But recently, along with twenty other fellow believers, I’ve been taking a Biblical Theology class at my local church. Each week we approach a different genre of Scripture, seeking to understand how it illuminates Christ and his suffering (Luke 24:25-27). Last week, we looked at the five books of the Old Testament that comprise “wisdom literature” which to my surprise includes the Song of Solomon.

We read Chapter 2 in class, which is about a man going to great lengths to get to his bride. In verse 8 we read, “The voice of my beloved! Behold, he comes, leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills.” You feel the groom’s thrill in pursuing and moving toward his soon-to-be wife, displaying a longing and eagerness that refreshes the reader as we imagine ourselves in her place. It bids us to imagine “if only someone pursued me in that way.” But remember! This is a letter that is reflective of Jesus and the church, a love letter God wrote to his people. Instead of reading it as a how-to guide, or an old-fashioned story about traditional marriage, we get to read this as Jesus’s traveling at great lengths to get to his church, that is, this is the story of God’s very pursuit of you. Jesus didn’t bound over literal mountains and hills – he bound the chasm of heaven itself. He leaped down to earth to die for you to bring you back into his unending, never-breaking love.  

This passage could be re-written in a manner that depicts Jesus all the clearer:

The voice of my love, here he comes. Leaping over the greatest chasm, from heaven to earth, to be with us. He is full of grace, the perfect man. He has arrived and he is calling my name. 

He says to me, Get up, my love, the one I delight in, and come to me. For all the deadness of your winter has passed, it’s been nailed to the cross. And now, through my resurrection, life springs forth from the earth. Restoration of all creation is knocking at the door. The time to worship God forever is now here. Get up, my love, the one I adore, and come away with me. Do not hide, for there is no longer shame, but instead, come out in the open. I long to see your face, to hear your voice. 

I am yours and you are mine.

As I reflect on that truth, I think back to my twenty-something-year-old self and wish this was the picture someone would’ve painted for me, instead of telling me this book was off-limits until marriage. In that moment it felt as if I wasn’t worthy to read the book, when instead that is far from the truth! This book is a beautiful display of God’s intimacy toward his people and how sex is an illustration, not the fulfillment or purpose of love. Now, as someone who is married, this book bids me to see how marriage can’t be my God because my husband will not satisfy or fulfill the desires only God can fulfill. Marriage, and the Song of Solomon, is a reflection, pointing to a far more intimate and satisfying relationship, which is in Christ alone.

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But it’s this element of finding love particularly in small towns that’s got me thinking this year. I suppose, if you’d prefer, instead of Hallmark it could be Austenian images of Mr. Darcy traversing the countryside to court Elizabeth. My wife’s a big fan and we’ve watched our share of Austen films together. (Our daughter Jane’s name was inspired by one of the sisters in Pride and Prejudice.) But it’s hard to miss the pronounced theme in Austen’s novels of finding and experiencing love in the outskirts.

Well, you might be surprised to know that the Bible has a compatible view of love, and where to find it. But its story is anything but predictable. It goes against every bit of human intuition and appears (at least at first) in the unlikeliest of places. 

Nestled deep away in the middle of the Old Testament, in Song of Songs chapter 3, we meet a young woman who is in despair because she can’t find her fiancé. At wits’ end, she says, “I will rise and go about the city, in the streets and in the squares; I sought him [there] but found him not.” But then after she passes outside the city gate, past the watchmen on the wall, she finds him — in particular Darcy-fashion — coming up out of the wilderness toward her, his heart brimming with joy. A happy ending, to be sure, but a notable contrast between her distress and her relief, divided by a simple city wall.

Now, for us, as modern readers, often conditioned to reading the Bible more scientifically than artistically, this can all seem so arbitrary. Why does it matter where he was found, but that he was found? Well, fortunately for us, God isn’t like us. He’s a much more creative storyteller and always has his eyes on the smaller details, catching us off guard with things that confound human reasoning. 

