faith

Faith Application

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Click on the study title or article you‟d like to see:



Study 1: HOW TO REPENT

Article 1: Whatever Happened to Repentance?



Study 2: THE FREEDOM OF FORGIVENESS

Article 2: Keys to Forgiving



Study 3: IT’S ALL ABOUT JOY!

Article 3: Yabba-ka-doodles!



Study 4: DAVID’S DANCE ACROSS THE LINE

Article 4: Dance of the God-struck



Study 5: WHAT MAKES A HERO?

Article 5: Blood, Sweat, and Prayers



Study 6: LETTING GO OF GUILT

Article 6: Guilt Good and Bad



Study 7: TOO MUCH STUFF

Article 7: Too Much Stuff

Article 7b: Are Christian Executives More Ethical?



Study 8: WHAT’S FUELING YOUR ANGER?

Article 8: The Enigma of Anger



Study 9: WHO ARE WE TO JUDGE?

Article 9: Who Are We to Judge?



Study 10: CHURCH UNITY MYTHS

Article 10: A Unity Not of Our Making

LEADER’S GUIDE - STUDY 1



How to Repent

We’ve come to think our faith is about comfort. It’s not.



Repenting from sins may not be our favorite way of passing time,

but it is necessary. Former CHRISTIANITY TODAY columnist Frederica

Mathewes-Green says that caring for others is fine, but being a

Christian also involves preaching—and practicing—repentance. In

this study based on the life of David, we will see what it looks like.









Lesson #1



Scripture:

2 Samuel 12:13; Psalm 51



Based on:

“Whatever Happened to Repentance?” CHRISTIANITY TODAY, February 4, 2002, Vol. 46, No. 2, Page 56

LEADER’S GUIDE

How to Repent

Page 2









PART 1

Identify the Current Issue

Note to leader: Prior to meeting, provide for

each person the article “Whatever Happened to

Repentance?” from CHRISTIANITY TODAY

magazine, included at the end of this study.

The words to the old hymn ―At the Cross‖ have

been changed in many hymnals from ―such a

worm as I‖ to ―sinners such as I.‖ The phrase

could be changed again, if the current disfavor

with the word sinners were considered. Perhaps,

―victims such as I.‖ What other words have replaced the concept of sinner in

contemporary thought?



[Q] Why is it so hard for people to think of themselves as sinners?



[Q] Has the way people perceive their culpability changed over the years?



[Q] How comfortable is our society with the notion of God as judge?



[Q] Mathewes-Green says the awareness of our sinfulness, our fallenness, ―grows

slowly, over many years, because [God] mercifully shows us only a little at a

time.‖ How have you experienced this?



[Q] The author also says seeing our sin becomes an opportunity for joy. Do you

know what she means?



[Q] How comfortable should we be with the concept of ourselves as sinners?



PART 2

Discover the Eternal Principles

What does real repentance look like? The Bible gives us an example in the sin and

repentance of David. After his adultery with Bathsheba, he conspired to have her

husband murdered. Later, the prophet Nathan confronted David about these sins.

The child that resulted from David‘s affair with Bathsheba was ill at the time of its

birth, so the king fasted and prostrated himself before the Lord for seven days. When

the child died, David resumed his life. (Read 2 Samuel 11–12 for the whole account.)



Teaching point one: It takes an instant to decide to repent.

When Nathan went before the king with his tale of a poor shepherd whose only sheep

had been stolen by the evil herd-owner next door, David got the message. He, with his

many wives, had stolen Uriah‘s only wife, then had the cuckolded husband killed.

David broke three commandments. His confession was immediate. So was his









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How to Repent

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absolution. As soon as David said, ―I have sinned against the Lord,‖ Nathan replied,

―The Lord has taken away your sin‖ (2 Sam. 12:13).

It seems so quick. And in one sense it is. Mathewes-Green points out the Greek and

Hebrew words for repentance. The Greek metanoia is simply the changing of one‘s

mind. While one may weigh a decision for days, or even years, the act of changing

one‘s mind happens in an instant. At some point in time, the decision is made. We are

usually aware of it when we make important choices in life.

The Hebrew word shub (pronounced ―shoov‖) is more picturesque. It means turning,

as in turning around. A person moving in one direction decides to switch directions.

If all sin moves us away from God‘s will, then the best depiction of this is the about-

face. Confronted with our sin and how far from God it has taken us, we confess, turn

around, and come running back to the Father, who right away assures us: ―Your sin is

forgiven.‖

In that way, repentance happens in a moment, in the instant when the sinner

confesses his sin, turns away from his sin and back to God. But repentance is also a

process that, as the author of the article alludes, takes a lifetime.

A cursory reading of this account might lead us to believe that David was too quick to

confess and too quick to return to his normal life. True, David confessed his sin

immediately after Nathan exposed it. His week of fasting and prayer was prompted by

the infant‘s illness. And he was back to business, to his servants‘ amazement, after the

child‘s death. But Samuel does not record what was happening in David‘s heart when

he was on his face before God. David himself wrote that account in Psalm 51, the

great account of confession and repentance.



Read Psalm 51 aloud, noting the language of repentance.



Teaching point two: The process of repentance requires an ever

greater understanding of ourselves as sinners and of the cleansing we

need.

First, a little background on the psalm itself. This is not the usual, off-the-cuff,

stream-of-consciousness prayer. This serious supplication is penetrating and rich. It

is also beautiful poetry. The psalm‘s words, and even its form, help us understand

how repentance is a process.

Psalm 51 is a chiasm. That means it builds to a peak, and the verses before the peak

have parallels or counterparts in verses after the peak. Verse 12 is the peak. In the

following outline, notice the relationship between the first and last sections (1 and 5)

and between the second and the next-to-last sections (2 and 4).



1. Prayer for personal repentance (vv. 1–2)

2. Confession of the sin that inhibits God‘s blessing (vv. 3–6)

3. Prayer for restoration (vv. 7–12)

4. Thanksgiving and pledge to share God‘s blessing (vv. 13–17)

5. Prayer for national repentance (vv. 18–19)









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How to Repent

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Repentance begins with the appeal to God. Our repentance is only possible because of

the mercy of God. David invokes not only the name of God, but also his character.

God described himself as merciful (Ex. 34:6–7), and David‘s address is a plea for God

to act on his mercy. This is not the prayer of one king to another. This is the

beseeching of a lowly creature to the Almighty God who created him.

Next is a statement of the sinner‘s intent. Like a grime-caked coal miner emerging

from the pit at the end of a long, dark day, we want to be washed. We need to head for

the showers of God‘s mercy. We need to be cleansed completely. Verse 2 invites God

to do all that‘s necessary to cleanse David of his sin. The psalmist develops this theme

in verse 4. ―Cleanse me with hyssop‖ refers to ritual cleansing. Hyssop was a plant

used much like a brush or sponge, which was used to brush or sprinkle blood on the

object being cleansed. (See Ex. 12:22 and Lev. 14:6–7.)



More than a bath, or even an emotional catharsis, David is asking for a spiritual

cleansing. Hyssop connects the cleansing David requests to the sacrifices offered at

the temple. Some commentators say it foreshadows the cleansing we receive through

the blood of Jesus. (See Heb. 10:22; 1 Peter 1:2.)

David uses several Hebrew words for sin. As a poet might search for ways to depict

the blue of the sky (―azure,‖ ―turquoise‖), the sinner grapples with his sin and

struggles to describe his deepening understanding of it.

He calls sin ―sin,‖ but also ―transgression‖ and ―iniquity.‖ The words are not exact

synonyms. Their meanings overlap, but their differences are clear enough for us to

see sin from several angles.



 ―Transgression‖ (pesa) is an act of rebellion or disloyalty. It is like

trespassing where a ―No Trespassing‖ sign is posted.



 ―Iniquity‖ (avon) is a crooked or perverse act, an intentional twisting of legal

or moral intent.



 ―Sin‖ (hatach) is missing the mark. Here the idea is that even though we want

to do God‘s will, and even try to do it, we fail—like an archer who aims for the

bull‘s eye but simply misses.



David reveals what he learned about himself in his days on the carpet: he is a sinner.

David‘s understanding of himself as a sinful man is marked by four revelations:

1. All sin is against God. Certainly David sinned against Uriah, Joab,

Bathsheba, and the baby. His violations of their trust are not to be dismissed.

But he comes to the conclusion that his sin is ultimately against God. David

had violated God‘s law by abusing his creations. All sin against people is

against the One who made them and who made the laws to protect them. (v.

4)

2. Human beings are sinners from the beginning. David concludes that he

had been a sinner since birth, quite a confession for a king whose every deed

had earned him praise. Scholars are divided over whether humans are

already in a sinful condition when they are born, or simply have the proclivity

to sin and are waiting for the opportunity to make their own sinful choices. In

either case, David‘s implies in verse 5 that he has been sinful as long as he can

remember.







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How to Repent

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3. People are thoroughly sinful. Sin is not confined to one part of the body

or psyche or personality. Sin cannot be compartmentalized. As sin has

affected all of creation, it infects all of the person. In verse 6, David confesses

that he knows God wants truth in the human heart. As sin has had its

influence since the time David was knit together in the womb, now wisdom

must invade his inmost parts.

4. Sin deserves death. David confesses he is not just the unwitting sinner

covered by the sacrifices—he is the willful kind, the one who deserves death:

the adulterer, the conspirator, the murderer. In verse 14, he admits that his

sin should require his own life. Again, he begs God for mercy. He vows to turn

from sin to righteousness, and to live publicly a righteous life as a testimony

to God‘s mercy and forgiveness.



Teaching point three: One sinner‟s repentance benefits many sinners.

Repentance brings us back to God. Ongoing contrition keeps us in a flexible,

moldable state. It keeps us from rapidly hardening our hearts, as Scripture says.



We turn from our sins, and by God‘s mercy we are restored to a right relationship

with him. David characterizes this as knowing again the joy of God‘s salvation (v. 12),

but it is not joy for joy‘s sake. God has a purpose, as always. David joins the joy he

anticipates in climactic verse 12 with a request for a willing spirit that he may remain

in this useful state.

Consider the activities David pledges himself to in verses 13 and following.



[Q] How is David‘s repentance played out in acts of thanksgiving in verses 13–17?

What are those acts? What is their bearing on David and on others?



[Q] What is the role of these acts of worship and thanksgiving in renewing,

maintaining, and deepening your own repentance?



[Q] Verses 18 and 19 are more than a coda tacked onto David‘s personal prayer.

These intercessions on behalf of the nation flow directly from David‘s

confession and restoration. What is the role of personal confession in national

repentance and restoration—both by our leaders and ourselves?



[Q] How does one person‘s repentance influence others?



PART 3

Apply Your Findings

[Q] Do you think of yourself as a sinner? Do you want to? Explain.



[Q] In what ways is it spiritually healthy to accept yourself as a sinner?



[Q] Can the label ―sinner‖ keep us from moving beyond sinning?









