The Seven Habits of Highly Ineffective Christians (2)
Put God in a Square Box
Cardiff Heights
9 January 2000
Tonight we come to the second in our series on the seven habits
of highly ineffective Christians. Some of you are perhaps
concerned by the topics we are looking at since your desire is for a
deeper, more real relationship with the creator God. Well let me
assure you by pointing out that being ineffective is one of the few
things I can actually 100% practice what I preach, so these
messages will also be ineffective and you will probably be more
motivated towards discipleship and being effective in you’re walk
with God than before.
The second habit of a highly ineffective Christian is that they “Put
God in a Square Box”.
http://www.geocities.com/dreamingisdangerous/GodBox.bmp
Your concept of God has a great deal to do
with the way you live your life. This is why you must limit God, or
put him in a square box. So how do you put God in a box? Well
firstly you need a very big box. Maybe one from a fridge or
something. No of course that wouldn’t work. Who ever heard of a
square fridge. Perhaps we better make our box to be a symbolic
one but a square nonetheless.
The way that you limit God is that you believe that God will behave
in certain predictable ways and that you in fact can have control
over God’s behaviour by doing certain things. God is not given any
choice, no room to act in any way he pleases but must respond in
the correct way if you pull the right strings.
There are two ways in which we can relate to any person even
God. One way is to see them as objects, to see them for what
function they serve for us. The best example I can think of is the
way we view automatic teller machines at the bank. We see them
for their function, giving us our money. And we have no regard for
how the ATM feels about the transaction. It is an object with a
function of serving us. When we treat people this way, we do a
great deal of damage to them.
Have you ever stood in MacDonalds and become frustrated with
the other lines moving more quickly than yours? The quiet rage
you feel within at the slowness of the girl serving your queue is the
same detached frustration we usually reserve for machines. Now
we feel that irritation towards a living human being. It’s as if you’re
seeing her as having no value other than to fulfill her function to
serve us.
In order to be highly ineffective in the way you relate to God you
need to treat God in the same way. By doing so you dare to
suggest that we can use God, to push the right heavenly buttons
so that he will come good with whatever we happen to want or
need. In other words, we can bribe him with pious actions or
flattering words. In doing so we make God an object, someone we
can use. If we want to have an effective Christian walk we need to
meet God, not manipulate him.
God’s interest in us is to meet us, not to make use of us for his
own benefit. There is nothing in it for him other than the basic
satisfaction of having secured for the people he loves a more
enriched, more fulfilled way of living. This is truly foolishness in a
world grown used to manipulation and coercion.
The truth is that we can treat God like on object, but God cannot
be manipulated, there are no buttons to press. We just wish there
were. It would make things much simpler if God wasn’t a complex
individual. And God doesn’t manipulate us either. Instead, he
wants to be treated as a significant other whom we encounter
rather than use. And vice versa. When we serve God or others for
what we can get out of it, we turn them into utilities for our personal
gain. Jesus radically changed the perception of the way we relate
to God. He bluntly suggested that if we are in this game for what
we can get out of it, whether that be crowns, mansions or
individual blessings here on earth, then we have no relationship
with God.
It makes much more sense to us when those of us who worked
harder or longer receive some kind of greater recognition. Don’t
you think there ought to be a kind of celestial merit system. Those
who are involved in doing more religious activities should get a
reward of some kind.
Jesus was keenly aware of this basic urge for extra recognition. He
told a powerful story about service and reward that concerned the
owner of a vineyard. (Perhaps have some youth mime this part
while you continue to talk) The man had tended a huge crop of
grapes and was ready to harvest them. He had waited until the
very end of the season to ensure the plumpest and most succulent
variety and, when he felt it was time to bring them in, he had to do
it quickly. So he went down to the marketplace where the
labourers wait for work and contracted the biggest and strongest
workmen to come and bring in the crop. They contracted to work
for a denarius for the day’s labour. The deal struck he set them to
work.
At about nine in the morning, he began to wonder whether the
men he had hired would be able to manage the job in a day, so he
went back to the marketplace to contract some more workers. But
instead of contracting them he just offered them the rest of the
day’s work at a reasonable price. By midday, the workers were
struggling and the boss was panicking, so he raced back to the
marketplace. More workers were brought in with the offer of
reasonable pay. At three in the afternoon, he roped in some more
workers. And at five he returned to scrape up the dregs, whatever
good-for-nothing layabouts he could find, to finally finish off the
harvest.
