Running from the Mess

A few days ago I had an odd memory pop up in my head. It was something I had not thought about in many years but I used to think about quite often. This memory goes all the way back to 1st grade. There was a girl in my class, her name was Shannon, and she was confined to a wheelchair. I can’t remember why I just remember that for some reason her legs did not have the ability to straighten out or function in such a way as to allow her to walk. She and I had become good friends through the year. I don’t remember it ever mattering to me that she couldn’t walk like me. I don’t even know that I gave it much thought at all. On our way to lunch one day she told me her arms were tired and asked if I would push her. I agreed and remember feeling pretty special and excited that I was going to get to push her in her chair. Well, as we were going to take a turn I didn’t judge the angle right and somehow her chair slipped off the sidewalk and the whole things collapsed on her and was caught in the middle of her chair as it fell to the ground. I was so scared! So I ran.

I know, I know. It’s awful. I still feel bad about it. I took off. I left her there in her collapsed chair, laying on its side on the ground. I don’t know how long it took a teacher to find her, but eventually our teacher came up to me and asked if they could speak to me for a minute. I am sure my face was bright red. I got up from the lunch table and followed her outside. She began to ask me about what happened. I was so embarrassed I couldn’t find words and I just froze there, which was unusual because I was never quiet. She looked me in my eyes, took me gently by my shoulders and simply asked me, “Whitney, why did you leave her?” I told her the truth. I was scared. I knew I had messed up and I didn’t really want to stay around to see how bad my mess actually was. I didn’t want to know if she was hurt because that would have been my fault. I didn’t want to know if the chair was broken because I would have caused it. I didn’t want to know if she was mad at me. So I ran. I ran from the mess and moved on with my lunch.

I can’t help but see that same story played out in the lives of so many people today. We start out with an idea, a dream, a request or something that we are excited about, and somehow we hit some bumps and mess up. Sometimes the truth of the matter is that we actually fall completely off the path we were on. What we thought we were going to do never comes to fruition. We get disappointed, hurt, frustrated, and disenfranchised. And we run.

We don’t want to see how we may have hurt people along the way. We don’t want to take a good look at what might have happened as a result. We don’t want to hear what someone may have to say about what we have done. We don’t want to take time to learn how we could fix it, learn from it, or take responsibility for what happened. Too many time we duck our heads, turn our eyes and run for it. We go into survival mode and find the next new thing to throw ourselves in to and try our best to move on with our day, or even our lives. My prayer is that for the rest of my life I have, and each of you have, a “teacher” (perhaps a person or even the Holy Spirit) in our world who will gently call us to the side, look us straight in the eye and ask, “What happened? Why are you running?” We have got to be people who take responsibility for even the messy parts of our lives, face them and allow God to teach us through them so that we are not leaving people stranded and hurting in our wake. We are not perfect. We will mess up. We will hurt people and disappoint them, but there are ways to make things right and work through them instead of running.

So to Shannon, wherever you are in the world today: I am so sorry for running that day. I was wrong. I have learned a lot since then, and I do much better at turns!

Something that’s Been Bugging Me

I have been wrestling with this for awhile and I think I am ready to write a little something on the subject of legalism. I hear that word come up constantly in conversation, particularly in the church world, and something about the way that it is typically used has begun to bother me. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I simply found myself cringe when people would mention that they didn’t want to be legalistic or that they see so much legalism around them. I have been thinking, praying, and searching the Word of God about this because I could not get it out of my head…or my heart. While I am not attempting to write an exhaustive composition on this topic, I would like to share a few of my conclusions.

When I question them I have found that most who claim they do not want to be legalistic actually have no real understanding of what legalism is. Legalism by definition means: “a strict adherence to the letter of a law, rather than the spirit of a law.” It seems to me that those who don’t want to be legalistic often have no interest at all in the spirit of a law. For the most part it seems that they have no interest in the law at all…they simply do not want to be held accountable to anything. I am not advocating a life obsessed with law, what I am saying is that there is a place for Holiness and we often use legalism to excuse to live ruled by the desires of our flesh.

Jesus was hardest on those who prided themselves in their own “righteousness” because He understood that the best they could offer God was equivalent to a filthy rag. I am having to hold back from giving a graphic illustration of what that translates to, but lets just say that it would literally make most people cringe in disgust. I once taught on this topic to a group of college students as a polite description I lifted an open borrowed dirty diaper into the air and said that we take our truly legalistic works and standards and hold them up to God and say, “Lord, be honored by this! Be pleased with what I have done.” See the problem is that we often do these things as though it will earn us the favor of God when the only thing that qualifies us for Heaven is blood of Jesus Christ. Let me repeat that: THE ONLY THING THAT QUALIFIES US FOR HEAVEN IS THE BLOOD OF JESUS CHRIST. The place where it becomes legalism is when we lose the heart behind the action. We adhere to the letter of the law, rather than the spirit of the law. It is when we think we are more righteous or are earning something from God because of our actions. The law and a system of sacrifice was set into place so that unholy people could be reconnected to a Holy God. When Jesus came He paid for ALL sin once and for all. He says plainly that He did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. We no longer have to work to make things right, Jesus has done that for us. But Paul’s letter to the Romans makes it clear that the Grace Jesus made available to us does not give us license to continue living in sin. It says that once we accept the sacrifice of Jesus Christ we are then a new creation and dead to sin. It has become so true in my life that the more I pursue Christ the less appealing the offers of the world are to me. All else seems as rubbish compared to Christ. More and more I can say that. Legalism is when we are still trying to earn what Jesus already gave to us, Holiness is our response when we understand what we have already been given!

Once we receive Jesus we are then to spend our lives pursuing two things: 1) to know Him and 2) to make Him known, which is simply a different way of saying what Jesus said were the two most important commandments: Love God with all your heart, your mind and your soul, and love your neighbor as yourself. When we understand that the heart of the law is all pointed toward those two things then it is not legalism but a desire to pursue a Holy life that reflects and represents Christ that should cause us to embrace certain restrictions or what we would refer to as “law” in our lives. It is not merely blindly following rules or regulations, but desire to represent Him well.

Jesus broke the rules of “religion” but when He was doing it He was emphasizing that we were to live Holy lives before God. Jesus didn’t use it as an excuse to do less for God, but to do more! He used breaking free from legalism to change the world! It just absolutely makes me cringe when I realize I have used it to excuse a movie or a song or to fulfill the desires of my flesh. Freedom from law should give me the freedom to be far more effective, not put me in the place to keep people complacent and stagnant. That was not what His blood was shed to give us. He died and conquered death so that the same power could be alive within us giving us the power to have direct relationship with our Father and the power to do greater works than He did. It’s time to start running as though we intend to win, not simply make it to the finish line.

This is not even close to all my thoughts on this subject, but I just felt it was time to get some of it out.