Charles J. “Joey” Tomlin, BA, MDiv,
DMin.
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Graduation Recognition and Trinity
Sunday, June 3rd, 2012
Does your “gospel” have a hole in
it?
Let me explain. When Jim Wallis, founder of the evangelical
Christian Magazine Sojourners was a seminary student at Trinity Evangelical
Divinity School, he and some other students conducted an experiment. They took a King James Bible. They went through all the sixty-six books of
the Bible and underlined every passage that had a verse that dealt with
poverty, wealth justice and oppression.
Then, one the students took a pair of scissors and physically cut out
every one of those verses out of the Bible.
The result was a book in tatters that barely held together. Beginning with the books of Moses, through
the books of history the Psalms, Proverbs, the Prophets (major and minor), the
four gospels, the book of Acts, the Epistles and into Revelation, so central
were these themes to Scripture that the resulting Bible was in shambles. (There are over 2,000 verses on Poverty and
Justice and there are more texts dealing with Wealth than any other).
When Jim Wallis would speak on these
issues that he believed should concern churches, just as much as the saving of
souls, he would hold up his ragged Bible in the air and proclaim, “Brother and
sisters, this is OUR American Bible; and it is full of holes. If we only believe and teach the part we
want and ignore the other parts, we might as well take our scissors and cut it
out of the Bible. At least then, we’ll
see that our Bible is full of holes (As
Told by Richard Stearns, in “The Hole in Our Gospel, 2010, p. 24).
Let me declare to you that the “true
gospel” or the true Bible is not full of holes, but the one many of us choose
to believe and live by may be. And if
it is, there is one verse in the Bible that can help us begin to repair it, to
plug it, and to fix the hole we’ve cut out.
You know that verse as the gospel in a nutshell, but let’s make sure we
don’t throw away the heart with the shell.
FOR
GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD
No one can mistake the bigness of those
words. There is no “hole” in God’s
love. God’s love is as solid as it is
big. In fact, God’s love is even
“bigger than the whole world”.
When I was in seminary, I had a
systematic theology professor begin to teach a lesson about the doctrine of
God. He started the class by drawing two
equal circles on the board. One circle
represented the world. The other circle
by its side represented God. Our
professor then explained: This is how most people imagine God’s relationship
with the world. God is over here and the
world is over there. Get the
picture? Isn’t that how most of us
picture God; as either outside, above, or beyond the world?
With this thought in our minds, the
professor proceeded to draw two more circles.
This time he drew one circle on the board and said, “This is the
world.” Next he took his chalk and told
us that he was going to draw how God relates to the world. Instead of drawing God beside or outside the
world, then he drew the “God” circle as a ring around the world, which was
much, much bigger. He told us: “God is
not out-there far, far away. But God is
even bigger than the world”. Then,
speaking figuratively, he added, the whole world fits right in the middle of
God’s heart.”
Right then, my whole understanding of
God changed. God is not away, out-there,
but we, the world, we cannot help but be loved by God, because we there we are,
all of us, right in the middle of God’s heart.
And even more, we can also infer one the most important truth which John
3:16 tell us: since God is bigger than
the world, he is always big enough to love the whole world. “He’s got the whole world, not in his hands,
but in his heart.”
How do you picture God? What we need to understand out of this
picture of God is not only is God big enough to love the whole world, but God
is also bigger than any personal, private or particular interpretation. We must not miss this important truth. To put it another way: God is too big to be
just a private matter between “you” and God. Unfortunately, this is exactly how
people start cutting the true God and the whole gospel out of the Bible. We start picking and choosing the parts that
we like, that fit us---the parts that make us feel good---and we leave out all
the other parts that are just as important; sometimes, even more
important. Too many people believe in
God they have “reduced” down to size---their size. They have made God and the gospel a kind of
“fire insurance.” Someone put it this
way: “We’ve shrunk Jesus down to our size where he can save our soul---but we
no longer believe that he can change the world.”
Interestingly, when Jesus started his
ministry, he said nothing about saving souls for heaven, and spoke about changing
the world so people could live full and free lives now, “on earth as it is in heaven”.
