Christians get a lot of bad press.

Some of it is because we have enemies. I can think of a long running TV crime drama that typically portrays Christians as violent, mean spirited, rule obsessed, homophobic, angry bigots. One episode even featured a serial rapist whose name was Dr. Byron Marks. How they chose me…….I haven’t a clue. Many of our enemies dislike us because of what we believe. I can live with that……..In fact, I will wear it as a badge of honor.

But there is a problem.

The first part of the problem is this:

Many people dislike us………because of what we say and do.

We bring a lot of the antipathy on ourselves.

You don’t have to look too hard to find a Christian speaking out against…….criticizing…….someone else because of what they say or do. This criticism is typically directed at someone who is violating one of the rules in the Bible. Last week’s post deals with the unpardonable crime of telling someone that they are wrong. If you haven’t read it, you might chase it down.

Let’s face it, the Bible has a lot of rules…….and many of them interfere with the pursuit of our appetites…….the pursuit of short term pleasure. In a secular humanist culture, these rules are not popular……neither is the speed limit in my subdivision.

As Christians, we follow a God who restricts our appetites and our pursuit of short term pleasure……..but, we live in a culture that does not.

Let me repeat that…..

As Christians, we follow a God who restricts our appetites and our pursuit of short term pleasure……..but, we live in a culture that does not.

It is no wonder that the culture doesn’t like us. The harder we push restrictive rules, the harder the culture pushes back. Please don’t get me wrong…….these rules are good and true. Furthermore, they are God’s rules. The fact that the culture may not like some of them……the fact that even you or I may not like some of them……..is irrelevant.

If I am following God’s teaching in the Bible…….God’s rules…..and you don’t like what I am doing……..then you have a problem……..with God, not me. And that is a big problem……..even bigger than climate change.

This brings us to the second part of the problem:

We are charged with the responsibility of bringing others into the faith. And that is hard to do when we antagonize them.

What to do?

When in doubt………read the instructions.

The Bible is very clear on the solution to this dilemma……and the solution is right there……..in the rules.

Love God…..Love man.

Rules #1and #2.

When I find myself butting heads with the culture…….if I am to succeed as a Christian……the first and foremost thing that the culture must sense…….the most important thing that I must demonstrate……….is my love. All of the other rules stand……..but they must be secondary to love.

If you find yourself beating someone up over a rule…….and you are not clearly showing them your love………you are wrong. You need to go back and restudy the “owner’s manual”.

Love…….this is the tool for successfully confronting our secular humanist culture. Love is devastatingly effective at disarming an attack from the culture. It is “the nuclear option”. Only the most committed attacker will continue to come after you when you respond with love……and you probably weren’t going to win him over anyway.

So……stop wasting your time pounding the culture with the rules………just show them your love………God’s love.

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Jesus, ESV

If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat,
and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink,
for you will heap burning coals on his head,
and the Lord will reward you.

Solomon, ESV

Before you speak ask yourself if what you are going to say is true, is kind, is necessary, is helpful. If the answer is no, maybe what you are about to say should be left unsaid

Bernard Meltzer

“No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care”

Theodore Roosevelt.

In our modern society, one of the worst things that you can do is to tell someone that something that they have done, or even worse, something that they are still doing…………is wrong. You can call an idea wrong and you will meet a lot of pushback. But, if you call a behaviour wrong, you will face an entirely different level of hostility. Tell someone that their belief in God is misguided and you will likely enter a spirited debate. Tell someone that it is wrong for two men to have sex and you will face name calling and may even be ostracised socially or have your business……..or even your state boycotted.

Even obviously wrong behaviors like looting a store are becoming……..ok……tolerated……….not wrong. Shoplifting less than $900 is, in many jurisdictions, not prosecuted. Rioters looting stores are rarely pursued. Wrecking Portland is a legitimate form of public discourse. Some politicians even verbally give the rioters a pass……….or post their bail.

We are entering an era where the realm of behaviors that are “wrong” is shrinking. We are, slowly, one offense at a time, removing the very idea of wrong from our world. The internet and the media are leading the charge.

I’m getting a little too close to politics here……I apologize. I’ll get to the point.

