Category: 2 Corinthians

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Focus On God

Attention span has been decreasing for at least fifty years. We struggle to stay focused and to keep our eyes fixed while sacrificing the long game for the immediate short yardage. We chase butterflies when they come within our peripheral or are distracted by the clouds. We stop listening. We cease paying attention. We’re easily distracted. We ignore what is around us – a flower blooming or a child laughing – as if nothing is new to what we’ve always seen. Sometimes it’s intentional, we’re just not interested. Other times, we’re being pulled away like the riptides on the Oregon coast, and no matter what we do to fight our shrinking attention span, we’re swept away like the beach’s soil erosion.

The battle rages within me on a constant basis since I am an undiagnosed victim of ADHD. Growing up, psychologists did not know what to do with or how to treat kids like me who could not keep their attention, or learn like other children, or comprehend what they read. They told us we had to work harder to overcome our struggles. Since then, my reading has improved, but it’s still comparatively slow and I don’t always retain what I’ve read. I love to write, but it’s a gift that takes forever to unwrap. Don’t get me started on my prayer life and the lack of focus while talking to God. Some of us overcame our ADHD, but for me, it always felt like the climb to the top was self-defeating.

In 1985 Neil Postman published his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death,* in which he raised a red flag that the public was self-medicating themselves through television entertainment. Take the news for instance. He believed that television was not the best medium for a serious forum of discussion as the staging took precedent over the substance. Soft lighting, appropriate music, perfect voice to accompany the face, and interjected with commercial breaks meant that for him, the news media could not be taken seriously. Cue the 1968 Presidential Debate between camera ready Kennedy overcoming camera inept Nixon.

The printed word, Postman argued, is a better venue for serious studies in part because you can spend time absorbing and reading the document. That said, one of the side effects of television’s influence, he noted, was the audience’s decreasing attention span. People were failing to stay focused. He documented the decline, which came before the rise of MTV and the digital age, where images changed every few seconds, creating a freefall in attention span.

Postman pointed to the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 as a test case in attention span. In those seven debates, the candidates spoke for hours on end to their audience arguing about slavery and tariffs while the spectators were captivated by the words. The crowds sat for the speeches, staying focused on the arguments of the speaker. Compared to today’s ninety-minute debates that often lack substance, which by now I’m sure I’ve lost your attention.

So shifting gears . . .

The teenager girl stepped onto the stage on a hot summer night at church camp. She was part of a skit performed by her cabin. She demonstrated spiritual focus by repeating the phrase, “Focus on God. Focus on God. Focus on God” with her hands to her temples like they were blinders. As she continued her reminder, a friend entices her to go to a party and she changes her phrase, “Focus on parties. Focus on parties. Focus on parties.” But she calls herself back to her true focus which was on God. As she continues to focus on God, another friend comes by, inviting her to go shopping. Her attention begins shifting from “Focus on God” to “Focus on shopping. Focus on shopping. Focus on shopping,” until she calls herself back to “Focus on God.” Finally, another friend comes holding a basketball, inviting her to join them in a “pickup game.” Her “focus on God” changed to “Focus on basketball. Focus on basketball. Focus on basketball.” As she is about to join her friends, she calls herself back to her speech. You can hear her as she exits the stage, “Focus on God. Focus on God. Focus on God.”

While there is nothing wrong with going to a party, going shopping, or playing basketball, the point of the story is to show just how easy it is to pull our focus off God and onto other things. It happens. We are all victims of this ploy. All of us suffer from spiritual ADHD trying to follow Jesus with a faith focused on God.

I doubt that the apostle Paul was burdened with ADHD, but I was drawn to 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 because it speaks to my struggle.

“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

The phrase, “fix our eyes” (v. 18), draws my attention. The very thing ADHD victims are struggling with is the thing Paul exhorts readers to do. We fix our eyes. We focus our attention. We fasten our thoughts. And therein lies the battle. We cannot hold our gaze that long. Paul is calling us to do the impossible, or else it feels like it’s impossible. And as my doctors told me in middle school, the advice is disheartening, “You just have to work harder.” And that just seems like the kind of “fairness” I’ve always experienced.

But maybe we are missing a piece of the puzzle. For if following Jesus was based on our ability to overcome ADHD, we have no hope. Instead, Paul’s refusal to “lose heart” is not about working harder, though clearly working with all our heart is hard work. Paul seems to have two different events in mind.

First, he says “we are outwardly wasting away.” The time clock of our bodies is winding down, and we know it. Just watch a child run circles around their parents as they try to keep up with that child’s energy. Now watch that same child run their grandparents into the ground. All that energy bursts forth from the child where the adult has to play tag-team to match energy for energy. As a grandparent, I know. No matter how much I miss my granddaughter, when she goes home from a visit, Cile and I need a week to recover. We are worn out. The strength of our youth fails. But Paul’s promise is that while physically we weaken, inwardly we gain strength. Faith is not dependent on age, time, or physical prowess. Faith continues to churn within us so that while we age, peak, and begin the decline, something else within gains strength. Faith, according to Paul, strengthens even when our physical bodies worsen.

Secondly, Paul says that the suffering we face now is no match for the glory we will experience then (e.g., Rom. 8:17). They say life is hard and things happen in our life to erode our trust, love, and faith in each other and in God. Paul references “momentary troubles,” which is a general statement that could include persecution, heartache, disappointment, sickness, death, etc. They are momentary as compared to the eternal, and the word “trouble” does not minimize suffering. But the promise given is that all the bad things we experience now are nothing compared to what the good will be like then. The suffering now leads to glory then. So, for example, the distance runner keeps running not because of how he feels during the race, but how he will feel at the finish line. The mother endures all sorts of childbearing pain, not because it’s enjoyable, but because when she holds her baby in her arms the pain will all be but forgotten. The Christian endures, not because we are sadists, but because the end goal will make all trials and tribulations worth it.

The “fixing of our eyes,” then, is not about compensating our being ADHD or by being forced to work harder than everyone else whose faith seems to come so easy. On the contrary, “fixing our eyes” is the focus to recognize the eternal in the midst of the temporary both in us and in the world around us, even when what is happening in and around us is filled with suffering. Our focus in the temporary endures the hardship, molds our character to be Christ-like, and prepares us for an eternal filled with celebration.

Paul says that what is seen is temporary while what is unseen is eternal. The temporary calls to our ADHD nature to divert our focus off God and onto other things. The eternal calls to the Spirit within us to free us from the burden of distracted living, so that we can distinguish between the temporary and the eternal.

What is seen is temporary; what is unseen is eternal. Suffering is temporary; jubilation is eternal. Harboring anger and resentment are temporary; offering forgiveness is eternal. Death is temporary; resurrection is eternal. “God has forsaken us” is temporary; “God is among us” is eternal. Wealth is temporary; generosity is eternal. Political unrest is temporary; Kingdom business is eternal. Chasing conspiracy theories is temporary; pursuing God’s Word is eternal. Notoriety is temporary; anonymity is eternal. Relationships that are transactional are temporary; relationships that are mutually reciprocal are eternal. Engaging your phone is temporary; engaging that person is eternal.

So in a world that feels so temporary allowing an ADHD to live, what do we do? We focus on God. Focus on God. Focus on God.

Soli Deo Gloria!
(i.e., only God is glorified!)

* Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: A Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York: Viking Penguin Press, 1985).

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Buyer’s Remorse

That feeling you get in the wake of making a large or extravagant acquisition has a name. It’s called Buyer’s Remorse. A person purchases a house, or one that is more expensive than was budgeted, begins second guessing the investment. Buyer’s remorse. The memory of the best vacation ever begins washing away once the bills start piling up. Buyer’s remorse. Investing in a huge diamond ring to present to that special someone when your gut and your friends tell you it’s a mistake, and in a moment of doubt you think they might be right. Buyer’s remorse. Or buying a vehicle where the smell of the new car quickly evaporates when something goes wrong with it, and you have no extended warrantee. Buyer’s remorse.

My dad might have experienced some form of buyer’s remorse when he traded in our family Ford station wagon for the Buick version of the same car. The 1964 Ford Country Squire was a practical and steady car for a family of five kids. The best part of the car was the tailgate window. Dad placed a makeshift third row seat in the tailgate that faced the back window. The seat was wooden and covered with Naugahyde, and never included seat belts. Deanna and I, and sometimes David, sat in the back and watched the road behind us. For long trips, Dad packed the tailgate so that old couch cushions were positioned for Deanna and me to play, read, fight, or sleep. I have good memories of that car, but eventually a car needs a replacement.

Dad feared that the Ford, which was leaking oil, was not going to pass an inspection. Feeling the pressure, he traded it in for a Buick Estate Wagon. The upgrade included power windows and locks as well as a third row bench facing forward with seat belts. At the time, dad loved Buicks. But the car was a lemon, and my father regretted making the purchase. Confiding in me when I was learning to drive, he said, “Given what I know now, I should have held onto the Ford.” Clearly, what dad experienced was Buyer’s Remorse.  

Paul tells the Corinthians that we were “bought with a price” (1 Cor. 6:20). Such language finds its origin in the marketplace venue of the slave trade. When a slave is sold, either informally to another owner or formally on the auction block, he or she is sold for a certain price. The going rate. That slave now belongs to someone else, and their lives must conform to the new owner’s wishes. Paul’s point is that we Christians were on the market and were purchased by God. We are under new management and the price paid was his Son. More to the point, Paul says that our bodies must be used to honor God, our new owner, and not the selfish self-satisfaction of our own passions and desires.

