In Search of Many Schemes…

So I turned my mind to understand, to investigate and to search out the wisdom and the scheme of things and to understand the stupidity of wickedness and the madness of folly.  Ecclesiastes 7:25.

 

To illustrate his point, Solomon uses the following analogy:  I find more bitter than death the woman who is a snare, whose heart is a trap and whose hands are chains.  The man who pleases God will escape her, but the sinner she will ensnare.  Before anyone gets all huffy about this “diatribe” to women, remember Proverbs 31 praised the woman of virtue.  Solomon collected the sayings in that book, which means he wasn’t against women in general, just bad girls.  If you want to compare the amount of times he spoke against women to men, the weight of evidence will be on the male side.

Then what’s he trying to say about women and men in this rather hard observation?

Well, for one thing he’s not saying women are bad in general.  So let’s ask a question:

 

Is the woman the trap or is the man’s desires for her the problem?

 

I say both.  James 1:14…but each one (man) is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.  Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

Our biggest “fail” as humans is our unwillingness to look our own desires full in the face.  Or, to be more precise, to look at ourselves in the mirror—literal or figurative—and see who we are without blinders, philters or anything which might hinder a true reading.  Solomon declares that women can snare, trap and chain a man, yet he also chides men for being fool enough to go looking for easy sex.  Oh, he doesn’t mention that word but it is implied.  Men act as their own worst enemy in a quest for sex without consequences.  I’ve know a few women who want this too, but women pursue sex for slightly different reasons than men as a general rule.  That’s not to say a woman can’t be narcissistic because everyone knows better than that; rather, their general goals make sex a means.

Earlier in this chapter we read: There is not a righteous man on earth who does what is right and never sins.  If this is true, then when Solomon says at the end of the chapter:  Adding one thing to another to discover the scheme of things—while I was searching but not finding—I found one upright man in a thousand, but not one upright woman among them all.  This only have I found:  God made mankind upright, but men have gone in search of many schemes.  Ecclesiastes 7:28, 29.

What we see here is a “connect the dots” kind of logic.  If there is not a righteous man on earth who does what is right and never sins, then even that one upright man in a thousand is in search of sex outside godliness.

Why is there not an upright woman with that upright man?

Because, though God made mankind upright, they have gone in search of many schemes.  We are the product of our own desires.  Our world’s condition is a direct result of mankind’s search for anything to quench the thirst for pleasure outside of God’s design.

I refuse to condemn any sinner for being such since I know I am one myself.  If everyone who claims Christ as their savior looks in His perfect mirror, they will know the truth and humbly accept they have no right or place to condemn anyone.  Wisdom is justified by her deeds.  A man who conforms to wisdom realizes his own weaknesses; a woman who does the same recognizes her own failures to hit the bulls eye.

The biggest fail in my view is the refusal to admit our own sinfulness.  For if we not only admit it but gladly point it out—not in general but in fact, we become a true light for grace, mercy, forgiveness and restoration.

For All have Sinned…

There is not a righteous man on earth who does what is right and never sins.  Ecclesiastes 7:20.

 

The rest of this chapter is tied together in an odd way so I will have to take a couple of posts just unravel it all in order to show how I believe it connects.

Like any good writer/philosopher Solomon gives his readers an emphatic statement he believes is fact then sets about supporting it.  In a seemingly non sequitur he immediately jumps into the human tendency to gossip about one another behind each other’s backs.  For the purpose of illustration he reveals the heart of the problem—i.e. that even “righteous” people have badmouthed someone so shouldn’t get their panties in a wad if someone does the same to them.

When I was a teen my younger brother tried to get me to ask girls out.  I was rather shy about it because I didn’t think I would be up to par.  In exasperation he’d exclaim that girls stink too.  While I could admit he was right, I still put women up on a pedestal of more than human—or better than me anyway.  I look back and smile because I understand what he said as fact, since now I know from experience that no one is above being human.

Silly as that might sound to some of you reading this (and me at this point in my life) pedestals seem to be as natural to us as eating.  For instance many of us put ourselves up on this pedestal thing every time we resent being gossiped about or put down to our faces.  Each of us must admit to our own nature just confess to being a failure at righteousness.  When we get all huffy or offended because someone took one of our idiosyncrasies to task in a conversation, we put ourselves up on a pedestal as above being gossiped or talked about in this manner.  It’s almost strange that few of us make the connection between our own tendency to talk about others in the same manner and what others do to us.

But Solomon doesn’t stop there.

In a truly fascinating way he brings it around to his own failure to understand wisdom and the scheme of things.

 

All this I tested by wisdom and I said, “I am determined to be wise”—but this was beyond me.  Whatever wisdom may be, it is far off and most profound—who can discover it?

 

What Solomon faced remains a problem for us today.  Wisdom, as I understand it, is the ability to use knowledge in a way that benefits.  Yet sometimes even this is beyond us, like we know something must be done but how to get there or where to start just doesn’t compute.  The more we learn, more we have to unlearn and readdress reality for the truths we place as all important in our ignorance often times equals childish reasoning when the light of knowledge dawns.

Another problem, however, is knowledge without wisdom is useless.  Trying to understand what we know and apply the right perspective to it without the Source of wisdom is simply futile.  The conclusions we draw from the perspective of no god or God, for instance, will color how we see the evidence.  Yet the issue of knowing what the actual facts are continues to haunt us where the five senses are limited to faith.  No matter what we say we know by faith, without firm evidence to support our belief we leap off the bridge of knowledge into the murky waters of guessing games.

Every righteous person alive sins…

If this last sentence isn’t true, then why do the scriptures claim all have sinned and fall short of the example and reputation of God?

So everyone needs correcting; everyone needs humility, since everyone sins and requires repentance.  To say otherwise is to refute scripture.  If scripture cannot be broken and where it speaks about the nature of humanity it does so authoritatively and decisively, then those who believe themselves to either be better than others or above reproach sin by default of their estimate of themselves.

All this contributes to our inability to grasp wisdom in its full capacity.  The inability to grasp wisdom in its capacity leaves us with gaps in our reasoning, which in turn results in bad choices.  Even the spiritual minded man is gonna’ struggle with this one for we are products of where we come from first and foremost.  Denial of who we were before we knew Christ only results in unwarranted spiritual arrogance which history demonstrates time and again how devastating that is.  All have sinned, therefore all are sinners.  If all are sinners saved by grace, no one has any advantage over anyone else.