The truth is, it matters greatly where the woman found her husband-to-be because when it comes to the Bible’s hometurf, different locations symbolize different theological realities. The Apostle Paul isn’t shy about this in Galatians 4 when he likens the physical city of Jerusalem (and the temple therein) with Mt. Sinai, and with the old, lawful covenant of “Do these things and then you will live” (Lev 18:5). The woman is a poetic picture of something beyond herself, as is the rural landscape she finds love in. She’s a picture of the bride of Christ finding Jesus outside of or apart from the trappings of the Law. 

This is also why Jesus was born in small-town Bethlehem, grew up in the Podunk town of Nazareth, ministered to the tiny villages of Galilee, and even more, why he died for us “outside the city gate,” as the author of Hebrews so helpfully reminds us.

The apostles are adamant about this. The prophets insisted on it — both where he would be born and where he would die — for the sake of a pure, undiluted gospel. Because, law and love don’t mix. The law demands something from us; it remembers past offenses. But love gives, and keeps no record of wrongs.

The New Testament is more “Quaint Christmas village” than we tend to think. It’s a village far outside the city limits of our work, hectic lives, responsibilities, moral accolades, and the high expectations that so many people place upon us and that we place upon ourselves. The gospel tells us — and the stories show us — that the law is behind us, not in front of us. So, with a sigh of relief, we can rest in the countryside of God’s grace, knowing that he was restless to come and love us to the uttermost — to find us, in fact — by coming all the way down to our hometown and dying on a cross in our place.

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Recently I was reading the New Testament encouragement from the Apostle Paul to “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and give thanks in all circumstances” and it hit me that I fall far short of living up to that standard most of the time. If my Apple Watch measured the urgency and vitality of my prayer life instead of my standing hours or the number of steps I take in a day, I don’t think I’d appreciate the technology very much, and the findings would be ugly. In fact, whenever the topic of prayer even comes up, my thoughts usually devolve into: “I’m terrible at prayer, I don’t pray enough, and I’ve got to get better at it.” While all of that may actually be true, I was recently relieved to see that Jesus doesn’t think about prayer in the same kind of me-centric, measure-y way that I do. And contrary to my approach, he doesn’t simply tell me to try harder.

In Luke 18, Jesus shares a story of a persistent widow. In so doing, he decidedly does not take the “close your exercise rings” approach to improving our prayer life, nor does he put forward a “how to hack your way into regular prayer habits” like you might expect to hear today. Instead, he uses story to slow us down and help us see underneath the many reasons we don’t pray. He paints a portrait of a widow who continually seeks justice from a self-involved judge who eventually caves to her demands due to her persistence. He surprises us by relating God to the unjust judge in the story and pointing out in a lesser-to-greater style argument that if the judge will grant the requests of the widow, how much more will a good God will listen to the cries of his chosen ones and care for us.

What’s unexpected for “spiritual vitality measurers” like myself about the approach Jesus takes is what Luke tells us the point of the story is meant to teach us. In Luke 18:1 it says, “Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.” Luke tells us that Jesus wants us to learn to pray continually and not give up. But he “shows” instead of tells. He isn’t a solicitor at our front door trying to sell us something to improve our lives, rather, he’s like a family member or close friend who always uses the side door.

Jesus knows that our wills are often more resistant to the things of God than we like to believe, particularly because an appeal to our will normally teaches us to look to ourselves. The words “try harder” give us a fresh chance to buckle down and finally be more spiritual. But a story doesn’t work that way. Instead, a story compels us to respond. When I watch the beginning of the movie “Up” and see the love story between Carl and Ellie, including the pain of the loss when Ellie dies, my heart is compelled to love, cherish, and appreciate my wife all the more. 

But reading the Bible goes a step beyond example-setting – and so does the story of the persistent widow. The main character leaves the screen and enters our lives, making the story not about our prayer life but about his, and that makes all the difference. In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus prays “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” He is the true persistent widow who tirelessly assumes our place and receives the justice we deserve on the cross. It’s this story of God’s one-way love that knocks at the side door to our hearts and compels us to turn from self and experience in Jesus a greater joy and refreshment than we could ever find on our own.