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How to Repent

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 In our 12-step age, might the term ―recovering sinner‖ be helpful in

understanding the continuing nature of repentance?



[Q] What do you make of the New Testament passages that pronounce believers‘

freedom from sin?



[Q] ―No era finds repentance easy, but many have found it easier to talk about,‖

Mathewes-Green says. She also says the church has fewer options in the current

theological climate, where sinners often see themselves as victims seeking

comfort. How can the church engage unrepentant people in helpful

conversations about repentance?

Action Point: Will you make ongoing repentance a spiritual goal this year? If so,

how?





—Study prepared by LEADERSHIP journal managing editor Eric Reed.









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A HANDOUT FOR FURTHER STUDY

How to Repent

We’ve come to think our faith is about comfort. It’s not.





Choose one of the following:

1. Write your own Psalm 51. Recall a time in your life when you were especially

aware of your need to repent. Include in your psalm some of the elements David

used in his psalm of repentance: recounting the effects of sin and owning them;

identifying God as the one sinned against; anticipating the joys that come with

restoration; describing how you will share those joys with others.

Once you have written your personal psalm of repentance, pray it. Then keep it for

the next time you need a reminder of your need to repent and God‘s willingness to

restore.

2. Contemplate the Cross. Spend 15 minutes before the Cross. Pray the prayer

Mathewes-Green cites, ―Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.‖ At the

end of the time, sing or read an old hymn about the cross: ―Alas, and Did My

Savior Bleed,‖ ―When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,‖ or ―The Old Rugged Cross.‖

Later, ask yourself: ―How are my understanding of myself as a sinner, my need for

repentance, and my appreciation for God‘s grace deepened when I am before the Cross?‖









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ARTICLE

Whatever Happened to Repentance?

We’ve come to think our faith is about comfort. It’s not.



By Frederica Mathewes-Green, for the study, ―How to Repent.‖







Forget what the billboard charts say—

to judge from church ads in the Yellow

Pages, America‘s favorite song is ―I‘m Mr.

Lonely.‖ Churches are quick to spot that

need and promise eagerly that they will be

friendly, or be family, or just care.

Apparently this is the church‘s principal

product. When people need tires, they

look up a tire store; when they start having those bad-sad-mad feelings, they

shop for a church.



Here, for once, denominational and political divisions vanish. Churches

across the spectrum compete to display their capacity for caring, though each

has its own way of making the pitch. The Tabernacle, a ―spirit-filled, multi-

cultured church,‖ pleads, ―Come let us love you,‖ while the Bible Way Temple

is more formal, if not downright odd: ―A church where no stranger need feel

strangely.‖ (The only response that comes to mind is ―Thank thee.‖) One

church sign in South Carolina announced, ―Where Jesus is Lord and everybody

is special,‖ which made it sound like second prize. And one Methodist

congregation tries to get it all in: ―A Christ-centered church where you can

make new friends and form lasting relationships with people who care about

you.‖

But when Jesus preached, he did not spend a lot of time on ―caring.‖ The

first time we see him, in the first Gospel, the first instruction he gives is

―Repent‖ (Mark 1:15). From then on, it‘s his most consistent message. Yes, he

spoke words of comfort like ―Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden‖

(Matt. 11:28). But much more frequently he challenged his hearers, urging

them to turn to God in humility and admit their sins. Even when told of a

tragedy that caused many deaths, he repeated this difficult theme: ―Unless you

repent, you will all likewise perish‖ (Luke 13:1–5).









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Whatever Happened to Repentance?

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We love one of these sayings of Jesus. We repeat it often, paste it onto felt

banners, and print it on refrigerator magnets. We mostly ignore those on

repentance. This says more about us than it does about Jesus.



One thing it says is that we live in a time when it‘s hard to talk about

Christian faith at all, much less about awkward topics like repentance. (No era

finds repentance easy, but many have found it easier to talk about.)

Paradoxically, we live in a very easy time. We are the wealthiest, healthiest,

most comfortable generation in history. With less to struggle for, we become

increasingly oriented toward pleasure. This all-too-natural inclination is what

most unites us. America is a place of wild diversity, but we all meet at the

shopping mall.





Whining Spiritual Babies

We‘re confirmed in this expectation by a ceaseless stream of advertising

messages. These messages tell us who we are: special, precious people with no

faults, who deserve to feel better than we do. Ads tell us, ―Your wife (boss,

teenager, classmate) doesn‘t understand you, but we do. Here, buy this, and

you‘ll feel better.‖ Advertising invites us to be big babies—an invitation that

fallen human nature has always found hard to resist.



Try telling a person who‘s been discipled by advertising that he‘s a sinner. A

hundred years ago, a preacher would have seen heads nod in recognition at

that familiar concept. But today‘s consumer is likely to be shocked—and

baffled. How could he be a sinner? All he knows is that he‘s unhappy because

he does not have his fair share of stuff, and he isn‘t appreciated enough by

those around him. Original sin? He will readily agree that everyone else keeps

letting him down. That he‘s estranged from the one, holy God and needs to be

reconciled? He‘s likely to respond, ―So who‘s this God who thinks he‘s better

than us?‖ Bring up Judgment Day, and you‘ll get to see someone genuinely

appalled; the very idea just sounds so judgmental.



In trying to reach this seeker, the church has been given a severely reduced

pack of options. Since he is aware only of seeking comfort, it looks like that‘s

what we have to headline in any message we send. Neither this need, nor our

response, is untrue. A profound sense of unease and dislocation is indeed part

of the human condition, because sin has estranged us from God. ―I‘m Mr.

Lonely‖ is the theme song of everyone on Earth. The church has the only

authentic solution to this problem, because we bear the Good News of

reconciliation through Jesus Christ.



The problem comes when we never get around to talking about the hard

part of the Good News. The problem can even be that we start forgetting it









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ourselves, and start believing that consolation is the main reason Jesus came.

But what‘s wrong with us required much more than a hug; it required the

Cross. It doesn‘t seem this way; we too, have been catechized by the world and

reflexively think of ourselves as needy, wronged children. We‘d rather feel as if

we‘re victims of a cruel world than admit we are contributors to the world‘s

cruelty, lost sinners who perversely love our lostness, clinging to our treasured

sins like a drowning man to an anvil.



How bizarre such language seems today. We look around our neighborhood

and our congregation and everyone seems so nice. We know what really

wicked people are like—we see them in the papers every day—and we‘re not

like that. God must find us, in comparison, quite endearing. And of course he

knows the hurts we bear deep inside, and anyone who‘s been hurt can‘t be bad

(I call this the ―victims are sinless‖ fallacy). With these and a thousand other

sweet murmurs we shield ourselves from our real condition and remain

Christian babies all our lives: pampered, ineffective, whiney, and numb.





Repentance Is Joy

Jesus didn‘t come to save us just from the penalty for our sins; he came to

save us from our sins—now, today, if we will only respond to the challenge and

let him. A nation of grownup Christians, courageous, confident, humble, and

holy, would be more compelling than any smiley-face ad campaign. The Lord

does not love us for our good parts and pass over the rest. He died for the bad

parts and will not rest until they are put right. We must stop thinking of God as

infinitely indulgent. We must begin to grapple with the scary and exhilarating

truth that he is infinitely holy, and that he wants the same for us.



I propose that we recover the ideas of sin and repentance, and reinstate

them at the heart of all we do. Such words make us uncomfortable, and raise

images that come more from old movies than Scripture. ―Repent!‖ is what‘s on

the soundtrack when a sweating, shouting preacher in a string tie starts

slamming his Bible around and making everybody cower. But the meaning of

repentance in Scripture and the early church was very different. It was part of

the good news, so any bad-news associations we find lying around are just

plain wrong.

A good place to start is with the word repentance, or the Greek metanoia,

meaning a change of mind. (The Hebrew word is shub, which means to change

from the wrong to the right path.) Metanoia is a compound word; ―meta‖ is a

versatile preposition that here denotes transformation. Metamorphosis is a

change of shape; metanoia is a change of the ―nous,‖ or the innermost

consciousness, a region that lies below both rational thought and emotion. ―Be

transformed by the renewal of your mind [nous],‖ Paul wrote, and the







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devotional classic ―The Shepherd‖ (A.D. 140) says, ―Repentance is great

understanding.‖ Repentance is not blubbering and self-loathing. It is insight.



The insight is about our true condition. We begin to see our fallen

inclinations the way God does, and realize how deep-rooted is the rottenness

in our hearts. This awareness grows slowly, over many years, because he

mercifully shows us only a little at a time. But he sees it all. His is like the eye

of a surgeon, which sees through to the sickness deepest within. There is no

other way for us to be healed. It‘s when the surgeon says, ―All we can do is keep

him comfortable,‖ that you‘re really in trouble.



Some will object, ―But I don‘t think I‘m a fine person. I already hate myself,

I feel ashamed and like a failure all the time.‖ That miserable feeling can be

pride with a twist: we have an unreasonably inflated idea of how wonderful we

can be, and find the inevitable failures crushing. God‘s assessment of our

abilities is more accurate to begin with, so he doesn‘t share our surprised

dismay. Repentance, ―great understanding,‖ replaces our distorted self-image

with God‘s perspective.



Other times the wash of self-hatred is due to feelings of hopelessness. We

all have committed a million wrongs, large and small. We can get stuck there,

aware that God forgives us but unable to apply that fact, and aware that we‘re

bound to continue to fail. It seems like there‘s no solution, so we sit in the

garbage pile feeling miserable.



This is not repentance; this is despair. The early church differentiated

between the two, perceiving that healthy repentance is vigorous and clear-

minded, while despair is debilitating, and in fact sinful. Isaiah, a fifth-century

Egyptian monk, warned against the kind of sadness that ―sets off numerous

diabolical mechanisms until your strength is sapped. The sadness according to

God, on the other hand, is joy…It says to the soul, ‗Do not be afraid! Up!

Return!‘ God knows that man is weak, and strengthens him.‖



―Sadness according to God,‖ repentance, is joy. Initially we fear looking

squarely at our sins, lest we get overwhelmed. But the reverse turns out to be

true. The more we see the depth of our sin, the more we realize the height of

God‘s love. The constant companion of repentance is gratitude. Like the

woman who washed Jesus‘ feet with her tears, we are forgiven much and

discover endless love. Seeing our sin becomes, paradoxically, an opportunity

for joy.

Then we are free indeed: free from any need to hide, to conceal or impress,

to make excuses for ourselves, to demand our fair share. Free to love God with

abandon, free to love others without bargaining and conditions. Free to love

even those who hurt us because, ultimately, nothing can hurt us. Knowing our







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own sin, we pray for all other sinners, asking God to show them the mercy he

has given so abundantly to us.



A gospel of comfort, on the other hand, is a gospel of minimal expectations.

Christianity is one of the great world religions, and the greatest spiritual power

in history. But we don‘t act like it. We act like once people are in the door and

make a statement of faith, the whole thing is over. Paul envisioned something

more like a transformation, Christ living in us and we in him.



