Growth Relationships

Little Lies

“In your eyes, I am complete”

“She saved my soul from the devil”

“I could not ask for more”

“Forever and ever, never will part”

For music fans, all of the above quotations can be rightly attributed to a song that includes it. The songs range from Pop to Country to Oldies and they all share one common denominator…they all contain lies.

Now, most people will sing along to these songs without any strike of conscience. And maybe that’s normal. But for thinking people, especially thinking Christians, we have to consider the impact of the words and the thoughts that we allow to infiltrate the way we perceive the world. After all, as Scripture says “Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34). If this is true, then even the words we say carelessly, maybe especially so, gives us revelations about our heart. And if we unthinkingly repeat untruths just because they are set to a catchy tune, what does that say about us?

Because you see, the challenge with these little lies is that most of the time we don’t recognize them as such. We think that someone else really can complete us, or that they can save our soul, give us all that we’ve ever wanted, or will be with us for always. However the only being that all of these can really be attributed to is God. When we place someone else in God’s place, we are exchanging Him for something less than Him. In other words, we are creating and serving an idol – a caricature of what God offers that can only be expected to disappoint.

The logic may seem extreme, which is maybe the point. We don’t recognize the seriousness of “little lies” and that is why they can often have the greatest damage.

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Growth Hope Relationships

Lunching with the Enemy

The holidays are a time where spend a great deal of our waking hours with those we love. A lot of these occasions seem to involve eating and maybe rightly so, as it seems that eating together is often associated with a level of intimacy not found between mere associates. Maybe this is why business executives and Hollywood agents are quick to “do lunch”; it’s a tangible sign of inclusiveness.

Inclusiveness, however, doesn’t happen just around the dining room table of our homes. For those of us who are Christians, our Heavenly Father has promised that not only are we part of our own families, we are part of His (Titus 3:7; Ephesians 1:5). Therefore, we get to eat at His banquet table, and share in fellowship with Him (Luke 14:15). This is a common understanding of grace; those of us who were wrong with God get to be made right with Him. However, as in much of Christianity, that which has become common, has perhaps lost its impact. While all the above is true, what is often forgotten is the degree to which we are anathema to God except for Christ’s sacrifice. Getting the privilege to eat at Christ’s table is comparable to the outrage that would occur if President Bush had Osama Bin Laden over for Thanksgiving, except comparably our crimes against a holy God are far worse. (This is not to say that the earthly consequences of our behavior are the same, but the contrast between our sins and God’s holiness is much more pronounced than the same comparison made between sinners.) The shock of such a meal would resound throughout the CNN-world, because we would recognize that a privilege was being given to a man who not only had not earned it, but had earned the exact opposite response. The President would be granting an act of inclusion to somebody whose behavior calls for him to be ostracized. Osama would be accompanying the same seat that the President’s children had sat in, served from the same dishes, and allowed the same access. The fact that we find this absurd, shows us the scandal of God’s grace. For those of us who were enemies of God are now His children (Col. 1:20-21); He has allowed them unprecedented access (Rom. 5:1-3), and shows them favor they can never earn (Eph. 2:8-9). We have become so used to calling ourselves “children of God”, that we forget the affront our adoptions paper must cause in heaven. The enemies have been made kids.

Many of us will gather this holiday season and get together with friends and families out of obligation. Let us not forget that God has no obligation to lunch with us, and yet through faith and repentance, He gives us the privilege anyway.

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