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Nothing can choke the heart and soul out of walking with God like legalism.
Consider the story of Hans the tailor.
Because of his reputation, an influential entrepreneur visiting the city ordered a tailor-made suit.
But when he came to pick up his suit, the customer found that one sleeve twisted that way and the other this way; one shoulder bulged out and the other caved in.
He pulled and struggled and finally, wrenched and contorted, he managed to make his body fit.
As he returned home on the bus, another passenger noticed his odd appearance and asked if Hans the tailor had made the suit.
Receiving an affirmative reply, the man remarked, "Amazing! I knew that Hans was a good tailor, but I had no idea he could make a suit fit so perfectly someone as deformed as you."
Often that is just what we do in the church.
We get some idea of what the Christian faith should look like: then we push and shove people into the most grotesque configurations until they fit wonderfully!
That is death.
It is a wooden legalism which destroys the soul.
[Legalistic Strait Jacket, Citation: Richard J. Foster in "TSF Bulletin," Nov.-Dec. 1982. Leadership, Vol. 4, no. 2.]
In the first century, a 12-year-old would have been well along in their life since:
-a third of those born would have died by age 6;
-60% by their mid-teens;
-by their mid-twenties 75%;
-90% by their mid-forties; and
-maybe 3% reached their 60s.
Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992) 211.
WASH YOUR HANDS
In 1818, Ignaz Phillip Semmelweis was born into a world of dying women. The finest hospitals lost one out of six young mothers to the scourge of "childbed fever." A doctor's daily routine began in the dissecting room where he performed autopsies. From there he made his way to the hospital to examine expectant mothers without ever pausing to wash his hands.
Dr. Semmelweis was the first man in history to associate such examinations with the resultant infection and death. His own practice was to wash with a chlorine solution, and after eleven years and the delivery of 8,537 babies, he lost only 184 mothers--about one in fifty. He spent the vigor of his life lecturing and debating with his colleagues.
Once he argued, "Puerperal fever is caused by decomposed material conveyed to a wound. I have shown how it can be prevented. I have proved all that I have said. But while we talk, talk, talk, gentlemen, women are dying. I am not asking anything world-shaking. I am asking you only to wash. For God's sake, wash your hands."
But virtually no one believed him. Doctors and midwives had been delivering babies for thousands of years without washing, and no outspoken Hungarian was going to change them now!
Semmelweis died insane at the age of 47, his wash basins discarded, his colleagues laughing in his face, and the death rattle of a thousand women ringing in his ears.
(From a sermon by Terry Blankenship, A Redeeming Ministry, 2/8/2011)
LOVING TEDDY
Miss Thompson taught Teddy Stallard in the fourth grade. He was a slow, unkempt student, a loner shunned by his classmates. The previous year his mother died, and what little motivation for school he may have once had was now gone. Miss Thompson didn’t particularly care for Teddy either, but at Christmas time he brought her a small present. Her desk was covered with well-wrapped presents from the other children, but Teddy’s came in a brown sack. When she opened it there was a gaudy rhinestone bracelet with half the stones missing and a bottle of cheap perfume. The children began to snicker but Miss Thompson saw the importance of the moment. She quickly splashed on some perfume and put on the bracelet, pretending Teddy had given her something special. At the end of the day Teddy worked up enough courage to softly say, "Miss Thompson, you smell just like my mother . . . and her bracelet looks real pretty on you too. I’m glad you like my presents." After Teddy left, Miss Thompson got down on her knees and prayed for God’s forgiveness. She prayed for God to use her as she sought to not only teach these children but to love them as well. She became a new teacher. She lovingly helped students like Teddy, and by the end of the year he had caught up with most of the students. Miss Thompson didn’t hear from Teddy for a long time. Then she received this note: "Dear Miss Thompson, I wanted you to be the first to know. I will be graduating second in my class. Love, Teddy Stallard." Four years later she got another note: "Dear Miss Thompson, They just told me I will be graduating first in my class. I wanted you to be the first to know. The university has not been easy, but I liked it. Love, Teddy Sta...
STOP PAYING THE BULLY
In his book Fuzzy Memories, Jack Handey writes:
There used to be this bully who would demand my lunch money every day. Since I was smaller, I would give it to him. Then I decided to fight back. I started taking karate lessons. But then the karate lesson guy said I had to start paying him five dollars a lesson. So I just went back to paying the bully.
Too many people feel it is easier just to pay the bully than it is to learn how to defeat him.
“Broken Hearts Don’t Need Vince Lombardi!” Mark 5:35-43 Key verse(s) 41:“He took her by the hand and said to her, ‘Talitha koumi!’ (which means, ‘Little girl, I say to you, get up!’).”
I did not know what to do for her. Her heart was breaking right in front of me. She so much wanted to be held, yet she shunned the embrace. Cradling her head in her hands, she sobbed, “I just don’t know what I am going to do! Nothing is working out the way I wanted it to. I’m so lost, so alone. I just don’t know what to do.”
My daughter had been struggling with so many things for so long. She had bottled them up in her tender heart and just couldn’t contain them any longer. She had wanted to be brave, to face everything on her own. But now, her second year of college nearly under her belt, she wanted to chuck everything into the dust bin and call it quits. It seems that life had been pretty hard on her for some time now and she just couldn’t face another semester of competing, doing and just being who she was. More than anything else she wanted to throw in the towel and stop the fight. Yet, sensing that she needed someone with which to share her deep sorrow, she had given me a call. “Dad, I need your help!”
“Dad, I need your help!” These are five little words that makes the adrenaline flow in any fathers’s being. The fact that a child puts you into the role of knight and defender can really become the wind beneath your wings. It can also become the fire within as it strikes a fear in your heart, not knowing what that help might require. As soon as I had taken the phone call I drove down to campus and found her sitting on the grass near her dorm. I could see that she was struggling and was deeply troubled. I sensed pretty quickly that nothing I said would have much of an immediate effect if any at all. How do you respond to “I just can’t go on!” Having nearly raised four children, three of them daughters, I had learned long ago that the locker room pep talk is a pretty ineffective tool at times like this. Broken hearts don’t need Vince Lombardi. Trying my best to comfort her, I encouraged her to think clearly before making a decision to quit everything. She was a top student on nearly a full scholarship. It seemed like such a waste. It wasn’t long before I began to grasp the tenor of the situation. It seemed that father and daughter were really not there for discourse at all. We were there merely to labor and work at the pain; to place our spades deep within the sorrow and shovel it out. Not knowing what else to do, and not wanting to leave her alone, I slipped my hand into her’s and began a long silence. Soon there were two sets of tears. The vulnerability within her had reached out and pulled me deep into the hurt. There was nothing I could do but go with the flow.
In The Four Loves, author C. S. Lewis writes, “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must given your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket––safe, dark, motionless, airless––it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.” (The Four Loves, chap. 6, para. 13, p. 169)
Compassion is more than doing good or being charitable. Although there is a place for the civic “do-gooder,” being compassionate is more than just showing u...
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