bad rap. Perhaps they think that if they only say “Jesus loves you” then people will get the wrong idea, that they’ll think that God is some pansy in the sky that’ll let you walk all over him and only say, “No problem, man. Make love, not war. Alright?” I guess it’s an honest motivation, to present an accurate picture of God. But I think God doesn’t need anyone to stand up for Him. He can handle Himself, thank you very much. And He did risk His rep. He let His own creation torture and kill Him. It may seem like a big risk, but I’m confident He won’t lose.

Another passage in that pamphlet talks about holiness/sanctification saying:

The New testament teaches us both about what God has done for us in Christ, and about how we should respond to him in repentance, faith, obedience, service etc. [But] if one takes all the injunctions concerning our response, without the initial context concerning his grace one can actually use New Testament statements to teach salvation by human effort. The human response becomes all important, as an end in itself. This kind of teaching does not produce holiness. It does produce all the characteristics of legalism; despair, pride, judgment, loss of joy, etc.

In here I like the part about the initial context concerning his grace. It can be a very subtle omission talking about how we should live as Christians without this context. It seems like some Christians think that being saved is a one time, instantaneous thing, in which Jesus does everything He can for us. And from that point on it’s our own responsibility to become perfect. But, like the quote says, that would be earning our salvation (after the fact) and it doesn’t produce the holiness desired. Instead, I like to talk about how awesome God’s grace is. I think people find the hope and inspiration and security and strength they need when they really see His love. And then they can respond in a good way. Like my pastor said at our most recent Bible study, “When they understand that grace, many other things fall into place in their life.” My pastor here in Malta is a cool guy. Pray that he’ll continue to say cool stuff like that.

Now, speaking of teaching for results, I’ve had a couple quotable thoughts of my own:

Telling somebody the right thing to do does not necessarily enable him/her to do it.

Telling somebody that they’re doing something wrong does not necessarily enable him/her to change it.

Altogether, I’m saying that giving a person a canned answer to their problem can be really crushing sometimes. There are those cool people in the world who simply know the right thing to do and do it. Period. End of discussion. But those people are few and far between. Most of us are broken people, confused people, hurting people, and simply weak people. We need someone to spend time caring and listening and validating our thoughts and feelings. If someone simply reminds us how imperfect we are, it’s very condemning. Very legalistic.

I know this post is getting long, and your mom is calling you to dinner, so I’ll just mention one more quote, this one from The Purpose Driven Life:

In a courtroom, a witness isn’t expected to argue the case, prove the truth, or press for a verdict; that’s the job of attorneys. Witnesses simply report what happened to them or what they saw. Jesus said, “You will be my witnesses,” not “You will be my attorney.”

Miss Wormwood…

May I be excused? My brain is full.

I know my blog frequency was spotty for a few months there, and now I’ve passed over two months without a peep! Sorry about that. But I figure if you’re reading this, you’ve forgiven me. So, thanks.

I’ve been learning a heck of a lot in the last two months (pretty much exactly since the last post) about people, life, etc. I still don’t have all the answers, and I’m still processing a lot of it. It’s part of the reason for the lack of posts. The emotional overload has been quite an experience, and I’ve spent my spare minutes thinking, praying, and coping with it all. I’m happily confident however that it’s all valuable life experience, seeing as how I have the best Teacher in the world. Also you’ll be happy to know that it’s given me a lot of great blog material.

That plus the fact that we now have DSL means that I’m once again saying, “I hope to blog more often now.” I know, I know, “We’ll see about that, Ben.” And we will.

For now, the main update is the resolution to the last post. We’ve decided to stick with our commitment here in Malta for one-year. Although several things in the last couple of months have made us want to go home sooner, that wasn’t really the question back in September. At that time we were wondering if we should stay longer than a year. But by now the Lord had made it clear that one year is just right. So, I’ll say to all of you back home, “We can’t wait to see you in the Spring!” We don’t have an exact return date yet, but we will soon.

What will we do when we get home? I don’t know. That’s the next ginormous question. And if I ever have an answer, I’ll let you know. Until then, I’ve got a few thoughts to share from these last few months. I’ll try and get ‘em out on the blog soon.

(And for all those who could identify the opening comic quote – give yourself 3 extra points)