Well, when the gravy train arrived the workers lined up for
payment. Those who had helped polish off the job in the cool of
the evening, working only an hour of the day, received one
denarius. Can you imagine how the ones who had laboured all day
through the heat were feeling? If the boss is paying one denarius
for an hour, that added up to twelve denarii for them. Hey, their
ship had finally come in! But when they stepped up to the cashiers
table they were also paid one denarius. And they were furious. As
you would be? They complained to the boss and he replied:
‘Friends, I am not being unfair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for
a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who
was hired last the same as you. Don’t I have the right to do what I
want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am
generous?”
Doesn’t this parable seem a little unfair? I always thought so. I
couldn’t blame those workers for feeling hard done by after they
had worked so hard. But then I learned something about the
symbolism employed in the Bible. The coin, the denarius, is the
symbol of our redemption, our salvation, eternal life, our
relationship with the creator God. What is our salvation in Christ?
Is it a gift or payment for services rendered? The way Jesus sees
it, redemption is always a gift. So how can you complain about a
gift?
The goal of living an effective Christian life is not to earn salvation.
Did you get that? We are not about earning redemption. Jesus
changed the perspective and said that salvation is a free gift. Call
out in faith and recieve it. If we could earn redemption, then we
would be putting God in our debt. He would owe us. And that is
never the case.
One of the most disturbing and powerful films I have seen over the
last couple of years is Steven Spielberg’s movie, Saving Private
Ryan. The movie tells the story of an Army captain named John
Miller who having survived the carnage of the D-Day invasion at
Normandy Beach, portrayed in 28 minutes of intense, graphic and
gory detail, is ordered to find a solitary private among thousands of
displaced soldiers. He must return Private James F. Ryan home to
his mother, whose other three sons have just been killed in action.
However, due to some confusion in the invasion, it is not certain
where he is to be found; Private Ryan is a “needle in a stack of
needles”. The soldiers reluctantly set out on their daunting
mission. Almost immediately, they begin questioning the worth of
risking eight men’s lives in order to save one.
Captain Miller rationalises that each life lost in combat is supposed
to save 10 lives. Within that paradigm, how can their current
mission make any sense? The soldiers begin to detest their
mission to save Private Ryan, even hoping to find his name on one
of the dog tags taken from some dead soldiers.
Captain Miller and the small group of men assigned to him
successfully locate Ryan, but then are forced to defend a strategic
bridge against enemy tanks and troops. Captain Miller is fatally
wounded. In his dying moments, he reaches out to Private Ryan,
and with great emotion says, “Earn this! Earn this!”
Many years later as an old man, James Ryan stands in a military
cemetery tearfully looking at the small white cross that stands
where the man who saved his life is buried. He wonders aloud if he
has indeed earned the great gift he received.
The truth is you can’t. The price is too high. Jesus’ sacrifice on a
cross is a case of a man who refused to comprimise his
committment to both love this world and to exercise justice for all.
We have all fallen short of perfection and are reminded of that fact
every day of our lives. No matter how good we may be, and some
of us are no doubt very good, we cannot love enough, care
enough, serve enough to be truly perfect.
So what can a perfect God have to do with imperfect beings like
humans, like us? Nothing! He cannot, by his very nature, be in
contact with us. If God was only interested in being fair, he
wouldn’t bother with us at all. But, God is not just concerned with
justice. He also loves us, and wants to forgive us for our
inadequecy. God’s dilemma is between his justice in refusing
contact with a sinful humanity and his overwhelming love for that
same humanity... us.
When you consider the awful cost of God’s refusal to compromise
between love and justice - that Jesus was sacrificed in our place -
it almost seems insulting to suggest that there ought to be some
reward for services rendered in devotion to him. He said in effect,
“The punishment for your sin is separation from God. You’ve
endured that long enough. I’ll take your place.” Why else do you
think he cried out on the cross, “My God, My God, why have you
forsaken me?” God had forsaken him because that is the
punishment for sin and Jesus was bearing it on our behalf.
We can’t be holding God in debt to us. The cross reminds us that
we are always in debt to him. As Private Ryan found he was to
Captain Miller despite spending is whole life trying to remove the
debt by earning it. Jesus has radically altered the way we see our
relationship to God. It ought to be our humble response to God’s
grace, not our arrogant attemptes to manipulate that grace. It is a
life lived in debt to a God who has creatively set his people free. It
is not a neurotic, anxious attempt to put that God in debt to us.
So... if you want to be a highly ineffective Christian you need to
spend your whole life trying to earn your salvation to place God in
debt to you. Remember that God is a fair God and will give you
greater recognition.
But.....to be an effective Christian, receive your gift with humble
gratitude and engage a wonderfully complex God that you will
never truly understand. Effective Christianity is affective
Christianity.
