When I was in college, there was a restaurant that we loved to go to. It was an all you could eat type of place, which explains why I look the way I look today.
We would go and stand in line in the buffet and pick all those things we wanted to eat -- shrimp, crab, clams, hushpuppies, French Fries. And we would ignore those things we didn’t want on our plate -- broccoli, spinach.
We loved that place and ate there at least once every week.
What was the basis for what we ate and what we didn’t? Whether it appealed to us. Not whether it was good for us. Not whether or not it made a balanced meal. Just, what did it taste like?
Sometimes I think we try to grow in our faith as if it were an all you can eat buffet.
We go through life picking out this doctrine, but ignoring the others. We select some ethics, but reject others.
What is the basis for what we believe and don’t believe? Whether it appeals to us. Not whether it is true. Not whether it is right. Just whether or not we like it.
We treat the Word of God as if it were nothing more than an “all you can eat buffet.” We pick up some things and make them part of our lives, while we ignore other things.
Our faith, our beliefs and our ethics have become like an all you can eat buffet. We pick and chose.
A friend of mine tells me that he and his wife are getting a divorce. The reason? My friend told me they were getting this divorce over her favorite movie.
Favorite movie?
I asked my friend, “What in the world is the name of her favorite movie?”
He looked at me and with a straight face said, “The Nine Commandments.”
I said, “You mean the TEN Commandments?”
“No,” he said. “That’s the problem. She left out the commandment about ‘thou shalt not commit adultery.’”
Well, in the faith buffet, she apparently selected nine out of ten, deciding not to pick up on the prohibition against adultery.
But aren’t we all like that.
It is so easy.
Our reading from the Psalms has a wonderful poetic description of the Word of God.
“The Law of the Lord is perfect…
The Statutes of the Lord are trustworthy…
The percepts of the Lord are right…
The commands of the Lord are radiant…
The ordinances of the Lord are sure…”
But we look at the Word of God and we think, “some parts are more perfect than others. Some passages are more trustworthy than other passages.”
We open the Bible and we pick and choose, in just the same way that I picked out what I wanted to eat at my favorite restaurant back in college – not whether or not it was good for me or not – not whether or not it is perfect, or trustworthy, or right – but whether or not this part of God’s Word appeals to me or not.
In the New Testament lesson from James, the apostle was struggling with a church that was accepting part of God’s Word, but not all of it.
The Word of God speaks very plainly about how we should love our neighbor as ourselves – and that means ALL of our neighbors. But in the church that James was addressing in our New Testament Lesson, the Christians were willing to love SOME of their neighbors – as long as they were wealthy, powerful, and influencial.
But James tells them they cannot show favoritism in love. They have to love all people. And James goes onto say that you cannot show favoritism with the Bible – you must observe ALL of the Word of God.
Elsewhere in the New Testament the Apostle Paul writes in a letter to his coworker, Timothy, “All Scripture is God-breathed – which means inspired by God -- and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.” (II Timothy 3:16)
But you see, what we do is to look at the Bible and say, “SOME of the Scripture is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.”
In the Old Testament lesson, the Psalmist wrote a wonderful song in which he was very plain in his respect for the Word of God.
“The Law of the Lord is perfect…”
Well, I run into people all of the time who tell me that they don’t go to church or believe in God, and they tell me, “Everybody knows the Bible is full of errors.”
To which I will always reply, “Oh really. That’s interesting. Tell me some of these errors.”
Without failing, everytime I have this conversation the other person will stutter and stammer and finally say, “Well, I don’t know what they are personally, but everyone knows the Bible is full of mistakes.”
But the Psalmist says, “The Law of the Lord is perfect.”
Then he goes onto say, “The Statutes of the Lord are trustworthy…”
But we don’t trust it.
Bill Cosby tells a story about taking drivers ed in high school. He was given all this training about how to deal with certain situations that might arise in driving.
One day he is driving down the road and it is snowing. The roads are slick, and all of a sudden, he’s losing control of the car. The car is going into a spin.
So he thinks, “What did I learn in drivers ed?
“Oh yes – turn in the direction of the spin.
“Wait a minute. That doesn’t make sense. That’s stupid. Forget about turning in the direction of the spin, I’m turning the steering wheel in the direction I want to go.”