Jesus quoted these words from the great prophet Isaiah: “The Spirit
of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the
poor, to proclaim freedom for prisoners, to recover sight for the blind, to
release the oppressed and to proclaim the year of God’s favor.” The point here is that God’s love is big
enough to save us in and for this world now, not only to save us for the world
to come. “For God so loved the world” means that we, as people of God’s love
are also called to “love the world” as God “so loved the world”. Our
love is supposed to grow into a God-sized love.
Before we move on, let’s ask ourselves: HOW
BIG IS OUR UNDERSTANDING OF GOD AND HIS LOVE?
Many years ago, J.B. Phillips wrote a book entitled: Your God is too Small, implying that the
picture of God most of us carry in our heads is way too small. He gives examples of the images of God in our
mind that we should deconstruct: God as a resident policeman; God as the voice
of our parents in our heads; God-in-the-box; or the most famous one, God as the
“grand old man in the sky.” Phillips
said that these, and several others, are all inadequate images of the true God,
the God who must always remain bigger than we can ever conceive. Then, in the second part of his book, Phillips
goes on to reconstruct the image of God that is so big that we will always be
“in the fog” about God until we can “focus” our minds on the very heart of God,
which has been revealed to us through the gospel of Jesus Christ (From
Your God is Too Small, by J. B. Phillips, reprinted by Touchstone Books, 1997).
The only way we humans can see God is
with the human face of Jesus, not made visible with a painting, photo or any
graven image, but only made visible in the life of loving acts, deeds, and
compassion of Jesus Christ. We can see only
the true God by looking straight into God’s heart, as we look at God giving us
his “heart” through the life, death and sacrifice of God’s Son and our Savior,
Jesus the Christ. This is why John
3.16; continues: “For God so loved the
world that he gave his only Son….” In
giving us His only Son, God was giving us his own heart. He was giving us himself for the world.
And this is what God also calls us
do. If we love God and have God’s love
in us, we also should live lives of sacrificial love; serving not only ourselves,
but serving the needs of the world. We
are not, as Christians, called to hate or to hide out from the world, as some
have mistakenly thought. The point John
3.16 makes is that just as God’s love is something God does for the world, our love
for the world must also be something we do “in” and “for” the world. Without that kind of “love” for the world,
there is indeed, a “hole” in the gospel.
IN
THE WORLD BUT NOT OF THE WORLD
To say that we should “love the world”
as “God so loved the world” is a
beautiful thought, but what does it look like?
In this time of graduation, you graduates should be contemplating the
same kind of thing: Now you have this work behind you but you still have your most
of your life and work ahead of you, so what does it look like to live a life for
God that is full of love, but not full of holes?
The first thing we should say loud and
clear is that loving the world does not mean that you love everything about the
world. Here is where your education
kicks in. The Bible not only tells us:
“For God so loved the world that he
gave…., but it also tells us, “do
not love the world”. This sounds contradictory but it isn’t. Listen closely how in First John 2: 14-15 we
read a word especially written to young people: “I write to you young people, because you are strong and the word of God
abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one. DO NOT LOVE THE WORLD OR THINGS OF THE
WORLD. THE LOVE OF THE FATHER IS NOT IN
THOSE WHO LOVE THE WORLD, for all that is in the world---the desire of the
flesh, the desire of eyes, the pride in riches---comes not from the Father but
from the world. And the world and its
desire are passing away, but those who do the will of God live forever.” Again, your education comes in because you
realize the problem here is about the limits of human language not because of the
limit of God’s truth. The word “world”
means different things in our language, doesn’t it? In John 3.16; the “world” means the
creation, cosmos, humanity and all the cultures God has created in the world, which
are a “gift” of God. But in 1 John 2: 15
the “world” means something else.
It means all the negatives, the evils--both spiritual and human evils
which are destructive to the world God loves and has created. The same selfish desires which took paradise
away from Adam and Eve can still take your opportunities for life and for love
away from you.
