Your Brother Daniel
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Why Does God seem to Care more about what we Believe
than what we Do?
God is often indicted
because He sanctions deathbed conversions. The logic goes like this:
- It is not fair for God to excuse a mass murderer on his
deathbed by virtue of a mere confession of sin, while condemning many good
people who haven’t repented.
This “logic” suggests
that God is unjust in valuing a confession over a life of good deeds. However,
there is another way to understand this. Imagine a son who habitually robbed,
disgraced, and maligned his parents. He then stole a large sum and left them.
What would the parents want most:
- Reparations from the son? (This would not restore the
relationship and would minimize the extent of the wrong.)
- The return of the son? (A return would merely invite
more problems without a change of heart.)
- To hear reports that the son had done well and had
earned a doctorate? (This might merely make it easier for the son to
justify his conduct and leave the underlying problems unaddressed.)
Instead, any
reconciliation would have to include a sincere and humble confession of sin.
Only this would provide a foundation for hope and a real reconciliation. Of
course, a sincere confession necessarily includes a determination to change
(repentance), and this determination, if real, will produce results.
It is not that God disdains or minimizes a
changed life. However, He knows that a changed life must be based on a changed (converted) heart. If not, it will be based on self-righteousness and the
arrogance that always follows.
Jesus told a parable –
the Parable of the Prodigal Son –
showing what happens when our personhood is based on self-righteousness, the
performance of good deeds. It produces arrogance and contempt for others (also
Luke 18:9-14).
The prodigal son had
lived in a way that disgraced his father (Luke 15). However, when the son
repentantly returned, the father received him with joy and celebration.
Meanwhile, the older son, convinced of his own righteousness, moral
superiority, and lack of need of any mercy, resented his wayward brother and
rejected his father’s overtures to join the celebration. He was convinced that
he was too deserving to humble himself to rejoice with his repentant brother.
For many, this parable
is deeply troubling. We tend to identify with the older son and feel that it
was unjust for the father to celebrate the return of the prodigal in such an
extravagant way. This is only because we are convinced of our moral superiority
and entitlement!
But perhaps we are morally superior and therefore more deserving? However, not according
to Jesus! Instead, we live in the deepest denial, always ready to judge others
but unwilling to see that we are only superficially different (Mat. 7:1-5).
Consequently, salvation is humanly impossible even for the “best” of us (Mat.
19:26). Consistent with this fact, Jesus informed the religious leadership that
the mercy of God, through faith in Him, was their only hope (John 8:24; 6:29).
Real change must begin
from the inside (Mat. 23:26). We must be born again (John 3:3-5). Anything
short of this represents an unwillingness to engage the truth about oneself and
an entitlement mentality.
What am I Worth and who Determines it?
Responding to the way
our culture exalts its ideal images of the attractive and sexy, one female
commentator responded:
- Every woman is beautiful!
Actually, I agree. It’s
not so much because every woman is physically
beautiful, but rather because each woman is endowed by her Creator with an
inalienable inner female beauty that no amount of aging can diminish.
I therefore wondered how
this commentator could justify her secular assertion. Did she have physical
beauty in mind? If so, I don’t see how she could make such a case. Physical
beauty fades! Did she have inner beauty/character in mind? If so, it is
patently obvious that some women have a more winsome character than others.
However, the Bible
teaches that what we are transcends human appraisal and our comparative
assessments. However this worth is an invisible worth that perhaps only God
sees. It is only on here that we are freed from the ruthless assessments of
society, the clawing opinions of others.
Without this freedom, we
remain enslaved, co-dependent, and undermined by the way others treat us and
confirm value upon us.
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