God purchased us. He took a good long look at us. He kicked the tires and checked under the hood. He weighed his options. He read the warranty and ordered a copy of the Carfax. He even took us for a test drive. When he made his decision, he purchased us, and now we belong to him. That is such good news, except for one problem. He got stuck with a lemon, and when we look at the fine print of our lives, it’s clear that God has buyer’s remorse. At least from our perspective.  

One doesn’t have to go to far away from Corinth to conclude that God had second thoughts. And if he didn’t, he should have. Corinth is nothing but a mess of buyer’s remorse, and 1 Corinthians is replete with examples. The church seemed to find every reason to divide, especially since they quarreled and were filled with jealousy (3:3). Such strong disagreements may be the reason they were so divisive. Each loved their own favorite preacher (1:12; 3:4), believing their pastor was a better leader, communicator, and more spiritual than the others. They supposed that their specific Spiritual Gift was more valued than other member’s gifts, never realizing that the individual parts made up the whole (12:25-26). Besides, love is the gift to pursue (12:31b; 13:8-9). And while they were gathered around the Table for the Lord’s Supper, a table intended to unite the believers, the social economic disparity was clear: the wealthy kept the poor away (11:18-22). And beneath all this divisiveness, two families were airing their dirty laundry, tangled in a public legal court battle against each other (6:1-11).

From there the troubles worsen in Corinth. The members bought into a casual carnal mindset (6:12-20), and it’s possible to directly link it to idolatry (10:21-22). One man was having a sexual relationship with his stepmother, and the church is glossing over it as if it’s normal or acceptable behavior (5:1-2). The marriages were in trouble (7:1-40) while their assembly time was chaotic (14:26-33a). They denied the resurrection of the saints, philosophizing that it had already occurred (15:12-19).

By the time one opens the Second letter to the Corinthians things are certainly no better. The infighting, divisions, and idolatry are still present (12:20-21), while the church had broken its promise to collect monies as relief for the Judea famine (8:10-11). At its core is their rejection of Paul as their leader, believing he had not only broken his promise to them, but also deceived them about the money collected for the Judean famine relief. The very one who introduced them to Jesus and brought them the gospel is now discarded because he wasn’t the flashy celebrity they were seeking.

The church in Corinth was toxic, and clearly the source for church hurt. I would never place my membership there, and you wouldn’t either. And if God called me to minister to them, I just might find the belly of a big fish a safer environment than Corinth. With all the chaos and dysfunction running through the church, I can’t help but think God had his head in his palms, shaking his head, regretting while experiencing buyer’s remorse.

Thankfully, that is not God’s perspective, it’s mine. I can be judgmental. Pointing the finger is easy until I realize that three fingers are pointing back at me. And if someone were to peel back the layers of my life, I’m sure they might have buyer’s remorse. And like the Corinthians – and you – I stand in need of God’s grace and mercy, and not his judgment and justice.

This is what makes Paul’s words so powerful, when he says, “Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come” (2 Cor. 1:21-22).

When Paul talks of “standing firm,” he draws from a marketplace terminology that reflects the validity of a sale.* In this case, we are the product purchased by God. The sale is final and cannot be returned. By dropping three statements** capturing a moment in time, he strengthens the purchase invoice. First, he says, “He anointed us.” The Old Testament is filled with moments where God had prophets, priests, and kings anointed. They were anointed by oil, chosen intentionally and always with clear thought. God knew what he was buying when he anointed someone, and the same holds true when he bought us. Though we were not anointed with oil, but with the Spirit. And dare I add that the word “anointed” is the verb form of the title for “Christ.” Let that sink in, God’s not throwing that term around for nothing. Secondly, “God set his seal on us” to show we are his possession. In ancient times the seal was often a signet ring worn by a king. It was used to certify a document, ensuring that the paper came from the King. In our own western world, we might think of branding cattle to show ownership. Cue Toy Story’s Woody and look for Andy’s name written under his boot. God has placed his seal, the Holy Spirit, on us signifying we belong to him, and he’s not getting rid of his possession. And thirdly, God “put his Spirit in us as a deposit.” A deposit is a down payment that guarantees more to come. God has given us a piece of himself and promises to make good on completely giving us his Spirit. In the future, he will fill us to the full of himself.

The truth is God knows what he is getting with us. He knows our failures, our brokenness, and our sinful shortcomings. But he bought us with his Son and he has absolutely no buyer’s remorse. Next time you buy something, and you regret doing so, remember that you may experience buyers remorse, but God doesn’t.

Eventually, my dad ditched the Buick Estate Wagon. Swallowing his ego, and noting his family was shrinking, he bought a Volkswagen Rabbit. It was the car I learned how to drive. The Rabbit was the VW Bug replacement car, but never as cute or fun as driving the Beetle. It had four cylinders and could go from 0 to 60 in about six minutes on a good downhill grade. Dad loved big cars, and he wore a brave smile driving this little car around town and on trips. I’m sure, deep down, Dad had buyer’s remorse, especially since he could have had a V-8. I would have. But here’s the thing. For a variety of reasons, we experience buyer’s remorse, God doesn’t. God has invested too much time and effort into securing our salvation to worry about if we are a good, worthy purchase.

Soli Deo Gloria!
(i.e., only God is glorified!)

* William Baker, 2 Corinthians, College Press NIV Commentary (Joplin, MO: College Press, 1999), 90.

** These statements are aorist past tense participles, pointing to something that happened to us in the past that holds future ramifications. That “something” is our confession and baptism.

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Unregulated Joy

One of my favorite memories is Christmas morning at my Aunt Eunice’s house. Maybe it was because a child’s memory is bigger than the event itself, especially on Christmas. Or maybe it was because Aunt Eunice served us Danish sweet rolls and hot chocolate out of her Santa Claus mugs. And those sweet rolls were like a delicacy eaten only at her house on Christmas morning. And just thinking about them right now, my mouth is salivating, and I’ve gained five pounds.

You should know two things about Aunt Eunice. First, she never married, never having children of her own. Her nieces and nephews were her children, and I’m not sure she understood children. Secondly, Aunt Eunice was not my aunt but was my dad’s aunt. By the time I knew her, she was more like the stately and reserved grandmotherly kind, and was certainly not the “cool” aunt who wanted to take you on the wild trip against your parents’ wishes.

This leads to a pet peeve of Aunt Eunice. She meticulously wrapped each present, and before people thought about recycling, she was into saving wrapping paper to use again for another occasion. Thus, she wanted everyone to unwrap the present just as meticulously as she wrapped it. For an adult that’s easy. For an eight-year-old boy, impossible. And that’s what I mean by her not understanding children. As I was about to tear into the present, you can almost hear her yell, like Elsa Raven from Back to the Future, “Save the paper! Save the paper!”

There’s something about a child’s joyful enthusiasm for life that gets chaffed as we age with time. Such gusto cannot be regulated or shaped by rules but is a natural expression of a wholesome outlook on life.

If you have never seen a child,
               Tear wrapping paper to shreds,
               Or jumping up and down on their beds,
Then you have never seen one embrace the wild.

If you have never seen a girl,
               Splashing around in rain puddles,
               Or spend an afternoon chasing bubbles,
Then you have never seen one give it a whirl.

If you have never seen a boy,
               Play with a truck or a car,
               Or watched him as he ran really fast and really far,
Then you have never seen one in pure joy.

If you have never seen a kid,
               Ride the bus for the first time,
Or dress up for Halloween as a superhero to fight crime,
Then you have never seen really go off the grid

Children capture the enthusiasm and joy of life. They are all in all day, and either fight sleep with just the same effort used throughout the day or embrace sleep and are out all night.

Embracing the enthusiasm and joy of life as a child is one thing. Maintaining the enthusiasm and joy of life throughout adulthood is something else altogether. We get blunted. Or worse, we want to regulate and contain the gusto, only to realize too late that such regulation siphons whatever joy remains.  

As the apostle Paul was motivating the Corinthian church to fulfill their commitment to complete the collection for those suffering under drought conditions in Judea, he could have brought the hammer and forced them to give. He could have regulated an amount for them to give. He could have guilted the church and shamed them for failing. He could have sung all 147 verses of Just As I Am. Instead, he went for the enthusiasm of life where regulation has no place.

First, he drops some bumper sticker statements. He says, “Whoever sows sparingly, reaps sparingly” and the opposite is true too, “whoever sows generously will also reap generously” (2 Cor. 9:8). Drawing from the farming analogy, however much you are willing to plant, it will determine how much you will harvest. There is no guarantee of a bumper crop just because you plant generously. The fact is too many uncontrollable factors are in play like the amount of sunshine and heat versus rain and cold. That said, if you are not generous in sowing, the planted harvest cannot be generous.

The other bumper sticker statement is a classic, “God loves a cheerful giver” (v. 7c). The total times this verse has been quoted before praying over a church collection cannot be numbered. Despite its overuse, it does not negate the fact that God adores the childlike innocence of a person sharing what they have. Instead of Paul forcing the people to give, his desire is that they give without feeling reluctant or under compulsion (v. 7b).

