Love, fear and pride

Continuing our look at man-made religion versus life with Christ, let’s compare the key element of the Christ-filled life with the two key elements of man-made religion.

From what I have seen, I agree with the writer, Dallas Willard, who says that religion has to do with pride and fear. The Christ-filled life, on the other hand, is meant to be defined by love.

Let’s first consider this word, “love.”

LOVE IS “WILL TO GOOD”

The word, “love,” is thrown about very casually these days. People say that they love their car, or that they love pizza. And people fall in and out of “love” all the time.

However, the proper meaning of real love is “bene-volence,” which means “will to good.” In other words, it means to want good for the other, to honestly desire the best for them. It is NOT the same thing as desire. We can have evil desires and selfish desires, but those aren’t love.

Dallas Willard writes:

Love is not the same thing as desire, for I may desire something without wishing it well, much less willing its good. I might desire a chocolate ice cream cone, for example. But I do not wish it well; I wish to eat it. This is the difference between lust (mere desire) and love, as between a man and a woman. Desire and love are, of course, compatible when desire is ruled by love, but [many] people today would, unfortunately, not even know the difference between them. — “Renovation of the Heart,” Pp. 130-131

None of us accomplishes this “will to good” toward one another all the time, but when we begin to let Christ form our lives and change us from the inside out, this is the kind of love God wants to form in us.

Man-made religion, on the other hand, tends to be dictated by pride and fear.

PRIDE

St. Augustine taught that the opposite of love is not hate. It’s actually pride.

Why? Because pride is all about getting “my way.” It’s not about willing the best for the other person but for myself. This leads to manipulation, power plays, and all the other things that some unhealthy churches might refer to as “a board meeting.”

Yet love pushes pride away because when we truly begin to be concerned about the other person’s needs and concerns, there’s no room for manipulation techniques and the determination to always be “right.” The determination to prove myself is never about love; it’s always about pride. But when I learn to let God’s love take its rightful place in my heart, proving myself begins to be less important than the more important issues of helping those who are hurting and meeting the needs of those who are hungry, lost or poor.

FEAR

As I said in my last post, fear involves torment. God doesn’t want to be our tormentor; He wants to be our lover, our Father and our friend.

“Religious” Christians become obsessed with “holding on” to the people. They want to fill their churches and so become afraid of doing anything that would push them away. As a result, they start making more and more demands of them in order to get them to conform to their ways and ensure their power over them.

But that has NOTHING to do with Christ’s love.

Fear pushes people away by trying too hard to hold on, while love is rewarded as it willingly ‘lets go.’

When we let God have His way in our hearts, we begin to desire the best for the people who come into our lives. We no longer need to be worried about “holding on to them” or “getting them into our church.” All we have to do is love them, share God’s message of hope with them, and be available.

We don’t have to make them conform to our patterns of life or ways of thinking. Everybody’s different, and God uses us in our diversity. We can point people to God’s Word and let God do His work in their minds and hearts, but we don’t need to expect that He will always speak to them in exactly the same way He spoke to us. He has a unique plan for every life, and it will look different in some people than it will in others.

The funny thing is that, as we start to live our lives in this way, holding loosely to our own agendas and to other people’s lives, often our churches WILL begin to fill up with people and more and more will be attracted to us. This will not be because we are trying to make them come to us, or make them look like us, but because they will begin to see that we really do have their best interests in mind… that we love them as God loves them.

May God deliver us all from religions of fear and pride and fill us with His genuine love for one another.

This concludes a 3-part series that started with
Is Christianity Religion?
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Is Christianity about fear?

I recently heard somebody saying they didn’t want to become a follower of Christ because, as they understood it, the Christian life is all about fear. They said that the idea of a God who requires people to live in constant fear of hell and judgment seemed counter-intuitive to them.

Fair enough. In fact, I would actually agree with that last statement…

In my previous post, I talked about the difference between man-made religion and life with Christ. I don’t believe in the modern understanding of religion, which is basically the creating of a cultural system that uses the idea of God in order to get people to conform. Whenever “church” becomes all about “religion,” the truth is it tends to become an organization that is based on pride and fear.

That is the opposite of what Christianity is meant to be about. The life of the Christ-follower is meant to be about love, which is the opposite of pride and drives out fear. Though there are churches that fall into the trap of religion, a church that is true to Christ must do everything it can to avoid it.

The Bible does talk about having a “fear” of God, but the biblical idea of the fear of God is not about living in torment and terror. The word, in that context, refers more to a holy reverence for God and a respect for Who He Is.

Now don’t get me wrong. There IS a place for a healthy kind of fear, but only in the context of respect.

Here’s an example:

I fear the ocean.

However, I’m not afraid of it.

What’s the difference, you ask? It’s simple.

When I stand at the brink of the sea, I recognize its incredible might and power. I recognize that, if I jump into the sea without knowing how to swim, I could drown. I recognize that, if I don’t pay attention to the laws of nature and go out into the sea on a boat in the middle of a storm, its waves might destroy me.

I’m not afraid of the sea, but I respect it for what it is and treat it accordingly. I went on a cruise once and I wasn’t afraid because I trusted that the ship was well-designed, the crew was well-trained, and the lifeboats were ready in case of emergency. That doesn’t mean I chose to be stupid though; I knew better than to jump in with the sharks!

