transform

Holiness and Mercy

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 1 Comment

I was watching a podcast video with Andy Chrisman and Steve Camp talking about how Steve took such a bold stand in the late 90s against what was going on in the Christian music industry at the time. He also spoke about a couple of his songs related to the emerging AIDS crisis in the 80s. One phrase that stood out to me was “holiness never compromised, mercy never restrained.”

That’s the essence of the gospel. We’re never to tolerate sin in the name of mercy, but we’re also never to condemn the sinner in the name of holiness. The same Jesus that told the woman that He didn’t condemn her for her adultery also said, “Go and sin no more.”

Jesus never accommodated sinful lifestyles, but He also never withheld His love from those in those lifestyles who earnestly sought Him in their need. The message He proclaimed was not “I’m OK, you’re OK, just do the best you can” but “I’m calling you out of your sin into something better because I love you enough to want God’s best for you.”

I can’t say that I’m the best at balancing holiness and mercy. I can testify that I’m really good at looking down on sins that I don’t struggle with. I can be more permissive with my own faults than forgiving of others with theirs.

But I believe that Jesus is the one who perfectly embodies holiness and mercy as the 100% God, 100% man who is both just and the justifier. I believe in the gospel message that Jesus can change and transform anybody from anything into something holy. I’m seeing it in my own life and in so many lives of the people I know and love.

The challenge is to hold to both holiness and mercy, not pitting one against the other or elevating one at the expense of the other. We need both. Most of all, we all need Jesus.

The Silver Chair

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SONY DSC

So now I’m reading The Silver Chair. That means I only have one more Narnia book after this. Also, I believe there will be a movie hitting theaters in the next year or two based on this book (although I’m a bit skeptical as to how faithful the filmmakers will be to the original source material).

I do love this book.

I love how Eustace Scrubb and Jill Pole escape from their dreary clouded school day into bright and sunny Narnia. Well, technically they start out in Aslan’s country, but it’s in the same world.

I also love that ol’ Puddleglum, the Marsh-wiggle. He’s the pessimist of all pessimists, but he’s the one who keeps the other two grounded and who comes through grandly in the climactic scene (which I won’t divulge for those who haven’t read these books yet).

I especially love how the book’s theme is that you can make a royal mess at the start– to the point that it seems like you’ll never get back on track– and still at the end find a way to succeed. After all, it’s not how you start that matters, but how you finish.

More accurately in my experience, it’s not how many times you’ve screwed up or how big a fiasco you’ve made of your life up to this point, but how God can transform even that into good. Or better yet into something marvelous.

It’s funny how the evil scheme was to get one of the main characters, who had been bewitched, to steal what was already rightfully his. It’s funnier still how Satan did the same to Jesus, offering Him the world if He would only worship the prince of lies. Jesus knew that the world and everything in it was already His. Furthermore, He knew that all this world was not Satan’s to give in the first place.

Temptation is often the devil trying to get us to go after something good, but in the wrong way at the wrong time, like having premarital sex or having an affair instead of enjoying intimacy with the one God made especially for you. He offers what is not really his to give and what God alone can truly give, but often in a way that is different and much better than we would have chosen.

So I give the book 5 stars. Out of 5.

PS There is a BBC film version that is quite faithful to the book but looks as though it had a special effects budget of about $8. It’s good in a campy sort of way.

More Adventures From the Magical Land of McKay’s

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I went back to McKay’s Used Bookstore, or as I like to call it, The Place Where Multimedia Nerds Like Me Go When We Die.

I traded in enough movies to stock a small movie rental store and got enough credit to purchase an iPad 3 with 64 GB and a Hank Williams CD box set. It was a good day.

I still go warm and fuzzy inside when I step inside that amazing place. It’s simply ginormous. It’s huge. And it’s big, too.

I didn’t find everything I looked for, but I did come away with a few gems. And in the process, I got my happy fix for at least a month.

There’s no real spiritual segue way, other than to point out that most of us have been guilty of treating God like a giant department store.

It’s like we pray, “God, I’d like a pint of patience, two helpings of humility, a small dose of suffering (to keep me from getting too worldly), and a couple of giant crates of blessing.

What we fail to realize is that what God offers to us here and now isn’t so much gifts or blessings but Himself.

That is, God offers to transform us into the image of Jesus. We get Jesus’ righteousness, perfection, wisdom, and best of all– that power that raised Him from the dead. We get EVERYTHING we need in Jesus for life and godliness.

Sure, we get a few things thrown in that we’d like to return. But those things help more than anything to conform our character and mind into one just like that of Jesus.

So yes, I highly recommend McKays. And I recommend maybe not asking for stuff from God’s hand as much as the gift of having His heartbeat inside you and seeing with His eyes and being filled with His Spirit.

That’s all I got for now.

Boasting in weakness

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 3 Comments

“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

When was the last time I boasted in my weaknesses? I seldom even acknowledge that I have any weaknesses. Usually I try to sell myself on what I consider my best qualities. But weaknesses? I try to hide them or pretend they don’t exist.

I truly believe that there is a power that comes only through weakness and brokenness that will never come through self-reliance or self-sufficiency. Only when I am weak, when I admit to the world that I am weak, then I am strong. And Christ in me is so much stronger than I could ever be.

What if I boasted in the fact that my social skills are slightly better than nonexistent? That I back down when I should stand up? What if I shout to the rooftops that I am weak, helpless, afraid and utterly broken? Maybe then I am at my strongest and the power that raised Christ from the dead is unleashed in me.

This is so very against the culture that it is unthinkable. But aren’t I supposed to be counter-culture? What if we are too busy fitting in and so much like the world that we have completely lost the power that can save the world? Maybe that’s why Christians are so despised. Not because we are different, but because we are not different enough.

A broken world can’t relate to perfect, holier-than-thou Christians who have it all together. They respond when they see what our brokenness looks like and when God’s grace is able to transform our weakness into His strength. Grace is what the world needs, not our perfection.