Two Kinds of Sons

The Parable of the Prodigal Son is a parable that never really got to me when I was a kid. I thought it was pretty cool that the father (who represents God) would take that terrible kid back. I saw that it was a picture of God's grace, but I was never able to put myself in the prodigal's place. I could never imagine myself doing what he did. But Jesus didn't title the parable “The Parable of the Prodigal Son.” And if He had bothered giving His stories titles, He probably would have been more likely to call this parable “My Two Sons.” (It wouldn't have been a cliché back then.) This story is not only a picture of God's grace but is also a warning for those of us who consider ourselves “good.”

In Luke 15:11, the parable starts out with a father and two sons. The famous son--the prodigal son --says to his father, “I wish you would die already so I could have all of your money now.” His father gives him the money without dying, and the bad son spends his fortune on sex, drugs, rock-n-roll and Pilates classes, gets so hungry he starts to covet the food in the dumpster behind the Waffle House and finally decides to go back home to beg his father to give him a job mowing the lawn.

The other son, the one who usually gets ignored, is the good son. In Luke 15:29, the good son claims to have been pretty much perfect, and his father doesn't argue. We don’t even know anything about this kid except that he obeys his father and wants justice and his own dead calf. At the end of that story, the father invites everyone into the party (Heaven) to celebrate the return of the bad son. Only one person did not go into the Heavenly metaphor: the good son. Why? Because the good son believed that he had earned the right to the fattened calf by following the rules. Instead of relying on his father’s grace, he was relying on justice. He never did anything wrong; therefore, he deserved his inheritance. He did not need grace from his father; his father owed him.

Many people make this mistake. We think that if we do everything right God has to be on our side. He owes us. But Jesus came and made it clear that it doesn’t work that way. Jesus died on the cross "while we were still sinners" (Romans 5:8). Because this is the case, we know that He doesn’t owe us, we owe Him. God doesn’t let us into Heaven because we obey the law or do good works; instead, we obey the law and do good works because He is letting us into Heaven. He already did it all.

Nothing we do after confessing with our mouths that Jesus is LORD and believing in our hearts that God raised Him from the dead can get us into or out of Heaven. He died for all of your sins once, knowing all the while that you would sin again and again. If you truly believe, you will have good works. That’s what Paul says in Galatians 5 and what James says in James 2. The result of true faith in Christ is service done to God out of thankfulness and love. If you don’t really believe, you’ll prove your disbelief either by going back to sin (the prodigal son before he came home) or by going back to doing good works to ensure your salvation (the good son). He did not die for those who loved Him first. He died for those who made it necessary for Him to die.

Everyone Worships Someone

I read a poem at a poetry slam once. The slam was held every other Thursday at a coffee shop that called itself the Magic Bean. Everyone else called it the Tragic Bean. Their coffee was awful. The magic was allegedly in their brownies, if you get my drift.

When it came time for the slam, everyone went outside, walked around to the back of the building, climbed up a flight of stairs, and stooped into a poorly lit attic where tiny desks--purloined from a university dumpster--were set up in front of a small stage. The rule of the slam was given by the event’s host: “The only rule is no props.”

When my turn came, I read my vivid and well-written poem about a butcher who killed and chopped up his own dog rather than punishing the pack. It was a metaphor. I hoped my poem was interesting enough to keep the judges’ attention; my presentation was boring.

One of the better slammers stomped around the stage in a circle with the rhythm of his poem. The audience was roaring with laughter while he huffed and puffed and stomped and tripped and tried not to burst out in laughter himself, all the while reading his poem, which I believe had several "Star Wars" references in it.

The last poet started his presentation by lighting a cigarette. Between lines of a poem about how great it is to smoke, he took long drags on his cigarette:

“It’s been a rough day.”

A long drag on the cigarette followed by a long, slow release of his indrawn breath.

“I need to relax.”

Another slow, deep puff on the cigarette.

“They say smokin’ ain’t good for you.”

Again with the cigarette.

“I don’t care.”

A final, longer drag on the cigarette and a longer, slower release of breath amid wild cheers from the crowd.