Calling out wrong behavior………and the guilt it causes……is becoming socially unacceptable.

To take it one step further, feeling guilty…….or worse, making the other guy feel guilty………is becoming more wrong……….than being wrong.

I think that there is a link here…….between wrong behavior, guilt, redemption, and secular humanism. If guilt is a bad thing……..and wrong behavior causes guilt………..then if we can eliminate the idea of wrong behavior, we no longer need to suffer from guilt. Without guilt we no longer need forgiveness.

To take it one step further……..if we do something wrong…….if we are guilty…….we need forgiveness……..and we need to change. But, if there is no wrong……….there is no guilt……..there is no need for forgiveness. And if there is no need for forgiveness……….there is no need for Jesus………or God for that matter. So……..if we can completely eliminate wrong……..if we can define it out of existence……….then we can eliminate guilt and confidently take charge of the world. We can get out from under the thumb of God……..and all of those rules……..all of those wrong things that restrict us………that make us feel bad when we do them.

In order for man to be the ultimate ruler of the universe, we must either be perfect………or we must bring our vision of perfect into alignment with our condition and our appetites. We must either do what is right …….or redefine what right is……..until it agrees with our appetites………until the things that are wrong……….become right.

We don’t talk about it……..but eliminating the concept of “wrong” is a central requirement of the theology of secular humanism.

In a Christian world, right and wrong, are defined externally…….by God. Objective right and wrong guide our appetites and actions. In a secular humanist world, our appetites and actions guide our definition of right and wrong. Right and wrong become whatever we need them to be in the moment.

In an increasingly secular humanist world, self actualization, our rights, our appetites, our entitlements………..are becoming more important than right and wrong. These ideas are not, in themselves, evil……….. but they cannot define right and wrong.

In a Christian world, wrong leads to guilt, which leads to repentance, which leads to forgiveness, which leads to growth. Secular humanism rejects guilt…….and in the process discards wrong……….and Christianity with it.

The progressive elimination of wrong puts us on a slippery slope. When we turn something wrong into something right, we make it easier to turn something even wronger into something right.

We are like the frog in the pan of ever hotter water………sitting there until we cook.

So……the challenge for us is this:

Pick an act that is OK today but that wasn’t OK 50 years ago:

Sitting in front of your TV for one evening and watching 10 or 20 killings and 10 or 20 thinly veiled sexual encounters.

3000 abortions……today.

Parents turning the socialization of our kids over to the internet.

Government that turns a blind eye to crime.

Are these things really right………or is the water getting warmer?

Wrong causes guilt…..and guilt causes pain. But pain is what tells us to get out of the pan of hot water.

Christianity tells us to get out of the pan. Secular humanism tells us that the water really isn’t that hot.

in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power.

Paul. ESV

Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.

James, ESV

I want to spend a little more time this week on the transition from the temporal world to the spiritual world. If you are new, you might want to read my last few posts.

I’m a Christian. I believe in Jesus and have accepted his gift of forgiveness……a gift that I didn’t earn and that I don’t deserve. I am going to paradise when I die. That may not be what I deserve. It may not be fair……or just…….but that is how God’s grace and mercy work.

So……picture this:

I’m in paradise, driving down the road, on my way to worship, in my car……….a ’67 Camaro SS (sky blue with white rally stripes, 4 speed, and a loud exhaust). Hey, this is paradise after all. Some teenage kid blows through a stoplight at 80 mph. I slam on the brakes and barely miss a collision. As he zooms off on his merry way. I mutter under my breath, “G.. D… F…… A……” Then I head on off to church.

That doesn’t sound right does it? Forget the kid. My behavior in this situation is not at all what heaven will be like. And yet, in the last year…….in this temporal world…….I’m sure that I have done something similar…….if not worse. And I have done it over and over.

Road rage in paradise.

There is only one logical conclusion to this conundrum.

In my current condition……..I do not belong in paradise.

I do not belong in paradise………and yet, that is where I am headed. These two ideas are incompatible. This situation calls for a fix, because I don’t believe for a minute that road rage will be a part of the landscape in paradise. I don’t believe for one minute that paradise will be modified to suit my temper……or lack of control over it.