The fear of God is about respecting God for Who He Is. It doesn’t mean being afraid of Him, but it does mean I’m not going to be stupid. If there is a God who made the heavens and the earth and is more powerful than any ocean or force of nature or man, I’m not going to try to pick a fight with Him! And, of course, when I begin to recognize how powerful, glorious and real He is, you’d better believe I’m going to stand in awe of Him.

The fear of God is about respecting God, standing in awe of our great Creator, and submitting ourselves to His rule just as I would submit myself to the natural laws of gravity and the laws of the sea. I don’t stand in terror of those laws, but I respect them as they deserve to be respected.

So do I fear God? Yes, I do. But am I afraid of Him? Absolutely not.

The Bible says:

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. — 1 John 4:18

When we begin to have a healthy understanding of Who God is, He actually chases all fear away. This Bible verse says that “fear has to do with punishment,” and the Bible teaches that God doesn’t want to punish us. In fact, He wants to save us from punishment. He went so far as to take the punishment for us.

And when we trust our lives into His hands, we don’t ever need to fear that He’s going to change His mind about us and inflict terrible punishment upon us. On the contrary, He has promised to love us and take care of us.

“In this world you will have troubles,” Jesus said, “but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world!” (John 16:33)

I remember a friend years ago who was always afraid of God’s punishment. Whenever something bad happened to her, she would say, “God’s punishing me because I’ve been bad.”

Although Jesus teaches that bad things do happen in this world, and they will continue to happen until He returns to make everything right once and for all, Jesus does NOT teach that those bad things happen to punish us. Life can be messy sometimes, and things happen that we don’t understand. But God’s promise is to take us through even the worst of times and lead us to eventual victory.

When we trust Him, He doesn’t reward our trust by throwing stones at us. He promises to be with us and to be faithful to the very end. He promises to deliver us from eternal death and to give our lives purpose and meaning. We don’t need to be afraid that He’s going to give up on us or punish us, because He has made us His beloved children and will never abandon us.

The life of a true Christ-follower is not about being afraid.
It’s about being delivered from being afraid.

Romans 8:15 says:

For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.”

I’m so glad God is my perfect “Dad” and that, in His arms, I don’t ever need to be afraid.

Christians and violence in schools

A friend of mine put a link to the following video and petition on Facebook.

The reply from a well-meaning person basically indicated that kids just need to learn to deal with violence in school so they can learn to deal with fear in “the real world.”

Ask the United Nations to end violence in schools.

That made me sad.

Why?

Because I knew of some Christians who would say the same thing.

My friend replied by saying,

“We’re not talking mild bullying here & not just from other students; being raped didn’t help me learn more about the world, it only gave me more to overcome as an individual.”

What a great response! She pointed out that the issue is a lot more serious than many people realize. Her experience, which she gave me permission to refer to in this blog, is unfortunately not a rare occurrence.

Too many people, both inside and outside the church, think that people should just “get tougher” and deal with living in an increasingly violent world.

Others sit around complaining about a ruling made years ago regarding prayer in schools that they believe is the source of all problems. “If we could just get prayer back in schools we wouldn’t have these problems.”

But the violence continues…

Here are the hard, cold facts — you won’t be getting mandated prayer into American schools again anytime soon, and the violence won’t go away by just turning a blind eye to it. As Christians, we can’t afford to ignore the issue that is staring us in the face:

• since 1992-93, 270 violent deaths have occurred at schools in America alone; of those deaths, 207 were shooting victims [1]
• 7.8 per-cent of high-school students reported being threatened or hurt with a weapon at school in 2007, according to one survey [2]
• more than 1 in 20 said they didn’t go to school at least one day because they didn’t feel safe there, according to the same survey
• nearly 9.6 percent of children are targets of educator sexual misconduct sometime during their school career [3]

And that’s just in America…

We won’t make much of a dent in this situation just by preaching more sermons about how nice it would be to have prayer in schools. As Christians, we need to wake up to the reality that we can only represent Christ in this situation by seeking creative ways to confront the problem. What are some practical things we can do?

A wikipedia article on violence in schools suggests some actions, including society-level prevention strategies, school-wide strategies, intervention programs aimed at helping to improve family relationships, programs that deal with conflict-resolution and team problem-solving, etc.

What would happen if the church started using some of its energies in helping to spearhead some of these strategies, and also to explore other creative solutions? We can’t stop violence from happening. It’s always been in this world. However, we can help to curb it.

But preaching louder sermons alone won’t do it. As Christians, we are not called just to be Jesus’ mouthpiece; we’re also called to be his hands and feet.

I wonder who amongst Christ’s followers will rise to the challenge. Will you?

A better view

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Do you see what I wrote above on the first line? Look closer.

It’s a dot.

This week I’ve spent time obsessing over some things in my life that were really bothering me. I’d felt hard hit by some things and was getting really down about it all.

Then yesterday, my wife and I both saw basically the same picture in our minds at the same moment. It was a piece of paper with a little dot on it.

We realised that the things we were facing this week were like a little dot on the big page. In our minds, they looked so big, but in the big picture of things they will mean next to nothing.

How often we get bogged down in one moment, one mistake, one regret, or one problem. We focus on it and imagine it to be a big blotch on our page that we’ll never recover from.

But it’s just a dot.

God help us to get things in perspective and see how many of the things we worry about are really so very small compared to the vastness of the page upon which You are writing our life story!

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