Last point:  If Paul, at the end of his life, wrote, Not that I have already attained all this, or have already been made perfect…declaring his need to grow still further in the faith, then anyone who claims more than this man of God must be looked upon with skepticism at best and downright distrust at worst.

Two Wise Men Got into an Argument…

It is better to heed a wise man’s rebuke than to listen to the song of fools.  Like the crackling of thorns under the pot, so is the laughter of fools.  This too is meaningless.

Extortion turns a wise man into a fool, and a bribe corrupts the heart.  Ecclesiastes 7:5-7.

 

Let’s be honest with ourselves, if with no one else, and just bring it out in the open: all of us can be bought with something.  It might be value by another person we respect, money—which can be for security or pleasure—respect itself, power, and the list could go on and on.  Until we understand where we are vulnerable, we remain a danger to ourselves spiritually—and even knowing doesn’t guarantee the danger is over.  A sinner cannot save or change him- or herself because “Without me you can do nothing,” as our Master made so poignantly clear.  The branch gets its nourishment from the tree or main vine, without which it withers.

The song of fools sounds like a great song title and subject to explore (guess what I’m gonna do with it), but the imagery of the thorns crackling under the pot didn’t make clear sense until I started writing this post just now.  Those thorns under the pot are burning up; they are on fire.  In a way, Solomon might be suggesting anyone looking just to party their life away will burn, and burn out eventually—sooner rather than later.  In the mean time their lives will be a fog, indistinct and numb.  Laughter which doesn’t come from a happy, joyful place internally cannot be serious happiness but is merely a veneer we put over “life” to distract ourselves from whatever we feel is boring, dull or depressing.  In other words, we use the words “really living” to point to the exciting things we do rather than the responsible life we live.  The former are the hilltops; the latter the rest.  Yet “really living” isn’t just the peaks in what we call “life”, it’s the whole journey.

Notice Solomon doesn’t stop with the wise man’s rebuke and the emptiness of a fool’s laughter.  He moves on to tackle a subject most of the powerful would probably rather he leave alone.

A fool is one who is morally or spiritually compromised, meaning doing something shady for their own gain.  A wise person who chooses extortion (which implies not only theft by exorbitant graft but deception and oppression as well) in order to benefit themselves will be transformed into a fool.  It’s foolish to believe we can benefit ourselves at the expense of others and not pay for our sins eventually.  It never works that way because someone always pays.

I know the following thought might not seem comforting but it is for me:  Even the wise like and need to feel good, secure and happy.  I don’t know that they would essentially sell their souls to get any of those things, but since they are human just like the rest of us and crave to matter as well as do something with people who matter to them.  Most of us don’t feel comfortable enough with the opinions or possible reactions of others to confess our constant need for wisdom in all areas.  Some of us have established a line in the sand or built fences as boundaries around ourselves to demarcate what is right and wrong, but it doesn’t stop us from craving or indulging in many of the things we preach against.

I remember hearing about Jimmy Swaggart before his big scandal hit.  I couldn’t listen to him at all because all he talked about was how sinful everything was and the need to repent.  It wasn’t that I disagreed with him entirely but more a sense that this man was obsessed with one aspect of human nature.  When his secret became public I understood who he was preaching to—himself.  His guilt destroyed any amount of joy or contentment he could have as well as creating guilt in thousands of loyal followers in the meantime.  His situation and many since then (and long before) give me the reason to live openly while being cautious with what I reveal.  I am a sinner.  Accept it.  Get over it.  Know I intend to grow.  Also realize that I’m not gonna’ just get rid of all my sin at once and neither are you; that’s why there’s grace, my friends.

We don’t sin because of grace, we have grace because we sin.  I’m not talking about lust, greed, gluttony, lying, etc, but rejecting God as Master and Lord of our lives.  The Pastor at Bridge City here in Milwaukie, OR, said something quite profound that I will have to paraphrase,  “If you believe in any part of you that you can please God or do something to make yourself better by your own efforts, you have essentially dethroned Him as God and placed Him as lower than your own ability.”  There was a lot more along that line, suffice it to say I don’t believe anyone is sinless this side of the re-creation of all things.  Sin is putting us, someone or something else in God’s place as the commander and chief of our choices and actions.  Any time we mess with God’s place, we destroy our ability to depend on Him.

What we can do for ourselves is submit to Him.  That’s the hard work, quite frankly.  Sin itself isn’t the wrong we do, that’s the malignant growth on an organ or body part which is the evidence of it.  No, sin is rejection of God as God.  The reason a wise man becomes a fool is he or she decides to become commander and chief of their own lives.

In this light we have no right or place to condemn (a type of judgment) anyone else for their fallen state.  It doesn’t mean we excuse or support their bad habits or choices, but neither should we place ourselves on any sort of pedestal to shake our moral finger at them.  Without Jesus we are all lost.  Without His saving grace, none of us would know mercy.  Those who understand grace know mercy and practice it.

The Trouble with Vows

When you make a vow to God, do not delay in fulfilling it.  He has no pleasure in fools; fulfill your vow.  It is better not to vow than to make a vow and not fulfill it.  Do not let your mouth lead you into sin.  And do not protest to the temple messenger, “My vow was a mistake.” Why should God be angry at what you say and destroy the work of your hands?  Much dreaming and many words are meaningless.  Therefore stand in awe of God.  Ecclesiastes 5:4-7.

 

I’m pretty sure this is one of those passages many would rather relegate to the Old Covenant and never think of again.  The reasoning goes, “Jesus revealed God as loving and personal.  How can He also demand such special treatment?”

And right there is the problem with most of our “modern” views of God.

We give the president of the United States more respect than the Creator of the universe far too often.  To treat God as a common being is a mistake, in my opinion; one which the contemporary church in America has perpetuated to its own hurt.  We buy into the “name it, claim it” variety of Christianity forgetting His sovereignty and ignoring all the lessons of those who came before.  We read NT stories like Ananias and Sapphira, recoiling at the thought God would actually punish such an action with death.  Our reasoning is faulty, our conclusions about godliness and righteousness out of step with Jesus and our sense of what true love is based on brokenness few desire to fix.

How do I know this attitude pervades the church?

I own it.

