What I Knew For Sure

“It’s not what you don’t know that kills you,
it’s what you know for sure that ain’t true.”
— Mark Twain

This is going to make me look like an idiot but, for what it’s worth, here is my list* of things I once knew for sure … that ain’t exactly true. I don’t mean they are false through and through, but they steered me in the wrong direction.

Is there a common thread? Yes. Count how many times I use the pronouns I, my and me. In one way or another, directly or indirectly, everything I’ve listed puts the burden on me to build and maintain a relationship with God. This seems impossibly self-reliant and backward to me now. The truth is that it was not, is not, and will never be about me, or because of me. I am merely a consumer of grace, not a producer.

• After accepting that first big round of forgiveness for my past sins, all I need to do now is ask forgiveness for each new sin as I commit it.
• “Amen,” at the end of a prayer, is like hanging up the phone; it means, “Goodbye for now.”
• God hides from me.
• God is very busy running the universe.
• God is a serious, controlled and humorless character, with no excesses of passion, who is never amused by my vanity and foibles.
• God loves me, but only because that’s a requirement of being God.
• God needs my help.
• God sets the bar very high and expects more results than I can deliver.
• God won’t dump more on me than I can bear.
• I am living inside one of God’s backup plans due to bad choices I made in the past.
• I become more and more holy by doing “spiritual” things.
• I can somehow “fall out” of the kingdom.
• I need to control my sinful nature through willpower and self mastery.
• I need to put my best foot forward in prayer.
• I should decide what to do for God, then ask God to bless my efforts.
• I should feel guilty when I could have done something good, but didn’t.
• If I tell God the straight-out honest truth about X, he may take offense.
• In prayer, I should be on my best behavior, being careful what I say and how I say it.
• In the divine dance, God wants me to take the lead.
• It is normal for me to have a desire to do things for God coupled with a constant inability to carry them out.
• It is normal for me to have an on-again off-again relationship with God.
• It would be wonderful if I could reboot my Christian life and start over from square one.
• My bad behavior comes as a shock or suprise to God.
• My inconsistent behavior frustrates God, or frustrates God’s plan.
• My life would be a lot better if I could just “get it right”.
• Obeying strict moral rules is a sure way to attract God’s favor.
• Prayer is putting my agenda on God’s table.
• Resisting sin will make me holy … eventually.
• Salvation does very little for me now, compared to what it will do for me when I die and go to heaven.
• Salvation is my giving my life to Jesus.
• Sometimes God is close to me and sometimes God is distant.
• Take away God’s super powers and there wouldn’t be much left in terms of personality.
• The Christian life I am called to live is difficult and demanding.
• The kingdom won’t come unless I do my part.
• There is a proper way to pray. I should follow the standard protocol.
• To keep God “on my side,” I must keep on doing certain key things (going to church, reading the bible, praying …).
• When I sin, I should be ashamed of myself.

At least one of these needs a little explanation: “Salvation is my giving my life to Jesus.” The truth is exactly the opposite: Salvation is Jesus giving his life to me.

I’m coming back to the heart of worship
And it’s all about You,
It’s all about You, Jesus.
I’m sorry, lord, for the thing I’ve made it
When it’s all about You,
It’s all about You, Jesus.

— Matt Redman

* Lorilynn Barth and Steve McVey made lists similar to the list shown above; I have adapted some of their items.

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I have not been perfect; I am not now perfect; and I will never be perfectly perfect.

“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.” [John 8:11 NIV]

“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” [Matthew 5:48 NIV]

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Breaking news: Loss of life is the main cause of mortality among both males and females, according to a recent 20-year study done at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Well, not exactly, but you have to respect that near-perfect statistical correlation between birth and death. Still, I sometimes court the illusion that, if I get regular checkups, faithfully follow medical advice, and take good care of myself, maybe I might earn an exception to the 1-to-1 birth-to-death rule.

At other times, I have courted the illusion that, if I am very careful and disciplined, from this moment forward, I might be able to live without committing sin.