He was the only poet to break the only rule in the slam, and he won it.

I mentioned that my poem was a metaphor. It is probably obvious that it was a metaphor for Christ’s death on the cross. Writing that poem, and even reading it in that attic, were acts of worship. The other poets--and most of the audience at that slam--were worshiping, too. They cheered the smoking poem because it was about breaking the rules. It was about independence and self-idolization. That poem meant that they didn’t have to answer to anyone but themselves. As DA Carson would say, each of them had placed him or herself on God’s throne, which is the definition of idolatry.

Not every poem has to be about God in order for God to be happy with it, but every act--especially every creative act--worships something. Every poet, every musician, every painter, every athlete, is trying to please someone, whether that someone is a beautiful woman, a friend, a parent, or one’s self. If you act to please someone else, you have placed that person on God’s throne, and your creative acts are acts of worship toward someone that is not God. Everyone worships someone.

Worship

I was watching--against my will, because I am a manly man but also a servant to all--the movie "Soul Surfer" with my wife and three young children this weekend. It was my daughter's seventh birthday, so I had to join. It would have been much more enjoyable to me if the surfer girl had gotten her arm blown off by a grenade, or bitten off by a dinosaur, or if Kevin Sorbo, TV's Hercules, had dove into the water to get her arm back from the belly of the beast, but at least the shark added a few seconds of thrill. My son covered his eyes for most of the movie, by the way. He said he wasn't going to watch until she got another arm, and asked every couple of minutes if she had gotten another arm yet.

Meanwhile, my new 7-year-old was sobbing uncontrollably. You should have seen them when we watched "The Princess Bride" together. All three of them were screaming while Wesley and Buttercup were in the Forbidden Forest fighting the Rodents of Unusual Size. And then when Wesley was being tortured, all three of their little bodies were racked with sobs. It was hilarious.

At the beginning of "Soul Surfer," the main character (Bethany) runs up out of the water, throws a dress over her bikini, and sits down in church, where a crowd of blond women and Hawaiian men are sitting with giant smiles on their faces while they watch a similar group of people lead worship. Once or twice someone in the audience will mouth a word, but mostly, they're just basking in Carrie Underwoods' glow. While this was happening, my oldest daughter said to me, "Daddy, they aren't standing!" I responded, of course, that you don't have to stand up to worship God. But what do we have to do to worship Him?

As you read through the Psalms, you'll find that worship is commonly expressed through singing, dancing, lifting hands, kneeling, clapping and playing music. You'll notice that all of these forms of worship are physical forms. Our minds have to be focused on God, of course, but our bodies have to be focused on Him as well. The Hebrew word for worship (I learned this bit of Hebrew in Richard Foster's Celebration of Discipline) literally means "to prostrate." The English word "bless" is from the word "to kneel." "Thanksgiving" comes from Hebrew for "an extension of the hand." Our bodies bow before Him as our minds humbly worship the Creator of the universe, who is so big and so powerful and so good that we cannot comprehend it. We raise our hands as we think about how He became a man and died on the cross that we might have life. We dance before Him as our minds understand that great salvation. No doubt there is a time to sit quietly in God's presence, praising God solely with the mind, but even if you are doing that while a worship service is going on around you, that isn't worship. It is spiritual. It is good. It is valuable. It is even necessary for a disciplined life, but it isn't worship.

My three little kids, while they were watching "Soul Surfer" and "The Princess Bride," experienced an emotion so great that it caused their minds to reel, their eyes to tear, their voices to howl, their hands to cover their faces, their bodies to cower. Mind and body, they were wholeheartedly reacting to these movies. As they get older, thankfully, they will gain control of themselves and allow themselves to react less and less. But when God comes, we will all worship. We will all bow down--some of us rejoicing, some of us wailing. We will all cover our eyes. All of our little bodies will be racked with sobs. It will be awesome.

iPod Fast

When I was a freshman in college, I didn’t know many people on campus. And my roommate and suitemates were not the kind of people who just let a fat introvert be himself. I was lonely and miserable. My devotional times became extremely important to me. And then Jesus--this is for real, not just a metaphor or a cliché--became my best friend. I started talking to God on my way to class. Out loud. And then He would sit with me at lunch, and I would talk to Him during lunchtime. Out loud. Sometimes people would look at me funny. I was a fat introvert, so I always thought people were looking at me funny.