Secondly, Paul enmeshes his exhortation to give with Scripture. In verse six, when Paul talks how sowing generously leads to reaping generously is likely a reference to two verses in Proverbs (11:24-25; 22:8-9). There the passages speak of generosity and a willingness to help others. While neither passage speaks directly to raising funds, both passages lay the groundwork for Paul exhorting generosity with others, especially for those lacking daily needs. In verse seven when Paul mentions giving what his heart has purposed, he likely has in mind Exodus 25:2. With Israel at the base of Mt. Sinai, construction on the tabernacle was in play. Instead of taxing the people and forcing them to give, Moses leaves the amount open based on what each person’s heart prompts him/her to give. This was a freewill offering from Moses, which Paul draws from to motivate the Corinthians to give. Then, Paul directly quotes Psalm 112:9. The Psalmist is extolling the virtues of the righteous man, who is generous and lends generously. While the Psalm lifts God up as this “righteous man,” Paul hopes the Corinthians will follow God’s lead and emulate his generosity.

Finally, Paul avoids mandating or regulating generosity by omitting passages from the Old Testament about giving God a percentage of the income to help others. This is a freewill offering, and regulating percentages prevents it from becoming one’s free will. Also, Paul not only may be trying to avoid limiting Corinth’s generosity but fueling a joyful enthusiasm for being generous. Thus, binding and regulating an amount may very well get the funds collected, but it will be devoid of the cheerfulness God is seeking.

One of the many lessons Dad taught me was to “lay by in store” (1 Cor. 16:2). Every week he gave me an allowance and told me to take ten percent of the allowance as a gift to God. I remember my starting pay level was ten pennies as I put nine of them in my little piggy bank. One penny was placed next to the bank as a visual reminder that that money belonged to God. Looking back now, I wonder what would have happened if Dad had said to me, “Here is your allowance. Decide in your heart how much to give to God and how much to keep.” I’m pretty sure the lesson of saving for the future and regulating gifting to God would have been lost on the five-year-old. I would have dropped all ten pennies into the collection plate, for no other reason, because it made a loud noise. More so to the point, the joy of a child’s generous heart would overshadow the need to regulate giving.

The story is told of a wife who for thirty years suffered abuse at the hands of her husband. Every morning, her husband wrote a “to do” list out on paper before going to work, expecting his wife to complete the list in his absence. Wash the dishes, do the laundry, make up the bed, do work in the yard, pay the bills, and have dinner on the table when he walks through the doors at night.

Out of fear she completed the list the best she could. Sometimes she was successful. Other times she failed. When she failed, he verbally attacked her, and at times physically attacked her too. When she completed the list, it was rarely completed to his satisfaction. Thus, he humiliated her for a lack of competence. Simply put, he was a mean person. And over time he drained the joy out of her.

After thirty years, the man suffered a heart attack and died. He wasn’t a good husband, but he was her husband. Mourning her husband, she packed everything away and put it in the attic.

Time passed. Scars heal. Memories soften the pain.

The woman met man who was anything but her husband. He was kind and gentle. He encouraged her independence and appreciated her as a person. They fell in love and married, and they were both very happy. She found a deep contented peace in her husband and all the hurt and pain were washed away. Joy began to return to the woman.

Years later, it was time to downsize. As they were going through their things, she grabbed a box forgetting it was her first husband’s things. Opening the lid, she saw a piece of paper sitting on top of his things. It was one of his lists. Why she kept it she had no clue. She read the list. Shocked at seeing the list, she read it again before a flood of emotions swept over her. The dams broke and the tears fell like a waterfall. When she finally gained composure, she realized that all the things she did for her first husband, she was doing for her second husband. Only this time, she was driven by joy, not anxiety. She had enthusiasm, not terror. She wanted to make the bed, do the laundry, cook the meals for him. She was no longer driven by fear but compelled by love. She now realized this truth that when she gave of herself first, everything else falls into place, including an enthusiastic joy.

Soli Deo Gloria!
(i.e., only God is glorified!)

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The Giving Me

In the backyard of my childhood home – the purple house for those who know – was a some forty-foot-tall cherry tree that in my memory stretched to the highest peaks of the sky. For a hundred years the tree produced the best Rainier Cherries, provided shade from the heat, and offered a home to the birds that nested in her branches. To everyone who saw her, she was a magnificent tree of great beauty and strength. To me, she might have been my closest friend.

She was the home-base when the Partlow children were playing hide-n-seek. She was a secret hideout for our G.I. Joes to climb in their latest adventure. She was a refuge to get away from life. Sitting on her branches we could read, think, dream, and pick her sweet cherries to snack on through the summer months. She was trusted with our deepest secrets, like hiding our baseball cards and candy that David and I bought before sneaking them past mom into the house. And to be sure, she allowed Patches, our dog, to mark her as his territory.

I remember the day my sister, Deanna, and I were in the tree, and got stuck. We called for dad who grumbled under his breath as he got the ladder out of the shed and came up to retrieve us like some old lady’s cat needing rescued by a fireman. I remember when bees made a hive in the trunk of the tree, and dad had to evict them. I can still hear mom’s promise that if we kids would pick and pit the cherries, she’d bake the cobbler. Mom made the best cherry cobbler. Ever. Yes, I recall the day Lehman Hall, being forewarned of the possible pits in the pie because elementary kids pitted them, bit into his serving only to discover the pit. He laughed and spat the seed out and, without reservations, finished his pie.

Years after selling the home, we found out that the owner had the tree cut down and removed. It was a sad day. She was old and her limbs were frail and known to fall, so I understood the rationale. But never once did she think of her own needs as she selflessly produced fruit, welcomed children to play in her branches, and even allowed a dog, and some boys, to pee on her. But that is, by her own nature, who she is.   

If you crossed the bridge to Shel Silverstein and his beautiful story, The Giving Tree, then you’re probably not a bridge too far. In the story Silverstein walks the reader through a lifetime relationship between a boy and a fruit tree. The boy has wants and needs, and the tree’s only longing is to give the boy whatever he desires: shade in the hot sun, fruit to satisfy his hunger, branches to build a house, his trunk to build a ship, and finally a stump as a place to sit, to think, and to reflect on life. While some might criticize the book for the selfishness of the boy, the focus is on the selflessness of the tree. It is called The Giving Tree for a reason. The tree gives the boy everything, because the tree gave of herself first. It is, by nature, who she is.

For a tree to grow strong, it needs sunshine and rain. Trees also need pruning and for their fruit to be picked for consumption. Giving is an essential purpose, not only for life in general, but specifically trees. Jesus once condemned a tree for acting like it was willing to give its fruit, only to discover it was not bearing any fruit to begin with.

Paul very well could have used the analogy of a giving tree to underscore his message to the Corinthians. He didn’t, but he could have.

The Corinthians needed to make good on their promise to collect funds for the Christians in Judea suffering under a great famine. The church had promised but was now backing off from their commitment. Paul wove some beautiful words together to help motivate them to jumpstart the collecting process. In his first move, he linked grace and joy together as if they were best friends (2 Cor. 8:1-2). He says, “the grace that God has given has welled up into overflowing joy.” Grace and joy in the Greek language were homonyms as they sound alike. By linking joy and grace together with giving, the message is clear in that giving is not only a joyful expression of grace, but that it is rooted in God’s character.

As I reflect on God’s gracious giving, I cannot help but be drawn to Deuteronomy 8:3-4. Moses is preparing Israel to enter Canaan after their forty years of wandering. Those wandering years were driving by Israel’s defiant lack of faith. They constantly tested God’s mettle, even at one point revolting against Moses to elect new officials to return to Egypt. Nevertheless, for forty years they woke up every day to find bread, or Manna, on the ground to collect for their daily meal. Every single day. Then, at the end of their forty-year journey, Moses noted that their clothes never wore out. Sure, children would grow out of their sandals, but they never wore out. Both are signs of God’s gracious giving, for he offered to Israel not what they deserved but what they needed. One could say that because God gave of himself first to Israel, the gracious gifts followed with joy.

Back to Corinth, Paul propped up the churches in Macedonia, not only as an example of those who give, but also as an example of those who allowed God’s joyful grace of giving to work through them. Comparatively, the Macedonians were impoverished. Yet, they begged Paul to participate in this ministry (2 Cor. 8:4). Paul was not about to burden them with this gift, but they forced Paul’s hand. When they did give, they shattered the glass ceiling of expectation, giving far more than even Paul expected.

Paul attributes the key to their generosity in 2 Corinthians 8:5 by saying, “. . . they gave themselves first to the Lord and then to us in keeping with God’s will.” When one empties of him or herself, filling themselves with God’s Spirit, what follows is gracious generosity of giving which becomes second nature.

A couple of Scriptures highlight this principle. For instance, when Lydia opened her heart to the Lord, she opened her home to Paul and the others with him (Act. 16:15). When Paul outlines the Fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23, one of the qualities is “Goodness.” Suffering from the tradition of an early and weak translation, the word rightly means “Generosity.” We might say a good person is a generous person. Paul might say that someone filled with the Spirit is a generous person. When Jesus saw an impoverished widow giving her pennies, which was all she had, into the temple collection, he noted that she had put more in the collection than the wealthy who gave simple leftovers from their abundance (Lk. 21:4). The often-overlooked indictment from this story is that Jesus accuses the wealthy teachers of the law of devouring the homes of the widows (Lk. 20:47).