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I’m a fairly competitive person, but my drive in competition is often fueled by a fear of losing rather than a love of winning. In fact, if you tune in to the internal Spotify playlist I have playing to motivate myself, you may be reminded of Full Metal Jacket’s Gunnery Sergeant Hartman.

Most days, I feel like I only know how to push myself by berating and belittling myself. If I win or perform well, sure, I’m happy, but maybe it’s more a sense of relief from not losing. Fear of failing next time looms behind every victory. This same cloud hangs over my professional career – particularly in sales. After closing a deal, I’m slow to celebrate the win and instead spend time sighing that nothing blew up in my face. The momentary relief doesn’t last long though, because the next opportunity to screw up could be right over the horizon.

While I aspire to be this crazy athletic stud and super successful businessman, my fear of coming up short and failing means that I don’t go all out. I‘m afraid that if I leave it all out on the field or in exercise terms “go to failure” there will be no place to hide if I come up short. Put differently, by refraining from pouring myself out, I can hold on to my delusions and keep my fantasy alive.

Some days I feel like I’m running all over trying to keep the cracks in my fantasy from spreading and having my ideal self come crashing down. It’s on days like this when my internal playlist is the loudest and loops for hours, not just when working or exercising. If I spill water while doing the dishes, I’m a failure. If I forget to get an item at the grocery store, I am an idiot. If my car is low on gas I am a f***ing idiot-failure who can’t get anything right. Those are just a few of the classic hits.

By my own ideals, I continually fall short. The standards I have for myself prove to be a curse upon my life and self-condemnation repeats over and over in my head. When reading Scripture, I identify strongly with Moses, who had no shortage of anger management issues. I wonder if my internal monologue is similar to the anger and frustration he felt when he first brought the law down to the Israelites and found them worshiping an idol they made for themselves: 

Moses said, “It is not the sound of a victory shout, and it’s not the sound of a shout of defeat, but it’s the sound of singing that I hear.” As Moses approached the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, he became angry. He threw the tablets from his hands and shattered them at the base of the mountain. Exodus 34:18-19

Whenever I read this story, I see myself on both sides. I’m the one angry about the failure, and I’m the one chasing after false gods. But recently, I’ve begun to hear a new and better playlist, but it took failing and dropping out of a marathon to hear this new music. 

Marathons take months of committed training: getting up early to beat the summer heat, long runs every weekend, and an insatiable appetite. During training runs, I fought to switch the playlist in my head to something more encouraging, “You can do this! Just have fun.” But hollow cliches rarely do anything for me.

When race day finally came around, in the most anti-climactic fashion possible, I suffered an injury and had to drop out of the race after only seven miles. As I hobbled to the spot where my wife and daughter were supposed to be cheering me on to my glorious victory, my failure was on full display and my anger was in complete control.

“God, why would you shame me like this in front of my family? Why the hell did I try to do this in the first place?”

Deeper and deeper I spiraled as I limped for what seemed like a marathon in itself. And who were all these happy people on the side of the road with their stupid signs? I now know with certainty that the “press here for boosters” sign does not work, at least not for me.

But as I turned the corner, I saw my daughter waiting for her dad. 

In terms of the race, she didn’t have a clue what was going on. She wasn’t wearing a stopwatch to track my splits. She was just looking for her dad, who she loves. As I stepped off the road and limped towards her, she threw her sign on the ground. Then she trotted towards me and gave me a hug. My daughter was oblivious that race officials put “DNF” (Did Not Finish) next to my name. If you asked her what the winning time was that day, she wouldn’t be able to answer. None of that mattered to her.

I didn’t realize I was hearing from Jesus that day, and I especially didn’t think he was answering my angry questions, but he was – he was there in that moment when my daughter threw down her sign and hugged me.   