It sounds like I was a weirdo, I know, but I have missed the times I had with God back then. I would pray between classes and during classes, and more than once ducked into an empty classroom and prayed and was filled with the Holy Spirit. And then after five or ten minutes, I would come out of the empty classroom, tears running down my face, and rush to my next class.

Jesus is more real than you realize. He is not my imaginary friend. He is not just an idea. He is not just a historical person. He is more alive than you or I am, and He can make your life powerful. He wants to be your best friend. Take some time from something you’re doing, and spend that time with Him.

This week I started a kind of fast: I am fasting from my iPod. Usually, any time I am alone I am listening to my iPod. This is mostly in the car, but I spend a couple hours a day in my car, so it’s a lot of time. This week I have turned off my iPod and am spending any time that I would usually spend with the buds in my ears praying. I imagine that He is in the passenger seat. Because I’m driving, this kind of prayer is not focused enough to be called my daily devotional prayer, but it does keep me focused on Him throughout the day. I have been enjoying it so much, I am definitely extending it for six weeks, and may never listen to another podcast again. If I were just pulling out the plugs to listen to myself think, I would not be enjoying it. As I have mentioned in this blog before, my inner dialogue is not much fun, and leans toward depressing thoughts. If I spent that time just talking to myself, it would not take me six hours to pop the ear buds back in. Spending all that time talking with God, though, is energizing, and I know that the more time I spend with Him, the more available I am to be used in powerful ways for His kingdom, and I am really looking forward to that. Someday, I might even start a podcast about it. And I hope you don't listen.

To Die is Gain

My aunt had cancer.

She had a hard five years that ended in death. Hard for her to endure, and hard for us to watch. Would we be happier if she had had a hard five years and then lived? Yes. We would be ecstatic. We would never stop praising God for that miracle.

Instead, she died.

But for her, as for Paul, to live is Christ and to die is gain. She had a hard five years and then was healed completely and forever. And we would have been happier if she had lived to die of old age. We would have shouted our praises to the Lord if only he would have deigned to allow her to suffer with us a little longer. We see through the glass darkly.

My aunt is in Heaven, where her entire life on earth was a blip in a place where time has no meaning. Five years of cancer? A twinkling of an eye. The 40 or 50 years we think she was shorted? A blink.

My aunt won a trip to Heaven. She did nothing to earn it. She didn't even have to enter a raffle. She got sick and got to go to Heaven 40 or 50 years earlier than anyone expected. And here in America, people work for years to make enough money to take a week-long trip to Hawaii.

When Jesus healed the paralytic, He told the crowd that the true miracle was that the man's sins were gone (Matthew 9). Healing the man's legs was only a sidebar, done to prove that He had the authority to forgive sins. We are more impressed with healing the physical body, but this only proves our short-sightedness. Once the sins of the paralytic were forgiven, the man held a promise of walking on good legs for all of eternity. Healing those same legs temporally and temporarily was only an illustration of something more real than legs. After all, even Jesus, who healed the lame man, said, “If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell” (Matthew 18:8-9). Our physical bodies are merely shadows of a reality we cannot fathom.

Why did my aunt have to go through years of cancer? I don't know exactly, but to say that the reward is in Heaven is not a shallow answer. And what's even more exciting--for me--than my aunt residing in Heaven is that I will reside there one day, too. It's as certain as death.

I Made This for You

My grandmother has, in several drawers and trunks, all of the crafts and pictures her children made in their entire lives. My dad is in his fifties, but she still has the picture of a tree he made for her when he was 5.

Until I had children of my own, I didn’t understand why my grandma had saved all that trash, and, in fact, my wife and I usually only save our children’s work until they leave the room. As soon as we’re sure they’re gone, we bury it in the trash can. We have to bury it: if one of them goes to throw something out and sees their work in the trash, it hurts their feelings. We don’t want to hurt their feelings. But we also don’t want the clutter.