I remember my Kentucky church hosting a fish fry to raise funds from a flood that wiped out homes and devastated the community. We raised a lot of money because people arrived with open generosity. One elderly couple came to the fish fry. As he wheeled his cancer-ridden wife up to the table where we had a collection box, I watched him pull out a couple of twenty-dollar bills to drop in the box. We should have given him some money as he was in dire need. But his heart was too big, and his generosity had overcome his own needs. For when we open our hearts to the Lord first, then generosity has no limits.

My wife is known for her homemade sourdough bread. It tastes like bread from heaven, and the biggest complement we’ve been given is that it was coined “Jesus Bread” by some in the office when I began working at hospice. Some have asked why we haven’t marketed the bread and sold it. We could have, and that option is always on the table. But here’s the thing: we love giving away the bread. We love the joy of blessing others with our gift. We don’t want to take that away from us or from those we give the bread to.

Wes and Kelsey started dating in high school. On their one-year anniversary, Wes chose not to bring her flowers. Instead, he brought a tree sapling that he planted in Kelsey’s mother’s backyard. Every year, the tree grew and so did their relationship, posing before the tree for an anniversary photo opt. When Wes proposed, he did so at the tree. When they got married, they took wedding pictures with the tree. When they renewed their vows, they did so at the tree. When they were expecting their first child, a photo was taken at the tree. And now with the tree grown, dad Wes hung a swing to its branch to swing their daughter from the tree. With all the changes that are thrust upon us, and the world pulling us in all directions, Kelsey’s comment about the tree says it all, “It’s the roots that give us the wings.”

Did you catch that? The tree is all about giving because when you give of yourself first, then giving anything is easy. With the Spirit’s help, it is who we are by nature. No, we are not a giving tree, but we are a giving me.

Soli Deo Gloria!
(i.e., only God is glorified!)

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Beyond the Senses of Sight, Smell, and Sound

Thomas Anderson had stumbled onto a new reality, the Matrix, but he could not get his head wrapped around its ramifications quickly enough. Federal Agents were hunting him down. A simple computer programmer, Anderson was also a cybercriminal going by the alias name, Neo. Thus, Federal Agents leaving their calling cards is not what someone like Neo wants to encounter. Federal Agents, though, weren’t the only ones interested in Neo.

In the movie by the same name, the Matrix is a computer-generated simulation, like a virtual reality, created by intelligent machines to trap and control humans in a dystopian future. In essence what we see every day is the Matrix. Unbeknownst to us, the reality is that our bodies are trapped in a cocoon and its energy is used to feed our captures, the Machines. Neo’s discovery brought unwanted attention to him. Those hunting him were not from the Government, they were facsimiles of the Machines.

Morpheus, a leader of an underground freedom movement, was looking for Neo as well. Since Neo had inadvertently broken the code to the Matrix, Morpheus wanted to recruit Neo’s help. In meeting him and explaining the backstory of the Matrix, Morpheus offered Neo two pills. The blue pill returns Neo to the Matrix forgetting his encounter with Morpheus. The red pill takes Neo down the rabbit hole to experience a new truth. A darker dystopian truth.

The premise of the movies entertains the possibility that our senses betray the greater hidden reality revealing itself around us.  

The Bible often speaks of a dual reality. The physical existence around us appeals to our senses, while the spiritual realm experienced through faith is beyond sight, smell, and sound.

Elisha was in Dothan when the king of Aram sent his troops to capture him. Rumor had it, God revealed to Elisha Aram’s secret military plans, and in turn disclosed those plans to Israel. Like the 2019 Houston Astros or Bill Belichick’s New England Patriots, the prophet was stealing signs. In retaliation the King of Aram sent his entire army to capture Elisha at Dothan. When Elisha’s servant saw the massive army, he was in fact rightly nervous. Reassuring him, Elisha said, “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them” (2 King. 6:16). I can see the servant doing a head count. “Well, there are two of us and a gazillion of them. How can you say we outnumber them?” Elisha prayed for God to open his eyes to reveal the truth. Reveal, God did. Suddenly, the servant saw that the hills swarmed with the army of God. What we see before us with our eyes is not always reality.

The first three chapters of Revelation reveal dark times for the churches in Asia Minor. Roman Imperial propaganda was either attacking the church for being unpatriotic or seducing the church to accept Roman cultural. With the pressure on the church to conform or to face retribution, Christians were facing a dark reality: churches were buckling under the weight of persecution or selling-out under the pressure to compromise. Chapter four opens with John being invited to look into heaven, and for the rest of the book he discovers the reality behind this world. What goes on down here has an impact on what goes on up there, and vice-versa. In short, God will fight for his church against any force that either seduces or persecutes his people.

Both stories highlight an important message. Something beyond our senses of sight, smell, and sound is happening around us.

A preacher was shaking hands with his members following a worship service. Whatever the topic of the sermon was, it challenged the way people perceived the world around them. One fellow told the preacher, “That sounds really good in a church building, but in the real world, it doesn’t work that way.”

He has a point, doesn’t he? Themes like forgiveness, kindness, gentleness, and grace don’t work well in a “dog-eat-dog” world where we are, in the words of Norm, “wearing milk bone underwear.”

The preacher addressed the member with his own gentle-kindness and grace by reminding him, “What we do here on Sunday morning is the real world, and what we do the rest of the week is a shadow of this reality.”

It’s likely that in 2 Corinthians 4:3 Paul is being accused of a veiled gospel, keeping people from knowing the truth. His opponents believed that Paul was purposely holding out on the Corinthians the complete gospel message. Paul flipped the narrative telling his church that it was not him who is veiling their sights, but the veil is on those who are perishing. Those who refuse to give the gospel serious attention are the ones who are veiled. In essence those who tune-out Paul’s preaching and tune-into his antagonists’ preaching are operating under a veil. They cannot see or perceive the truth around them. Thus, their reality is distorted.

Ultimately, a third party is at work, and he’s very crafty at what he does. Paul says, “the god of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelievers” (4:4). The phrase, “the god of this age” is clearly a reference to Satan, the Adversary, who works against Christ to stop the gospel from penetrating the darkness. Satan has always been at work, and while Paul calls him the “god of this age,” he works in any age to veil the people around him. The “unbelievers,” as Paul notes, are those perishing because they turn a blind eye to the gospel. That said, those who are unbelievers and perishing could also be aligned with Paul’s opponents, who stand in opposition of the gospel message he preaches. They believe a gospel message, but they do not believe the message Paul preaches, a message where the power of the gospel is displayed in the weakness and frailty of humanity. Such a message is the alternative reality to their way of thinking.

In a world of darkness, the answer is not to embrace more darkness but to allow the light of God’s gospel to shine through us (4:6). In our brokenness we bring healing. In our humility we bring confidence. And in our pain, we bring a balm. As Paul will conclude, “For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake” (4:6). It is not about us, but about Jesus. And when our role is noted, it is the servant’s role who seeks no glory nor attention, but who simply point toward Jesus.

Such an approach to ministry is counter intuitive. Those who rely on their sight, smell, and sound will believe that successful ministry has a charismatic preacher (or dynamic worship), who is eloquent with words, and shames those who are a challenge to their position of power. Serving one another in humility is like Neo grappling with the Matrix. In the real world, it can’t work. But who said we are to measure success by the world’s standard?

Years ago, at a small university in the Midwest, a student was getting frustrated by the lack of attention the community bathrooms were given by the university janitorial service. The toilets were unclean. No, they were disgusting. He reported his displeasure to the R.A., but no action was ever taken. The R.A., frustrated himself by the situation, assured the student that he had filed the proper paperwork and completed the correct requisition forms. After a month of dealing with the unsanitary environment, the student went over everyone’s head to the President of the University. He made the appointment.

On the day of the meeting the President greeted the young man and listened intently to the complaint of the student. He asked for clarification, like “how long this problem has been going on” and “who has he talked to about the situation.” The student knew he had the listening ear of the President, and at the end of the meeting, when the President assured the student that the bathrooms would be clean, the student believed him.

Sure enough, the next morning as the student got up to go to class, the bathrooms were clean. Not just one toilet either, but all of them, and the sink, and the floor. The student was thrilled and thought that he should send a thank-you card to the President. He never did, but he thought about it. In the meantime, the bathroom was never dirty again.

On the last day of the semester, the student set his alarm early so that he could get a good night’s sleep and get up to review for his hardest final. As he ventured into the bathroom, he could not believe his eyes. Bending over the toilet with a scrub brush in his hand was none other than the University president.

The world we live in limits our vision and feeds us misinformation about who we are and what we do. Our selfish egos are stroked and fed. The world that calls to us is beyond our senses of sight, sound, and smell. It is in that reality we are unveiled and step into the light to embrace Paul’s words, “For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake” (4:6).

Soli Deo Gloria!
(i.e., only God is glorified!)

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The Measure of Sincerity

Nine years into Charles Schultz’s Peanuts strip, he introduced us to an off-panel character who captured the imagination of his readers. While this character never made an appearance in the strip itself, nor did he have any speaking or trombone lines, he inspired many strips and even one TV special. The part religious messaging and part myth-making character was the Great Pumpkin. And Linus Van Pelt was at the center of the story telling as the Great Pumpkin’s greatest advocate and prophet.

