Wednesday, July 25, 2018

Balancing Act

Wednesday, July 25, 2018
Tax collectors and other notorious sinners often came to listen to Jesus teach.  This made the Pharisees and teachers of religious law complain that he was associating with such sinful people—even eating with them!  So Jesus told them this story:  “If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them gets lost, what will he do?  Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others in the wilderness and go to search for the one that is lost until he finds it?  And when he has found it, he will joyfully carry it home on his shoulders.  When he arrives, he will call together his friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.’  In the same way, there is more joy in heaven over one lost sinner who repents and returns to God than over ninety-nine others who are righteous and haven’t strayed away!  Luke 15:1-7(NLT)
This parable of Jesus’ sets up the classic balancing act between actions and attitudes.  Both are important, and both usually criticized in a tug of war between the good children and the bad ones.  And, depending on which side of that line you stand, both are dangerous.

The “Good” Ones

The Pharisees, keepers of all things religious, are the obedience-driven “good children”.  In Jesus’ other parable about this conflict, the Pharisees, religious leaders and teachers of God’s Law, they would be the stay-at-home elder brother (as opposed to the bad son who wasted his father’s estate in the far country).  The religious, obeying, do-gooders were performance-driven conformers; they dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s.  Their resume’s were inscrutable; their attitudes were horrible, condemning everything that walked…except themselves!

The “Wild-child” Ones

The wild children of the world have a problem with authority figures, something you see in abundance with the Pharisees.  When Pharisees exercise control, the predictable reaction is rebellion.  Wild children can detect a Pharisaical fussbudget’s horrible attitude in a heartbeat…and they want none of it!
The irony of these two types of people represented in Luke’s Gospel account is that neither is all right, and, obviously, neither is all wrong.  The Pharisees –a title almost always spoken with a slight bit of spit-out-of-the-mouth disgust – are seen as wanting to ruin the party, sucking the fun out of life, while the wild, rebellious ones are duly chastised for their lack of obedience, but silently admired for their I-gotta-be-me rebellious ways. 
Putting aside which side you and I may occupy, let’s ask the question this morning: 
If neither the Pharisee, nor the Wild-child is all right or all wrong…
what do we make of what God expects here?
Well, take your preferences and prejudices out of the equation and consider; is obedience to God wrong?  Ask again, is a positive attitude of life is good, and meant to be enjoyed wrong?  The answer is always “yes” AND “no”. 
When your obedience is like a Pharisee, obeying every commandment and, at the same time, despising the fact that you must obey, because you know all those people who aren’t obeying are out there having a good time, and it tweaks you so much to be the good child, that you must condemn everything the wild children are doing…you need an attitude adjustment.
On the other hand, when being a wild-child, disobeying just because you despise the good children who do obey, and then you see how empty the life can be apart from a relationship with God, and it drives you to step up your game with more and bigger disobedience, just because you’re gonna show them you were right to reject them…well, you need a performance review!
And so, the balancing act becomes surrendering your inner Pharisee AND your outer wild-child ways to God’s Spirit, so that the growing humility (Christlikeness) God wants to grow in you destroys your criticizing and allows you to really start living.
The problem with a Pharisee or a wild-child is the balancing act between obeying and not obeying is too difficult to be handled by amateurs; sin is just too strong without the cleansing of blood…and we are unable to be cleansed when we stand on ONLY our own two feet.  This is what Paul meant when he said it was only when he was weak that he was actually strong[2].
For You Today
There is nothing wrong with obedience, and there is nothing good about disobedience.  Those are merely indicators of where you stand on the scale of whether a heart has been surrendered to the love of Christ, or a heart trying to navigate life all on your own. 
You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day. 

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[1] Title Image:  Courtesy of Pixabay.com
[2] 2 Corinthians 12:10

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