Dialog

This year Jan and I are learning about Ham Radio so I am deep in memorizing electronic formulas: P = IE, E=IR, P=E²/R and other fancy collages of letters. It is much easier to remember P=IE (and not just because I like “PIE”) than it is to remember, “Power in watts is equal to E (voltage) times I (current in amps).” I like “memory hooks.” They really help me remember a lot of information concisely.

After studying before bed, I went to sleep thinking about these things and woke up in the middle of the night with a new formula: IA2R. It may be the most important formula ever – even greater than E=MC²! It describes the four points of the Christian message: the Gospel. They are: Incarnation (I), Atonement (A), Reign (R), and Return (R).

I – Incarnation

God became a human being, just like us, to show us He understood our situation, to teach us how to be His children and to show us how to live.

A – Atonement

Jesus didn’t come to earth to bring “enlightenment” or “knowledge” or end world suffering. Jesus came to earth to die. His sacrifice took away our sins. Think about the cross as a bridge between heaven and earth for us.

R – Reign

Jesus the King, reigns in heaven today but that doesn’t mean he is far away. Jesus is near each one of us, cheering us on and providing us with power to live lives that please God. He sent his Holy Spirit to live in each of us and transform our bodies into the Temple of God.

R – Return

One day Jesus is coming back to take all of God’s children home. That is an event that we long for and it provides us with a sense of urgency to share the Good News with everyone.

 

Not a bad formula that IA2R!

So why do people think Christians are so negative? Perhaps it’s because we are always telling people what they can’t do. The “Thou-shalt-nots” loom large in our life. Christians come by it naturally though. Our Jewish forefathers studied the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) carefully gleaning out the commandments. When they were done, they counted 613 commandments – 365 negative commands and 248 positive ones. The rabbis explained there is one negative commandment for every day of the lunar year and one positive commandment for every bone in the human body. Of course that still works out to about three “Thou-shalt-nots” for every two “Thou-shalts.”

I once heard a preacher justify his fiery, negative preaching by quoting Paul’s words to Timothy: “preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort,” (2 Timothy 4:2). Then he explained, “That means in two out of three sermons you ought to be angry about something.”

Yikes! But just because there are negative commandments in the Bible, does that mean we should be negative people? I don’t think so! The “thou-shalt-nots” are there to free us to live. After all, Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly,” (John 10:10). The negatives are there to keep us from making dead end choices. Look at Paul’s list again. When has a “fit of anger” ever made you happy? Are “jealous” people content? Do drunks get the most out of life or do these sins represent paths to unhappiness? No wonder a loving God warns us not to make such foolish choices!

“But there is so much evil in the world!” someone might warn and they would be right. Judith Smith pointed out in Ladies’ Bible Class, “The way to overcome evil is to turn it around. ‘Evil’ spelled backwards is ‘Live.’”

Let’s take a closer look at the word “evil.” Two words for “evil” used in the New Testament are phalos and kakos. The first, phalos can also be translated “base, ordinary.” That sheds an interesting light on Paul’s instructions to the Corinthians:

“For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil [phalos],” (2 Corinthians 5:10).

What if we translated Paul’s words as “so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in this life, whether good or ordinary”? If you really want to experience life don’t settle for evil, that’s just ordinary. Be extraordinary!

The second word is kakos. The second century Christian, Ignatius, wrote: “These people, while pretending to be trustworthy, mix Jesus Christ with poison [kakos]—like those who administer a deadly drug with honeyed wine, which the unsuspecting victim accepts without fear, and so with fatal pleasure drinks down death,” (Letter to the Traillians, 6:2). Evil is a deadly poison. I want no part of that!

So God is warning us not drink the poison the world is offering; instead live an extraordinary life! This thing we call “sin” has consequences, now and later, so choose life!

The great Albert Einstein was on a train leaving Princeton Junction in New Jersey, heading north. When the conductor came to his seat, Einstein was unable to find his ticket. He searched through all of his pockets and looked in his briefcase, becoming extremely disturbed. The conductor tried to comfort him, saying, “Dr. Einstein, don’t worry about the ticket. I know who you are and you don’t have to present your ticket to me. I trust that you purchased a ticket.”

About twenty minutes later, the conductor came down the aisle of the train once again and saw Einstein, still searching wildly for the misplaced ticket. The conductor again said to him, “Dr. Einstein, please don’t worry about the ticket. I know who you are!”

Einstein stood and said in a gruff voice, “Young man, I know who I am, but I am trying to find my ticket because I want to know where I am going!”¹

¹Tony Campolo, Stories That Feed Your Soul, Regal Books, 2010.

I can identify with the poor professor! Sometimes I find myself passing Tracey’s desk in the church office and I can’t remember if I walking back to my desk or out to the library. Have you ever found yourself wondering if you are going up the stairs or coming back down?

So where are you going? I’m not talking about stairs or trains. I’m talking about something far more important. I’m talking about the ultimate destination. Some people may think that’s a silly question. “There is no ultimate destination. This is it. You’ve got to live in the now,” but I think that can be a little like the man who fell off a twenty-story building and was heard to say as he passed the tenth floor, “So far so good!”