Like Moses, and like my daughter, Jesus also throws down tablets. Do you remember that strange sequence in the Gospel of John where we’re told Jesus is writing in the sand? In John 8, the Pharisees drag a woman caught in adultery before Jesus and demand that He pronounce sentencing against her. Just like with the stone tablets, Jesus etches writing into the ground – but we’re only told about the activity, not the words themselves. Or are we? In the story of Moses, God has to rewrite the tablets a second time after they are broken, but now, with Jesus on the scene, He writes a new and personal word, “neither do I condemn you.” At that moment, Jesus is shattering the commandment, but unlike Moses, He is doing so out of love – substitutionary love. The adulterer deserves to die according to the law, but Jesus is going to cover that debt himself when he is shattered on the cross in our place.

On this side of failure, I am learning to trust God when he says “it is finished.” Every day I need to ask him to shatter the albums of my old classic hits because I keep going back to them just like that Top 40 Hit from middle school. I am learning I can give him my fear of failure because he says, “I love you no matter the outcome. You can run because it doesn’t matter how you perform…it doesn’t matter.”

Whenever a coach says, “Now go out there and just have fun,” everyone knows it’s a lie because if you want to stay on the team, you know you have to perform. But I think when God says it, he actually means it. I am beginning to see fear’s grip loosen, and I can’t help but smile when I think of Jesus, Moses, and my daughter throwing signs on the ground never to be picked up again.

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And because we live in an age where everyone carries a megaphone in their pocket, it’s easier than ever to go public with any form of news or announcement. Share it, spread the word, tap into the algorithm, release the dopamine. 

And even if we don’t like or use social media, we’re not immune to accomplishments breeding a desire for recognition. We redirect conversations to share the things that we’ve learned or done. It can be like an itch that needs scratching.

Of course, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. After all, celebrations are meant to be a joint project. Why then does Jesus seemingly always oppose our intuition when he does something impressive? Why doesn’t he go public? There are many examples of when he hushes miracle witnesses, but here are three:

• Mark 1:43-44 – Jesus sent him away at once with a strong warning: “See that you don’t tell this to anyone…”
• Luke 8:56 – Her parents were astonished, but he ordered them not to tell anyone what had happened.
• Matthew 9:29-30 – Then he touched their eyes and said, “According to your faith let it be done to you”; and their sight was restored. Jesus warned them sternly, “See that no one knows about this.”

After taking away people’s most significant ailments, Jesus would ask (even command) them to not share the news. Not to go public. Curious right? Why not allow at least one selfie with the miracle worker? 

It’s worth noting that the Apostle John doesn’t include these interactions in his Gospel account, likely because he is much more upfront with his agenda (John 1:29). He’s much quicker to lay his cards on the table than Matthew, Mark, and Luke in pinpointing what Jesus is about and why he came to earth in the first place.

However, John’s gospel is not without parallels to Jesus concealing impressive achievements. The most prominent example is in John 6 when Jesus miraculously feeds thousands on a hillside. The crowd instantly wants to make him king. Their thought process is practically jumping off the page: “This guy can really do something about our problems! Hurry, start the campaign – get this guy into a position of power so we can finally do something!!” 

But Jesus won’t have any of it. He withdraws from the masses. He won’t be crowned on their terms. They are looking for a particular type of king, but the Messiah has other plans in mind. On his pathway to the crown and the throne, he will operate on a different playing field.  

But even here, Jesus begins to show his playbook when he quiets the crowd with a disconcerting invitation: you have to eat my body and drink my blood (John 6:55-56). Without missing a beat, the same people who wanted to put a crown on his head, now want him in a straight jacket. 

But Jesus stands by what he says. He doubles down on this invitation at a dinner party a bit later in the story. The night before he dies, in fact. It’s the eve of his death and he tells his friends to eat bread and drink wine for this is his body and his blood, given for you.  

Here is where we’re given the reason for the prior shushing of all the miracles. Jesus is essentially saying “I am going public on terms that don’t impress people but confound them. I am being crowned in weakness, not strength. By death, not life. With a broken body, and shed blood. And all of this is for you.” His prior privateness reveals the inauguration of a kingdom decidedly not of “be impressive and know all of this information to change the world!” but instead a kingdom wrapped up around Jesus’s self-denial, humility, and one-way love shown most fully at the cross.

