Right Between the Eyes

Mark 10:10-12

      Sometimes the truth strikes us right between the eyes. It hits us with such force that we get knocked over, our lives forever altered. We are knocked off balance and we must find a new center of gravity. We can’t go back to the way things used to be. The past has been redefined by that moment. It has become a large exclamation point in our life story. It ended one chapter and signaled the beginning of another.

      Truth has a way of doing this to people, me included. The only way we can go forward is to fully incorporate the truth into our view of the world. Or we can live in the room with the elephant, but simply act as if it doesn’t exist. We move around it, being careful not to allow its presence to touch ours. We build carefully designed boxes to keep it at a safe distance.

      I see this most often with grief. We lose a loved one. We have a choice in the months ahead: we can learn to live with the void or create a world where the void doesn’t exist. We fill the void with substitutes. Often addictions are put in the void. They have a way of numbing the pain, even if only temporarily.

      The Truth in today’s passage sounds very intolerant, to use the politically correct buzzword. Nothing is worse than intolerance, or so the media proclaims. And yet as they label us intolerant, they are demonstrating their own intolerance of our beliefs and practices. You can’t label someone intolerant without making a judgment statement about them. And making judgment statements are the heart of this new intolerance. They judge us for our beliefs, just as we supposedly judge them for theirs. And yet their judgment isn’t based on fact, but on fiction.

      Marriage is supposed to be between one man and one woman for life. If the bond gets broken and another union happens, that union is adultery. Forgiveness is possible, but it can’t happen without acknowledging the truth of the sin. You can’t get forgiveness for violating a command without first acknowledging the command and its relevance to your situation.

      Forgiveness is available. All sin has been paid for by Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. When we marry again we are committing adultery against that first spouse, an act that requires forgiveness from both God and the spouse. You can repent of your portion of the wrongs that fed the divorce, even if the portion is extremely small and limited. Forgiveness is available.

      If you have trouble with this straight forward Truth, you are not alone. The disciples had this same trouble. That is why they asked for clarification. If they had gotten the strictness of what Jesus was saying the first time, they would not have asked for clarification. Being a follower of Jesus requires our death, death to self, death to selfishness, death to self-centeredness, death to my way or the highway, death to stomped feet and pouting looks. Embrace the Truth, no matter what.

Lawful, Command, Permit

Mark 10:2-4

      Our modern political speech has nearly perfected the ability to say so much and yet say so little. They can talk for hours without saying anything significant. This is especially true when they are asked a question about one of the many divisive issues of our day. They rehearse answers to questions so that they don’t get caught off guard. When they are preparing for a public debate, they have teams of questioners come in to pepper them with questions to prepare them to respond with their own message and not allow themselves to get sidetracked.

      Jesus uses a very different tactic when He is questioned. He often flips the question back over to His questioner in order to determine their motive. Instead of simply understanding more about Jesus as we study these interactions, we can also learn about the questioners. Questions simply become a means to finding the heart.

      Some very strict religious people come to test Jesus. Their motive is to catch Him saying something that can stand up in court. They don’t really want to know the answer. They just want Jesus to ‘blow’ it. They want ammunition, not answers. So they pick a controversial topic: divorce. Things haven’t changed much. Divorce is still a divisive issue.

      These questioners want to know what is lawful. They want to know the exact boundaries so that they can look for the loophole through which they can run. But Jesus won’t play their game. He asks them an even more fundamental question. He takes them back to the source material, Moses.

      Moses gave commands, not suggestions. What the LORD shared through Moses were requirements, not conveniences. It was supposed to be difficult to keep the Law. The Law’s purpose was to prove that humans couldn’t obtain righteousness, that they couldn’t live up to their own rules, so that redemption would be God’s domain, once and for all. If we couldn’t earn it, then the LORD would have to provide it. And He did.

      They want to know lawful. Jesus wants to know the command and they give Him permit. They want to know what they can get away with doing. Jesus gives them what to do to live. Their answer would fit perfectly with the politically correct crowd of today. They give Jesus the loophole. They give the wisdom of their day, that even the most direct commands are up for interpretation and dismissal.

      I want to encourage you to look for the “must do’s” and do them. If we spend our lives looking for the loopholes, rather than living inside the lines, we will end up with an incoherent life that isn’t worth following as an example. We will live a life of inconsistencies and invalidations. Instead of living a life of principles, we will live a life based on popularity polling, the opinion of others leading the way. Our life will look like the random shots of a cub scout on an archery target rather than the precision holes of an Olympic marksman.

Edge Walker

Mark 10:1-12

      Lawful - Unlawful. Permitted - Prohibited. These words have haunted people for centuries. We are always trying to find the line between these pairs of words. We want to stay as close to unlawful on the lawful side of the line. Our nature is to try to push the boundaries. Most of us are edge-walkers, spending our lives looking at the unlawful and prohibited, while standing in the lawful and permitted. And for many of us, the other side is only one step away.

      This makes life a perilous journey. If we life on this moral edge, then we must be careful with every step we make. Every next step could be over the line. Talk about a tentative life, a life lived not knowing where our journey will take us. We spend it looking back wondering where we went wrong, how we got off the path, or we are so afraid of the next step that we hesitate constantly, wondering and wandering to places we never expected to see in our journey.