Oh, I admit to fighting it in this public arena, but I struggle to like this part of God’s personality/character.  I don’t want strictness but leeway.  And if we’re all honest with ourselves, in some area of our lives or another we all want the same thing—that is, for God to excuse some trait or sin in our lives so we can keep on doing it or so we don’t have to look at it.  To get even this reconciled to our text has taken me years.

Yet our reaction in the West has much to do with the attitudes which pervaded the East and Europe in times past.  Jesus made God approachable by proclaiming Him personal.  This changed how we see God as a whole for we look at Him through the cross.  However, in contrast to the austere, severe and disinterested God of past centuries (perpetuated by church hierarchy often to secure their own power and position), twentieth century Christianity took it to the other extreme and made approaching Jesus a casual thing.  Now I’m not saying this is everywhere in the church, rather that I’ve experienced these two extremes in an almost schizoid (which means out of touch with reality) dual personality way.  The reality is somewhere in between these two extremes, which makes both of them true, although only a half truth taken by themselves.

In my late twenties I made a vow to God, which I have tried to fulfill to the best of my ability.  Before that I made another vow which I kept for a long time until the pressure to conform took over, so I compromised.  I’m not sure of the ultimate consequences of either, though I know there are some in minor areas for the latter.  However, the vow I kept has resulted in censure from leadership, mild interventions on the part of family or friends and lastly a lack of financial security.

Though I know grace covers all, every act carries natural consequences—and not just the bad deeds have outcomes.  There’s a sarcastic saying which goes, “No good deed will go unpunished” which is snide way of saying doing good often results in loss and ingratitude.  The losses I have endured have been mostly in the relationship arena.  I can’t sustain certain relationships because of how I choose to live.  Some important people in my life keep their distance and avoid any conversation about my work.

You wouldn’t think being dedicated to working for God and working hard to not be a burden on the church would arouse censure, but it does.  Or, may be a better way to say it is the way I interpret the calling on my life definitely does.  This is gist the first vow (which I found recently in a Bible dating from 1987):  “I vow to serve God in whatever capacity I can full time, full tilt, no holds barred.”

The second one dealt with media.  I grew up Seventh-day Adventist and in most circles around that time they frowned on going to movies or watching TV shows except for news.  So I vowed to abstain from all media and keep my head clear of all these distracting voices.  The problem came with my band—they all did both, not being raised the way I was.  One day the leader of the band told me the rest of the folks felt I didn’t want to hang out with them.  We had a long talk about my vow and what it meant.  In his mind I had made a foolish promise that God would look on as silly.  The pressure continued for a couple of weeks.  I know my story probably sounds ridiculous to some of you reading this, but I’d like us to consider the nature of our take on God through my experience.  I eventually folded after much prayer and agonizing over the issue.  Not only was I bucking the conditioning from my heritage but also working against this very text, which I knew well at the time.

For years afterward I feared God would destroy the work of my hands.  In some ways the suspicion is still with me in the dark corners of my psyche that the current state of my music career is due to this broken vow.  Whether or not this is true, I can’t really say.  What I can say is that I came to God humbly aware that for me to reach into people’s lives I couldn’t be a recluse.  Writing songs amounted to some worth for the kingdom but it was in relationships where the real work began.  I realized my vow had isolated me from not only my friends but most people I would reach out to for Jesus.

I began watching TV and going to movies with the band.  Not a lot, but enough to show friendship.  To this day I limit how much I take in, not as part of the vow but for the sake of focus.  At this point in my life I can safely say I’m not a conservative or liberal in my thinking about these things.  In other words I don’t buy into either ethic as sacrosanct or the final word on righteousness.  My purpose here is different than you might imagine.

Our mistaken perspectives push us into all sorts of vows, arbitrary rules and foolish “spiritual” takes on very ordinary things.  As I grow in a knowledge of Christ, I realize more and more how very broken we all are and in our efforts to staunch the hemorrhaging in our spirits we create elaborate rules and erect formidable walls of doctrine to limit our baser passions.

All for nothing.

Jesus made something clear,  “Of yourselves you can do nothing.”

Anyone—and I mean Anyone!—who believes we change our own natures by personal effort misses the point of the cross.  Later Paul chimed in on this subject by stating emphatically, I can do all things through (Christ) who gives me strength!  Do you see the difference?

My vow had to do with my own efforts to be remain pure and untainted by the world—a godly goal.  The only problem was it didn’t work to keep me pure.  My thoughts were no less sinless than anybody else; my actions no less arrogant spiritually or more in tune with God’s Spirit.  What I find is that we fail as believers to strike a balance between what is and what should be.  To be blunt, I doubt most people really have a good (or even fair) grasp of what “should be” over anyone else.  Legalism is based on human efforts to improve ourselves so that we can approach God.  Since no one can approach God except through Christ, our efforts and rules are wasted.

What brought me to my senses about vows came in the form of a small story in the book of Judges (10:6 to 12:7) where Jephthah made a vow to God to sacrifice whatever came out of his front door first for a winning edge in the war he was about to fight.  His vow came from a lack of faith, first off, and in the second place, he forgot or didn’t know the law concerning sacrifices.  The first one to greet him on his return wasn’t a dog or goat or lamb but his only daughter.  I don’t know what he expected when he made the vow but the wisdom of it seemed to escape him.  He sacrificed her to the Lord as he promised.

Unnecessarily.

The law clearly prohibits human sacrifice.  Look it up and study what God said through Moses about such things.  Jephthah’s ignorance set him up for heartache.  His God (as opposed to gods of the nations around him) considered such a sacrifice abhorrent and abominable.  The sad truth is his daughter died for a foolish vow.

Ananias and Sapphira, on the other hand, made a similar promise to pay the entire proceeds of the sale from a piece of property then lied to renege.  Peter’s question to Ananias was paraphrased, “You could’ve given any portion to God you chose because the land belonged to you.  If you hadn’t wanted to give it all, God would not have had a problem with that.  But instead you promised all then held some of it back, which made your promise a lie.”  The vow turned out badly for both he and his wife.

Solomon’s assertion that we need to be reverent and differential when approaching God, however, still applies.  Yes!  He is interested in us.  Yes!  He loves us with a passion we can barely comprehend.  Yes!  He longs for us with an aching heart we cannot begin to fathom.  Yes!  He is personal.  Yet in all of this He is still wholly other and set apart (the meaning for the words “holy” and “sacred”) for specific reverence, respect and communication.  Jesus came to show us how personal God is in contrast to what the law seemed to imply (which it didn’t, we just interpreted it this way), at the same time, never do we see Him suggesting God as common.