Sure, the whole world held onto Santa Claus; Linus held onto the Great Pumpkin. The world embraced Christmas; Linus embraced Halloween. The world looked to the North Pole; Linus looked to the pumpkin patch in his own neighborhood. Santa never disappointed; the Great Pumpkin . . . well, he kind of smashed the hopes of Linus like the comedian Gallagher smashing pumpkins.

You likely know his story. On Halloween night the Great Pumpkin rises from the Pumpkin Patch to deliver toys to all the good little children of the world. The line between Santa and the Great Pumpkin is razor thin, but brilliantly written. The key difference between the two is “sincerity.”

The Great Pumpkin chooses the “most sincere” pumpkin patch from which to rise and then to deliver his gifts. Sincerity. It’s not the most measurable attribute. If Linus told us that the Great Pumpkin chose his patch from the biggest pumpkins, then size is measurable. If he told us that The Great Pumpkin chose the patch with the most pumpkins, then volume is measurable. As it stands, sincerity is difficult to measure, even if Linus claims otherwise, as he says, “I don’t see how a pumpkin patch could be more sincere than this one. You can look around, and there’s not a sign of hypocrisy.” Yea, I’m convinced, and I’m sure you are too.

Sincerity is the absence of hypocrisy, deceit, and pretense. Sincerity is infused with genuineness. A small child wraps their arms around you, or offers you a bite of their candy, or invites you to a tea party is working from a place of sincerity. We don’t question motives. We don’t wonder if there is an agenda. However, when a child starts to grow and mature into adulthood, depending on our perception of the child, when they do something that looks kind, we start to wonder if there is some hidden motive.

In the TV show, Leave it to Beaver, no one really questions if Beaver did something nice or said something kind to someone. Beaver had a tender heart and wasn’t poisoned by hypocrisy, or deceit, or pretense. That said, when Beaver’s brother’s best friend, Eddie Haskell, smiled and schmoozed adults, his hypocrisy was like a flashing neon sign. He had an agenda. He was covering up something. We knew it and the adults on TV knew it too, they just allowed him to play out his plan. Normally, we can spot a fraud. Normally.

The Corinthian church was infiltrated by a group of outsiders who attacked Paul’s credibility. They, the antagonists, leveled accusations against him that he lied, had broken his promises, and was untrustworthy. Paul pushed back. He wasn’t the one lacking sincerity, they were.

Paul tells the Corinthians, “Unlike so many, we do not peddle the word of God for profit. On the contrary, in Christ we speak before God with sincerity, like men sent from God” (2 Cor. 2:17). It’s clear that the “so many” is the antagonistic group that had infiltrated Corinth. The phrase, “peddle the word of God for profit,” is an afront to the deceptive practices of these people. It’s hardly flattery. His insult was a backhanded compliment.

“Peddling” holds a negative connotation for Paul. He is not against someone selling his wares, as even Paul himself worked as a tentmaker in Corinth (Act. 18:3). Earning an honest wage is commendable. That is not what is happening with these outsiders getting access to the church. What they are doing is darker. A lot darker. “Peddling for profit” was an ancient marketplace term for vendors who tipped the scales or water downed their wine, employing fraudulent means to increase profits. For the antagonists, they were hawking their wares and using their ministry as a cover for shady business practices – it was a sham. What they were peddling was not tents or dry goods, but the gospel itself. They were compromising the gospel of Christ, and at its root of such insincerity was greed. It’s always greed.

We’ve never quite gotten past Gordon Gekko’s 1997’s Wall Street soliloquy,

“The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed in all its forms. Greed for life, money, love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind.”

I’m not sure Hollywood was trying to push the greed agenda or was simply acknowledging the elephant in the room, regarding Wall Street and the American mindset. They don’t need to. Society seems driven by the belief that greed really is good. Look at today’s inflation and compare it to the record profits in the gas and food industry; their profit margins seem to be fueled by greed at the expense of consumers. Note that the financial rift between the workers’ pay benefit to their CEO’s counterpart has widened since 1965. It’s grown some 350%, and whose paying for the chasm? The American worker is. Our TV airways are filled with charlatan preachers bilking their audience for wealth beyond measure, not to further their ministry, but line their pockets. Such preaching ministry is not limited to the big, fancy Televangelists or Mega Church leaders, but includes anyone who holds their naïve followers in the palm of their hands. When the core value is greed, can you really trust their sincerity?

While Paul undermines the antagonist’s sincerity, he reinforces his own integrity. By offering four simple statements, he not only distinguishes himself from his opponents, but also underscores the seriousness of his own calling. First, he speaks before God “with sincerity” as his agenda is pure. He has checked his motives at the door, they have not. One source of conflict between Paul and the Corinthians was his refusal to accept financial pay from the church. Reaching back to his first letter, Paul hints that money was coming between him and the Corinthians (1 Cor. 9:6). In the Greco-Roman world, Sophists went from town to town to share their philosophy of life and were financially supported by their followers. Paul’s refusal to accept support caused a rift filled by the antagonists who expected pay for their services. They passed themselves off, not only as preachers, but as sophists selling a philosophy. Paul was redefining the modern Sophist by refusing a salary. All they were doing was exploiting the church, something Paul never did (e.g., 2 Cor. 12:14-18).

Secondly, he speaks as “from God,” which means his message is not his own, but its source derives from God. Beyond modern day issues of inspiration, Paul may have in mind his ambassador image from 2 Cor. 5:20. He is God’s ambassador, and his role dictates the message he is commissioned to speak. He does not speak for himself, but for God. In the case of 5:20, it’s the message of reconciliation.

Thirdly, he speaks “before God” and “in the presence of God.” Paul is very much aware and in awe of who is present when he speaks to the Corinthians. Throughout this letter, Paul self-discloses his awareness of God in his words. In 4:2 he shares, “We renounce secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor distort the word of God.” In 5:10 he reveals, “For we all must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him . . ..” And in 12:19b he articulates, “We have been speaking in the sight of God as those in Christ . . ..” Paul is acutely aware of God’s presence in his life and how it shapes not only his messaging, but his integrity.

Finally, he speaks “in Christ” which may very well draw him back to the Acts 9 conversion on the Damascus Road which subsequently united him in Christ. He speaks out of that unique experience.*

These four simple statements reinforce Paul’s integrity, who has no agenda but is sincere when dealing with the Corinthians. The opponents, significantly less sincere, if not plain shysters, cannot be trusted.

During the 1980’s I knew a preacher who was in high demand. He spoke at all the popular gatherings, authored multiple books which were popular among my tribe, preached for a large influential church, and was a leading voice of hope by guiding churches away from legalism and into grace. For that, he wore a target on his back and was often verbally abused by dissenting voices. One time I witnessed a speaker at a forum harshly address him. When I looked to see his reaction, he was smiling and shaking his head. No anger and no thought of revenge. I saw the grace he preached materialize under fire. More importantly, at his large and influential church, he could have written his own check and demanded a greater pay package. Instead, because of his book deals and a family farm income, he refused multiple pay raises from his church, opting for those monies to be redistributed elsewhere. Say what you will, but if greed is the measuring tape for sincerity, he measured up.

The key to measuring one’s sincerity may not be revealed by any one specific action of the person. It may be measured by what a person is willing to give or share verses what they are willing to take or extort from the people around them. One thing for sure, it certainly cannot be measured from a pumpkin patch.

Soli Deo Gloria!
(i.e., only God is glorified!)

*These four statements are influenced by Paul Barnett, The Second Letter the Corinthians, New International Commentary on the New Testament.

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On the Back Burner

Sometimes life makes you feel like you’ve been placed on the backburner of the stove in God’s kitchen. Forgotten, whatever is being sauteed in your life is now burning. Smoke rises and sets off the fire alarm, while God does nothing to intervene. At least that is how it feels. You’ve been there. So have I. So has a New York city grandmother.

On a cold winter’s night in 1935, in a New York City courtroom, a tattered old woman stood before the judge, charged with stealing a loaf of bread. The storekeeper was pressing charges. The woman pleaded her case, “My daughter’s husband has deserted her. She is sick and her children are starving.” The shopkeeper refused to back down and drop the charges, saying, “It’s a bad neighborhood, your honor, and she’s got to be punished to teach other people a lesson.”

The judge sighed. He turned to the old woman and said, “I’ve got to punish you; the law makes no exceptions. Ten dollars or ten days in jail.”

And that is life on the back burner. No one listens, not even God. No one cares as hope evaporates like forgotten boiling water on the back burner of a stove.

Would it surprise you if I told you that Paul carried similar feelings?

By 2 Corinthians 2 Paul is in the midst of defending his decision not to visit this church, and his decision did not sit well with certain members who were influenced by outsiders. Instead, Paul dispatched a letter and began the long wait. Here is Paul’s description.

Now when I went to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ and found that the Lord had opened a door for me, I still had no peace of mind because I did not find my brother Titus there. So I said good-bye to them and went on to Macedonia (2 Cor. 2:13-14).

The situation in Corinth had grown toxic. The church attacked him like a rapid dog, and he was still licking his wounds. Having written a letter, which caused him great distress (2 Cor. 2:4), he outlined expected behavior. Without a reliable mail system, he dispatched Titus with the letter in hand to Corinth. He would meet with the church, read the letter to them, and gather a response to report back to Paul. All of that took time and introduced a waiting game. No email. No texting. No phones. Paul wrote a letter. Gave it to Titus who travels to Corinth. Titus reads the letter and allows the church to absorb the message before assessing their response. Then Titus makes the journey to find Paul.