Here is what he is ultimately crowned under, namely, the banner of die-in-your-place grace. The first time in the gospel of Mark where he doesn’t tell someone to hide a miracle is when he saves a man from a demon and a herd of pigs hurl themselves off a cliff as a result (Mark 5:13). We can conclude he doesn’t hush the witnesses on this one because this is the story Jesus came to tell — one of substitutionary healing, at the death of another. The surprise is Jesus identifying with the lowly pigs in their rushing off the hill. 

The most public act Jesus ever accomplished was his death on the cross. He broadcasted himself as the Messiah through a public execution. It’s the type of thing we don’t like to have details about. And yet, it’s exactly what we all didn’t know we needed. This is why there is no longer any shyness about miracles after the cross, but instead a “tell the world!” posture towards the miracle of the cross. The parable of the necessity of the death of the Son has given way to the clarity of the gospel itself. But we’re the ones who put it on display. We glory in the act of another, and not in our own.

The post See That You Tell No One appeared first on Red Tree.

As dramatic as this scene sounds, all of us suffer under the very same stressors. What is this force that moves us so? We may not (often) physically throw things across the room when life doesn’t fit neatly in the cutout of our expectations, but the same inner turmoil is present. There’s an emotional pandemic that leaves us trying to claw our way upward through life, well acquainted with a sense of isolation and shame when we get anything wrong. It’s the subtle, but powerful work of anxious perfectionism.

Anxious perfectionism fosters a pervasive lie within us: “If I can’t do it perfectly, I won’t do it at all.” The phrase might come across as overly binary, and perhaps even childish, but we see variations of this innate idea all the time in others regardless of age. Hearing friends and people I work with identify and process this force in their experiences serves as a mirror to understanding my own. 

I might argue anxious perfectionism is, in fact, a product of the fall. A product of the law. Rules and standards create expectations of perfection. I have valued the wisdom of a friend of mine on a similar topic: “Children are great listeners but terrible interpreters.” From an early age, we learn to guard our sense of self and our sense of pride closely. We pick up on little things here and there that reinforce two false, internal beliefs:

1. What others think dictates who we are
2. What we do dictates who we are

We start to enact perfectionistic tendencies early – just like our four-year-old friend who threw up the puzzle because he felt his failure – because if what we do impacts who we are then when we fail, we are failures. And our fragile, child hearts can’t handle the feelings we associate with failure. Unfortunately, this childlike fragility doesn’t dissolve when we become adults. 

The pervasive nature of anxious perfectionism has gotten me wondering: if we do this in nearly every part of life, do we also do this in our reading of scripture? Do we try to perfect our scripture reading, and if it isn’t just right, do we stop altogether?

Let’s take me as a case in point. As a woman in what I would describe as the intermediate, maturing years of her faith (no longer a “baby Christian,” leading out in ministries, but not yet walking with the Lord longer than I haven’t), I have been through many phases of reading scripture and exposed to many different “correct” ways of reading it.

I went through my passionate phase: reading scripture all the time, hungry for more and more because the words of life were brand new to me, not having any theological clue, but relying on the Spirit to enlighten me. Too quickly, the “newness” of scripture wore off and my callous heart got bored. So, I started to learn there are actual tools for reading. Books on Christian living. There is even something called “Theology” and several subsets of theology within Theology. [Insert mind-blown emoji.]

I also learned how bad theology hurts people and I began to love learning and using new tools to glean as much as I can from the Bible. However, because of my sin that distorts beautiful things, these good, useful tools (to protect against this hurt) became rules. Consider a few of the following:

1. Don’t do the blindfolded, finger-pointing approach where you open up the bible and pick a verse and start reading. A verse taken out of context is bad news.
2. Don’t read the Bible emotionally. Jesus isn’t your boyfriend, and the bible isn’t a self-help book for you to get your daily pick-me-up.
3. Do study the text in its historical context.
4. Do consult commentaries, but do not only read commentaries, theological books, or Christian living books– you need to love Scripture the most.

