Joe Fontenot's Blog, page 12

For evil, take two

Continuing yesterday’s idea.

Jesus again addresses evil. This time a wrong from someone else affecting the innocent.

“Then do you want us to go and gather [the bad]?” asks the servant in his story.

“No,” says the owner, “lest in gathering the weeds you root up the [good] along with them” (Matthew 13:29).

In this story, the owner (God) defers judgment. He allows those being affected to be affected a bit longer.

Until the harvest.

Until the day when he will set things right.

Then it will be, “Gather the [bad] first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the [good] into my barn” (13:30).

Sometimes, even when it is bad, it’s best to focus on the eternity that comes after.

For evil

Why do bad things happen to good people? And if God’s good, why does evil exist at all?

Good questions.

But often lopsided.

Or, perhaps just, too soon.

Because often the shoe—the second one—doesn’t drop for quite a while afterwards. Focusing on the why too much too soon can often get us stuck.

Mike Edens, a guy who’s taught me a lot, said it this way:

“God used the grinding stones of life to smooth out the rough edges.”

There’s much, much more in it for us when we follow in spite of the whys.

P.S. I interviewed Mike in my new podcast recently. We talked about his 27 years with the IMB, being a strategist, and issues with discipleship. Listen to it here.

 

The plain club

“For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

– Jesus (Matthew 12:50)

Whoever is not about entitlement or merit, it’s a broad blanket.

Does is an action on the part of that whoever.

The will is the alignment with God the Father. As in, when your heart beats for the things his does.

Is is the state of belonging.

Brother, sister, mother is the family reference. The unbreakable tie that lasts and lasts. The membership.

Like all clubs, this one, too, has a membership. But unlike other clubs, this one isn’t exclusive. It’s inclusive.

And isn’t that really the ideal club?

“Everyone commits a crime”

“Everyone commits a crime. You, me, everybody. From that day your life becomes about nothing but dealing with that crime. How do you handle the fact that you’ve done something that can never be undone? Deny it? Seek redemption? Do you try to justify your crime? Become a criminal? Do you demand punishment? Square it with God by making sure you pay for what you’ve done? The Jewish religion is about justice. You devout? Me neither.”

(Marvin Bablik, a Jewish gangster in 1970’s era New York City, from The Knowledge by Steven Pressfield.)

The Knowledge is a book about finding your purpose and the missteps you make getting there.

What’s interesting, when you look for it, is all the ways the world asks us about the gospel.

All that’s left for us is to keep our hearts focused enough to reply.

Drawing the line wide

“Whoever is not with me is against me”


– Jesus (Matthew 12:30)

Jesus says his work is so important, so polar, so vital, that anyone not actively embracing is actually working against him.

This seems so over the top. How can anyone following keep up?

But then he says something else. He says that “whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man [me] will be forgiven.”

In other words, his followers will mess up (big, and often), but it’ll be okay.

Balancing standards with grace is a difficult concept for us—for me—to understand.

On the one hand, the standard is high. Impossibly high. On the other hand, do-your-best seems to be okay.

The question left is, what’s my best? How do I know when I’m following Jesus’ standard? And what exactly is it, given the above?

Jesus foresaw this question, too. “But,” he keeps going, “whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.”

On its face, this seems like worse news. But it’s not. It’s really a good thing.

Because it’s the spirit that guides, and that speaks. It’s the spirit that becomes our conscience. And it’s the spirit who helps us find right and wrong.

And so we follow the Spirit’s leading. Because, by doing that, we’re following Jesus.

What happens to the greatest

Ali famously said, ‘I’m the greatest.’

Jesus, more famously, said, ‘He who is the greatest isn’t.’

Both are invitations to us, the observer. What’s important is where each leads.

The first is a cul-de-sac. It’s a trick. It doesn’t actually go anywhere. Like a company built completely around a famous founder who messes up or dies. When he goes, everything he built goes with him.

The second is a catalyst. It’s not a solution, it’s a path. And the path isn’t to be better than the others, it’s to help them.

The turnabout is what Jesus goes on to say.

“Whoever humbles himself like [a] child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:4).

Which, honestly, is a much better (and easier) option.

The infinite why

Growing up, our bathroom had a wall-length mirror, and next to it, ninety degrees, was the medicine cabinet, which also had a mirror on it. If you open the medicine cabinet so that both mirrors were nearly flat against each other, you could see a tunnel going deep into the mirror.

Sometimes, I’d look into it. To see how far it went. (Forever.) But it was fake. A fake forever-tunnel.

It occured to me (much later) that this is a lot like life.

When something bad happens in real life, it’s natural to ask why. But, apart from God, it’s not natural to ever find an answer to those whys.

Apart from God, there is no end. There are no reasons. It’s just random.

But, such a world is also not real.

In the real world, there’s always an end to the whys. Even if we don’t like it (at the moment) or understand it (at all). There’s an end. And that end, if we’re open to it, will always lead us back to God.

Good forces bad

Jesus heals the withered hand. After making his point (the Sabbath is for doing good), he then does the good.

Talk is one thing. Manageable. But doing is a step too far. The Pharisees left the encounter working on a plan “to destroy him” (Matthew 12:14).

The more you do good, the more the bad reacts.

And a lot of people shy away from doing any kind of meaningful good because of this. As if they are somehow causing the bad.

But they’re not.

That’s just the nature of bad. Like water always finding its lowest level, bad always fights good.

If for nothing else, that’s a reason to keep doing the good.

The ease of discipleship

I remember the first time I had real stress in my life. It wasn’t scandalous, but I was doing something I shouldn’t have. Or rather, dating someone I shouldn’t have. I was nineteen. It lasted about six months.

I learned two things about stress from this.

First, stress is about multiplication, not addition. It goes up exponentially, the more and the longer it goes on.

Second, stress is subtle. It’s hard to see it coming (or even recognize its cause once here).

Rest, on the other hand, is the exact opposite of rest. It is restorative and comfortable.

Jesus, talking to the masses, described life with him as “finding rest with your soul.” And that, if you take up with him, your work is easier (Matthew 11:29-30).

As hard as it sometimes is, being a disciple, it’s always easier than going it alone. Because going it alone doesn’t end well. Being a disciple, on the other hand, has us only ever looking up.

Proximal Faith

“Wisdom is justified by her deeds.”

— Jesus (Matthew 11:19)

It’s easy to compartmentalize threats from far away. Like gun violence or terrorists. It’s easy, even natural, to prescribe, condemn, and reprimand.

But…it’s a lot harder to know what to do in the middle of a stickup.

In the same way, it’s easy to put God first when the morning is still quiet, when no one is yelling or demanding, and when, well, all is good.

But…it’s much harder when we’re in the middle of a day’s temptations.

Though, it’s in those times we understand our faith and what we really look like.

The good news is, it’s also during those times that God builds us into who he wants us to be.

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