I’m always struck by how these types of things are received in large, public venues. Of course, we clap and appreciate what these people have done. As we should. Especially the bone marrow donor! But there’s often a sense to which they poke back at us too. If we haven’t done what others are being recognized for, we might start to feel the tiniest bit of shame or guilt creep up within our hearts. Comparison games run amuck. And if we have done them, then we might wonder why we’re not out on centerfield ourselves, getting the same recognition.

Of course, there are more personalized, self-initiated, and therefore more devious forms of this, what we sometimes call virtue signaling, or simply wearing our acts of charity on our sleeves. Social media has exacerbated the problem to the moon and back. But whatever the source, it’s quite the predicament. If we’re honest, no matter who we are or what we’ve done, chances are we prefer our accomplishments to lean more public than private. And yet it doesn’t do a lot of good for us. The more we brandish our acts of righteousness, the worse versions of ourselves we tend to become.

This is why Jesus’s spin on all of this in Matthew 6 is so refreshing. And shocking. In it, he instructs his disciples and the listening crowds to not be like the hypocrites who give in order to be seen by others. He calls them “those who live out of the synagogue,” or the law-center of religious and social life. Instead — and this is the kicker — we shouldn’t let our left hands know what our right hands are doing so that our giving is done in secret (Matt 6:1-3).

At first glance, the teaching appears simple enough: check your arrogance at the door and let your acts of charity be done privately. And that is certainly the point. At least part of it. But, I’m just as interested in what Jesus says before the privacy clause, about our hands. Because, if you think about it, there’s more going on here than privacy toward others. There’s also a privacy toward self that Jesus desires. “I want your hands themselves to be oblivious to what’s going on,” he says. This type of ethical living is on another level, better yet, another planet. It supersedes the moral because the moral application to Matthew 6 would be to simply try harder at being private with our acts of generosity. But, that doesn’t cover the private-to-self dimension of what Jesus is actually going after. Again, he wants a type of self-forgetfulness that can only come when we’re not focusing on the good work itself. Because the instant we do, our left hand starts bragging to our right hand, and we start feeling a little better about ourselves on the basis of morality alone.

There’s a lot of grace in this for us. These big ethical markers (or seemingly so) of Jesus’s kingdom aren’t simply standalone ethics, they’re impossibilities — who can actually be that forgetful and blind-to-self apart from cutting off one of our hands entirely? See, these things lead us to focus on something other than our works, that is Christ crucified, the one whose left and right hands were stretched far apart and pinned to a bloody cross, and who gave to us the riches of his grace by dying in our place. 

Tim Keller calls this a “grace over goodness” way of living. When our attention is on how much we’ve been loved, we realize we don’t always have to know what we’re doing as Christians. We don’t even need to know what ‘good’ is (though we might). We certainly don’t need the recognition, because, again…what for? Instead, forgetting ourselves and remembering him, like a branch to a vine we trust Jesus will be the one to bear fruit in due time. And because it’s God we’re talking about, he will surely do it. Even better: if we’re in Christ, he already has.

The post When We Don’t Know What We’re Doing appeared first on Red Tree.

We are surrounded by moral messaging. It’s inside us too — we love good stories that present us with a good challenge. In reality, though, my attempts to apply the moral always seem to fizzle out. I might learn humility from Bugs Bunny and apply that lesson for a minute, but then I find myself on the highway muttering about the slow car in the fast lane and abruptly realize I’m not up to the challenge.

This is one reason why reading the Bible grows stale for many of us. We tend to think about Bible stories as moral challenges. But reading them this way can make the Bible exhausting because rules and laws are not meant to save or heal us, but to reveal the depth of our spiritual desperation. God doesn’t want us to read his story looking for a simple moralism. In fact, he wants to put our moralistic, rule-following thought patterns to death so that they can be replaced with something else. The story of Jesus forgiving and healing the paralytic in Mark 2 brings this startling reality into view.