No…….the fix is that I will be changed…….transformed into the kind of man that Jesus is looking for. You too will be “fixed”. This will probably be one of our first experiences in paradise.

The fix will be different for each of us. For some, it will be a minor tuneup……….for others it will be earthshaking. It will be permanent. The process may very well be uncomfortable……if not painful. But…….the result will be satisfying and it will feel good……..because we will return to the condition that we were created for……..because we will finally be the men and women that we were meant to be. I can’t tell you what this will feel like, because I can’t even imagine it. We have fallen so far away from our original purpose…….our true identity…….that we can’t even see it from here.

But, I know this……..it will be right. It will be so right that it is worth making changes for……worth making sacrifices for….today…..in order to experience it. This could require some hard work….on my part. So…….I might as well get started now.

To do that, I need to start asking myself some questions:

“Is what I am doing, saying, or thinking………right now…….something that will fit in……..something that will be appropriate……..in paradise?”

And

“Is there a better choice for me today, here, in this broken world……..a choice that will be more compatible with my future home?

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Paul, ESV

But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

John, describing paradise, ESV

If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.

Jesus, ESV

In a recent post, I compared our temporal world with God’s spiritual world. These two worlds are clearly different. Today I want to develop that a bit more. Specifically, I want to explore the interface…..the transition…..between the temporal and the spiritual worlds.

We all believe in death. Most of us believe in an afterlife. As a Christian, I believe in the paradise described in the Bible. The dominant religions…….Islam, Judaism, and Christianity………agree in general that paradise is real. In that vein, my Bible reading from yesterday is causing me some trouble. I ran across a line that jumped out at me. Jesus is talking about getting rid of things that might be problematic after we die. He gives several examples of removing a body part that is incompatible with paradise.

This is repeated three times…….so it is very important.

The lesson is this: paradise is so important that it is worth making a big temporal sacrifice to reach an eternal spiritual paradise.

“if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire.”

Jesus, ESV

This is clearly a metaphor. Jesus is not looking for a bunch of one-eyed Christians.

The passage that I’m struggling with follows these three metaphors. It jumps out at me because it just doesn’t seem to fit.

“Everyone will be salted with fire “

Jesus, ESV

It is important………because Jesus said it.

The first point is that whatever this transition at death process is……it will be universal……..nobody gets a pass……whether you are a believer…….or not.

Salt is good. It adds flavor, it preserves, it is essential for life. It is repeatedly used in the Bible as a metaphor for correct Christian living. We are taught to be the salt of the earth. To extend the metaphor, paradise………and everyone in it…….. will be “salty”. This is different from this temporal world and that implies a change…….a transition.

Fire?………not so much. Fire is destructive. It is painful……sometimes lethal. In specific applications it is useful. One of those is purification. We use it to cook our food and destroy germs. We use it to refine metals. In this verse, “fire” is the tool……the vehicle…….of transition………of purification.

When will this salting occur? It could be during our earthly lives. I can say that many events in my life have felt like being “salted with fire”. But, most people think that this will occur at or after our death.

“Everyone will be salted with fire”………..purified with fire.

What troubles me is the specifics of the process of purification by fire. Is this real fire that we must pass through to reach paradise……..sort of “hell light”……..AKA purgatory? Or is this purely metaphorical……..we walk into the light, meet Jesus and, in the blink of an eye, all of the bad that is in us………every last one of us…….is gone.

Or is it something in between?

I don’t know. Even the major religions can’t agree.

The lesson that I can take from this is that I will be a very different man……in paradise……..from the man I am now. There are many things that are a part of my life……every day…….that will have no place in paradise. And that transition…..that purification……..will be uncomfortable…….possibly even painful……..whether the “fire” is literal or metaphorical.

What to do?

It’s pretty basic. If I can begin the transition…….the purification…….now, at age 69, the adjustment at my death will be less of a shock.

I will, of course, fail. I doubt that I will come close to cleaning out every corner of my life. But every cobweb that I can knock down now will mean less “fire” later.

But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false

John, ESV

For this is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does.

Peter, ESV

Each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done.

Paul, ESV

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.”

God, ESV