A story is told about a desert monk of the early church, Abba Joseph. A

young monk came to him and said, ―As far as I can I say my prayers, I fast a

little, try to live in peace and keep my thoughts pure. What else can I do?‖



Abba Joseph stood up and spread out his hands toward heaven, and each of

his fingertips was lit with flame. He said to the young monk, ―If you want to,

you can be totally fire.‖ The challenge is ours as well: What, really, do we want?





Frederica Mathewes-Green is author of The Illumined

Heart (Paraclete).



CHRISTIANITY TODAY, February 4, 2002, Vol. 46, No. 2, Page 56









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LEADER’S GUIDE - STUDY 2



The Freedom of

Forgiveness

How do you know that you have truly forgiven someone?



We can‘t live for too long before realizing we need to know how to

forgive. We may want to forgive and try to forgive, yet still feel

tormented by hurt and anger. As this study shows, forgiveness is

usually a process we have to learn. We may not forgive perfectly,

but we can learn from the Bible how to find the freedom of full

forgiveness.









Lesson #2



Scripture:

Matthew 5:38-48; 6:12-15; 18:21-35; Isaiah 43:25



Based on:

“Keys to Forgiveness.” CHRISTIANITY TODAY, December 3, 2001, Vol. 45, No. 15, Page 73

LEADER’S GUIDE

The Freedom of Forgiveness

Page 2









PART 1

Identify the Current Issue

Note to leader: Prior to meeting, provide for each person the

article “Keys to Forgiveness” from CHRISTIANITY TODAY

magazine, included at the end of this study.

The goal of this section is to help class members learn to

forgive their enemies fully. Choose the option you like best, or

do several if time permits.





Option A: Ad Campaign

Divide the class into groups of three to four people each. Give

each group large sheets of paper or posterboard, markers, old

magazines to cut up for pictures, plus scissors and tape. Every group should create a

magazine ad. Assign some groups to develop an ad promoting forgiveness and the

other groups an ad promoting unforgiveness. For example, a group‘s ad might say,

―Forgiveness: Don‘t Leave Home Without It,‖ or ―Unforgiveness: The Natural

Feeling.‖

Then have groups present their ads, explaining why they chose the picture and slogan

they did.





Option B: Categories Game

Divide the class into groups of three to four people each. Then ask the first group to

name one possible misunderstanding about forgiveness. If that misunderstanding

matches one from the list below, the group gets 1 point. Then ask the second group to

name a misunderstanding. Continue until every item on this list, or nearly every one,

has been named:



 Forgiveness is instantaneous or immediate.



 If you haven‘t forgotten what the person did to you, you haven‘t forgiven.



 Forgiveness means you‘ll be reconciled to the person who hurt you.



 If the wrongdoer has never taken responsibility for what he did, you can‘t

forgive.





Option C: Crisis Counseling

Your class has been asked to provide crisis counseling for a 37-year-old mother of two

whose husband was killed when the World Trade Center was attacked. The widow

asks plaintively, ―How can I ever forgive the people who did this?‖ (You might even

have a class member act the part of this woman.) Ask students to talk to this woman,

with the knowledge that she is a Christian. After a while, change the situation so that

the woman is not a Christian. How does the counsel change?









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The Freedom of Forgiveness

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Discussion starters:

Follow any option by discussing some of these questions:



[Q] In all that you heard, what most struck you, and why?



[Q] In his book Forgive and Forget, Lewis Smedes describes the way we sometimes

feel: ―I‘ll never understand why you did that. There is no understanding it. You

didn‘t have to do what you did….You did it of your own free will, and I hate you

for it—at least I hate that part of you; and I blame you for it. I can‘t get over it

or excuse it or understand it.‖ What do you do when you feel this way?



[Q] What, to you, is the hardest thing about forgiving someone?



PART 2

Discover the Eternal Principles

Teaching point one: If we refuse to forgive, we have no claim on God‟s

forgiveness.

Have someone read aloud the parable from Matthew 18:21–35. You might have

different people read parts. You‘ll need someone to be the servant who owed 10,000

talents, another person to be the servant who owed 100 denarii, and another to be the

king.

When they‘re finished, you may want to retell the parable in a contemporary setting,

perhaps like this:

In today‘s terms, here‘s a guy who has fallen behind financially. He‘s maxed out every

charge card. There aren‘t any more relatives who will give him some money to get

him through. Creditors are calling and leaving messages on the answering machine.

The stress is a mile high, and it looks like they‘re going to lose their home.



Then, a representative from Visa calls and says, ―We‘ve been looking at your account,

and we‘ve decided to make an adjustment to bring the outstanding balance down to

zero.‖ Later that week, a representative from a company that tracks your credit

history calls and says, ―We‘ve been looking at your credit record, and we‘ve decided to

clear it and treat it as if it were a new account.‖

Then this same guy goes to work, sees somebody who had failed to return the 50

cents he borrowed from him for a can of pop, and throws him up against the wall,

demanding the money.



[Q] How would you explain Jesus‘ words in Matthew 18:34–35: ―In anger his

master turned him [the unforgiving servant] over to the jailers, until he should

pay back all he owed. This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you

unless you forgive your brother from your heart‖?









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[Q] How does this passage compare with Matthew 6:12–15, especially verse 15,

where Jesus says, ―But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not

forgive your sins‖?

This raises the question of how God treats the person who does not forgive. Some

scholars read Jesus‘ words literally, meaning that by not forgiving, you actually block

the forgiveness God wants to give you. Others say that God‘s forgiveness is

established by Christ‘s death and cannot be hindered; Jesus is using hyperbole to

communicate that if you don‘t forgive, God will chastise you.

Either way, however, the irreducible meaning of Jesus‘ words about forgiveness is

simple and shocking: If we don‘t forgive, something goes terribly wrong in our

relationship with God.



Teaching point two: Forgiveness requires that we surrender the right

to get even.

Read Matthew 5:38–48.



[Q] Have you ever felt like you had to forgive someone but later realized that person

hadn‘t actually wronged you? What happened?



[Q] Think about a time when someone did wrong you. What did you want from that

person?

Leader’s Note: Class members might suggest an apology, nicer treatment,

an explanation for why he or she did that, for him to feel the same pain he

inflicted on me.



[Q] Other than forgiving, what are some ways people react to being wronged?

Leader’s Note: They may nurse anger, imagine or plot revenge, complain

about the person who hurt them, etc.



[Q] What happens to the person who refuses to forgive? What affect does that

decision have on his or her life?

In his article in CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Smedes writes that forgiveness requires three

basic actions: (1) We surrender our right to get even. (2) We rediscover the humanity

of our wrongdoer. (3) We wish our wrongdoer well.



[Q] Which of those steps have you found the most difficult, and why?



[Q] What reasons do people give for not forgiving?

Leader’s Note: Some reasons people may say are, “He doesn’t deserve

forgiveness”; “This is different,” meaning this situation is so painful that

forgiveness is too much to expect in this case; “He should know better.”



[Q] How would you reply to such reasons?







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In his writings, CT columnist Philip Yancey calls forgiveness ―an unnatural act.‖

Smedes writes in Forgive and Forget that ―forgiveness is a miracle. It breaks through

the normal calculus of morality that calls for evenhandedness and balance. Forgiving

is always a decision to put up with an uneven score.‖



[Q] If forgiveness is so hard, why bother with it?

Leader’s Note: To be obedient to Christ, who calls us to forgive; because it’s

the only way to be fully released from hate and bitterness, which would

otherwise poison our character and relationships; because without

forgiveness, our families, neighborhoods, churches, and nations would be

destroyed; to be in full relationship with God.



[Q] What makes it possible for a Christian to live with an uneven score?



Teaching point three: Forgiving does not require forgetting.

People say, ―But how can I forget what that person did? That is an event stored in my

gray matter. I can‘t rewrite history. I can‘t get those words and pictures out of my

mind, because they actually happened.‖

Read Isaiah 43:25. The question we might also ask is, How does God forget every

time we sin against him? As Smedes points out, God said through Isaiah (43:25), ―I

am he who blots out your transgressions…and remembers your sins no more.‖ How

does God do it? We know that God has perfect knowledge and therefore, a flawless

memory. What God means by his promise in Isaiah is that he chooses not to

remember.

Christian psychologist Louis McBurney writes that ―forgiveness is not a one-time,

magical act that removes all memory and pain; it‘s a continuously repetitive choice.‖

Thus, to ―forget‖ sin done against us does not mean the memory of that sin will never

cross our minds. Rather, it means, in Smedes words, ―we can dethrone the memory;

we can refuse to let it control our lives. We can detoxify the memory; we can purge its

poison from our souls.‖



[Q] How, specifically, do we ―dethrone‖ and ―detoxify‖ a painful memory?

Leader’s Note: You might suggest an analogy of a video tape: when that

painful scene comes into our memory, rather than press Play, Rewind, Play,

Rewind, we can choose to press Stop and Eject.





PART 3

Apply Your Findings

We need to move this discussion beyond the academic to applying the Bible‘s

teachings on forgiveness to specific situations in our lives.



[Q] What‘s the difference between seeing someone as a monster and seeing

someone as a person who did a monstrous thing?









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[Q] Have you ever made that shift? What happened in that process?



[Q] Have you ever prayed for someone who wronged you? What happened?



[Q] Think about a time you were hurt but were able to forgive. What helped you do

that?

Spend extra time on the question central to the CHRISTIANITY TODAY column:



[Q] How do you know if you‘ve fully forgiven someone?

Leader’s Note: There may be many responses here, such as, “I’m not

thinking about what they did to me all the time.” You may want to remind

class members of the three steps mentioned in the article: (1) you have

surrendered your right to get even; (2) you can see the person who hurt you as

a human being rather than a caricature; (3) you can and do want the best for

that person.

If time allows, you might read aloud, or having students read, the story on the

student handout.



Action Point: Think of a wrong you‘re struggling to forgive. Then pray for the

person on your right, asking God to give that person grace to fully forgive.





Study written by executive editor of www.preachingtoday.com

Kevin A. Miller









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A HANDOUT FOR FURTHER STUDY

The Freedom of Forgiveness

A story from the life of Corrie Ten Boom





The Bell Rope

The book and film The Hiding Place tell the story of a Dutch woman, Corrie ten Boom.

During World War II, Corrie and her family sheltered Jews from the Nazi occupation

forces in Holland. She and her family were arrested and shipped to a concentration

camp. In the camp, Corrie‘s sister, Betsey, died.

After Corrie got out, she thought she had forgiven this one particularly cruel guard, but

still she was tormented by the hurt. Finally she went to talk to her pastor about it.

Corrie‘s pastor took her outside the church and pointed up to the steeple. ―You see those

bells?‖

Corrie nodded. Her pastor said, ―Well, after you‘ve been pulling on the ropes, even when

you let go, the bells keep ringing for a while. But let go of the rope. In time, the bells will

stop ringing.‖

In forgiveness, we have to let go of the rope, to stop tugging on the hurt that‘s been done

to us. If we make that crucial decision to take our hands off, after awhile the noisy

clanging in our soul will finally slow and then stop. Our hearts will grow quiet again.