Other people live in the past. A friend of mine is a famous Hollywood make-up artist. While she worked on films, later she discovered she could make a better living keeping famous celebrities looking like they never aged!

So Christian, I’d like you to pat your pockets, check in your wallet, look in your briefcase – do whatever you need to do to find that ticket that reminds you of your final destination.

“I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life,” 1 John 5:13

 

In the February 28, 2005 edition, The National Review reported on a polling organization that asked a thousand citizens to update the list of “Seven Deadly Sins” (pride, envy, wrath, sloth, lust, avarice, and gluttony). Apparently the list seemed out of date so it was replaced with the sins of cruelty, adultery, bigotry, dishonesty, hypocrisy, greed, and selfishness. Personally, I’m glad gluttony is off the list but it makes you think: “What is the difference between the two lists?” and what does it say about modern times?

The old list was the product of a monk by the name of Evagrius Ponticus as revised (and simplified) by a later pope. The Bible is overflowing with catalogs of sin (see Galatians 5:19-21 for one example) and he was trying to narrow it down to root sins – sins that lead into other sins, but that leads us into defining what sin is.

While sin harms us and other people, the biblical focus is on how it damages our relationship with God. So David confesses “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done evil in your sight” (Psalm 51:4) after he committed adultery with Bathsheba and had his friend Uriah murdered. David understood that the root cause of his sins was disobeying God. The beginning of his tragic actions was lust (He saw Bathsheba and allowed himself to fantasize) and pride (“I’m the king.”).

In contrast the modern seven sins are “equated with causing pain or mental distress to people” with its logical corollary “Is it wrong if no one gets hurt?” which begs the question “Are there victimless crimes?” Obviously, God doesn’t count.

It’s not that the modern list isn’t horrible – it is – it’s just not all that helpful. For example, adultery is a terrible sin but its roots are found in pride, lust, envy and perhaps gluttony (properly defined). Likewise, hypocrisy stinks but it is the result of earlier sins like pride and anger.

By chopping at the roots of sin rather than the leaves of sin, we have a far better chance of making actual progress in the tricky business called “Life.”

 A Bible Word Study

“Either you are or you aren’t.” Have you ever known someone who makes a decision and then changes his mind — often over and over again? Perhaps they’ve changed it so many times no one knows what they really stand for anymore. Can you imagine the inner turmoil that poor soul must be experiencing!

James, the brother of Jesus, was quite a wordsmith. He had that wonderful ability to coin new words that exactly and picturesquely capture ideas. For example, when James wants to describe a very wealthy man who visits a church service, he says the man is wearing so many rings he literally has “golden fingers” (2:2).

We’ve all heard the derogatory term “two-faced” to describe a person who says one thing and then does something else. We might say he speaks “out of both sides of his mouth” but if he sincerely means both things the problem is much deeper than that. He doesn’t know what he believes! James coined a new word for the Greek language to describe just such a person. He has “two-souls” (dipsuchos).

The word only appears twice in the New Testament and both of them are in James’ epistle (1:8; 4:8). Most of our English Bibles translate James’ new word as “double-minded” but the New Living Translation gets at the heart of the meaning by explaining this kind of person “is divided between God and the world” (James 1:8). “That man” — the person who doubts the love of God — “should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does,” (1:7 – 8). In chapter four James gives the cure for double-mindedness, “Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded,” (4:8). Come to a decision and stand by it!

Other early Christian writers began using James’ new word. The Shepherd of Hermas, writing in the Second Century observed, “But those who are perfect in faith make all their requests trusting in the Lord, and they receive them, because they ask unhesitatingly, without any double-mindedness. For every double-minded man, unless he repents, will scarcely be saved,” (Man. IX, 6).

Clement of Rome, writing about the same time that John wrote Revelation, says Lot’s wife was a good example of a double-minded person. She wanted to be saved but she also wanted to be with her friends in Sodom “and as a result she became a pillar of salt to this day, that it might be known to all that those who are double-minded … fall under judgment,” (1 Clement 11.2).

So what’s it going to be for you — the clear sight of single-mindedness or the appalling confusion of double-minded indecision?

 

Howard Rutledge, a United States Air Force pilot, was shot down over North Vietnam during the early stages of the war. In his book In the Presence of Mine Enemies Rutledge describes what he learned about life:

“During those longer periods of enforced reflection it became so much easier to separate the important from the trivial, the worthwhile from the waste. For example, in the past, I usually worked or played hard on Sundays and had no time for church. For years Phyllis [his wife] had encouraged me to join the family at church. She never nagged or scolded – she just kept hoping. But I was too busy, too preoccupied, to spend one or two short hours a week thinking about the really important things.

“Now the sights and sounds and smells of death were all around me. My hunger for spiritual food soon outdid my hunger for a steak. Now I wanted to know about that part of me that will never die. Now I wanted to talk about God and Christ and the church. But in Heartbreak [the name POWS gave their prison camp] solitary confinement, there was no pastor, no Sunday-School teacher, no Bible, no hymnbook, no community of believers to guide and sustain me. I had completely neglected the spiritual dimension of my life. It took prison to show me how empty life is without God.”

Life is about the choices we make and putting God first should be our highest priority. With that foundation, life becomes LIFE – now and forever.