My conclusion?  Instead of grabbing onto a specific view of God and running with it we need to add it to our list of characteristics.  If a human being is both good and evil, happy and sad, successful and failing—and the list could go on—all at the same time, then God created multidimensional creatures capable of being many things at once.  If this is true of His creation, then what does it say about the Creator?

As to vows, I say we should stay away from them until we have some inkling as to what we are doing.  Much heartache and unneeded stress comes from ignorant promises.  A vow—any vow—before God is never to be taken lightly or left unfulfilled.

Circling the Block

Whatever has already been, and what will be has been before; and God will call the past into account.

And I saw something else under the sun:  In the place of judgment—wickedness was there, in the place of justice—wickedness was there.

I thought in my heart, “God will bring to judgment both the righteous and the wicked, for there will be a time for every activity, a time for every deed.”  Ecclesiastes 3:15-17.

Let’s digest this together for a bit, what ya’ say?

Before we go on I need to declare my belief and faith in this book as intrinsically factual and true.  This is an important statement because what comes next flies in the face of convention.

When we say we need to take an account of some part of our lives, business (social, economic or religious practices) or possessions/wealth, it’s the same as saying “take stock of…” in another context.  To check the accounts of financial records simply means adding and subtracting the ebb and flow of it in order to see if they balance out on the side of profit or loss.  It’s not that deep of a concept, really.  The phrase “take stock of” just needs to be dissected minimally to see from where it originates:  The stock house or room.  To check the stock means (I’m really not trying to insult your intelligence here, just focusing on why we use these phrases) to count what’s available or lacking.

Ok, why was that word study important to our take on the judgment?

God will take the past into account, meaning weigh up the good with the bad, right?  So if this is true, then what has to happen for the “financial” (in the spiritual sense, of course) to be in the black or at least even?  I can answer this from two perspectives, I think, with ease, but first let’s work with Solomon’s question from his worldview.

Habits are behaviors or attitudes which come back around on either a regular basis or when a stimulus of some sort pushes a specific habit button.  What has been will be again.  Though Solomon is probably speaking about inventions, conventions and human relationships or accomplishments, his words can also apply to our deeds.  Why else would he include the subject of the judgment in a discussion of things going around in a circle (or cycling back around) to reinvention?  But what caught my attention was how he looked at the judgment, so let’s dwell on that, since we’ve already discussed the repetition of history.

In the Jewish economy the law provided forgiveness through sacrifice, yet it required restitution through either paying four times the amount stolen, a payment of some type to those wronged by rape, accidental death or debt, and, finally, death in extreme cases where premeditated murder or violent theft occurred.  But in every case, repentance did bring mercy from God; the debt to Him could be paid through sacrifice.  I don’t know what happened in Solomon’s case since we aren’t given anything past this book and the accounts of Kings and Chronicles, but the book seems to suggest something happened at the end of his life to turn him back to his God.  Oddly enough this works for me, given the copious examples in Scripture of some real scoundrels receiving mercy.  A man who lived most of his life in pursuit of pleasure and wealth found it all to be meaningless at the end of a race he won by all accounts and standards.

From the perspective of one whose life is now hidden with Christ in God, it seems to me to be easier to find grace in the sludge of human relationships—at least from the One who counts.  In this case we know a grace Solomon could only hope for but had no chance to see.  If I stand on my own in the judgment, my life is weighed by how my deeds balance out.  The bad thing is:  If I sinned even once in my life, the sin outweighs everything else good I did by God’s accounting, so I’m lost anyway; so one tiny sin or an excessive amount matters little when coming to the judgment.

Yet here’s where it really gets good:  if I’m like the thief on the cross, about to die for a life of crime and violence, and repent with a sincere heart, the blood of Jesus covers me like a white wedding garment and all my stinkiness is erased.   In other words, His good outweighs the world’s bad by the infinite power of the death and resurrection of Christ.  His good is weighed on the scales of the nature of His being, the Son of God; which makes Him God as well (see John 10:31-38).  The infinite nature of God outweighs by infinity the rebellion it takes to deny Him, which is the essence of all sin.

Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord prevails in the accounting.  Like a good friend of mine, Jerome says constantly, “When someone asks me how I made it into the kingdom, I’m gonna’ say,  ‘I don’t know.  I’m with Him!’”  then he’d point over his right shoulder to signify Jesus.  That’s all we get in the judgment; it’s the all or nothing clause; it’s a winner (Jesus) take all (anyone who submits to Him and all creation) situation.  Nothing can be added to Him and certainly nothing taken away.

But there is one final addendum to this subject I’ve just begun to understand.  The issue of the reward for the righteous never really made it on my radar until a few years ago when I read it again in the book of Revelation.  I’m not going to go into this in depth right now, but what came out of it and every other text which speaks of this subject is that our salvation is guaranteed by the blood of Christ.  The crown and rewards in the kingdom however are based on the trend of our life in His service.  If the good outweighs the bad, we receive a reward; if not, we squeak through the fire of His judgment saved, but with the sludge of sin burned away and all that remains of our entire lives is the foundation of Christ and the apostles (refer to 1 Corinthians 3 for Paul’s illustration).

I’m good with that, how about you?

Mending the Tear By Knowing When to Speak

…A time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak…  Ecclesiastes 3:7.

 

By now anyone would get the rhythm of these pithy little truths.  They speak into our lives such a wealth of simple reality that we have to just nod and agree.  What we usually miss, however, is the scope of their reach.

Knowing when to mend or tear relates to us in the physical realm quite easily because we can assess the damage.  The spiritual world baffles most of us as does the heart of a person.  We can’t know the motives of the heart anymore than we can know what is in the secret regions of God.  God might choose to open a window of understanding so we can gain some sort of grasp on the truth hidden there, but this is a privilege won by being trustworthy, not by works or we would boast about our status.

The Knowledge of the right time to speak or shut up, mend or tear only arrives when we submit to the wisdom of heaven.  I don’t know many people who succeed at the “knowing” part all that well.  Most of us make decisions based on the evidence and circumstances we have available then hope for the best.  This is called “wisdom” and is no guarantee of success.  As much as the self-help gurus would like to preach otherwise, making all the right decisions doesn’t make for success or prosperity—internally or financially.