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ARTICLE

Keys to Forgiving

By Lewis B. Smedes, for the study ―The Freedom of Forgiveness.‖







Jesus was unequivocal on this point: As his followers, we

are required to forgive those who sin against us (Matt. 6:15).

But what if we don‘t feel like we‘ve forgiven them? How do

we know, then, if we have truly forgiven? The Holy Spirit,

thank God, often enables people to forgive even though they

are not sure how they did it. But forgiving, and knowing that

we‘ve truly forgiven, comes easier when we understand the

realities of forgiveness:



1. Forgiveness is a redemptive response to having been

wronged and wounded. This is simple but important. Only

those who have wronged and wounded us are candidates for forgiveness. If they

injure us accidentally, we excuse them. We only forgive the ones we blame.



2. Forgiveness requires three basic actions. First, we surrender our right to get

even. Every victim is sure that the victimizer deserves to suffer at least as much as

he made us suffer. But that is not necessarily so. ―The wages of sin (wronging God)

is death‖ (Rom. 6:23), but the payment was made through the death of God‘s own

Son. The blood of Christ covers all of our sins, but each of us must do personal

business with God in order to experience his forgiveness. When we forgive,

therefore, we place the outcome of the matter in God‘s hands and often choose to

live with the scales unbalanced.



Second, we rediscover the humanity of our wrongdoer. When we have been

badly injured and clearly wronged, we make an instant caricature of the person

who did it to us. We define him totally by the one wrong he did. If he betrayed us,

his total being is reduced to his betrayal. When we forgive, we rediscover that the

person who wronged us is a complex, weak, confused, fragile person, not all that

different from us. This is what God does. Our sin hid our faces from him; now,

forgiven, we shine like sparkling jewels before him.



And third, we wish our wrongdoer well. We not only surrender our right to

revenge against him; we desire good things to happen to him. We bless him.

Unnatural? Too much to ask of us? Perhaps. And yet, this is how God forgives us;









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Keys to Forgiving

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he not only surrenders his right to see us punished, he graces us with whatever

blessing is right for us.



3. Forgiving takes time. God can forgive in a single breath. But we need time.

Just before he died, C.S. Lewis wrote: ―I think I have at last forgiven the cruel

schoolmaster who so darkened my youth. I had done it many times before, but this

time I think I have really done it.‖ Maybe, had he lived longer, he would have had

to do it again.



4. Forgiving does not require forgetting. True, God said through Isaiah (43:25),

―I am he who blots out your transgression…. and I will not remember your sins.‖

But does God have amnesia? Does God not remember that Peter denied his Lord?

Or, does he treat Peter and all other forgiven people as if he cannot remember

what they did? On a human level, it is futile to try to forget; the more we try to

forget, the more we remember. But we can dethrone the memory; we can refuse to

let it control our lives. We can detoxify the memory; we can purge its poison from

our souls. But we do well not to worry about forgetting. Sufficient unto the day is

forgiving.



5. Ideally, forgiving leads to reconciliation. But we often have to put up with

less than the ideal. Sometimes the forgiven person will not want to be reunited

with us; he may not care a fig for our grace. Besides, though he is forgiven, he may

not be changed. If he is reunited with us, he is likely to clobber us again. Forgiving

happens in our hearts. There can be no reunion without forgiving, but there can be

forgiving without reunion. An offender who has violated a law will need to endure

the just judicial consequences. But even as that happens, the offended person can

pray and seek full reconciliation on the other side of justice.



6. Forgiving comes naturally to the forgiven. Nothing enables us to forgive like

knowing in our hearts that we have been forgiven. This is probably why Jesus

taught us to pray: ―Forgive us our debts, [but only] as we forgive our debtors‖

(Matt. 6:12). Jesus implies that it is unthinkable for a forgiven person to refuse to

forgive. If we do refuse, he says later, we have no claim on God‘s forgiveness. But

remember, he does not expect perfect forgiving; he is the only expert at it. We are

poor duffers trying to treat others as he treats us.





Lewis B. Smedes is professor emeritus of theology and

ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary and author of The

Art of Forgiving: When You Need to Forgive and Don’t

Know How (Ballantine).



CHRISTIANITY TODAY, December 3, 2001, Vol. 45, No. 15, Page 73









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LEADER’S GUIDE - STUDY 3



It‟s All About Joy!

How to find joy—and keep it.



One word used frequently during Christmas is joy. It‘s one of these

concepts that is easier said than felt or acted upon, easier wanted

than had. What is joy? And how can it be found? Let‘s examine this

universal longing and the particular ways the Bible describes it.







Lesson #3



Scripture:

Nehemiah 8:10; John 16:20-24, 33; ; Philippians 4:4-8; Hebrews 12:2; 1 Peter 1:6-9



Based on:

“Yabba-ka-doodles!” CHRISTIANITY TODAY, December 3, 2001, Vol. 45, No. 15, Page 42

LEADER’S GUIDE

It‟s All About Joy!

Page 2









PART 1

Identify the Current Issue

Note to leader: Prior to meeting, provide for each person the

article “Yabba-ka-doodles!” from CHRISTIANITY TODAY magazine,

included at the end of this study.



[Q] When you hear the word joy, what mental picture comes

to mind?



Joy shows up in a variety of ways, but almost everyone wishes

joy were in greater supply. In his article ―Yabba-ka-doodles!‖

Mike Mason describes his determination to do something

different for the holidays. Read his first two paragraphs.



[Q] When you were reading the article, did you make any predictions at this point?

 Did you think Mason‘s experiment was likely to succeed or fail?



[Q] What do you think about the kind of joy Mason was seeking in his experiment

and the joy he suddenly experienced in the parking lot?

 Have you ever set out to be joyful? If so, how did you accomplish your goal?



[Q] Do you have any principle that guides your attainment of joy?



[Q] Are there many kinds and levels of joy—or does joy always mean the same

thing?



[Q] In your experience, can joy be a constant companion, or does it ebb and flow

like the tide?



[Q] Do you think simply deciding to be joyful is a good strategy or an exercise in

futility? Or both? Explain.





PART 2

Discover the Eternal Principles

Teaching point one: Joy is not the same as happiness or pleasure.

In the Bible, joy is not the same thing as happiness or pleasure. Joy Davidman, the

wife of C.S. Lewis, was herself a writer. She wrote in Smoke on the Mountain, her

book about the Ten Commandments, that ―living for his own pleasure is the least

pleasurable thing a man can do; if his neighbors don‘t kill him in disgust, he will die

slowly of boredom and lovelessness.‖

In his book The Taste of Joy, Calvin Miller points out that even Christians can

misdirect their loyalties—seeking only pleasant feelings, the sensations rather than







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the substance of faith. ―Many Christians are only ‗Christaholics‘ and not disciples at

all,‖ he writes. ―Disciples are cross-bearers; they seek Christ. Christaholics seek

happiness. Disciples dare to discipline themselves, and the demands they place on

themselves leave them enjoying the happiness of their growth. Christaholics are

escapists looking for a shortcut to nirvana. Like drug addicts, they are trying to ‗bomb

out‘ of their depressing world.

―There is no automatic joy. Christ is not a happiness capsule; he is the way to the

Father. But the way to the Father is not a carnival ride in which we sit and do nothing

while we are whisked through various spiritual sensations.‖



Read 1 Peter 1:6–9.



[Q] What kinds of not-so-pleasurable things seem to accompany the joy that God

gives (or at least have to be endured before the joy is fully received)?

 Does this mean that the unexpected joy Mason experienced was somehow

illegitimate? Why or why not?



[Q] What is the relationship between suffering and joy?



[Q] What produces this joy, according to these verses?



Teaching point two: Joy is living for God and others.

Read Hebrews 12:2.



[Q] What motivated Jesus to go through the suffering and abandonment of

crucifixion?

 Does the answer in this verse surprise you?

Leader’s Note: Not duty. Not obedience. Not even compassion. (Though all

of these may have entered in.) It’s “the joy set before him.”



[Q] What kind of joy is this?

Leader’s Note: It’s the joy of doing the will of God and knowing that he will

be well pleased.



[Q] How is this joy different from ―feeling good‖?

Leader’s Note: This is the joy of living not for your own pleasure, but for the

pleasure of someone else. It’s the rich satisfaction that your life finds meaning

in something much bigger than your personal agenda. You’re part of

something eternal. As Joseph Addison has said, “Three grand essentials to

happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to

hope for.”

On the Thursday evening of Holy Week, Jesus, knowing he was about to be betrayed

and killed, spoke about joy with his disciples. He prepared them for the terror of his









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trial, his death, and the devastation that stood before him and his followers. And

then, in that dangerous moment he told them about joy. Read John 16:20–24, 33.

Earl Palmer, in his article ―Joy: Spiritual Health Made Visible‖ (LEADERSHIP, Fall

1998), says, ―Joy is united by Jesus to the word ‗peace,‘ which means wholeness and

salvation. Sorrow will be turned to joy when we discover that Jesus Christ has won

the victory over death itself. This transformation of sorrow into joy is at the core of

comedy. What we thought would be a permanent loss, producing fear and grief,

becomes (surprise!) a victory. The result of this remarkable reversal is laughter.‖

Death may seem to be the end of faith, hope, and love, but our Lord told his friends

on the Thursday before Good Friday that everything would turn upside down, even

such powerful forces as death and sin and evil.



Teaching point three: We experience joy by continuing to pursue and

serve God.



[Q] What do you think about Mason‘s pursuit of joy?



[Q] Read Philippians 4:4-8. Can a mental attitude of cultivating joy in the Lord

help one attain it?

 Can joy be found in the most unexpected, silliest of places? Explain.



Catherine Marshall writes in A Closer Walk: ―I can see that Jesus drew men and

women into the kingdom by promising them two things: first, trouble-hardship,

danger; and second, joy. But what curious alchemy is this that he can make even

danger and hardship seem joyous? He understands things about human nature that

we grasp only dimly: few of us are really challenged by the promise of soft living, by

an emphasis on me-first, or by a life of easy compromise.‖



[Q] Why doesn‘t a life of pursuing pleasure produce lasting joy?

Instead, joy comes by another means. The famous devotional writer A.W. Tozer

observed in his book Men Who Met God: ―What I am anxious to see in Christian

believers is a beautiful paradox. I want to see in them the joy of finding God while at

the same time they are blessedly pursuing him. I want to see in them the great joy of

having God yet always wanting him.‖



[Q] What are some other areas of life in which you can ―find‖ only while continuing

to ―pursue‖?

 In which you can ―have‖ only while always ―wanting‖?



A parallel might be a fine craftsmanship—playing an instrument, making pottery,

painting—the skill can only be ―had‖ while one continues to pursue it. With many

valuable skills, it‘s a case of ―use it or lose it.‖ So, too, is the case with the joy of the

Lord. Only in continuing to pursue God can we find him; only in continuing to serve

him can we receive the joy he offers.









