by Chris Alexion, Copyright February 18, 2008, all rights reserved. 422 views
I once heard a story. A man driving through a bad part of town was carjacked by a local gang. They beat him within inches of his life and stripped him of his cash and credit cards. The man lay there, unable to move, as his blood darkened the pavement. After some time, a noted Reformed scholar happened down the road. Seeing the wounded man, the Reformed man thought about helping, but, realizing that the man could have been a heretic in need of divine judgment, passed by on the other side. More time elapsed. A Southern Baptist preacher came upon the robbery victim. He too would have helped the man, only he was late for an important meeting. The preacher looked down the street, glancing between the horizon and his watch, and finally drove off, giving the wounded man a wide berth. Surely someone would come in time.
Finally, someone did come by. This man was a homosexual who attended a liberal mainline church. Seeing the injured man, the homosexual stopped the car and checked the man's pulse. He was alive–barely. The driver put the man in his own car and drove him to the nearest hospital. Since the man's wallet was gone, the hospital had no idea as to his identity or insurance coverage, so the gay man arranged to be billed himself for the man's care. "Now," said the man who told me the story, "which one of these was the victim's neighbor?"
I heard another story. This story takes place in a quiet church, and two men are praying inside. One, a conservative Christian, begins by thanking God. He thanks God that he is not like the world around him; he protests abortion, tithes weekly, and is faithful to his wife. He casts a quick glance at the other man and thanks God that he is not a Clinton Democrat, robbing the people through taxation. The Clinton Democrat is afraid to even raise his voice or eyes to God. He only murmurs, "God, be merciful to a sinner like me." "I ask you," said the storyteller, "which of these two men went away right with God?"
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Perhaps these parables are a little incendiary. It's intentional. They have to be, because we so easily distort the truth. Even our reading of Scripture is tainted by our fallen nature, and unless the Holy Spirit enlightens us as we read–comparing spiritual things with spiritual–we'll remain blind and deaf to the text.
We always want to tacitly separate ourselves from Scripture's rough criticism. The ancient Israelites, for instance, were a stiff-necked people–a silly, faithless mob. I'm glad we're not like them. See how it works? Even Jesus' parables are victims of this coloring or misinterpretation. We know the "right" answer, and we subconsciously identify ourselves with the person in the parable that we want to be. But what if we allow ourselves to complacently become the exact target Jesus meant to spear? We then miss His whole point and rob His parables of their razor edge. We create a de-clawed Jesus.
Take, for instance, the parable of the Good Samaritan. That's us, right? We're the good Samaritan, not the arrogant scribes and Pharisees. But "Good Samaritan" is now such a cliche that we've forgotten what it would have meant to Jesus' audience. Samaria was a half-Jewish, half-pagan nation resulting from the repopulation of the Northern kingdom after the war with Assyria. The Samaritan religion was a heretical mixture of God's Word and pagan ideas. No respectable evangelical minister would have had anything to do with it. And yet in Christ's story, the orthodox preachers pass by on the other side, and the heretic does what God requires. "The Good Samaritan" wasn't a heartwarming tale; it was a slap in the face to the religious establishment of Jesus' day. It would be like saying that a homosexual did the right thing, and two straight Christians failed.
Or consider the two men in the temple. We automatically recoil from the Pharisee; we're the humble publican. But if we as evangelical, Reformed people become puffed up at our "savedness," distance ourselves from "them" on the "outside," and equate politics with the Gospel, we become the Pharisees. We're not any better because we're saved; it's simply a testament to God's mercy that He saves and preserves us in spite of our thick heads.
Calvinists have a special temptation: We believe that God chose us by free grace before the foundation of the world. So that makes us better than the rest, right? How do we fight our own Pharisaical tendencies, instead of just pointing out the problems of others? For instance, finding Christians who look down on gays is easy. Finding one who treats them as human beings and neighbors who need to be loved and given the Gospel is harder. According to Jesus, we're all sexual sinners (Matthew 5), so we need salvation just as desperately. Also, getting caught up in left-wing/right-wing politics is easy. Keeping Christ central is harder. Being saved by all five solas of the Reformation doesn't mean jack squat if we're proud of ourselves for knowing them.
But one more temptation is ready to seduce those of us who get the message and strive to root out the Pharisee inside us. Are we better than other conservative evangelical Christians or fundamentalists who don't get it? Are we a better, more humble, more relevant breed of Christian?
Two men were praying in the temple. . . .
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