That is a long time to wait. What happens in the meantime? In the void of unknown information, we tend to fill in the gap. No matter how hard we try, we insert information to complete the void, and it’s usually the worst-case scenario. Someone appears to ignore you; you assume they are angry with you. Your child is late coming home, you presume that there has been an accident. The boss calls you into his office and you start thinking, “What have I done wrong this time?” God won’t answer your prayer and you wonder, “What sin is in my life?” You’re arrested for stealing bread in the wake of the Great Depression and the judge with the law stands against you. So now you find yourself on the backburner of life and everything feels likes it’s about to go up in smoke.

Lloyd C. Douglas might have stumbled upon a solution. You might remember him as a minister and writer whose works included The Robe and Magnificent Obsession. As a university student, Douglas

lived in a boarding house. On the first floor was an elderly, retired music teacher, who was now an invalid and unable to leave the apartment.

Douglas said that every morning they had a ritual they would go through together. He would come down the steps, open the old man’s door and ask, “Well, what’s the good news?” The old man would pick up his tuning fork, tap it on the side of his wheelchair, and say, “That’s Middle C! It was Middle C yesterday; it will be Middle C tomorrow; it will be Middle C a thousand years from now. The tenor upstairs sings flat, the piano across the hall is out of tune, but my friend, that is Middle C!”

The old man discovered one thing that he could depend, one constant reality in life. He could have felt like he was on the back burner of life, I know I might have felt like that like. Instead of filling in the gaps with anxiety, lies, or fake truth, he chose something that wouldn’t change. He remembered Middle C. That is what he attached to his life too.*

Troas was the meeting place (2:12). Paul ventured to the city and waited for Titus to arrive with news. Titus never arrived. In the meantime, Paul preached in Troas, to which he claims, “the Lord had opened a door for (him).” Good things were happening in Troas. People were receptive to the gospel. Unlike the Corinthians, those in Troas trusted Paul and made course corrections to their lives. God was working. God was saving. But Paul found no resolution. No Titus. No news. No peace.

We’ve experienced the silence. A text is unanswered. A phone call is not returned. In its spot, anxiety.

With a plan in place, the backup was for Paul and Titus to meet in Macedonia, likely Philippi (2:13). With no clear directions from God, Paul was filled with apprehensive. His pot was simmering on the cusp of boiling over. Uneasiness. Worriedness. Anxious. He left a booming and productive ministry in search for answers he may or may not find. In truth, answers he may or may not want to know. And for now, we’re at a cliff-hanger and don’t know how this situation will get resolved. For Paul, he headed for Macedonia to wait for Titus on news of Corinth.

We live in a world where the forgotten backburner is so prevalent. We walk into people’s lives who feel discarded by society and abandoned by God. They live with broken promises to be there to the end. We bring a smile. We confidently step into their lives offering hope in a moment when they feel hopeless. They have filled in the gap with negative messaging, and we have the chance to redirect their thinking to believe again. To hope again. To love again. So, we sit and talk to our patients. We hold their hands. We listen to their stories, or complaints. We act for their good. We walk with them on a path that is difficult to navigate. And soon the pot that looked to be on the verge of boiling starts to simmer. Peace reclaims its place while hope is restored.

Still, sometimes life makes you feel like you’ve been placed on the backburner of the stove in God’s kitchen. Forgotten, whatever is being sauteed in your life is now burning. Smoke rises setting off the fire alarm, while God does nothing to intervene. At least that is how it feels. You’ve been there. So have I. So has a New York city grandmother.

On a cold winter’s night in 1935, in a New York City courtroom, a tattered old woman stood before the judge, charged with stealing a loaf of bread. The storekeeper was pressing charges. The woman pleaded her case, “My daughter’s husband has deserted her. She is sick and her children are starving.” The shopkeeper refused to back down and drop the charges, saying, “It’s a bad neighborhood, your honor, and she’s got to be punished to teach other people a lesson.”

The judge sighed. He turned to the old woman and said, “I’ve got to punish you; the law makes no exceptions. Ten dollars or ten days in jail.”

And that is life on the back burner. No one listens, not even God. No one cares as hope evaporates like forgotten boiling water on the back burner.

However, the judge that evening was no ordinary judge, but the sitting mayor. Having dismissed the judge earlier in the evening, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia – yea, that LaGuardia who has an airport named for him – was the sit-in judge. And while he was pronouncing sentence, LaGuardia reached into his wallet, took out a ten-dollar bill, and threw it into his hat with these words, “Here’s the ten-dollar fine, which I now remit, and furthermore, I’m going to fine everyone in the courthouse fifty cents for living in a town where a person has to steal bread so that her grandchildren can eat. Mr. Bailiff, collect the fines and give them to the defendant.”

The following day, a New York newspaper reported, “Forty-seven dollars and fifty cents were turned over to the bewildered old grandmother who had stolen a loaf of bread to feed her starving grandchildren. Making forced donations were seventy petty criminals, a few New York policemen, and a red-faced store-keeper.”

It’s a reminder to us that no matter how we feel at the time, to God, we are never a forgotten pot on the back burner.

Soli Deo Gloria!
(i.e., only God is glorified!)

* A story by Max Lucado.

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The Freedom to Play in Grace

Anyone who has been around sports knows that a coach has favorites. Right or wrong, he trusts certain players to play. Those players, who perform under the favor of the coach, play without fear. They know that their coach will not remove them from the game no matter the errors they commit. Other players, who are not under the coach’s grace, play in fear. You can see it in their timidity. You can see it in their eyes after committing an error. They look directly at the bench to see if the coach will send in a substitute. When the coach does substitute, the player steps off the court or field in shame, as their chin rests upon their chest. How much better will a player play knowing the coach will not yank him off the field for making mistakes?

My collegiate coach was the epitome of success. By my senior year our cross-country team had won the conference meet seventeen years in a row and twenty-four out of twenty-five years. Oddly enough, his background was basketball, not running. When he began his coaching career, he coached basketball. As much as he loved to play the game, he hated coaching because he despised taking kids out of the game for committing errors. He hated seeing the fear in their eyes. Loving the value of sports, he shifted to running where each runner could excel on his/her own merit. He taught self-discipline and inner motivation. He encouraged us to keep our moral and spiritual lives as disciplined as our running, for he understood the stranglehold that guilt and shame have on people and its debilitating impact on athletes. He wanted us to run in grace, not guilt.  

In a performance-based environment, success is tenuous. Fear, guilt, and shame tend to hold the upper hand and fuel motivation, a fuel like using diesel to a car needing unleaded gas. Fear gnaws at people believing something dangerous will occur or that failure is around the corner. Guilt, real or imagined, captures the emotional aftermath of failing. Shame is the painful feeling of humiliation. All of these are real, and we’ve all experienced them at one time or another. Fear: ask a child who has seen the anger in a parent about to respond to their defiance. Guilt: ask anyone who has ever been pulled over by a cop. Shame: ask anyone who had to make the amusement park “walk of shame.” Fear, guilt, and shame are interwoven into the fabric of this world, and no matter how hard we try, we cannot escape those feelings.

Church is supposed to be a different story. Jesus never motivated out of fear, guilt, or shame, instead he motivated people out of freedom and grace. They had a choice. We always have a choice. The younger brother in Luke 15 was allowed to walk away while the father never shamed him for leaving, or for that matter, for returning home. Zaccheus was never guilted into giving away his wealth but did so in freedom and grace. It wasn’t the fear of Jesus that caused Peter to sink into the sea, but the fear of the waves. Still, the church has used fear, guilt, and shame to motivate members to attend services, to participate in ministries, to keep them on the straight and narrow, and to give their lives to Jesus. Let’s be honest, if you provide too much freedom and grace, what’s the end result? Oh, that question in an of itself is rooted in fear.

The Corinthian church needed motivation to change. It was a mess. A big, dirty mess. It’s not the kind of church you want to bring home to meet the family. The church was imploding from division. They divided over their favorite preacher. They divided over spiritual gifts. Their divisiveness exploited the socio-economic tension, of all places, at the Lord’s Table. At least one family was embroiled in a lawsuit against another family. They saw themselves as wise when they acted foolishly. They prided themselves on embracing a man who was sleeping with his stepmother. Idolatry held the church in its clutches. They demanded their rights while claiming to follow a Savior who gave up his rights. That’s just Paul’s first letter. His second letter may be even worse. Idolatry still had its claws clenched into their lives. They had bailed on promises made to Paul to collect monies to send as aid to the Jerusalem church. They allowed a third party to come between them and their preacher, maligning Paul’s character in the process. What I know about the Corinthian Church is that I wouldn’t want to preach for them, much less be a member of that community. And if you were honest, you wouldn’t either.

Paul could have employed fear, guilt, and shame. He could have. If I was in his shoes, I would have. I would have reached deep into the Jonathan Edwards sermon that we are nothing more than being held in the hands of an angry God, standing on the very fringes of hell’s fire. More fear. More guilt. More shame. More control.

But Paul is not me. He confronts the sin in Corinth head on, but always as a pastor who loves his flock. And here, while he is defending himself against the accusation that he breaks his promises, he appeals to a promise-keeping God who himself creates an environment of gracious freedom by removing the fear, shame, and guilt from the equation. He’s not bringing in a substitute, he’s playing the team he’s called. Here is what Paul says,

Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come (2 Cor. 1:21-22).