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PART 3

Apply Your Findings

Joy can be experienced on different levels.

A person‘s attitude—as in Mason‘s case—does seem to help. You can start a day by

deciding to rejoice in the Lord and dwelling on ―whatever is lovely‖ (see Phil. 4:4–8).

Or you can spend the day being grumpy. In both cases, the mental attitude will most

likely influence the kind of day you have.

On a deeper level, joy is paradoxical. It‘s not something that can be gained by

pursuing it directly. The deepest joy known to human souls is not a prize that can be

grasped by seeking it. Such joy comes as a byproduct of serving God.

An old Scottish preacher, Alexander MacLaren, put it this way: ―To pursue joy is to

lose it. The only way to get it is to follow steadily the path of duty, without thinking of

joy, and then…it comes most surely, unsought, and we ‗being in the way,‘ the angel of

God, fair-haired joy, is sure to meet us.‖

Or as C.S. Lewis writes: ―Joy bursts in on our lives when we go about doing the good

at hand and not trying to manipulate things and times to achieve joy.‖



[Q] What is the ―good at hand‖ in your life right now?

 What is the ―path of duty‖ that God has assigned you?

Whatever your assignment, keep your eyes peeled, because joy will meet you on that

road, probably when you least expect it. And when joy comes, the Bible tells us how to

respond.



―Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have

nothing prepared. This day is sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the

Lord is your strength‖ (Neh. 8:10).



[Q] How do we respond to the gifts God gives—especially the gift of joy?

Leader’s Note: It is to be received with gratitude, savored, and shared. God

is the giver of joy. And while “the fear of the Lord is be beginning of wisdom,”

it’s equally true that “the joy of the Lord is our strength.”









Study written by editor of LEADERSHIP journal Marshall Shelley.









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A HANDOUT FOR FURTHER STUDY

It‟s All About Joy!

How to find joy—and keep it.



Meditation On Facets Of Joy

Like a diamond, joy has many facets that can be seen only by examining its many sides. Joy, according to

C.S. Lewis, is quite opaque to evil and the evil one, because all evil is baffled and offended by the essence of

joy.



Joy is the result of truth. Joy is the ―gigantic secret‖ of God (G.K. Chesterton) that the world could never have

expected, but it clears the air so that we see things as they really are.



Joy causes celebration. Gladness and song go with joy; the slightest witticisms cause laughter when joy is

present. There‘s energy in joy that cures fatigue and discouragement. This is what James says in his letter to

churches that face persecution: ―Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds‖

(James 1:2)



Joy has a rhythm. Jesus unites peace with joy in his Thursday night discourse. Joy is a quietness as much as

an exuberance. Together the two create a fundamental rhythm.



Joy is presence. It describes our relationship with God. Joy comes from knowing the Lord and knowing that

the Lord is nearby. In the New Testament, joy is related to prayer and friendship with God. Jesus invites his

disciples to pray so their joy might be full (John 15:11–17).



Joy is a protection. Laughter can be a sign of the dignity and resilience of brave hearts in the face of danger.



In J.R.R. Tolkien‘s story The Lord of the Rings, Frodo and his friend Sam Gamgee laugh out loud high on the

dangerous reaches of the dark tower where laughter had never been heard. Their laughter causes quakes on

the mountain that had so long been under the oppressive control of evil. Their laughter was defiant,

innocent, and profoundly good at the same moment. It was good because it had its source in joy, and that

made it powerful as well as destructive against the powers of evil.



Evil cannot understand joy. The devil is more austere and serious than God is, which makes us stop and

think that if we are to feel at home in heaven, we will need to enjoy joy because ―joy is the serious business of

heaven‖ (G.K. Chesterton).









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ARTICLE

Yabba-ka-doodles!

I’d begun to think of joy as a hard taskmistress, and of Christmas as her

nasty elder sister.



By Mike Mason, for the study ―It‘s All About Joy!‖







Last year, two months before Christmas, I began an

―experiment in joy.‖ I decided to be joyful for the next 90

days. Since this was an experiment, there was room for

failure.



If at times I felt gloomy, short-tempered, or just plain

blah, I didn‘t beat myself up for it. Rather, recognizing that

self-condemnation is a chief enemy of joy, I would simply

return as best I could to my quiet resolve to rise above all

circumstances and do whatever it took to lay hold of joy. In

this way, I hoped over the course of 90 days to learn some of joy‘s secrets and

to emerge a more jubilant person. I pictured my joy as a flabby muscle that, if

exercised every day, would gradually grow stronger.



The first month of my experiment was amazing. I‘m a moody person by

nature, and never in my life had I experienced such a steady flow of pure

happiness. By the second month, however, difficulties had set in. As Christmas

approached, my days were more characterized by struggle than by joy. Still,

each day in new and surprising ways, a measure of joy kept coming to me. I

was learning not to focus on the darkness but always to look out for the light.



Christmas tends to be a hard time for me, as it is for many. As the angels

gather to announce their glad tidings, there is a parallel gathering of the ogres

of materialism, busyness, unrealistic expectations, old sadness, and family

strife. To be touched by the true joy of Christmas, it seems we must first

encounter our own joylessness and our clumsiness at celebration.





No Party Animal

In our family we traditionally refer to the day before Christmas Eve as

―Christmas Adam.‖ Similarly, the day after Christmas is ―Christmas Cain,‖ and

the next day is ―Christmas Abel.‖ For years we have celebrated Christmas







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Yabba-ka-doodles!

Page 2









Adam with a story party, a gathering of friends and neighbors who are invited

to bring a story or a poem to read aloud. I usually write a short story, someone

brings a guitar, and everyone donates goodies. We read and sing and chat and

chew, and no finer entertainment can be found anywhere.



This year, however, I‘d hardly slept the night before and woke up feeling

embroiled in problems. I‘m not normally a party person, and the thought of

having to get into the holiday mood for a bunch of friends that evening was

overwhelming. Worst of all, I was in the middle of a wretched experiment in

joy. The happy honeymoon was over. I‘d begun to think of joy as a hard

taskmistress, and of Christmas as her nasty elder sister.



Fortunately there was one thing that I was looking forward to on Christmas

Adam: breakfast with Chris Walton. Chris is that rarest of people, someone

who always blesses me. No matter what he‘s going through, what mood he‘s in,

or what we do together—somehow I always leave his company feeling brushed

by heavenly light. As we aren‘t able to see each other often, our times together

are all the more precious.



So, nursing the kind of hangover that comes from imbibing too much

gloom, I set off to meet Chris at Ricky‘s Restaurant for bacon and eggs. Even in

times of tragedy, being with a true friend can have a normalizing effect. In

Chris‘s presence, I gradually began to relax as we talked about favorite books

and music, about Christmas plans, about our families, and about Jesus. I

particularly recall that we discussed, for some reason, the Jewishness of Jesus

and how the only Bible he had was the Hebrew one. We speculated on what it

might be like to read the Old Testament through Jewish eyes.



The more we talked, the more I sensed a quiet joy tugging at my sleeve like

a little child. I cannot say I was feeling entirely happy by the time we rose to

leave, but a warmth was stealing over me. Still, it was the sort of thing that

might easily have been snatched away by the next small annoyance, were it not

for the strange event that transpired in the parking lot.

We were standing beside our cars, Chris by his door and I by mine, saying

our goodbyes. Traffic was rushing by on Fraser Highway, making it difficult to

hear. But as Chris raised his hand in a wave and beamed a last, broad smile, I

distinctly heard him call out, Yabba-ka-doodles!



Yabba-what? What did he mean? What language was this? As we‘d just

been talking of Jewish matters, I wondered if Chris might be delivering some

traditional Yiddish holiday greeting. I felt a bit like Mary, who, when hailed by

the angel Gabriel, ―wondered what kind of greeting this might be.‖



―What did you say?‖ I called back.









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This time Chris threw back his head, beamed as brightly as if he were

seeing an angel himself, and belted out, YABBA-KA-DOODLES!



Chris is not much given to spontaneous ecstatic utterances. Maybe he was

just goofing off? More puzzled than ever, I left my car and walked around to

where he was standing.



―I don‘t get it,‖ I said. ―Yabba-ka-doodles. What does it mean?‖



―Yabba-what?‖ said Chris.



―Yabba-ka-doodles. You said Yabba-ka-doodles and I want to know what it

means.‖



―Yabba-ka-doodles? I didn‘t say Yabba-ka-doodles.‖



―Then what did you say?‖



―I said, ‗I‘m glad we could do this.‘‖



―I‘m glad we could do this?‖ I echoed blankly.



For a moment we stared at one another, listening to the sound of this

inane, colorless sentence against the rapturous syllables of Yabba-ka-doodles.



And then we both burst into laughter, wild, hilarious, thigh-slapping gales

of it there in Ricky‘s parking lot. It was so absurd a mistake, so gloriously

unlikely. And partly because of that, it filled us with that unlikeliest of qualities

in this darkly unsettling world—joy! It was a rich and preposterous joy, as

surprising as if Santa Claus himself (or his Yiddish uncle) had come

thundering down out of the sky in his sleigh.



All the way home in the car I kept muttering, caressing, shouting that silly

word—―Yabba-ka-doodles…. Yabba-ka-doodles‖—giggling and guffawing like a

schoolboy. Talk about joy! More than happy, I felt drunk with joy for the rest

of that day. And when Chris and I saw each other next, on Christmas Eve, we

nearly jumped into each other‘s arms, yelling, ―Yabba-ka-doodles, brother!‖

Who would have believed that so much joy could be contained in one crazy,

purely imagined word? Later I wondered: Were my ears playing tricks, or is it

possible that Chris, without realizing it, really did say Yabba-ka-doodles? Was

he unknowingly used as a messenger of God to me, delivering the joyous news

of Christmas in an angelic tongue?



When I was a student at Regent College, one of my Old Testament

professors was Bruce Waltke, who had worked on the translation committee

for the New International Version. In his lectures, Dr. Waltke loved to linger

over the subtleties of ancient Hebrew, expounding different interpretations of

a single word or phrase, and building a strong case for his own favored







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translation. Yet he also pointed out that translation is not salvation. As he was

fond of saying, ―I‘ve known people who were saved through a verse of

Scripture that I know is mistranslated.‖



On Christmas Adam last year, I was transported into joy through a phrase I

had misunderstood, which has now entered my vocabulary as a traditional

Christmas greeting. And so, as Tiny Tim piped up, ―God bless us, every one,‖ I

say resoundingly to each and every one of you: Yabba-ka-doodles!





Mike Mason is a full-time writer living in British

Columbia. He is author of several books, including The

Mystery of Marriage (Multnomah, 1985) and The Mystery

of Children (Waterbrook, 2001). He is writing a book

about his experiment in joy.