Once in a while, though, one of my daughters says, “I made this for you,” and she really means it, and isn’t just saying that because she doesn’t know what to do with her wet, glue-coated, sticky craft. When that happens, I put that picture on the refrigerator--which every young child knows is the preeminent spot in the house and is to be used for the accomplishments that make parents proud of their children. 

Although I quit making crafts for my dad in a time before my memory begins, I did spend most of my life trying to impress him. He’s a brilliant thinker, a professor, a better-than-average musician and now a missionary. At one of my multiple jobs, I run into people who have known him professionally for years, and many of them have told me that he is the smartest person they know. Even if he were an idiot, though, I cannot imagine anyone being a better earthly father. So, I want to make him proud.

Recently, though, I was praying in my car, on the highway, on the way to the gym, and something in me changed. I switched from wanting to make my dad proud to wanting to make God proud. I have professed, as long as I can remember, that God is more important to me than my dad is. I have always known that He is the only one I need to please, but as I was praying that day I felt my mind, my emotions--my guts even--switch from father worship to Father worship. And then the Holy Spirit filled my jeep and I started weeping and almost wrecked my car.

Someday I’m either going to die or meet the Lord in the air, and I’m going to get a tour of His house. In one room, maybe over the mantle, I will see the mouth-sword of Revelation 19. He might show me his many crowns if I ask to see them. He probably has them in a giant closet. His living room has to be giant, too, to get the throne in there. It’s hard to even imagine what other rooms God has in His house. Maybe it’s just the one huge throne room, with some nice couches for guests. He definitely doesn’t have a bathroom, and I don’t think He has a kitchen, either. After all, He is the bread of life and a river flows from his throne. I hope He has a refrigerator door somewhere, though. Wherever that door hangs, I hope that my humble, pasted-together life will be magnet-ed to it. And someday I will point to it and say to Him, “I made that for you.”

It's Necessary: Use Words

Have you ever heard the saying, “Preach the gospel at all times--if necessary, use words”? This is a quote often attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, but scholars say he never said it and probably never even thought it. In fact, St. Francis was known in his own time (the turn of the 13th century) for his powerful preaching.

I’m not sure where or when I first heard that slogan, but I’m sure it was at least 15 years ago. It used to bring me solace. I can show people who Jesus is just by being a good person? That means I never have to be uncomfortable!

I wonder now, though, what my life said about Jesus. I know my high school classmates knew I was a Christian. I had some great Christian t-shirts. One of my favorites was supposed to look like a Jack Daniel’s label, but said “Book of Daniel” instead, and instead of “Southern Comfort,” it said “The Great Comforter.” I also carried my Bible to every class. And I held it on the outside of my other books, where everyone could see it. If anyone asked me if I actually read the Bible, I could honestly say, “Yep. In geometry class.”

Everyone who was aware of me knew that I never got into any trouble, and I felt like everyone knew I got straight As. (I didn’t tell anyone about the Bs in chemistry and driver’s ed.) I was usually really, really, really nice to people. Several of my classmates noticed when I courageously helped out a substitute teacher who was being tricked by the rest of the class. No one saluted me, though, for standing up for right that day. Instead, one of them threw my calculator out the window. How did any of those actions tell people that Jesus died on the cross to save them from their sins? Even if my classmates noticed that I carried around a Bible, how did they know what was in the Bible?

I realize now that you do have to use words. The only way St. Francis of Assisi’s faux slogan works is if you enroll in mime classes at your local clown college. With practice, you can show--not tell--how you were trapped in an invisible box, someone died on a cross and opened the door for you, and pulled you out with a rope. Somebody else will have to tell them that the box is sin, the rope is grace, and the hero is Jesus.

While it is true that if you are a Christian the Holy Spirit will produce fruit in your life, affecting your behavior, the good news of the Gospel isn’t that you are a good person. In fact, the good news is the opposite. While you were a sinner, while you were making someone or something besides God your ultimate thing, Jesus died for you.

“And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” (Romans 10:14, NIV).