Options
October 26, 2010
Dear Friends,
Let’s pretend I locked you in a room with a copperhead snake, a rabid beaver, an African killer bee and a Black Widow spider. You have the tools to kill all of them, but I have told you can only kill one of them. Which one do you kill? OK, go ahead and answer the question, I am going to get a refresher on my coffee.
Did you answer the question? Which one did you choose?
Well, let me suggest to you that the right answer probably is to kill them all. Please don’t tell PETA I said that. Now, you might say to yourself, “Hey, that’s not fair, you didn’t give us the option to kill all of them.” True, I didn’t give you that option, but at the same time, I locked you in a room with a copperhead snake, a rabid beaver, an African killer bee and a Black Widow spider so I am obviously a few French fries short of a Happy Meal. Why are you listening to me to begin with? Kill the animals and call the police!
We are having a little fun with the above scenario, but there is actually a serious point behind this. There are times when people will be giving us ultimatums – sometimes from an authoritative perspective – that are just plain crazy. Sometimes the choices presented to us as alternatives are bogus. They say choose A or B and the real option we need to choose is C. Jesus was often confronted with this by the leaders of his day. They would try and trap him with a choice between A or B and he would choose C.
As brethren in Christ, we are taught to respect authority whether worldly political rulers or brethren in Christ in serving positions. See Heb. 13:17, Rom. 13:1-3. However, we also understand that we are ultimately answerable to God and if forced to make a choice between serving men or serving God, we always must choose serving God.
Imagine what it must have been like to be a servant of God during the Inquisition or in Nazi Germany. Imagine a Jewish family coming to your for help and knowing that any attempts to help them will bring down the full force and wrath of the Third Reich on you and your family. You choose the “not-an-option option” and help them because it is the right thing to do in the eyes of God.
Imagine a scenario where a black brother of Christ and his family comes into your all white meeting in the segregated South of the 1940s. The ecclesial leaders tell this brother that while he is a brother in Christ, he can’t share in the memorial table but can take his bread and wine out back in the wood shed. Are you going to stand for this effrontery to the principles of the One Body even though if you do it may have far reaching consequences for you and your family?
The world has always had leaders which embodied the principles of Christ. They are self-sacrificing, humble, ethical and lead by example. The world has also had its share of leaders who are the exact opposite and some who are just plain nuts.
Jesus asked a very insightful question in Luke 18. He asked, “Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” (v. 8) Notice, Jesus didn’t ask would he find “the faith”, but “faith.” In other words, Jesus is not asking if he would find people that were doctrinally correct when he returned, he was asking if he would find people that not only understood the Gospel but truly lived it. It seems to suggest that living the faith in the Last Days would be unusually hard. Is the reason it is so hard to live the faith because the sheep are so confused by the shepherds that they don’t know whether they are coming or going? It makes you wonder.
Now, would somebody help me clean up all these dead animals from this room?
Have a great week,
Last week, I said I was going to write about the parables of the Kingdom and obviously didn’t do that. I changed my mind. A full refund is available for all subscribers. :-)
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