When a person invests in a community their fate becomes linked to the outcome of that community’s choices and investments.  If this community continues to use wise careful consideration of its assets and investments, the outcome is more likely to be positive.  Unfortunately, nature plays a part in our plans as well.  If nature takes a turn for the worse—say a drought or hurricane—there’s nothing the community can do to change the outcome for the foreseeable future until the problem ends.  No one can ever fully divest themselves from the actions of others, which makes decisions a real pain, quite honestly.

Question:  Why should I be held responsible for the bad choices of someone else?

Answer:  We’re not responsible, just caught in the web of their natural consequences.

What has this got to do with tearing, mending, speaking or being quiet?

Every choice demands another choice.  We cannot escape the outcomes we’ve purchased by our efforts.  Oh, the specific outcome might vary from the expected, but then there are always a few to choose from aren’t there.

The very fact that Solomon mentions tearing and silence as the “balance” of mending and speaking should give us pause.  I hear a lot of talk about what love is and how it should be expressed.  Some would take issue (and do from the discussions I’ve had) with the “negative” part of these statements.  Yet these same people will rip apart a family through divorce if the marriage is dragging them down.  I’m not saying they don’t feel anything or that they’re completely heartless, rather these types of thinkers don’t consider “looking out for themselves” as part of list.

It is, though.

The moment we take care of business we move into the realm of timely living.  It’s impossible not to look at life with some sort of balance sheet, ticking off the different goals and obligations we engender throughout a lifetime of being.  I don’t know of too many people who wouldn’t relate to Newton’s third law of physics in its basic form—To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction…for we live with this everyday and continue to practice it in both the physical and social worlds.

To tear something we must know the purpose the tearing will serve or it becomes a worthless, and quite possibly harmful, exercise.  In the Jewish culture, tearing one’s garments was a public sign of distress, an expression of extreme anguish brought on by grief or humiliation.  There would be a time to tear the garment and when the grieving finished, mending the tear.  Some people don’t ever mend the torn spots in their garments or spirits, opting instead to live with the brokenness as some sort of badge or banner to their loss or social disgrace.

In keeping with this, there is a time to speak up and take notice of something bad or good in order to identify.  There is also a time when speaking into a situation or person’s life will do no good—especially once we’ve said the same thing several times.  But if we don’t speak up when we see evil, we bear part of the responsibility for the outcome of it.  At the same time, acknowledging evil is different than being able to fight it or stand against it successfully.  I know of very little in the way of opposition that could stand against a powerful nation in a full on confrontation, but there are other ways to win against the big dogs.

Ecclesiastes 9:17, 18 The quiet words of the wise are more to be heeded than the shouts of a ruler of fools.  Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good.

We can’t always win within our lifetimes for the grinding wheels of change take a while to effectively infiltrate the world around us.  But if we don’t speak up, those words may never be heard—or won’t be for a long era.  Change is not about seeing results instantly rather we see the incremental adjustments and affected areas grow healthier by degrees.  I may speak a word into my son’s life now that will only come back to him when he’s an adult and faced with the situation.  I may not even be alive when he considers what I said, but that’s not the point.

Yet the more the words the less the effectiveness which doesn’t benefit anyone.  So, weighing out what we plan to say is far more profitable than blurting it out.  I tend towards effusiveness (in case you haven’t noticed); giving people wa-a-a-a-a-a-y too much information to process in a short amount of time.  I’m learning what a powerful tool silence is.  In fact, the truth be known, I’m finding out the less I say, the more what I do say impacts those who listen.

If we learn the lesson of timeliness, we gain the best tool in our arsenal of social and personal growth packages we could find.  I have a long way to go…

To Search or Give up? To Keep or Throw Away?

…A time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away…Ecclesiastes 3:6.

 

In some ways it seems too simple to continue commenting on the list given by Solomon because the points written are just such basic commonsense that to say anymore is almost intellectually insulting.  Yet, though we acknowledge the wisdom of these basic truths, we don’t always know when or where to practice them.

For instance, a show like “Hoarders” would never even get off the ground in popularity unless we all had some sympathy for the people we’re watching obsess about stuff.  I know it sounds weird to say, but I think there’s a little hoarder in all of us in one way or another, because those who react strongly to “too much junk” in their garage or home are the same people who collected it in the first place.  Their worry isn’t that they have the stuff itself, it’s that they appear to be wasting space they could use better for some other purpose or thing.

Almost every reaction is equal to its counterpart action, except in the realm of emotional energy, for most of us overreact when it comes to certain things.  If we were hurt as children by other kids making fun of us, we’ll be crusaders for eliminating such behavior in people wherever we go.  If we experience poverty or witness the awful tragedy of starvation elsewhere in the world, those of us who have a strong empathy bone will crusade to eliminate hunger and poverty in the world.  Much of the time, the emotion the thing or situation inspires in us is stronger than warranted; although I will say watching children suffer cannot get enough attention.

The problem with most reactions is they aren’t sensible solution-based responses but rather over the top.  The way to solve most problems is to methodically approach them with a plan of action which takes care of the root issue causing the tragic consequence.  In the case of most starving children, poverty isn’t caused by the rich countries exploiting the poor necessarily; instead it grows out of the political climate in which these kids live.  I lived in South Africa for a number of years, and what I saw forced me to take a deep breath and reassess what caused such awful conditions.

Let me explain.

Apartheid (pronounced “apart-hate” in Afrikaans, meaning “separate heads”) created a climate where abuse could continue without much interruption from the rule of law.  At first, it seemed like a great idea to give the tribes homelands (separate states not the abuse), a solution which the Americans practiced with the Indian tribes by giving them reservations on which to live autonomously, to keep them spread out so they wouldn’t be close enough to war with each other.  What it ended up being (and probably was intended to be by the white powers of the day) was a way to keep the African people in a place outside of the white habitat.  This didn’t bother the blacks until they began to adopt Western culture in certain ways and technology.  Yet the poverty and disease amongst the African people didn’t directly result from white people’s interference or strategy.