Being a Christian means we ‘love the world’ but it does not mean we
love everything in the world. We are to
“yes” to God’s love, but we are also to say “no” to the things that are
contrary to God’s loving purposes and grace. There
is a “world” out there that we must oppose, which is not only “out-there”, but
it can get “in here”, in our own hearts and keep us from loving. Part of the Christian life is learning to say
“yes”, but another part of it is gaining the wisdom of saying no. If we cannot say learn to “no” to those
negative powers in the world which are against love, then soon we will not able
to say “yes” to all that God has for us.
John says: “And this is the judgment, that the
light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light
because their deeds were evil” (John 3: 19, (NRS). We
can’t say “yes” to the light God brings until we say can say “no” to the
darkness. Saying “no” is as important to
love as saying “yes”.
In a parenting book
that has shocked many American parents entitled, Bringing Up Bébé, an American mother living in France had learned
the wisdom of French parenting. For one
thing, she learned that French parents only allow their children one snack
daily at 4.30 pm. The French believe it
is better for the child be hungry when they eat than to have the parent give
them food whenever they want it. The
French also make their children eat their vegetables first. French parents think of themselves as the
educators for their children, teaching them patience, self-control, and delayed
gratification and this also means that they do not rush to give their children everything.
“Do you know the surest way to make your child miserable? The French say: “Accustom your child to
getting everything they want from you.”
“If by too much care you spare your child of every discomfort, you are
preparing them for great miseries in life.”
Children are a bundle of self-centered desires that need structure and
socialization. The sooner they learn
self-control (that is the power to say no), the better off they will be and the
happier they will become as adults (have the ability to say yes) (Based
on an article, Les enfants magnifiques,
by Anthony B. Robinson, in The Christian
Century, may 16, 2012, p. 36).
THOSE WHO DO WHAT IS TRUE
If we are unable to say
“no” to the darkness ---to be “in the world, but not of the world”--- we will not be able to love the world as God
loves the world and there will be a end up being a “hole” in the gospel. To plug the hole in “our” gospel, we must
love the world, by first being able say “no” to things that keep us from God’s
love. But learning to love as God loves
the world must not stop with saying “no”.
We must also be able to say “yes” to and “do what is true as we come
into God’s light. This is what John
means when he says in verses 20-21: “For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the
light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true
come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been
done in God." (Joh 3:20-21 NRS).
Loving like God means saying “no” to certain things, but it also means saying “yes” to the things that need doing. A love that only says “no” becomes just as negative and oppressive as the darkness itself. Love that lives in the light does what is true and keeps coming into the light so our “deeds” can be “clearly seen”. Actor and social activist Sean Penn understands this concept. In a recent rare TV interview, he told of his relief work in Haiti, which he says still isn’t done because the poor still need to have the opportunities we have. In the interview, Sean not only spoke about his work, but he was asked about his anger at some of the volunteers. He answered: “Yes, I do get angry at people who come to Haiti just come to get a notch in their belt and really don’t want to work. I want them to understand that to love and care means they have to do something, not just talk about it (Based upon Today Show interview, May 22, 2012, http://video.today.msnbc.msn.com/today/47517532#47517532). Love for the world is something to “do” for the world that needs saving and needs God. God’s love calls us to respond with a big “yes” to what needs to be done in our world and in our lives, all in the light of God’s truth.
So, now, with this understanding of the
gospel; believing and being saved by God’s love so that we can love this world
as God loves the world; let me now ask you once more: Is there a hole in your
gospel? If there is “hole” in your
gospel, today is a good day to start to fill it. Today is a good day to think about what you
need to say “no” to in your life so you can overcome the negatives that
threaten to pull you down. Today is also
a good day to think about what you need to say “yes” to; so that you will be
glad when the full light of God’s truth shines upon you and your life. What “deeds”
are you called to do “in God” as you
come into the full God’s light of God’s love?
I once challenged an atheist high school
graduate to love the world, even more than God does. He told me that he believed that Jesus was a
good man, but that we are much smarter than Jesus today. I took
that challenge and I told him. O.K., if
that’s true; prove it. If you think
you’re smarter than Jesus, go out into the world and do even more for the world
than he did. He gave his whole
life. What will you give to love the
world? God may still have something about love to teach some very “smart” people. Amen.
© 2012 All rightsreserved Charles J. Tomlin, B.A., M.Div.
D.Min.
No comments :
Post a Comment