CHRISTIANITY TODAY, December 3, 2001, Vol. 45, No. 15, Page 42









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LEADER’S GUIDE - STUDY 4



David‟s Dance across

the Line

What some view as disrespect can be the holiest act of worship



The image of King David dancing joyfully before the Lord in 2

Samuel is a powerful image and is often used as a model for how we

might worship. In Mark Buchanan‘s article, we see this and more,

as he puts David‘s dance in a larger context. There‘s a bigger theme

than worship style here. David‘s dance teaches not only about how

we might worship but, more importantly, whom we worship.









Lesson #4



Scripture:

S2 Samuel 6:1-8, 16-23; John 4:1-26



Based on:

“Dance of the God-struck.” CHRISTIANITY TODAY. October 7, 2002. Vol. 46, No. 11, Page 50.

LEADER’S GUIDE

David‟s Dance across the Line

Page 2









PART 1

Identify the Current Issue

Note to leader: Prior to meeting, provide for each person the

article “Dance of the God-struck” from CHRISTIANITY TODAY

magazine, included at the end of this study.



Discussion Starters:



[Q] When was the last time you danced in public?



[Q] How did you feel during the dance? Did you get self-

conscious or did you revel in it?



[Q] Do you remember watching someone you know dance? What did you think

about that?



When David danced before the Lord in public, he made himself vulnerable. The

words of his wife, Michal, dripped with disdain for his acting in such an undignified

way in front of common people. Don‘t we often go to great lengths to avoid such

vulnerability ourselves? It can be awkward to both be on display and to see others act

spontaneously. But those things didn‘t matter to David.



[Q] What do you think would be a modern equivalent of David‘s actions?



[Q] What do you think gave David the desire to break with established social

conventions?





PART 2

Discover the Eternal Principles

Teaching point one: God requires respect.

Read 2 Samuel 6:1–7.

After years of fighting both his own compatriots and foreign invaders, David had

finally established himself as king of all Israel. In keeping with his designation as a

man after God‘s own heart, he was determined to serve the Lord wholeheartedly and

to lead his people to do the same. And since the ark of the covenant represented

God‘s presence in a profound way, David wanted it in Jerusalem.

In this passage we see David and his priests preparing to bring the ark into

Jerusalem, and the tragic consequences of their ―innovation.‖

The verses that describe this incident are brief in relation to the treatment the article

gives them. We simply don‘t know the nuances of this story. But Buchanan takes a

poetic approach to filling the gaps, leaving us with a portrait of a man with whom all









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of us can identify to some degree, and a God who threatens to reject our best-laid and

―proper‖ plans.



[Q] Based on the passage, why do you think God struck Uzzah dead? What do you

think about Buchanan‘s speculation in answering this difficult question? Does it

seem probable?

David‘s coronation as king was an important point in the history of Israel and, at this

crucial moment, the people were reminded that God‘s laws were to be fully obeyed.

The deaths of Aaron‘s sons (Lev. 10:1–3), and later of those of Ananias and Sapphira

(Acts 5:1–11), served the same function.



Uzzah‘s death gives a vivid example of how easy it is to show disrespect to God when

our focus is on something other than his holiness—his awe-inspiring wholly

otherness. In Uzzah‘s case, his focus was on the logistics of taking care of God—a

concern that seems benign, even good, on the surface. But in reality, this concern

revealed disrespect and condescension. Ultimately, our urge to innovate must always

be subject to the sovereignty and revealed will of God.



[Q] Can you think of areas in your life where you attempt to ―take care‖ of God?



Teaching point two: God requires truthful worship.

How did Uzzah‘s death make you feel? It made David angry. He didn‘t even try to

hide it. In an honest expression of emotion that was so characteristic of David‘s

relationship with God, verse 8 (look it up) provides this chapter‘s first glimpse of

what God really wants in worship—the truth.

It‘s important to note that David‘s anger was accompanied by his utmost respect for

God, in keeping with teaching point one.

Three months after Uzzah‘s death, David made a successful bid to bring the ark into

Jerusalem. This time he was confronted with disdain from those within his own

household.

Read 2 Samuel 6:16–23.

In this passage, we see David fully engaged with what Buchanan would call Deepest

Reality. His actions—dancing, feasting, burning sacrifices, providing gifts of food for

his subjects—were all ways in which he worshiped and told the truth about his Lord.

This Lord is so glorious and holy that he inspired a king to spontaneous merriment,

surrender, and generosity.



[Q] What do your actions say about the God you serve?

In the spirit of worship, David arrived at his palace to bless his household. He must

have been surprised to find his queen in a bad mood. Saul‘s daughter and David‘s

wife, Michal, ridiculed him for his ―vulgar‖ display. Her disdain for David‘s worship

revealed the extent to which she was wrapped up in the façade of prestige and power.

She might as well have said that there is no one, not even God, before whom the king

should humble himself. One can imagine that her idea of worship would have been

far more dignified and ―appropriate‖—but this is not what God wants. Keeping up

appearances rids worship of truthfulness, and worship filled with pretense is no







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longer worship. Michal‘s lie is one that we struggle with even today. With all of our

knowledge, technological power, and other luxuries, it can be difficult to present

ourselves with abandon and joy in the presence of one who is greater.



[Q] You don‘t have to be a queen to get wrapped up in the pretense of power and

prestige. Pride has many manifestations. Are there times when you identify

with Michal? Explain.



God‘s requirement for truthful worship does not end in the Old Testament. Jesus

reiterates this requirement in a conversation with a Samaritan woman in John 4.

Read John 4:1–26.



[Q] What do you think Jesus meant when he referred to worshiping ―in spirit and

in truth‖?

Commentator Robert Kysar explains the passage this way:



“Spirit (pneuma) more likely stands for the divine presence than the human

spirit; hence, the point does not have to do with sincerity in worship but the

relationship with God out of which believers offer their worship. It is this

kind of worship in full knowledge of the Father that God wants. The title

Father suggests an entirely new relationship with the God who is now

worshiped. Verse 24 repeats the point of v. 23, prefacing it with the

assertion that God is spirit. The spirit in the context of which true worship

takes place is none other than God himself. This is not an attempt to

describe God but to affirm the way in which God deals with humanity and

the relationship God has with believers as a result of the revelation”

(Augsburg Commentary on the New Testament).



That‘s how David worshiped. Similarly, for today, to worship in truth means to

submerse ourselves in the reality of the Incarnation and salvation provided through

the Messiah.





PART 3

Apply Your Findings

David‘s dance before the Lord is often used as a model of how to express ourselves in

worship. The irony is that this picture of David dancing is, in fact, one of David losing

sight of himself; he‘s probably unaware of his style of worship. It says less about the

dancer and the ―dance‖ (worship style) and more about the audience that the dance

was meant to please. This dance is about God, not David. And it‘s because of this

attitude, not because of his movement, that David‘s dance is a model of worship.

One could say that for all Christians life is a dance performed for this audience of one.

Public and corporate worship are important, but ultimately everything we do in our

lives should serve as testimony and thanksgiving to the graciousness of God. Often

the problems we face stem from the fact that we forget for whom we ultimately

―perform.‖ Instead, our focus is on our boss, our friends, our family, ourselves, etc.

We easily become distracted from the Deepest Reality and instead make mistakes

similar to those of the superficially pious Michal.







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In 2 Samuel, we learn that God is not impressed with superficial piety. What can

seem good, even honorable, on the surface, such as Uzzah‘s effort to save the ark, can

turn out to be rife with ulterior motives. Often, such motivation keeps us respectable.

It keeps us from giving ourselves over to what Buchanan would call the ―half-

madness‖ that would ensue if we were to truly live our lives immersed in the reality of

God.



[Q] So where does this leave us? How should we apply this?



[Q] What would it be like to live life submersed in Deepest Reality?



[Q] Can you think of a time when you truly lost your self-awareness because you

were so immersed in Deepest Reality (or something else)?



[Q] What would be the equivalent of dancing down the street for you?



[Q] What things trigger you to be more self-aware?



[Q] Is self-awareness inherently bad?



[Q] How do you lose yourself in worship? (This can be a theoretical question or one

that is asking for specific examples of what people do or have done to focus on

God.)



[Q] How does your church facilitate corporate worship?





— Study prepared by Lisa Ann Cockrel, author of various Bible studies

in this series and an editor of Moody Magazine.









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Dance of the God-struck

There’s something about worship that can drive even a king to strip down

and leap up.



By Mark Buchanan for the study ―David‘s Dance across the Line.‖







David Dances.

Death looms on one side, barrenness on the other, and

between them, in that steep narrow place, David leaps,

twirls, shimmies wild-limbed on the air.



He is close to 40. Maybe his wound-haunted flesh—

trained for war, hardened through exile-dwelling,

borderland skirmishes, and Saul-dodging—has in these

later years softened. He doesn‘t have to get his bread by

begging or brigandage anymore. He doesn‘t have to bully

the neighbors, hide in caves, fake insanity. He‘s lord of the

land. He‘s king. Years of wiliness and austerity and hardship have given way to

a long season of prosperity, luxury, ease.



And maybe his body feels it. Maybe on cold mornings his limbs have a

stiffness like wood splints on the joints, and his tough supple body gathers a

heaviness, a fleshy sediment: the wound of idleness and indulgence.



But today he dances, near naked, with all his might, undignified.



He did this once before, months ago, and a man died. It was Uzzah, a

priest. As David danced, there was an accident: an ox stumbled, a cart lurched,

the ark of the covenant riding on it tottered, slid, threatened to tumble to the

ground.



Uzzah‘s instincts were razor-sharp and lightning-quick. He was ready for

just this kind of thing, vigilant, hands hovering in anticipation. When the

moment of crisis came, Uzzah was there, prepared, saving the day. He touched

the ark, and God smote him dead.



On this day, David‘s dance will end in a domestic battle, a bitter fight with

his wife. Michal, Saul‘s daughter and David‘s first wife, is unimpressed with

David dancing. She is, in fact, disgusted. Grown men shouldn’t carry on like

that. Certainly the king shouldn’t. Kings should conduct themselves with







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proper decorum, in a manner befitting their stature. It is irreverent,

grotesque even, these wild flailing calisthenics. It is what common people

might do.



God struck Michal barren.



Between death and barrenness, David dances. His motions are both natural

and desperate: a bird flying, a man drowning, the thing he was born for, the

thing he‘ll never get used to. Choreographed by yearning and wonder, this is

the dance of the God-struck, the God-smitten. This is the dance of the one who

dances in fire, at cliff edges, on high wires, in the midst of mortal peril,

between death and barrenness.



Uzzah watches with tense worry, and dies. Michal watches with brittle

scorn, and dies childless.



David dances, alive, fully alive.



This is an odd story (2 Samuel 6:5–7, 16, 20–23), and startling. It is a story

with a wrenching undertow of menace and violence. It is a story too seldom

remembered in context. Most of us retain only a thin polished fragment of it:

the image of the happy, leaping king. Lately the story has been used to justify

physical expressiveness in worship—from hand-raising and hand-clapping to

liturgical dance to mosh pits.