Indigenous societies only function well within the paradigm of their traditions and historical framework.  Introduce a new culture and the two create either a vacuum for the native culture or a hybrid in which both adjust their framework to adopt certain aspects of the another.  In South Africa the blacks didn’t remain in the homelands but became increasingly urbanized without the necessary adjustments to the Western emphasis on education and holding down a regular occupation.  Certain African cultures are by nature a very fluid and they view time in a rather easy going way.  The same can be said of most tropical cultures for the need to be constantly on guard against cold weather doesn’t exist so the food supply isn’t as much of a problem as in northern regions.  This said, Africans are not lazy, though they might appear to be by Western standards, they are just more laid back about time itself.  When they began to mix more and more with the White culture through work and services, it changed the paradigm and their traditions began to get fuzzy around the middle.  What the country ended up with was townships.  This produced another problem which the white government wrestled with internationally.

The point is, letting go of our traditions for the sake of adopting a new paradigm is a struggle we all go through to some extent.  We can’t judge a third world mentality by our “sophisticated” modern society because we too hold within even this traditions which science and education have shown to be both hubris or, at the very least, hair-splitting and unnecessary.  The South African Natives’ rate of adjustment has been remarkable since the change of government.  The people are beginning to see the difference between the ideal and the reality.

Again, the main point is that the reaction of the European settlers to the native cultures overreached and over reacted, as did, in turn, the native cultures.  We can blame the whites for their disregard of the blacks’ humanity without losing sight of the nature of the tribal wars spurred by the same problem.  This isn’t a lesson on African politics or inspired by any desire to convince you who was at fault, but what I want to point out is that the Africans failed themselves by clinging to the traditions of their past which wouldn’t fit into the new paradigm.  The Europeans failed everybody (including themselves) by refusing or may be just ignoring the humanity of the native tribes.  The European cultures felt superior to the natives; the natives felt superior to the Europeans.  Wars broke out and those with the guns won.  History is written by the victors until someone comes along with better information.

The European culture clung to their attitudes towards the natives long after they should have adjusted their thinking, and lost the country to the change that inevitably came.  If both sides had integrated and appreciated one another’s strengths as well as historical significance, South Africa would’ve turned into a truly amazing place to live.

But here’s the kicker:  The abuser is now being marginalized and condemned by not only the ruling party but the world at large.  When we cling to things too long the value goes down except in our emotional attachment to them.

There’s a time to stop sharpening tools that have metal fatigue (you didn’t know metal did this?).  There’s a time to hold onto a tool what hasn’t been used enough.  There’s a time to let go of friendships which are toxic or at best, a drag on life in general.  There are times to hold onto even painful friendships because the person we’re involved with is going through a season which won’t change them except for the better.  There’s a time to search for new things and time to just be content with what we have now; to search for that missing person and a time to give up because the resources and time spent don’t produce any evidence or the person.

These are sometimes hard decisions to make.  It’s tough to navigate the waters of when, where and how long if the evidence isn’t clear.  The best we can do is judge by what we know works for us personally and won’t harm anyone in the process.  Sometimes we can’t avoid hurt to another by our choices because the circumstance demands choosing the best of bad options.

Whatever the case, we must develop godly wisdom to make these decisions.  I’ll end with James 3:17, 18—But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.  Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness.

Timing is Everything

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven:  a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and time to uproot, a time to kill and time to heal, a time…  Ecclesiastes 3:1-8.

 

There are some who believe that a person can justify just about anything they want through the Scriptures.  If that’s true, here’s a great starting place.  At the same time having the Bible spell out what is normal for our lives isn’t a bad thing as far as I’m concerned.  It appears to me that without this list many of us might dismiss certain emotions or realities within our psyche we otherwise could benefit from expressing.  So let’s look at them in a list:

 

A time to…

 

Be born/die

Plant/uproot

Kill/heal

Tear down/build

Weep/laugh

Mourn/dance

Scatter stones/gather them

Embrace/refrain

Search/give up

Keep/throw away

Tear/mend

Silent/speak

Love/hate

War/peace

 

Of course, some of the list is just stuff to which most of us would say “duh!” but think about how Solomon moves from the basic to more complex stuff.  The first two deal with lifespan and sustenance but the third one jumps right into a complicated and debatable issue.  A time to kill and a time to heal…might seem to be excusing or giving permission to bloodthirsty people to have their way in society, but really I don’t think Solomon isn’t even suggesting such a thing.

There are times when killing becomes imperative because the health and safety of many would be compromised if a violent intervention didn’t take place.  Unfortunately, political manipulation uses this very argument to decide to go to war over investment issues.  Yet examples abound where the innocent will suffer if we don’t intervene.  The problem with mankind, in my opinion, one which keeps us from doing things in a timely manner, is that we will do as America and its allies did, attack Iraq to get rid of Sadaam while completely remaining neutral in a place like Sudan where child warriors were committing atrocities we’ve only now begun to see.  It’s oddly surreal that the genocide of that country’s civil war awoke very little desire in the nations to intervene.  Sudan didn’t have anything we wanted so we ignored it hoping it would go away.

Libya does, so the world stepped up.  (Other than oil, they provide a strategic place for the Allies to put their forces if necessary.)  I’m not harping on the political rightness or wrongness of our actions, just the inconsistency.

The time to kill also includes trees, animals and host of other things with life in them—some sentient, some not.  I don’t even pretend to know the right or wrong times for any and every situation, but I know a few of them and there are several statements in Scripture which clarify when it should happen.

 

Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter.  If you say,  “But we knew nothing about this,”  does not He who weighs the heart perceive it?  Does not He who guards your life know it?  Will He not repay each person according to what he has done?  Proverbs 24:12.

 

Believers who work extra hard to provide for their families, set up a secure environment, preserve moral decorum, and generally live a good life, have often fallen short of this mandate, I believe.  We are so concerned about issues which are outside our control that we fail to get personally involved in the lives around us.  We may not have the power to change the political direction of the country we live in, but we do have influence.  We might be a small pool of light shining in the darkness, but it’s enough for those lost in said darkness to see their way.

The truth is, however, that we don’t need to practice politics to influence the world around us.  If by one loving example a person who otherwise wouldn’t know any different sees one of us practicing generosity, what will their response be—especially if it’s to them?  I don’t know, but the opportunity to show God’s character should never be wasted.  If He rains His goodness down on the righteous and unrighteous alike, we as His children should as well.  If we represent the attitude of heaven, we will consider vying over scraps of human gold or valuables a waste of time.  The whole universe is ours for the exploring and experiencing, so why are scrambling to get a pittance of the American or any other human dream?