And on and on. These rules, and more, have played on repeat in my mind. Then, I feel stuck. I don’t use any of them. I don’t even pick up my Bible sometimes because I fear if I choose one, I may be offending or not doing the other correctly. There’s a sense of worry that I will be wasting my time because I won’t actually encounter Jesus in my time reading because I think there is a “right way” for me to get to him. Further, both of the false internal beliefs spin out in a way that makes me question my sense of worth and value.

The first one, “what others think dictates who I am” proclaims: If I read and interpret using one of the wrong methods, I will be disappointing one of the people who taught me said tool, and if I disappoint one of these teachers, then I will be a disappointment! If I am a disappointment, then I am worthless.

Or the second internal belief that “what we do dictates who we are,” chimes in even louder: If I read and interpret using one of the wrong methods then I will be doing it wrong.  And if I am doing it wrong, then I am incapable of doing it right, indicating I, myself, am incompetent and even inadequate.

So yes, even in reading scripture, I tend toward wanting to make myself right by what I do and of my own accord. I create new laws to achieve my desired end of being perfect. And perfectionism says, “you can’t do it wrong.” Then anxiety pulls the thread further: “Just don’t do it at all.” 

Here is where Jesus brings a better word to anxious perfectionists like me. 

After his resurrection, he appeared to his disciples and said to them, “These are the words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures” (Luke 24:44-45, italics added). We could use every good and useful tool, read every theological powerhouse book under the sun, even earn a Master’s in Divinity, and yet still have a veil up to understanding the true meaning of the Bible. But, Christ himself is the Word, and his death tore the veil to the barrier of understanding scripture. He was torn on the cross for us, in order to mend our separation from God; and not only is the separation removed, but he actually walks towards us, just like he does the two guys getting this Bible lesson in Luke 24. He doesn’t hide behind the correct tools or interpretative rules, waiting for us to get it just right. He wants to be known and is actively revealing himself now through the Holy Spirit, just as he did to the two men on the road 2,000 years ago. 

When we trust in Jesus and not our perfected reading of scripture, our approach to reading the Word might even manifest itself in surprising ways. In this season of my life, one of the ways Christ has been meeting with me and healing my anxious perfectionism is through The Message (a loose paraphrase of the Bible written by Eugene Peterson). The Message has been a balm to my hard heart and has helped my mom-brain settle and receive Christ. While far from perfect, and not even considered a legitimate translation, it has helped me experience the gospel and move away from simply having a cognitive understanding to having an affective, heart understanding.

If you’re in a season of drought from reading the Bible due to having too many tools in the tool belt, or perhaps don’t feel equipped with any tools at all and don’t know where to begin, hear this: you don’t need to read the Bible perfectly. Take my word for it. My contribution to Bible reading is anxious perfectionism. But the gospel tells me I’m not the only one present when I open up these pages. Jesus is alive and his non-anxious presence casts out fear through blood-bought love. He desires to be known, therefore, you don’t need to employ every tool you’ve ever learned every time you open the Bible. Instead, take up and read knowing that the veil has been torn. He is our rest, even when it comes to reading the Bible.

The post Bible Reading for the Anxious Perfectionist 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!”

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But there’s a dark side to it. Resisting help often leads to arrogance because to need help is to admit weakness. Did we cultivate that garden, do that kitchen remodel, come up with that idea, or write that article by ourselves? Or did we need someone’s help? Who do we want others to think is the hero when we retell the story? It’s even in little things, like carrying the groceries inside. I find an inordinate amount of satisfaction in carrying all the bags in by myself, in one try, without any help. My wife is never impressed.

The same message also pokes at us from the outside. You could say it’s one of the premier cultural mantras of our day, the simple phrase “You got this.” Is there any type of motivational jargon that’s spoon-fed to us more often? It builds an impenetrable shell around us, most resistant to the fact that we need help in more ways than we don’t.