Paul tells us that God makes us stand firm. We do not secure ourselves, but God makes us secure and steady in Christ. It’s all on God. At our strongest, we are too weak to play or to fight. To underscore this, Paul gives us three descriptions of God’s power. He does so in very strong, definitive wording that is unmovable.

First power: God anoints us. Anointing was common for healing. More importantly, prophets and kings were anointed as being set apart for service under God. The word used here for anointing is the same word for Christ, carrying with it Messianic overtones. One might say, since we are anointed in Christ we are linked to him for his purpose. All of God’s promises are fulfilled in Christ where we are the recipients.

Second power: God puts his seal of ownership on us. A seal is an official emblem by a lord, governor, or king. By placing his seal on us, likely a reference to the Holy Spirit, we now belong to God. We are now in his possession. Remember the Toy Story moment when Woody checks the bottom of his boot to find Andy’s name? Woody knows he belongs to Andy. More importantly, Andy realizes that Woody belongs to him because his name is on his boot. Essentially, God is looking to see if he has sealed us with his Spirit, and those whom he has belong to him. No one else.  

Third power: Paul uses marketing or banking terminology of earnest money. Suppose you are shopping for a car, and you find it. Your dream car. You want it, but don’t have the money. In a bind, you make arrangements to secure the car with a downpayment. The dealer or owner holds the car until you come back with the complete amount. The downpayment guarantees full payment. Similarly, God giving us his Holy Spirit is only a down payment guaranteeing that when he returns, he will make good on his payment, and we will be filled to the full with his Spirit.

All of this effort by God to anoint us, to seal us, and to giving us a deposit guaranteeing what is to come is the means for us to play in grace. If Paul argues to the dysfunctional Corinthian church that God is creating the freedom to succeed, what does that say about you and me? It’s like we can’t fail.

The summer after I graduated from high school, I worked for a man who owned a gas station about a half a mile from where I lived. His little gas station had a good reputation in the community and for all accounts he was a successful businessman. He was a Korean War vet who ran his business like a min-military unit. He barked orders and made his employees toe the line; mistakes were not tolerated. He had mystery shoppers who came to the station for service just to report back to him. In Oregon self-service pumps were banned and attendants pumped the gas for the customer. We had to wash every windshield and ask to check the oil. The station had to be kept neat and clean, and when it wasn’t he let us know in no uncertain terms his expectations. We kept busy, and if we weren’t busy, we created work to do or looked busy because attendants sitting around was not a look he wanted. When our tills were short, he took it out of our paycheck. I was the recipient of numerous berating’s that summer. I learned a lot from him, I grew to appreciate and respect him, but if truth be known he operated out of fear. His employees, those hired to pump the gas, did not respect the man and often feared losing their jobs at any given moment.

Four years later I spent the summer in Nashville, Tennessee living with my brother to spend more time with Cile. My summer job was working for a small cookie company. The owner discovered his grandmother’s recipe for chocolate chip cookies and began to market them. By the time I was hired they had moved to a small warehouse and made a half-dozen kinds of cookies: chocolate chip, white chocolate, butterscotch, peanut butter, et.al. With convection ovens and industrial mixers, my job was to mix the dough and bake them. The owner of the company expected and anticipated that mistakes would be made. Cookies break and recipes get botched, and the boss would simply say, “I’ve ruined plenty of batches, you know where the garbage can is.” I loved working for this boss and because his work environment was built-in with a freedom to fail, I gave him my best.

As evident from these verses from 2 Corinthians, God is more like the second boss than the first. He has created an environment for us to play with freedom in grace so that we can give him our all without fear of failure. Even when we do fail him.

Soli Deo Gloria!
(i.e., only God is glorified!)

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The Lies We Believe

We live in a world of lies. We are either convinced by them or are being convinced of them. The result is that the lies we believe are the lies we embrace, and the lies we perpetuate will shape our character.

Years ago, I walked into the office of a church member who I was scheduled to have lunch with. He was on the phone. I waited in the lobby, but I could see he was deep in a serious conversation with the person on the other end of the line. I waited as the conversation felt like it was part of a “never-ending story.” When he hung up the phone, he came toward me. Shaking hands, we began to exit his office, and he said, “They’ll lie to you, Jon. They’ll lie to you.”

To this day I do not know what the nature of the conversation was, nor who the person was on the other end of the phone. I do remember his words and that they remain crystal clear today, “They’ll lie to you.” And they will.

Lies come in all shapes and sizes, and colors too. They infiltrate our society and our lives, not only becoming part of our vernacular but framework and mindset to understand the world. If unguarded, lies will fester like a cancer and before we know how deceived we are the prognosiswill be terminal. The problem is that we are so easily deceived.

Just ask the radio listeners in 1938 to Orson Welles’ Mercury Theater on the Air program, who believed that Martians were invading the world. Radio then was today’s version of YouTube or TikTok, and with Wells purchasing the rights to HG Wells’ novel, The War of the Worlds, he set about presenting it in dramatic fashion. As the program unveiled landing sites with play-by-play destruction, pandemonium broke out across the nation. People were reacting to events based on a lie.

Or, just ask the Enron employees who were encouraged to reinvest back into their corporation. Believing their company was sound and profitable, they lost everything in less than six months. Actually, the money believed they had in stocks never existed. Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling developed a means to exploit loopholes in their accounting to hide billions of dollars in debt from shareholders. Employees invested, not in their future, but in the CEO’s lies.

Or, just ask the good German Christians who supported the Nazi Regime. Following the demoralizing defeat of World War I, Hitler used his charisma and vision for a new and improved Germany. The Jews were not only excluded from their “New World Order” but were scapegoated and blamed for their nation’s problems. The Jews were criminalized, dehumanized, and victimized. Tapping into the anger of the people, Hitler called the Jews, “parasites,” “race-tuberculosis,” “blood suckers,” and “vermin.” How could good German Christians be accomplices to the genocide of an entire race of people? Allow a big lie to be told over and over until you start to believe it, then rationalize it, then act on it.

Andy Andrews might have said it best when talking about one of his childhood friends, “The truth has no chance against such a convincing lie.”* He may be on to something.

The big lie of the ancient world is so foreign to the contemporary American culture, it’s often minimized and mocked. The big lie? Idolatry.

We don’t understand it. By either caricaturing the wood and stone carvings or over-simplifying it to hours watching TV or electronic devices, we reveal our ignorance. While idolatry offered lies about answers to life issues – such as explaining the turning of the seasons or why tragedy strikes – their fake answers were that the gods were angry with humanity or in a battle with each other and the fallout impacts life on earth. By removing the mystery of the universe, they felt they had more control over their lives. All of this is and continues to haunt us today. It was all a lie, but it felt like the truth to them. If we were honest, we’d fall for it too.

From the Ancient Near East to Greco-Roman times, three factors helped drive idolatry. First, sex sells, and it has always been marketed. Fertility rituals ensured successful crops and were always coordinated to temple prostitution. If you can imagine a modern-day marketing firm selling idolatry and linking it to religion and sensuality, then you can begin to understand the draw. Secondly, money talks. Ensuring that the right amount of rain will fall on the land is essential for an agrarian society. The rain makes the crops multiply. Rain allows grass to turn green and to grow so that herds and cattle may graze. This rain, they believed, was controlled by the gods. In our sexually saturated society, consumed with money and building wealth, we can understand the temptation to trust anything to increase pleasure and profit. Finally, politics warps. When a king imposes his idolatrous worldview on the people, this leaves very little room for resistance. From King Ahab to Nebuchadnezzar to the Caesar’s’ imperial worship, the pressure to fall in line removes the wiggle room for the individual to ignore or even protest. Standing against a king held deadly consequences. These reasons – sex sells, money talks, and politics warps – fueled the big lie of idolatry.

Corinth had its own struggle with believing the big lie. Paul had already warned his church to stay away from born-again Christians who worship idols (1 Cor. 5:9). With further questions, Paul spent three chapters helping the church navigate the culture of idolatry (1 Cor. 8-10). Unfortunately, the issue moves beyond the big lie, to the role and place of the pagan temple in the lives of the people. It wasn’t just a place of worship but served as the community center for the people as well. Banquets were held at the temple. Weddings took place in the temple, and if your neighbor invited you to his daughter’s wedding, what are you going to do? Work guilds held meetings at the temple, and if you were a member of the fishing or hospice guild, and you didn’t attend, you could be blackballed. What do you do? The struggle was real and the temptation to buy into the big lie was always present. Always.

Paul tackles idolatry and its lie one more time with the Corinthians, and he pulls no punches. First, he frames his argument in 2 Corinthians 6:14 by prohibiting the yoking of believers with unbelievers. The use of yoke takes the reader back to Deuteronomy 22:10 where Moses forbade yoking oxen to donkeys. Foreshadowing our own “cruelty to animal laws,” the oxen’s size and strength would overpower and kill the donkey. The two are incompatible. Paul views such yoking as a real threat to the life of the believer using words like “purify” and “holiness” while avoiding anything to “contaminate the body and spirit” (2 Cor. 7:2).

Secondly, Paul poses a series of five rhetorical questions (6:14b-16a) where he basically asks what truth has anything to do with lies. Clearly, the answer is “nothing.” Idolatry is the big lie and Jesus is the Truth, and the two merging is like food contaminated with salmonella poisoning. Even though the idolatry draw is so magnetically powerful, and the lie feels so right, Paul wants Corinth to fight and resist its pull.

