As close to a devotional as I get (Part I)

As I started writing this, I realized that this one was going to have to be a two-parter. I downloaded the Shane Claiborne chapel from our chapel archives and, while I was there, I saw a chapel message from earlier in February that I remembered reacting to at the time. I downloaded it and listened through it again, and wanted to share my thoughts on it.

The speaker was one of our student body chaplains. She started off by talking about her favorite movie: The Little Rascals. (If you want to listen to the whole message for yourself, you can get it here.)

She gave a synopsis of the movie, talking about the boys that make up the He-Man Woman-Hater Club, and how one of them, Alfalfa, is in love with a girl named Darla. Of course, his buddies are none too pleased with this violation of their woman-hating standards, so they set out to sabotage Alfalfa and Darla's relationship, which they do quite effectively. Alfalfa ends up with Darla mad at him, his He-Man Woman-Haters Club man at him, and their Clubhouse burnt to the ground.

After giving the synopsis, she posed the question:

How can Alfalfa live in this context (the context of the He-Man Woman-Haters Club) and still be who he is (in love with Darla)?

And that was her question for us: How do we, as Christians, live in the context we're in and still be who we are?

She turned to Revelation chapter 2 and talked a little bit about the church of Thyatira, which had a Jewish and pagan mix of a culture.

Then I tuned out for a bit, but I know she was hating on guilds. No seriously. I tweeted: "'Guilds lead to idolatry.' Dear IWU chapel, you're not helping us out a whole lot." When you're a part of the IWU Theatre Guild, well, you get the picture.

Okay, okay, jokes. But as she went on, I began to have some real misgivings about what she said.

She related the church of Thyatira to Alfalfa. To make your living in Thyatira, you had to belong to a guild. If you belonged to a guild, chances are you had to eat meat that had been sacrificed to idols, thus participating in idolatry, according to their definition. How were they to live in their context and yet still live out their faith? They were living in the middle of a difficult tension: a tension of Christ and culture.

She then said, and this is a direct transcribed quote: "There was a false teacher who came in and started saying -- I know, this is so nice, isn't it? -- 'Oh yeah, everything that you're doing -- being part of those guilds, eating that food -- totally cool. You can do all of that and still be a Christian. Isn't that so great?' Wasn't that so timely for a nice person to just come in and 'massage' the gospel a little bit and make it seem like what the culture is saying is okay is okay?"

So... I'm listening. And confused. Because (mentally) I immediately flip to Romans where Paul, talking about eating meat that has been sacrificed to idols, says:

"One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them.

"And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand."

"Whoever eats meat does so to the Lord, for they give thanks to God; and whoever abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God."

"I am convinced, being fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for that person it is unclean."

"For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit..."

Okay, you caught me -- that wasn't from memory -- I piece-mealed it from Romans 14 on BibleGateway. But I think you get the picture. The Romans 14 passage has increasingly come to mean a lot to me in the Christ-culture dynamic I engage with almost daily. And so, you can imagine, there was some interesting cognitive dissonance going on in my head. I still haven't figured out how to reconcile the two, because John in Revelation 2 certainly does seem to condemn the eating of food sacrificed to idols, but, on the other hand, here's Paul saying almost the exact opposite. Which is it? Somebody a little more familiar than me with Biblical literature will probably have to help me out on that one.

Anyway, in Revelation 2, it says that this false prophet Jezebel who is leading people astray has been given time to repent but still hasn't, and that the church has tolerated her and her teaching. The chaplain went on to say: "Sometimes I think we get this idea that toleration is love. That, if my friend is sinning (and I know that she's sinning), I shouldn't say anything because that would just be mean and rude and I don't want to make her feel uncomfortable or hurt her in any way."

She went on, "We like to rationalize it and say, 'Well, Jesus never condemned anybody and he tolerated their lives.' But that's just not quite biblical. Let's look at the passage in John chapter 8 which is where a lot of people go to when they say 'Jesus never condemned anybody.' So there's this woman who's living in adultery, and all these teachers of the law are dragging her to Jesus, and they start berating [sic] Jesus with questions of 'We should follow the law of Moses! This woman's living in adultery! We need to stone her! That's what the law says! Isn't that what the law says? Isn't that right? Shouldn't we do that? We should stone her now 'cause she's living in sin!' And so, Jesus, what he does -- he just draws a line in the dirt [sic], and he says, 'Let him who is without sin be the first to cast the first stone.' And one by one, each person, each teacher of the law and each Pharisee who was with this woman left, till it's just Jesus and this woman. And, no doubt, she has tears running down her face and she's panic-stricken in the face of death. And Jesus says to her, 'Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?' She says, 'No one, sir.' Jesus replies, 'Then neither do I condemn you.'
And at that point, shouldn't we be like, 'See? He didn't condemn her either. Point proven -- we should just be able to tolerate sin. Jesus didn't condemn anybody. We're fine.' But we then miss the last part of his sentence. And it says, 'Neither do I condemn you. Now go, and leave your life of sin.' See? Jesus called her out on her adulterous life to her face. How mean. But that's love. That's love, that Jesus actually cared about her eternal life enough to tell her that she wasn't living in a way that she would inherit the Kingdom of God."

Now, I'm not saying that I disagree completely with everything that she says here. I'm not saying that we should never confront people or call people out on things. I've called several people out on different things before and it has often turned out very well. And I've had many people call me out on things. It has even created a stronger bond between me and the other person occasionally in addition to fixing the bigger issues.

But here is another cognitive dissonance problem that I've always run into: He was Jesus. He was God. I am not. The student body chaplains are not. We look to that chapter because Jesus was God walking around on earth, and therefore he had every right to condemn her. And didn't. True, he told her to go and sin no more. But he was God. The human people all left, remember? They didn't have the right to cast stones, so they dropped them on the ground and left. And yes, we are to become like Jesus, but at some point, I wonder, where should we start watching where we tread, lest we start trying to do his job for him? Where is that line? It's something I've wrestled with for a while.

That's all for the first part. It wasn't originally what I started out wanting to write about -- I'm saving that for Part II, so stay tuned.