This tension is basic to human experience, and it brings me back to how basic it is to Christian theology. Not in the sense that we need God’s help (though we do, more on that later) but that there’s something at the core of what it means to be human that seeks to resist God’s help. It’s as involuntary as breathing. But God doesn’t waste our resistance. He uses it to underscore how one-way love operates in the world around us and in our very lives.

Take the story of Jonah as exhibit A. When God sends the storm upon the ship, he has something more in mind than turning Jonah around. He’s not mad. Nor is it punishment per se for Jonah’s disobedience. It’s a chance to let some of the B-level characters in the story have their moment — in this case, the rowers. 

After Jonah realizes the storm is his fault, he offers a surprising, albeit disturbing solution: “Throw me in the sea and the storm will quiet down for you.” The rowers respond how we’d all respond to inexperienced, outlandish advice on how to do our job: they ignore him and try to row out of the storm themselves. But the storm grows worse until they are left with no solution but to take Jonah at his word and throw him overboard, right into the belly of a huge fish, which makes the storm instantly stop. 

At that point, it’s hard to know whether to cheer or gasp in horror. But therein lies the theology, because this isn’t the only time in the Bible those two emotions go hand-in-hand. In the New Testament Jesus likens himself to Jonah by saying, “As Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matt 12:40).

These stories have an echo to them. A common rhythm. And the point isn’t just that Jesus saves us from the storm by being thrown into it himself. It’s that he saves us from our futile efforts at rowing ourselves out of our problems. Like Jonah’s death doesn’t cooperate with the rowers’ muscles, so does Jesus’s blood not mix with our works.

This lopsided grace can be difficult to accept, even for Christians. Just look at Peter. Whether resisting a foot washing from Jesus, or trying to prevent Jesus’s arrest, or even promising to die for him (!), it was all another expression of what plagued the rowers: seeking to replace the substitutionary death of a prophet with the self. 

People have been trying to minimize the cross and even manufacture an outright cross-less Christianity since the day Jesus died. But mixing in a little human achievement here and there doesn’t add. It subtracts. Fortunately, no matter how much we try to row against it, the current of God’s grace is too strong.

What matters, in the end, is not the muscles in our arms, the oars in our hands, the good intentions in our minds, or the pious deeds in our hearts. Salvation isn’t doled out in response to us “doing our best” (Jonah 1:13). Doing our best is never, ever enough. In fact, it only makes the storm worse. We need help — not mere assistance but wholesale rescue — through the Jonah-like self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the one who loved us to the belly of the beast and back again, and whose grace alone contains the power to break through the hard shells of our stubborn self-reliance.

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This post originally appeared on mbird.com

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It was here, when I first learned that practice doesn’t make perfect. Instead, it simply makes more of whatever it is you’re practicing. If you’re practicing something incorrectly, you will become better at doing said thing, incorrectly.

Bad practice leads to bad results.

The principle is nearly universal but it’s especially true when it comes to reading the Bible – plainly seen in the third chapter of the gospel of John. The chapter begins by getting acquainted with a guy named Nicodemus and his resume: he’s a top dog from an authority standpoint, is well practiced in religious traditions, and knows his way around the Old Testament.

He comes to Jesus at night perhaps hoping to get a professional edge over his peers or maybe to simply engage in some intellectual sparring. In a sentence, Jesus responds with what may appear to be a riddle to be solved:

“Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again”

Puzzled, Nicodemus wonders how someone can possibly be born again when he or she is old? Nicodemus’ response seems straightforward enough, perhaps a bit naïve, but it, in fact, exposes a lifetime of bad practice.

After a brief back and forth on the necessity of being born again, Jesus humbles Nicodemus with a simple question. Don’t miss this.

He says, “you are Israel’s teacher, and do you not understand these things?”

