Steve's Letter: God Doesn't Need Protecting or Defending!

I just discovered something I can hardly wait to tell you.

Are there certain Bible texts that make you wince? You know the ones I'm talking about... Bible teachers and mothers use them to make us feel guilty. Both want us to be good. They figure the best thing to do is to make us memorize Scripture that will keep us up at night until we either get in line or become atheists.

I call those "law enforcement texts."

I avoid them except when I'm doing the "lucky dipping." That's when you close your eyes, tell God you're in trouble and ask him to give you some "fresh word." Then you open the Bible at random and put your finger on a verse.

(That's not the way to study the Bible, you bozo! I know that! I'm a Bible teacher, okay? But we all do it and those who don't will lie about other things.)

When I do that, I either get "kill the Philistines" or one of the above mentioned law enforcement texts. I have friends who underline those verses, memorize them and read them often. It's nice to know that there are brothers and sisters who are more neurotic than I am. Not me. I make an intentional effort to avoid those texts until I have a lot of time to study them.

Let me give you a hermeneutical (look it up...the way I did) principle: When you study the Bible, start with what God clearly revealed about himself and, when you come across a text that seems to contradict what he already taught you, you need to go deeper. Utilizing that principle will always lead you to the truth of God's Word without going into the "sloth of depression"-you remember how Pilgrim almost got caught there in Pilgrim's Progress-every time you encounter those law enforcement texts.

There is one text that gives me a fit. It's Matthew 25:14-39. You know the one. It's where a master goes off on a trip and leaves some money with three servants. When he comes back, the first two have invested the money and give the master a good return on his investment.

Yep! That's where we get the words of Jesus, "Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much" (v. 23).

All someone has to do is quote that and ask, "Don't you want to hear those words?" and I become suicidal.

But that's not the main point of the parable. You will remember that the third servant, knowing that his master was a "hard man," went out and buried the money given to him. When the master came home, he gave the master back the original money. Jesus said that the master said, "You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sowed and gather where I scattered no seed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents...And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (vv. 26-30).

Now if that doesn't make you wince, you're dead.

But I'm here to help and, at the same time, wreak good-natured revenge on everybody who ever said to me, using this text, that I wasn't living up to my potential. This parable is a kingdom parable and, not only that, Jesus was talking to the religious priests and religious elders about religion...orthodox, protective, good, righteous and dead religion.

Jesus isn't talking about doing, he's talking about dancing. It's not about doing right, it's about doing something. It's not about potential, it's about protection-the danger of protecting what you've got.

(In the very next chapter, those religious leaders are so ticked at him that they make plans to kill him. They, at least, "got it" even if my mother, my teachers and a long list of Bible teachers didn't.)

If the wicked servant had lost everything, it would have been okay. If you read Matthew 18:22-33 (another kingdom parable), the servant lost everything and couldn't even repay his debt to his master. That master forgave him and was only upset because the servant refused to forgive the debts of another. You can't read the parable of the talents in a vacuum. That's another hermeneutical principle (did you look it up yet?): Always let a single text be interpreted by the "whole counsel of God" or, as Calvin put it, let the whole interpret the parts.

I had a staff member of a church I served once tell me, "Steve, if you don't get off your Calvinistic hobbyhorse, you're going to kill this church!"

Do you know what I did? I fired him.

When Jesus said it to the religious leaders, they crucified him.

That really was what he was saying, to wit, you're going to kill this thing if you don't get off your "religious" hobbyhorse, if you keep trying to protect a God who doesn't need protecting, and if you keep trying to bury what God never intended to be buried.

Jesus said he came to love and accept needy, sick and sinful people...people like us. And it is his intention that we tell other needy, sick and sinful people. When we try to take what he's given us and keep quiet about it, protect it and make a nice religion out of it, then we should feel guilty.

Do you know why we should feel guilty? Because we are.

One other thing before I go.

Please note the misperception about the master. The servant who buried the money said, "I knew you were a monster." And the master said to the servant "You knew (i.e. your perception was that) I was a monster." It's always dangerous to fail to see reality and to have misperceptions about people. It's even more dangerous to have misperceptions about God. It makes you so afraid that you won't risk what you've been given. It makes you bury good stuff in the ground so you won't lose it. It makes you hard and cold.

The truth is that if the wicked and slothful servant had lost everything, the master would have been pleased with him. Do you know why? Because Jesus (the real Master) was the one who told the story. They said he said, "I came that they may have life and have it abundantly" (John 10:10). They said he said, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick" (Matthew 9:12). And they said about him, "For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ" (John 1:17).

If you're forgiven, you don't have to protect your goodness or even pretend to be better than you are. If Christ is building his church and loves the church, you don't have to work hard to keep it safe and pure. The church doesn't have to have a wall around it and it doesn't have to be militarily defensible. If God is God, he doesn't need protecting and defending.

As someone said, "There is a limit of one Messiah per universe...

...and you're not him."

There, now, don't you feel better?

So chill out and let 'er rip!

He asked me to remind you.

In His Grip,