One sign that we’re reading Mark 2 moralistically is when we find ourselves asking, “What type of person is this asking me to become?” This can lead us to a number of outcomes, such as “I should be a better friend” or “I should reach out more to the sick and suffering around me,” or “I should be more willing to evangelize and bring my friends to Jesus like the paralytic’s friends are here.” It could even lead us to think “I should not be like the teachers of the law who question Jesus and his power, but instead I should work harder to have faith, because the stronger my faith, the more likely it is for Jesus to heal me.”

Now, these things are not necessarily all bad to pursue. It would be wonderful if I could be a better friend, and I feel that even more acutely when I scroll my text message threads and see friends I love whom I haven’t reached out to in months or even years. I’d love to be more evangelistic because I really do love Jesus and people, but if you were to look at my schedule, I don’t think you’d put evangelism high on my priority list. I’m so darn bad at it. I’ve even led seminars on the subject and still find myself feeling like I’m doing a crummy job.

But here’s where reading stories about Jesus and looking for the moral lesson breaks down: moralism says the answer to my problem is that I must look to myself. I’ve got to be a better friend. I’ve got to try harder to share Jesus with others. I’ve got to have more faith, then Jesus will bless me. Instead of looking to Jesus and his power and grace, we look to ourselves and our weak efforts. And like cutting into an onion, we end up teary-eyed and disappointed as we find ourselves falling short yet again. So, how do we stop reading the Bible looking for another fruitless lesson? How can we read the story so that we can actually see Jesus clearly and rest underneath the true moral that God intends us to hear?

Let’s consider a few things from Mark 2. First, note that Jesus forgives the paralytic before healing him. Picture the scene. It’s laser-focused. All eyes are on Jesus. But instead of healing the man, he does the unexpected, saying, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” If we went inside the mind of the friends, the paralytic, or the teachers of the law, they must all be thinking…”What?!” 

Jesus wants them, and us, to see something. He wants us to see that we need something more than physical healing. We need forgiveness. We need grace. We don’t need to try harder or do better in response to a wave of fresh inspiration — we need a Savior. Take him at his own word: “But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” Jesus uses the opportunity to turn our moralistic minds upside down and reveal that our situation is far more dire, and our hope to be saved is much nearer than we imagined. We are not in need of a greater moral effort from within ourselves. We are in need of someone outside of us to work a miracle on our behalf.

Much to the relief of observing parties, Jesus does heal the paralytic. Previously unable to walk, and at the mercy of others to carry him about, he is now by the word of power from Jesus’ lips capable of walking. The people are left in awe. But the story doesn’t end there. Remember, Jesus has the authority to forgive the sins of the paralytic and does in fact declare this man’s sins forgiven. But how do we know? How can we be certain that the paralytic has his sins forgiven?

The answer lies in what happens to Jesus later in Mark’s gospel. The paralytic was carried to Jesus by his friends in order to receive healing. But, looking ahead to the cross, we see something different. Jesus wasn’t carried by his friends. He was carried away by his enemies. He wasn’t carried to forgiveness and healing, but to condemnation and death, like a lamb to the slaughter. In our place, he didn’t resist but allowed himself to be carried away, and to be “cut into” like the roof in Mark 2 to make room for our salvation. This is why we have to stop reading for the moral of the story and start reading for Jesus. Because the real “moral” of the story is that Jesus took the brunt so that spiritually paralyzed people like us — people unable to change no matter how hard we try — could be healed and experience real forgiveness. 

The story of the paralytic confronts our love for neatly packaged Looney Tunes lessons. God has a plan for moralists who are tired of fizzling out under new challenges. The grace of Jesus reveals a better story by showing us that God doesn’t want a bunch of people who have made themselves well. Instead, his desire is to forgive and heal the sinfully sick, needy, and desperate, which is every one of us. In God’s story, the true moral is not to try harder, but to gaze upon the cross of Christ that says to us, “That’s all folks!”

The post Cutting Into the Onion of Moralism appeared first on Red Tree.