[I will wait for you to stop laughing before I continue.]

Mathematicians call it a proof by extrapolation. Here is how it works. I ask myself: Say, Walt, what’s the longest period of time that you can go without committing a sin? Hmm … let’s see. Since puberty is well behind me, I think I can safely answer: An hour. At the end of that hour, I merely repeat what I did or didn’t do for another hour, and so on, and voilà : a life without sin begins to unfold.

Realistically, that might work for a day. For longer periods, I will need to separate myself from society, thereby avoiding a vast number of social sins: theft, adultery, lying under oath, and parking in handicapped spaces. Then, while I am in my self-imposed isolation bubble, I will be careful not to complain or whine or make reckless promises to God. I will avoid all good works that carry with them any risk of offense to anybody.

Even in this monastic life of super-cautious isolation, I am not necessarily sinless. I still must act from the purest of motives. And that’s the rub. Honestly, even when I am doing exactly what God wants from me, there is always some element of ego satisfaction contaminating my otherwise honorable motives, like weeds in a prayer garden. For example, at this very moment, I am taking selfish satisfaction in my blogging style, imagining that you are admiring my work. You are, aren’t you?

Bottom line: I have not been perfect; I am not now perfect; and I will never be perfectly perfect. So how do I reconcile this fact with Jesus’ admonitions to be as “perfect” as the Father and to “go and sin no more”?

There are at least five possibilities:

• A quick read of John 8:11 and Matthew 5:48 is sufficient. Jesus meant what he seems to mean, so my life will be filled with frustration, guilt and occasional self-loathing.
• Jesus gave the terms “perfection” and “sinlessness” some softer meaning that is not immediately apparent, but is revealed in context or in the original language.
• By the grace of God, I am repeatedly being restored, as necessary, to a debt-free start-over state — like a computer that gets “rebooted” after a crash.
• I am inhabited by the Holy Spirit, who is perfect and sinless, who shines through my shell of imperfect humanity.
• God rewards the sincere and faithful effort I put into becoming like him, crediting it to me as righteousness, just as he did with Abraham [Genesis 15:6].

I’ll let the theologians wrestle over the first two. I have enough trouble just living up to the Scripture I already fully understand. Meanwhile, I will embrace the last three possibilities:

• Regardless of my sins, grace puts me back on the shortest straight path to the heart of God. Because of this assurance, I can afford to take on kingdom responsibilities that stretch or even exceed my limits — tasks that could grow my faith, could do much good, but also bring with them temptation and risk of failure. For example, I have accepted the risk of selecting art and images to enhance the worship experience at my church. When projected on screen, the images usually draw us deeper into worship but, once in a while, they become a distraction. Doesn’t matter. My experience is that God is always willing to put new “venture capital” into my hands, as if I had never sinned and will never disappoint.
• I feel and cherish the tangible presence of the Holy Spirit, living within me, breathing within me, inhabiting my body, molding me, re-making me, perfecting me from the inside out, even re-wiring my brain during periods of deep encounter. I may not be perfect, but there is a large and growing chunk of holy perfection living inside me, cleansing me from within. Hopefully, some of it shows through to the outside.
• The idea that Abraham’s faith was “credited as righteousness” is a recurring theme of Scripture [Genesis 15:6, Psalm 106:31, Romans 4, Galatians 3:6, and James 2:23]. I hereby claim my inheritance from Abraham and apply it to my deficit of perfection.

The end result is that, in an odd kind of way, I am comfortable living a life that produces mixed results — to be sure, an excess of good over bad, but not without sin. I am comfortable in my own human skin because a holy Flame burns within me, like an oversized pilot light. This doesn’t mean that I should sin on purpose just so grace may abound [Romans 6:1]. It does mean that I can abandon all my fears and push forward toward new challenges without obsessing on the possibility of sin. The result: A fine vineyard with a few weeds. Sorry about the weeds.

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