But it is a story with a darkly textured backdrop: death looming over there,

barrenness skulking over here. It begins when David wants to make the ark of

the covenant a symbol of his royal authority. David, after seven years of court

intrigue and brutal civil war against the house of Saul and the northern

kingdom, has finally been crowned king of both north and south, Israel and

Judah. Now David has breathing room. It‘s time to turn his abundant energy

toward other things: civic development, cultural initiative, scientific inquiry,

political fence-mending, worship.



The ark of the covenant baptizes David‘s political daring and novelty with

ancient authority. It gives David the imprimatur of Mosaic legitimacy. Such

might well be David‘s political motive in bringing the ark ―home.‖ But David,

who is not above shrewd political calculation, almost always transcends it. So

the ark coming to Jerusalem is not primarily a political gesture. It is primarily

worship. By this, David makes a powerful statement: God is king in this

kingdom, lord of this land. The king acknowledges the King beyond him, above

him, to whom he owes all fealty. For whom he dances.

So the ark is taken out of cold storage. It‘s been moldering, a dangerous

neglected relic, for three or four decades. In all the tumult of the early

kingship, it was easily forgotten. Maybe for some it‘s become an









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embarrassment, a relic of old folkways, a hoary religious symbol, a primitive

war talisman from before the days of kings and standing armies and modern

weaponry.



But David hasn‘t forgotten. For him the ark is a living symbol of a deep

reality: Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders build in vain; unless the

Lord watches over the city, the watchmen watch in vain. So David brings the

ark to Jerusalem. And as it comes, David dances. His dance is a kinetic

outburst of sheer joy. It is a pantomime of trust and surrender. Offer your

body as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, for this is your spiritual

act of worship. David does. David dances. But things go tragically awry. A man

dies, struck down by a fiercely angered God.

Why? Uzzah simply tried to keep the ark from tumbling to the ground. He

tried to keep the flag from touching the dirt. This is what any of us would do

under similar constraints: the right thing to do, the noble thing. But God killed

him for it. Why?



Here‘s my guess. Uzzah is a strange hybrid, an iconoclastic bureaucrat. He‘s

a rule-flouting stickler, a nitpicking maverick. He makes radical breaks with

convention, then rigidly adheres to his own conventions. Uzzah‘s willingness

to carry the ark on an ox cart was in clear breach of divine command. God had

given detailed instruction about how the ark was to be transported: slung on

poles and hefted by priests. Freighting the ark on an ox cart was a Philistine

notion. It must have seemed to Uzzah—maybe it was even his idea to bring it

over from the Philistines—more convenient, efficient, elegant. The latest

fashion in worship accoutrements. Why didn‘t God think of it? Well, we’ll

amend that. It was always the hankering of the Israelites to be like the other

nations. It‘s always been the hankering of the church, too. If everybody’s doing

it out there, it must be an improvement on what we do in here.



Rodney Clapp has written a book on the distinctiveness of the church, A

Peculiar People. Clapp argues that the strength of the church exists primarily

in our peculiarity: that we‘re neither for culture nor against it. We‘re simply

different, a new thing altogether, inexplicable under any of the standard

categories. We‘re the odd man out. We‘re—yes—peculiar.



But our peculiarity has also been our burden and embarrassment, the

backwoods twang in our speech we want to lose in the city, the britches we

barter for a zoot suit. So we‘re prone to Philistine innovations and refinements.

Whatever keeps us current, that‘s the thing.



The Bible doesn‘t say this, but I think Uzzah was a novelty hound. That in

and of itself doesn‘t appear to be the main problem. This is: He was also a

tradition monger. He had a Pharisaical disposition: to contrive or embrace the







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innovation, and then insist on it, kill or die for it. So Uzzah gets an ox cart, and

fusses so painstakingly over every little detail. He makes such a binding

tradition out of his newfangled innovation that he forgets the one thing

needed: worship. This was supposed to be about worship.



Here is where Uzzah gets me. I‘m a pastor. I am ―responsible‖ for the

church‘s worship. I am paid to make sure it all glows and flows and steps on no

one‘s toes. And, frankly, it‘s hard to preside and participate at the same time.

It‘s hard to lose myself in the presence of God when I‘m the one appointed not

to lose my head. Somebody‘s got to make sure the songs move in the right

thematic flow, in the perfect emotional key of elation or exhortation or

solemnity. Is that guitar’s B string a half-note flat? Why are they doing

another song when I told them the offering had to be taken before half-past?

What if the ox stumbles, and the ark falls off? Who will reach out a hand to

steady it? Who will protect God? Somebody’s got to pay attention here. Not

everyone can dance.



Dead.



Uzzah, at great personal cost, teaches us a valuable lesson about God. God

is not safe. God is not a household deity, guarded in our keeping. Our role on

this Earth, be it prophet, king, priest, or bank teller, is not to keep the

Almighty from mishap or embarrassment. He takes care of himself.



It is, the writer of Hebrews says, a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the

living God. He‘s dangerous, not safe at all. And yet there is something far more

fearful and dangerous than to fall into his hands: not to fall into his hands. But

perhaps the most fearful and dangerous thing of all is the sin of Uzzah: to

think that our job, should God stumble, is to ensure he falls into our hands.



The safest thing to do with a God like this is not to play it safe with him. It

is never to get so caught up in keeping the traditions or hastening the

innovations that we forget to throw ourselves headlong into his brusque and

tender embrace, not to get so busy with protecting God that we fail to take

refuge in him. And that we forget to dance. Uzzah was struck dead by God. But

in ways that matter most, he had been dead already.



Three months later, David tries again. So the procession starts again—this

time, the Philistine innovation‘s lost, and the divine prescription‘s restored—

and David dances again. This time, all goes well.



Sort of. This time, a messy argument erupts in David‘s household

afterward. Michal has decided to stay home today. Maybe she had a headache

or a backache. Or maybe—and the text hints at this—she is making a

statement. For Michal commits the principal act of those who disapprove: she

merely watches, distant, judging. ―Michal daughter of Saul watched from the







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window. And when she saw the king leaping and dancing before the Lord, she

despised him in her heart‖ (2 Sam. 6:16).



David, not knowing this yet, comes home exhilarated. He is exultant,

radiant, extravagant in generosity. He returns home ―to bless his household.‖

But he barely gets in the door before Michal, cold with contempt and hot with

scorn, stands him down and tears him up: ―How the king of Israel has

distinguished himself today, disrobing in the sight of the slave girls of his

servants as any vulgar fellow would‖ (2 Sam. 6:20).



Michal seems to believe that the chief end of humanity is to uphold its own

reputation and guard it forever. Religion is fine, in its place. It keeps the

servant girls from stealing the silverware. As long as it does not lead to antics

and gibberish and hollering and other unrestrained emotional displays

common among the lower class, it is to be tolerated, even welcomed. But

worship? Worship is a dicey thing, because modesty and moderation are

Michal‘s watchwords and worship always threatens them, always wants to

push beyond them.



There‘s something about worship that can drive even a king to strip down

and leap up.



Michal is one of those people who think you should never jump off the deep

end. If you‘re going to jump, jump off the shallow end. Better to go through life

maimed and paralyzed than embarrass yourself by thrashing about in some

desperate panicky state, needing rescue. But better still, just don‘t jump. Don‘t

even wade. Sit way back from the water, and avoid those noisy, bratty children

who kick and flail and splash you. Better yet, stay home, and watch from the

window.



Here is where Michal gets me. Frankly, it is often hard to sort out exactly

how a pastor ought to distinguish himself in this assembly. After all, if I do lose

myself in worship, if I get overemotional and overly physical in worship—well,

what kind of example is that, anyhow? People will feel uncomfortable. They‘ll

be embarrassed. They‘ll think that I‘m not being loyal to my Baptist heritage.

They‘ll question my ability to lead. And somebody‘s got to make sure

everything is done in an orderly fashion around here. Somebody‘s got to set

the tone. Somebody has to safeguard the propriety of worship.



What if the other pastors start falling on their faces or dancing in the

aisles? What if people start jumping off the deep end? Who will protect the

dignity of those assembled? Somebody’s got to keep their distance, watch

with a critical eye, make sure no one gets carried away. Not everyone wants

to dance.

Barren.







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Michal, at great personal cost, teaches us another valuable lesson about

God. God is not the safe-keeper of our reputations. God is not some priggish

domestic deity, a heavenly Miss Manners intent on prescribing the etiquette

that maintains polite society, aghast by any outbursts of fervor. And our role

on this Earth, be it prophet, king, priest, or homemaker, is not to keep

ourselves from embarrassment. We must come before the King, dignified or

undignified, robed or disrobed, in the presence of the élite or in the company

of slave girls, and worship with all our might.



Michal was struck barren by God. But in ways that matter most, she had

been barren already.



And David dances, through mordant anger, past mortal danger, between

death and barrenness.



Occasionally we get glimpses of Deepest Reality, intimations of what

remains after all else has been shaken out and burned up. This is the reality

that earthy things sometimes hint at, sometimes hide. A priest in his liturgy

might do either. A wife in her domesticity also. And a king, half-naked,

whirling and leaping, also.



Glimpsing it, that Deepest Reality, can make you do funny things. You can

become stony still. Or giddily happy. Or chokingly afraid. It can calm you with

uncanny peace or disrupt you with implacable dread. It can make you,

simultaneously, not yourself and fully yourself. It can make kings dance.



We have a repertoire of ways of dealing with Deepest Reality when it starts

to break in. We resort to bureaucracy or play the Pharisee. We pull back into

aloofness or lash out in scorn. We become puffed up with self-importance or

shrivel up in false humility.



Or we dance.



There is a lady in my church who dances. No matter how bad the music is,

no matter how flat-voiced or squawking or mute with disapproval those

around her are, no matter how hard things in her life are, she worships with all

her might, her face upturned and radiant, her arms spread angelic, cruciform,

an instinctive gesture of relinquishment and acceptance, her body alive with

God hunger. Some people see God‘s bigness when everyone else trembles at

the sight of giants and armies. Some see God‘s kingdom come when most

others see only mad rulers issuing murderous decrees. Some render praise

when others just do their duty or pass their judgments. Some behold God

where countless others look and don‘t see at all.



David was that kind of man. Where his fretful priest and his scornful wife

could only see a gilded box and frenzied crowd, he could see God. The









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temptation is to think men like David, at such moments, are half-crazy, not

fully engaged with reality. The truth is that precisely at such moments they are

the ones who truly see.



Hasn‘t the king distinguished himself?





— Mark Buchanan is a pastor and writer living on

Vancouver Island, Canada. His most recent book, Things

Unseen: Living in Light of Forever (Multnomah), is

reviewed in CT review’s “Bookmarks” (p. 108).



“Dance of the God-struck.” CHRISTIANITY TODAY . October 7, 2002. Vol. 46, No. 11, Page 50.









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LEADER’S GUIDE - STUDY 5



What Makes a Hero?

One man’s journal of ministry among New York City’s firefighters

and police officers at Ground Zero.



Gordon MacDonald pastored a church in New York City. He would

often look to the towers of the World Trade Center as he left his

apartment in the morning, gauging the weather by whether the tops

of the towers were shielded in clouds or visible against a blue sky.