Finally, Paul quotes a series of Scriptures in rapid fire. The quote in 6:14b is particularly interesting. “Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you” is from Isaiah 52:11. It’s the hopeful instructions to Israel as they see the day when they will return home from exile. The very lie they believed was that lie that shaped their character, which led to their destruction, which ushered them into exile. That lie is the one Isaiah says to avoid at all costs. The warning to the Corinthians is that something more is at stake than a home in Jerusalem, but a home with God.  

We swim in a world of lies. They are all around us, enclosing in on us while suffocating the truth. Like an onion, the more layers of lies we peel off, the more painful they become until our eyes water and our hearts break. If everyone has their own truth, then it’s likely everyone believes their own lie. The struggle to find the truth is real. Herein lies the hope. We can take steps to curb the onslaught of lies, many of which we likely believe.

First, open our eyes to how many lies are woven into the fabric of society. Simple awareness goes a long way in stopping lies from shaping our character and defining who we are. Secondly, if it’s too sensational to be true, then it’s likely a lie. Lies will lead you into a rabbit hole till you are lost in its caverns with no way of escape. Their magnetism will suck you in convincing you how everyone is involved in its plot. But if you cannot pull off a surprise party for a family member, how can you expect the whole world to be involved in a lie? If it’s too good to be true, it is. And finally, realize that sex, money, and politics fueled idolatry in the ancient world, and it continues to fuel the new form of modern-day idolatry. We need to live with this tension that all three are necessary for living. That said, all three will distort reality making you believe you’re serving God when in truth, you are really serving something evil. Something very evil.

It’s the lies we believe as my friend reminded me, “They’ll lie to you, Jon. They’ll lie to you.” Or, as Andy Andrews once said, “The truth has no chance against such a convincing lie.”* He may be right. But Jesus countered, promising, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (Jn. 8:32-32). And it will.

Soli Deo Gloria!
(i.e., only God is glorified!)

* Andy Andrews, Baseball, Boys, and Bad Words.

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A Vision Where the Content of Character Counts

On a hot and muggy summer day in 1963 some 250,000 people gathered on the Mall in DC for the March on Washington to bring awareness to the civil and economic rights for people of color. America was in the throes of the Civil Rights Era, and the movement would reach a climax at this gathering. Ten keynote speakers, largely forgotten overtime, addressed the crowd prepping them for the final speaker who delivered the concluding keynote of the day: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And deliver, he did.

Historians rank King’s I Have a Dream speech as one of the greatest orations ever delivered. He waxed, but never wanned, as his words echoed through the crowds and throughout history. The imagery and rhetorical savvy was unprecedented. King walked a thin line by honoring the Founding Fathers, the Declaration of Independence, and the US Constitution, while calling out the oppressive and abusive actions of America for over a hundred years. All along sowing seeds of hope.

Five times King declared that he had a dream, followed by a descriptive verse envisioning a time beyond the racism in America. The most quoted dream statement is likely the one involving King’s own children, believing that one day they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Character. Who the person is on the inside matters. The admirable qualities driving a person’s decisions carry far more weight than their job, position of power, or wealth. Truth. Faithfulness. Courage. Perseverance. Humility. Kindness. Discipline. Respect. These, and other qualities, are the virtuous lenses that Martin Luther King, Jr. was hoping society might view one another. Hoping, by the way, is a virtuous quality in and of itself.

By the end of the 1980’s the general sentiment was that the moral and ethical behavior in students was not only declining but freefalling. Believing public schools had abandoned their post of teaching the importance and virtues of character, the Josephson Institution formed the Six Pillars of the Character Counts program.

The first Pillar was Trustworthiness: being honest without deceiving others, while having integrity and keeping promises. The second Pillar was Respect: following the golden rule and accepting difference of others, while being considerate of people’s feelings. The next Pillar was Responsibility: doing your best, being self-disciplined, and learning perseverance. The Fourth Pillar is Fairness: playing by the rules without taking advantage of others. Another Pillar was Caring: being kind and compassionate. The final Pillar was Citizenship: making your school and community a better place. This curriculum was taught in many schools exposing children to the importance of its premise: character really does count.

In 1989 Steven Covey wrote a run-away best-selling book entitled, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Seeing a trend that has metastasized today, he warned about the dangerous tendency of embracing personality ethic over character ethic. Noting, prior to World War II, most American leaders were chosen because they held certain qualities in their character. No, they weren’t perfect, but their lives held a balance by their pursuit of a high level of moral and ethical qualities. Since World War II the trend has been to choose leaders owning a personality ethic. Simply put, someone with a personality ethic holds charisma that draws people and crowds to them. They look good and sound good on stage, but they very well may be morally and ethically bankrupt. Covey raises the concern of what happens when businesses, schools, churches, and the government are led and fueled by people who are charismatic without character. For him, character doesn’t just count, it matters.

Paul may have foreshadowed the tension when he wrote 2 Corinthians. Charismatic leaders infiltrated the church in Corinth, and instead of serving the church they looked for ways to control, manipulate, dominate, and selfishly squeeze the church for everything it’s got. Like the smell of a new car, they looked good. Once you looked under the hood, they weren’t that new but refurbished as their inner corroded lives were exposed for all to see.

Oh, their stories of unlimited accomplishments were told at great lengths. Their preaching drew a crowd. They healed the sick. Visions and revelations were the norm. They boasted of God’s power working through them, while noting Paul’s stage presence was lacking. Paul was weak and soft.

Paul wasn’t, at least according to their standard. He healed people, even bringing someone back from the dead (Act. 20:10). Jesus spoke to him on more than one occasion, too (Act 9:4-5; 18:9-10; 23:11). More importantly, Paul experienced at least one vision, a powerful vision, where he saw and heard things he could not express or explain (2 Cor. 12:3-4). As overwhelming his experience was, he gives us very little detail, leaving much to the imagination. He does not even fully understand what happened. He does so for very good reasons.

First, he blunts his experience by speaking in the third person (12:2-4). He says, “I know a man who was caught up to the third heaven” (v. 2). Using third person language, Paul deflects attention off himself, even when needing to share his experience. With his own credibility on the line, Paul, talking about someone else’s vision, makes no sense for the argument before him. He’s willing to share what happened to him, but, unlike his distractors, Paul is not the center of his own universe.

Secondly, Paul tells us that this experience occurred fourteen years earlier (12:2). Those in the know tell us that this vision occurred sometime between his conversion in Acts 9 and his first mission trip in Acts 13. Two conclusions can be drawn by this date. For one, if Paul had to reach back fourteen years to recount this story, then this experience was the anomaly, not the norm. And another, this very well may be the first time the Corinthians heard about his experience, which means he’s not going around trumpeting his encounter. They are, but he’s not.

Thirdly, Paul is the walking wounded (12:7). Because he experienced such a vision, a thorn in the flesh was given to keep him humble. Whatever the thorn was, and we are not told, the need for it was a reminder for Paul to trust God’s grace and not his own strength. With a knowing wink, Paul may be saying, “If I’ve had such an experience which caused me to limp away, why is their gate fine?”

All of this leads to Paul’s statement that if he spoke about his visions, he would be telling the truth. He is only talking about events in his own life. But he won’t, because, in his own words, “But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say” (v. 6b). Paul will not allow people to put him up on a pedestal because God revealed something to him. Such a trait is called, “humility,” which reaches to his own core characteristic. Contrast Paul’s words to his antagonists spewing arrogant pride, constantly boasting of their experiences. For Paul, character counts, and without character what you say or do is like offering God a beautifully wrapped present. Yet, once unwrapped and opened, nothing is in it.

We live in an era where we are easily drawn to the power and prestige of celebrity leaders. We’re captivated and captured by their charisma even when such leaders are devoid of character. We’ve convinced ourselves that good things will happen by following the person whose words speak to our hearts instead of to our souls. We expect the world to push back on the virtues underscored in Scripture, and sometimes they do. But when we listen to our own Christian voices mocking the Fruit of the Spirit qualities as wimps, or ridiculing the Beatitudes’ virtues as being soft, or deriding the “turn the other cheek” as weak, then we are listening to the wrong voices. We’re being shaped by lyrics, languages, and lives foreign to the gospel Jesus brought and Paul preached. The truth is the saint(s) who have charmed and enchanted us are really venomous snake(s) ready to bite only to satisfy his/her own narcissistic needs.

The truth is our society is flooded with leaders with little to no character fiber in their bones. At best, they’ve sold-out for fame, for control, or for the path of least resistance. At worst, they’ve abused and profited from the people they are called to love and to lead, while demanding fealty. And you don’t have to look very far to see the fallout in churches, businesses, schools, social organizations, and our own government.

In a recent article by Christianity Today editor, Russell Moore, he may have summed it up best when he said,

If we are hated for attempted Christlikeness, let’s count it all joy. But if we are hated for our cruelty, our sexual hypocrisy, our quarrelsomeness, our hatefulness, and our vulgarity, then maybe we should ask what happened to our witness . . . Character matters. It is not the only thing that matters. But without character, nothing matters.*

Soli Deo Gloria!
(i.e., only God is glorified!)

* Russell Moore, “Why Character Doesn’t Matter Anymore,” Christianity Today, March 22, 2024 (an online article).