Any who teach Israel do so from one textbook: the Old Testament. Jesus reads and teaches from THE SAME textbook. It’s based on this Old Testament that Jesus challenges his conversation partner’s teaching credentials because he’s failed to understand its core message. Imagine a pilot receiving a license to fly without ever having been inside a plane – he has the title, but it means nothing! He’s never been in the sky, never taken anyone anywhere. Just a person with a piece of paper.

Like many of us, Nicodemus approaches the Scriptures as a manual for what God expects of him. It’s too easy to miss this — look again: God says the way to see His kingdom is to be born again, Nicodemus responds as if it’s part of his job description: “how do I make this happen? How could anyone possibly do that?”

A lifetime of forcing the Scriptures onto a to-do list, has caused Nicodemus to make even this message about himself and what he is supposed to do to maintain favor with God. No one plays a role in their own birth. Of course not!! When we seek to make the Bible about us, we work against the grain of the story God has been telling for thousands of years. Functionally, we form ourselves into little Nicodemi (plural? seems right…) — deaf and dull to God and his word of life.

But Jesus isn’t here to belittle Nicodemus, or anyone for that matter. Instead, he’s teaching that the Bible is not about us. It’s not a life improvement plan, a to-do list, or a religious manual with a set of DIY instructions.

The main character of the Bible and your life is not you — it’s God! This is good news meant to be received. It’s an invitation out of our incessant “I need to do more” feeling. It clears away the fog of our murky understanding of God and helps us see that he is in the business of giving, not expecting; revealing, not hiding. After speaking from behind a veil for thousands of years, God brings unexpected clarity through the person of Jesus, who is the ultimate Word of God. His substitutionary death is the climax of human history, inviting all to see and say back to God, “Now you are speaking clearly.”

If bad practice leads to bad results then the opposite is true. When we take up the Bible, the best outcome is to behold the main character — the one who was lifted up in our place — literally brought to an end that we might be born again. The story is all about him.

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And even if the fastest does win the race, the reason for their victory is, well, complicated. I was recently watching Tiger Woods’ hall of fame induction speech and you could tell he struggled to clearly articulate how much of his success was due to his mother and father’s sacrifice and how much was due to his hard work. Between truisms about working more than everyone else and earning your way in this world, Woods fought off tears describing how much had been given to him by his parents. Malcolm Gladwell observes this phenomenon in his book Outliers:

People don’t rise from nothing. We owe something to parentage and patronage. The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all by themselves. But in fact they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot.

Success has many layers and many inconsistencies. More is given (vs. earned) than we sometimes like to admit.

In the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon disseminates all of this. He says: “I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent … There once was a city with a poor but wise man who in his wisdom saved the city from a powerful king who came against it.”

Ecclesiastes is more interested in how we relate to God than athletic competitions, but it isn’t disinterested in the latter either. Instead, it leads us to ask: what do these upsets and surprises teach us about deeper spiritual matters — even about God himself? Solomon essentially shows us in proverbial form the principle of being saved by something outside of us rather than a strength that gets pushed out from within. If we were made right before God by our hard work then we would expect to see that idea reflected by the strongest always winning. But, we don’t. So there must be something else — other than karma, hard work, and tit-for-tat spirituality — that rules the universe.

As we approach the New Testament, we see that churches are, by God’s design, communities of impoverished losers to show that something other than our prowess must be the ultimate determiner of who is reconciled with God, namely the love and grace of Jesus Christ. In the end, it’s his nail-pierced hands, not our calloused hands, that matter. In fact, that’s the final twist here. Jesus in his de facto “slowness” won the greatest race of all time. He’s the man in Ecclesiastes who in his cruciform poverty saved the town from the onslaught of the enemy. By his stripes we are healed.

Maybe this is truly why we all love watching a 15 seed beat a 2 seed, because whether we realize it or not we are cheering for the gospel. Though the law says “Work harder or you’re out!”, grace upsets the score and tells us the last will be first. To use Gladwell’s term, it’s the “hidden advantage” that we owe everything to, so that no one may boast in themselves, but that all might boast in the Lord.

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This post originally appeared on mbird.com

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