Saving those who are being led away to slaughter is just one area in which we shine like stars in a dark cave of madness.  The fact that most of us don’t see this testifies to our need for spiritual shock therapy—which didn’t work in humans but seems to be a favored method of the God we serve.  The best lessons we learn are those in which we have to suffer, because generally we don’t pay attention without pain.  C. S. Lewis claimed,  “Pain is God’s megaphone” since it gets our attention.  The problem with our reaction is we seldom recognize that target of His wake up call, preferring instead to rail against our bad luck, lack of faith or His lack of provision.

Though everyone born is bound over to death, hastening that appointment with the grave by letting the innocent go without even trying to prevent it is so unlike our Master!  No one who ignores the problem will be commended, from what Jesus said.  We are held to a higher standard that, even while knowing we can’t meet it, we must strive to conform to through the renewal of our minds.  The time to be born and die finds its kin in the plant and uproot/kill and heal theme.  We cannot deny these to be related since everything in nature points to such a theme as true.  What we can’t seem to get through our heads (and may be I’m just speaking for myself here) is without God’s direct presence influencing us, our choices in any of these matters will veer off the mark.

Someone might ask, however,  “What about God?  Why hasn’t He intervened in these atrocities?  Where is He when this stuff goes down?”

Good question and it can only be answered by pointing out the Scripture we just quoted above from Proverbs 24:12.  The finite beings must show a desire to save life in reflection of their Master’s character before He will act….

Whew!  I didn’t mean to get sidetracked by this subject but I need to finish this thought…

…We humans act like God should step in every single time there’s a war or a killing spree or some other disaster of nature or of human origin.  The nature ones I can understand a little, the human caused disasters, I don’t.  Humanity declares itself the penultimate of intelligence, thus taking on the status of gods, then rails at the Supreme Being for not intervening in their self-caused atrocities and disastrous choices.  Sorta’ like saying to society,  “So what if I drink and drive?!?  It’s not my responsibility to be safe, you have to watch out for me!”  Does that sound logical at all?

We don’t want God to perform the necessary character changes in us which would prevent all those bad choices from even getting off the ground, but we sure want Him to prevent the consequences.  Sin is the wildcard in the mix of the human poker game with God, since it brings to the deck a Joker with all he entails.  The problem is we want to be able to keep this “freedom” to do as we like but at the same time demand God intervene on our behalf when it brings death or destruction.

When I was a kid I remember riding on the back of my grandpa’s station wagon and getting sick as a dog—headache, nauseous, etc.  I didn’t know what caused it until I began to recognize that every time I had this reaction it was because of a vehicle’s exhaust.  Another issue dawned on me that took years for me to recognize the source, fairly debilitating headaches bordering on migraines.  When I was 19 a back specialist from Loma Linda instructed a group of us on sitting and standing posture and I eliminated most of my problem.  Denying that exhaust is harmful to humans is living in denial.  Denying that our posture—i.e. sitting all day or standing wrong—doesn’t affect our wellbeing is simply out of touch with reality.

Yet we do this all the time with sin.

The problem humanity faces isn’t all that hard to recognize once we admit there is evil rampant in our world.  It also stands to reason that we aren’t going to eliminate all the evil there because sometimes it’s downright impossible to distinguish the righteous from the unrighteous.  The concept of a time to kill and a time to heal offends most of us peace-mongers because we hate the idea of bloodshed, as we should.  But the reality in a world maddened by sin is we can’t escape the need for violence when the violent will not be reasoned with at all.

It isn’t that we don’t get instruction from God about all of these truths, it’s that we don’t recognize the them when He shines them in our face.  It isn’t the systems, it’s sinful people trying to control the world.

Nobly Serious

…Whatever is noble… Within the will of God I find a strange dichotomy which plagues the way we think about Him. Here is a Being who accepts the sinner but not the sin; who condemns evil but works in ever increasingly bizarre ways to save those who rebelled and who basically crave just to live forever doing whatever they want when they want. He loves every person who has ever lived with a passion we can’t even fathom. Yet He will destroy those who remain harmful to creation when the time for this age is over. For a long time, I struggled to grasp why a loving God would destroy anything. It seemed out of character until I realized that love desires safety, happiness, wholeness…the list of good things goes on and on. Good is the antithesis to evil. This truth plays out in all our myths, legends and modern stories as well as life itself. God desires the good and hates the evil, therefore if someone continues to practice evil even after He offers them good, what choice does a love have but to eliminate the threat to good? Look at sin as a disease which destroys its host then destroys itself. When an outbreak of some disease strikes a nation or community, those in charge of the cure will give a medicine designed to destroy the disease itself without killing the person or host. The problem is some people are so consumed by the disease that they can’t be cured and die as a result. In the case of small pox or the plague, once these people died, everything that touched them during their illness had to be burned so the disease wouldn’t spread. God knows sin as a disease. We don’t see it that way because to us it just seems normal. Unfortunately, most of us have identified with the disease for so long we don’t see the discoloration of our spirits as abnormal anymore. The only way to recognize the contrast is to be able to see Jesus. Once we look into His perfect light, our dark and smelly reality becomes all too apparent and is abhorrent to us. Unless, of course, we reject what the light reveals. However, the whole of our condition is not revealed in just one look, for if we saw the whole problem sin causes within us all at once, we would be overwhelmed by despair. So Christ gives us a glimpse of the reality first in order to set us on the road to treatment and recovery. A person who refuses to acknowledge the disease and thereby rejects the treatment eventually becomes the disease itself—or a proponent of it at least. Once this stage is reached all hope for redemption or cure is gone and God is left with no other choice but eliminate the threat. In other words, in order to destroy the disease, the host who refuses to relinquish it is destroyed with it. Sin brings with it harsh realities. First, it separates us from the Life (Jesus); next it deceives those fooled by its tantalizing glitter into believing they are the masters of their own fate. Lastly it brings death in numerous ways and death produces futility. Humans have fought this pointlessness by having their name carried on from generation to generation in order not to be forgotten in death. The problem is the reality of their identity is forgotten until all that’s left is myth and legend. God offers eternal life where the legend is the person rather than myths that raise up around their exploits and character. A living legend is better than a myth about the dead. So God has no choice but to eliminate sin if He desires a clean universe without death as an option again. Those who refuse the Way, Truth and Life find by default they have refused to live—probably not by desire but by rejection of the Son who gives life freely to all who ask. And, of course, they hate this truth and resent God for “forcing” such a choice on them as if it’s His fault…which it is. He designed the game and its rules, meaning the outcome also comes from this design as well. So what does this have to do with being noble? I looked up the word translated “noble” in the NIV and “honest” in the KJV. Vine’s p. 309 says the best translation of the word would probably be nobly serious. To call someone “noble” is more often than not a term for character. Of course the word is also used for those born to the ruling class where monarchies still exist, but usually we mean someone who possesses outstanding qualities in character and what they do. Basically the word noble covers all of the traits Paul speaks of in Philippians 4:8. The rest of the list merely expands and explains his first point. Yet, the KJV’s interpretation does place a twist on our understanding when it uses the word honest. In our modern world, honest means something different than noble. The original word came from the Middle English in a mixture of Anglo-French, which in the original Latin form was honestus and first used in the 14th century, meant honor or honorable. Paul is using a Greek word seminos to encourage us to be nobly serious or honorable in our pursuits. The contrast couldn’t be more clear: Those who follow Christ develop a taste for noble pursuits. In other words, they seek things which are honestly honorable. We who follow after Jesus pursue those things which not only honor Him, but reflect His character and by default infect us with His light. We grow to enjoy His company, which infuses us with Himself. If rejection of God is a disease we must choose, then the cure is His presence. No more noble pursuit could be sought after than Jesus in us. We develop a serious desire for all things noble, honest, honorable because of His presence in our hearts.