      I had my 34^th wedding anniversary a few days ago. If I had lived on the edge of moral decisions, I probably would not have the marriage I do. If I had chosen to try to get away with edge crossings, I am pretty sure my life would have been pretty miserable. Edge walking is not where I want to spend my life. I like solid ground in my relationship.

      The divorce and remarriage debate has been raging for millennia. I am not here to bring judgment on anyone who has endured its devastations. The price paid by the partners and the children has a definable cost. We see the costs in certain segments of our society in very pronounced ways. In some parts of our society there are almost no married fathers to help raise children and nurture mature adult relationships. And for far too many, marriage never even happened. The foundation of society has so fractured that marriage wasn’t even considered. I just want a baby, so I will get one.

      Jesus has a way of cutting through all the pretense and excuses. He can state the rule and violation consequences in very stark terms. The rule is simple. It has been this way since the beginning. Stay married to the same person for life. And if you don’t stay married, then stay single. The second marriage is adultery.

      Now I know that there are a couple of clarifying statements other places in Scripture, but I just want to stick with what Jesus says here. He has been questioned by the religious leaders about the lawfulness of divorce. They are purposely attempting to trip Jesus up in His answer. They want to be able to discredit His message. They want to invalidate His claims.

      In answering their question Jesus gives a very straightforward answer, allowing no wiggle room for the religious leaders to squirm out of. They ask about lawfulness and Jesus refers to design specifications.

      Male and female were made as a matched set. And once they are paired in a set, they are always a set. They are not bookends, but intertwining subplots of the same story. If one is taken away, the story falls apart. There is no way to add a new character to the book. The plot would be too disjointed, missing too many essential pieces.

Mentorship

Proverbs 16:31

      If our proverb is true, and I am sure it is, then I am one splendor-crowned guy! In a society that doesn’t value gray hair, and the wisdom and experience that can come with it, these words seem silly. We dye our gray hair. We work hard to hide any sign of those changing follicles. Instead of bringing honor, they bring a sense of shame. We are getting “OLD,” the pariah of our times.

      So why was gray hair seen differently during the proverb writer’s day? For starters, the life expectancy was much shorter. They didn’t live into their 80’s as so many Americans do today. Disease and a hard way of life took their toll.

      I think the reason our culture lost respect for older people is simple. The older generations were wise enough to regard the follies of the 60’s and 70’s as just that, folly. They didn’t buy into the lies that academia were propagating. They realized that sex without marriage would lead to decline in society. They knew that there was no such thing as “recreational” drug use, volleyball maybe, but not drugs.

      So when the younger generations saw their rejection, they rejected the gray hair. They rejected the wisdom and knowledge of lifetimes of living. They thought they knew better. Political correctness pushed against millennia of wisdom. All universal values were rejected except the value that there are no values.

      This meant that instead of learning to avoid mistakes that had been learned previously and passed from one generation to the next, they had to make the mistakes for themselves. This led to lots of mistakes, and costly mistakes that could have been avoided. Divorce rates skyrocketed.

      I want to encourage each us to seek out the wisdom of the older generations. Find people who have been successful at living a life of righteousness and volunteer to become their mentee. Allow them to provide guidance. Give them the honor of being your mentor. I will save you many pains.

Day 158

Grounds for divorce clarified

Matthew 19

Key Verses: 3, 8, 12, 14, 18, 21, 24,

Some things are wrong. There can be forgiveness. Keep these in mind as you read today. Jesus pulls us back to the standard: one man and one woman for life. Even the culture of His day had accepted the easy divorce, but there is no such thing as an easy divorce. Divorce is one of the most painful processes people can go through. The affects last for generations. Subsequent marriages are much more likely to end in divorce. Women and children are more likely to live on the edge economically. There is no easy divorce.

Jesus puts His finger on the problem: a hard heart. This is at the center of most sin. We just want what we want when we want it. We don’t want God or anyone else getting in the way of our ‘happiness’. The truth can be hard for us to accept because we are so stubborn! Part of that truth includes forgiveness. Forgiveness can be hard to accept as well!

Notice that the alternative to marriage is not the casual sex lifestyle, but celibacy: no sex at all! You thought ‘no divorce’ was a difficult rule! You see, Truth has definite edges. The one exception to this rule is adultery. Divorce is allowed, not demanded, when adultery happens.

Kids are important! I think sometimes some parents place their kid’s happiness above what is best for the family. They are involved in every sport activity to the exclusion of sanity. Every free moment is spent carting them to their events to the exclusion of family time. Who says that we must live a frenetic life? Why must every moment be filled with activity? Since when did it become the job of the parent to keep their child from uttering the words, “I’m bored!” They should not be the center of every activity. The disciples devalued children. Jesus pulls them in close.

Riches can get in the way of our spiritual progress. Comfort is difficult to give up. When we have a power outage, our worlds seem to come to a halt. Jesus asks the rich man to value eternal life more than his wealth and he can’t do it. Wealth was more important.

It has been suggested that large city gates had small doors in them so that individuals could enter at night, but security could be maintained. Only a single person could pass through at a time. If a camel wanted to go through, everything had to be unloaded and the camel had to be pushed through on its knees. I saw many of these small doors in old German towns when I lived there. The disciples remark that they have left everything to follow Jesus. Stuff can get in our way. We must let go of everything. What are you holding that prevents your growth in Christ?