Well what happens is that he really loses control of the car at that point and begins to drive sideways down the road like some crab walking on the beach.
People start opening their front doors and start pointing to him, laughing, “Hey Martha, look at that kid driving sideways down the road.”
He didn’t trust his training. And he got into trouble.
He didn’t trust it, because at the crucial moment, he didn’t think it was trustworthy.
At the crucial moments of our lives, can the trust God’s Word?
And what does the Bible say about itself?
“The Statutes of the Lord are trustworthy…”
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And the Psalmist says also that the Word of God is right.
Have you ever played Trivial Pursuit?
My wife and I used to play all the time with several other members from the church and it was always the men verses the women.
Time and time again, we would experience the same pattern.
The women’s team would ask the men’s team a question.
For those of you who have never played, that’s the way the game operates. You have to answer these questions in order to progress in the game.
For example. The women pull a question out of the box. “Who was the 16th President of the United States of America.”
Immediately one of the men yells out, “I know, it was Abraham Lincoln.”
“Is that your final answer,” the women will ask.
And of course, the men would say, “Well, no we’re not sure. Let’s think about this.”
And the men start talking.
“Who was the 16th President of the United States?”
The more we talk, the more we’re convinced that the first answer was wrong.
So we try to count the Presidents.
Let’s see. Washington was number 1.
Number 2 was Jefferson – or was it Adams.
Now we’re really confused.
And the women are laughing at us. And I have to say, women -- that doesn’t help. But finally, after 15, 20 minutes of debating, the men’s team have an answer.
Millard Filmore!
The women turn the card over to read the right answer.
Abraham Lincoln!
We were right the first time and we talked ourselves out of it.
We did that over and over everytime we played Trival Pursuit.
And I see us doing that all the time with the Bible.
The Bible gives us instructions for living, but then we have just a little bit of doubt about the Bible being right.
And we get ourselves into all sorts of troubles because we don’t believe the Bible is right.
We believe some other voice – MTV, our favorite actor, some article we read in a magazine.
But the Psalmist in the Old Testament tells us,
“The percepts of the Lord are right…”
The Psalmist speaks of the Bible in several different ways, but these phrases are all saying essentially the same thing – the Bible is the Word of God and you can believe and trust what this book says.
The Bible can become our guidebook. Our instruction. Our map. Our moral compass.
And we need that.
And we need ALL of God’s Word for our lives – not part of it, but all of God’s Word.
I was watching television earlier this week and there was a show about the real events of a man who broke out of prison several years ago. He trained for his escape, working out in the prison jail yard. He jogged daily around the small confines of the prison yard. Finally, one night he broke out of the prison and started running. He literally ran all night, but he had no compass and the skies became cloudy so he couldn’t navigate. He had no idea where he was headed, so he just ran and ran -- all night long.
Finally, as the sun was coming up, he collapsed on the ground. Suddenly he heard a siren. It was the alarm of the prison he’d just escaped from. After running all night long, he had ended up less than 100 yards from the prison.
We need a moral compass. We need something to guide us besides our own feelings.
The reason is that our feelings are so clouded with our own sinful desires that if we just pick and choose our ethics, we will never grow in faith.
If we were to look at a buffet of laws and ethics and beliefs, what would we choose?
We would choose those things that are easy to obey. That are easy to believe and understand. We will choose the things that don’t challenge us to grow.
"Thou shalt not kill." Fine. We’ll take that. Haven’t killed anyone this week, so we’ll live by that.
"Thou shalt not covet." Too hard. We’ll leave that out. Too confining.
You know, I loved that All-You-Could-Eat Seafood Buffet when I was in college. But even more than that, I love the family dinners I would enjoy whenever I would go home. During those home visits, there was never any question about what I would eat – EVERYTHING.
Whatever my mother put on the table, she expected us to take a serving of each and everything. Nothing was to be left untouched. That was, in fact, the definition of a feast. Don’t just eat all you want, eat all there is.
With God, life is a feast. We don’t pick and choose whom to love or what laws to obey. We leave no person unloved. We leave none of God’s commands ignored.
Copyright by Pittendreigh
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