Straining Forward

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.  Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it.  But one thing I do:  Forgetting what is behind and straining toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.  Philippians 3:12-14.

Now we come to a passage which has become a theme for me—mantra was the first word I thought of but it seemed out of place in this context.  As usual, I need to take this point by point to mine the rich truth embedded in it.

Paul does one of those Jewish rabbi expansion things where they say something in a sparse almost terse way, move another point then return to the original by way of saying it either slightly or completely differently with the same emphasis.

First he makes it clear he hasn’t been made perfect as yet; though he pushes on to grow towards this in Christ.  Using the phrase to take hold of he gives us a metaphor which points to his journey to become godly in Christ.  The next sentence denies actually being whole (perfect) so all this nonsense about Paul or any other apostle attaining sinless-ness except in the context of the blood is a complete waste of vocal cords.  The apostle proclaims succinctly he isn’t sinless, which should be a comfort to others who read his letters and feel like they don’t make the grade.

Yet once he makes it clear perfection is still a goal, he expands his original point by stating his determination to accomplish this through Jesus’ power.  It might be semantics for some but the fact that Paul makes a point of Christ taking hold of him for the purpose of perfection should wake us up to who really does the work.  We might hold on to Him for dear life but our efforts are not what change us, though by them we give God the “permission” to work in our lives.  Our submission is the means by which the Holy Spirit comes into our lives with His changing presence, and our work, as I’ve said before, is based more on keeping our submission current rather than a self-help list of pep-talks and attitude adjustments.

The next question we have to ask is why did Jesus take hold of us?

Jesus came to reconcile man to God and once that was accomplished mankind would become reconciled to themselves.  God didn’t need to be reconciled to man because, though we sinned, which means we betrayed and rejected Him, He worked out a way to save us, since He still loves us and wants a relationship with us.  That doesn’t describe someone who needs to be reconciled to me.  He doesn’t hold our sins against us and only for this reason would we need to mollify Him.  No, it’s man who holds the grudge not God, and is the main reason Jesus came to earth.  If this was Christ’s purpose in taking hold of us, then we press in to take hold of Christ, which means we have to be reconciled to Him to first.  Paul’s push to take hold of Jesus’ mission and claim not to have taken hold of it signifies that our entire lives are spent in the reconciliation process.  Don’t believe me?  Then why do we still wrestle with sin?

Anyone who is fully reconciled to another has no further work to do towards the process and operates in perfect harmony.  Paul’s declaration that he hadn’t accomplished all this or been made perfect says to me his life was in process of reconciling every part of himself.  None of us reach this point of full unity with God this side of glorification, since our bodies remain bound to death despite what our eternal spirits.  This is an important distinction because I know people right now who preach that a sinless state is possible for us.

I grew up with the understanding those who were alive when Jesus returned would be sinless.  Though I know the passages my church used to support their claim for this “doctrine,” I don’t know how they came to this conclusion with all the other references in Scripture disagreeing.  I’ve hear recently another church that preaches this kind of “perfection” to which one of my friends adheres most ardently.

Yet our “sinless” state on the Day has nothing to do with our performance or state of being without sin, rather it has to do with our connection to Jesus.  The robe of Christ’s righteousness covers our sin like the blood on the day of Atonement.  When we see Jesus face to face, we will not feel worthy to be with Him in and of ourselves, which means our salvation rest wholly on God’s mercy and grace.  Like one pastor had a habit of saying,  “When they ask me what I’m doing in heaven, I’m gonna’ say,  ‘I don’t know!  I’m with Him!’ “

Right there is where the difference comes for all of us.  The word “perfect” takes its primary meaning from a word in Greek which points to wholeness.  None of us will be completely whole this side of our bodies being glorified so any claims to contrary are a waste of time.

Why would Paul say, But one thing I do:  Forgetting what is behind and straining toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus, if he’d already arrived at wholeness?  The need to forget what is behind and strain towards something else points to a lack in the past, for no one needs unless they lack.  The prize for most Christians is eternal life, but I believe restored unity with God is what Paul is thinking of here.  Eternal life is a reward, to be sure, yet living forever without being reconciled to God would be hell.  What reason would Paul need to forget what was behind if he had already attained wholeness and reconciliation?

The short answer is:  None.

This passage only becomes encouraging to us when we realize Paul had to let go of his past mistakes and failures to be like Jesus the same way we do.  That knowledge gives us the greatest weapon against condemnation we could ever receive.  We step into a state of grace where mercy is the standard of operations.  Grace doesn’t ignore or deny sin; instead it solves it by being an agent of transformation, and any gratitude or loyalty to God on our part grows from this place.