MacDonald served there again for 12 days in September. After the

terrorists toppled the towers, MacDonald and his wife Gail returned

to assist recovery workers at the site. There he met America‘s new

breed of heroes.



In this Bible study, we explore courage and heroism. Why are the

most unlikely people often the most courageous? How might God

want us to emulate them and remember them?







Lesson #5



Scripture:

Judges 6:1-24



Based on:

“Blood, Sweat, and Prayers.” CHRISTIANITY TODAY, November 12, 2001, Vol. 45, No. 14, Page 44

LEADER’S GUIDE

What Makes a Hero?

Page 2









PART 1

Identify the Current Issue

Note to leader: Prior to meeting, provide for each person the

article “Blood, Sweat, and Prayers” from CHRISTIANITY TODAY

magazine, included at the end of this study.



[Q] Who was your hero when you were a child? What were the

characteristics of your childhood heroes?



[Q] Do you think our concept of heroes has changed in recent

weeks? Have you noticed the absence of sports figures and

celebrities in current discussions about courage and

bravery?



[Q] The service of the police and firefighters at the World Trade Center tragedy has

invigorated our discussion of heroes. We have found in ordinary people

examples of extreme bravery. From all the media coverage, can you recall one

person whose actions seemed to you to be especially heroic? Why, in your

opinion, is that person a hero?



[Q] We read the account of United Flight 93. Several passengers are credited with

bringing down the Boeing 757 in rural Pennsylvania, and preventing hijackers

from crashing the plane into a target in Washington, D.C. One of the passengers

widely called a hero was Todd Beamer, the 32-year-old father of two young

boys. Beamer was a youth Sunday school teacher and a devout Christian. He

was obviously bold and courageous, but in what ways is his heroism different

from the other examples, such as police and firefighters? Would you call his

wife a hero?



The point here is that not all heroes wear uniforms and helmets. In fact, most heroes

are people just like us who respond to someone‘s sudden need for help with

extraordinary service. Most heroes would not think themselves particularly brave or

fearless. Some might confess that they are timid in everyday life, or that they were

frightened in the extreme circumstances of September 11 and its aftermath. But we

call them heroes.

In this study let‘s consider two aspects: (1) how ordinary tasks performed under

extraordinary circumstances take on heroic status, and (2) what makes us heroes in

God‘s eyes. Ultimately, class members ought to examine their readiness to do

anything heroic if God asks this of them.





PART 2

Discover the Eternal Principles

When Gideon was confronted with a crisis, he had little more than a few grains of

wheat and a goat to test his courage. Armed with the makings of one Sunday dinner,

Gideon, the famous fleecer, would hear the call of God and respond, ―Who, me?‖







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Gideon is a lot like you and me. And he stands among many in Scripture who are

unlikely heroes.

Read Judges 6:1-24.



For the fourth time in the Book of Judges, Israel repeated the cycle of righteousness,

rebellion, and repentance. Both Moses and Joshua had warned the nation of the

dangers of turning away from Yahweh to embrace the gods of the pagan peoples

whose lands God had given to Israel. And every generation or so, God‘s chosen people

ignored the warnings or forgot the curses, and they worshiped other gods. After

giving them time to repent, God sent punishment, usually in the form of marauding

warriors from the neighboring heathen. This time it was the Midianites.

These people from south of Palestine, allied with the Amalekites and other peoples

from the east, made annual raids on Manasseh and the other tribes adjacent to the

Jezreel Valley. Their armies came in the late summer, when the weather was good

and the crops were ready to harvest. Their numbers were so great and the devastation

they wrought so complete that Scripture likens them to a swarm of locusts (v. 5). This

was truly a plague of biblical proportion.

The raids continued for seven years. During that time, most of Israel‘s food was

destroyed, along with the means of producing it. Finally, God‘s people cried out to

their Lord. His response was two-fold: (1) he told them what their sin was (see v. 10);

and (2) he sent a reluctant hero.



Teaching point one: God comes to us in the daily routine and in the

time of crisis. (vv. 11-13)

In a pit carved out of the rock, Gideon was threshing wheat. Threshing was normally

done in an open area outside, so the wind could carry off the chaff as the threshers

tossed the grain into the air. But Gideon was in a wine press, secluded from the wind

and, he hoped, from the raiding Midianites. Gideon had a big family, if the number of

his servants is any indication (10 servants, according to verse 27), and he had big

responsibilities—many mouths to feed.

In this time of national crisis, Gideon was doing the routine things upon which his

family‘s survival depended. He was in the midst of his threshing when suddenly he

found himself in the presence of the Lord. It is important to note that Gideon did not

recognize that he was hearing from God until much later.



[Q] When the angel of the Lord told Gideon that God was with him, Gideon doubted

(see vv. 12-13). Do his questions sound familiar? Have you said these kinds of

things to God?



[Q] Why does it seem sometimes that God abandons us in times of crisis?



[Q] In his diary from ―Ground Zero,‖ Gordon MacDonald points out the value of

ordinary activities that we might not normally consider heroic: bringing order

to disordered supplies, washing the hurting workers‘ hands and feet, delivering

water, and praying. Has there been a time in your life when basic daily activities

took on extreme importance?









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[Q] On the wall of a centuries-old parsonage in England, missionary and author

Elisabeth Elliot saw the words ―Do the Next Thing.‖ After the death of her

missionary husband, Jim, in an Ecuadorian jungle, she suffered bouts of

depression. The old admonition to ―do the next thing‖ saved her. Sometimes the

reminder was all that urged her from bed in the morning. How does routine

becomes more important in trying times?



[Q] In what ways does being faithful to daily responsibilities prepare people to do

heroic things when they are called upon to do such? Note the words of Jesus:

―He who is faithful in little will be faithful in much‖ (Matt. 25:23).



Teaching point two: God chooses unlikely people to be heroes and

leaders. (vv. 14-16)

The angel of the Lord calls Gideon ―mighty warrior.‖ The phrase refers to the qualities

of a fighting man, one who is valiant in battle. The angel is projecting what Gideon

would become. Gideon‘s reply, in essence is, ―You must be joking.‖



[Q] Gideon strongly objects when he is told he will save Israel from the Midianites.

His excuses appear plausible. He is from the weakest tribe, so he has few fellow

troops to call upon. His family is not especially large or prominent. He is ―the

least‖ (perhaps smallest, youngest, least wealthy) among his closest kin, so why

would they listen to him?

But God did not choose Gideon because of Gideon‘s greatness. As is his pattern, God

chose the person many others would bypass in order that God‘s glory would be

demonstrated. If Gideon won, it could not be credited to his tribe or his family or his

personal ability. The credit would be God‘s alone. As at the Red Sea, Israel would

understand once again who its true deliverer is: Yahweh.

In verse 15, Gideon referred to his visitor as ―Lord.‖ He used the word ―Adonai‖

rather than Yahweh. Gideon realized that his visitor was one greater than himself.

But he was unaware that he was entertaining a messenger of the Lord. The

mysterious guest revealed to Gideon new things: that Gideon would be used for an

important task and that he had sufficient strength for the task. Gideon accepted these

things as truth when he confirmed who was speaking to him.



[Q] Readiness for service does not depend on heritage or strength but on God‘s call.

What was the true source of Gideon‘s strength? (See verse 16.)



[Q] Do you think the people we consider heroes of the September 11 terrorist

attacks thought of themselves as especially courageous prior to the tragedies?



Teaching point three: Whom God calls, he confirms (vv. 17-22).

The following passage of Scripture tells us several important things about the call to

courageous service:



(1) Gideon doubted, but that‘s OK. Gideon is famous for his fleece-testing of God. The

whole matter of trying to confirm God‘s direction has been named for Gideon‘s wooly

confirmation. He wanted to be sure of God‘s calling before making a commitment.







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Many Christians struggle over the matter of testing God. Jesus warned Satan not to

put God the test. And Scripture tells us that we ―walk by faith and not by sight.‖ But

often, when undertaking something new, radical, and challenging, we want some

extra assurance. Gideon‘s visitor did not condemn him for his doubts.

(2) God waited. Gideon asked his visitor to wait until he could prepare a special meal

for an offering. We must be careful not to make demands of God. But Gideon‘s

intentions were right. Take note of the meal he prepared. He baked bread from his

short supply. And even though the Midianites had confiscated most the animals,

Gideon butchered a goat. Such sacrifice in times of scarcity reflected a generous,

humble, and willing heart.



[Q] Why would Gideon bake bread without yeast? What was the significance of the

unleavened bread? Could it have represented something special about Gideon‘s

standing before God? Do you think Gideon was different than other young

people in Israel?

(3) God confirmed his call. Gideon laid before his guest a fine meal. The bread, meat,

and broth were also the elements of sacrifice to God. Gideon called what he prepared

―an offering.‖ You can imagine the man‘s surprise when the guest touched the meat

and bread, and they were consumed by fire. In that moment, Gideon knew for sure

who his guest was: the Lord. Equally certain was the call the Lord had extended.

Gideon had the divine approval he had sought.

(4) Gideon was ready. God was pleased with Gideon‘s sacrifice. Gideon would soon

lead his people to victory over the Midianites. In the meantime, he named a stone

Yahweh-Shalom, ―the Lord is peace.‖ His fears settled, Gideon knew that the Lord

who promised to be with him would keep his promise. This God became Gideon‘s

personal peace, and he would eventually bring peace again to Israel.



[Q] Why does God assure Gideon he would not die after seeing the Lord face to

face? (Think of Moses and his view of the back of God‘s glory. See Exod. 33:20.)



[Q] Once again God says, ―Do not be afraid.‖ Why is fear the natural human

response to an encounter with God? Should we be afraid of God?



[Q] Has God ever said to you: ―Do not be afraid‖? What was the occasion? How did

his word come? What was its effect on you?



[Q] Sometimes the signs of God‘s call come immediately, leaving no time for

confirming God‘s call. What were the signs for the heroes of September 11?

What does that tell us about how God sometimes confirms his call?





PART 3

Apply Your Findings

[Q] How can crisis become an opportunity for heroic Christian witness? Would you

ever dare to ask God to give you such an opportunity?









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[Q] Gordon MacDonald wrote about a policewoman who carried a Bible and a CD of

Christian praise music to the World Trade Center recovery site. These were

important parts of her rescue gear. What spiritual tools would you carry into a

crisis situation?



[Q] Many people have been awed by the heroism of the New York City firemen.

Many have repeatedly said that the firefighters ran into burning buildings while

everyone else was running out. Are there situations, social problems, ministries

that Christians willingly run into while the world runs away?



[Q] Ask each student: In light of this study of heroes, what might you do differently

in your life, either to prepare yourself for God‘s future call or to participate

today in some heroic Christian venture?









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A HANDOUT FOR FURTHER STUDY

What Makes a Hero?

One man’s journal of ministry among New York City’s

firefighters and police officers at Ground Zero.





My “Stone of Remembrance”

Some two months have passed since the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington,

D.C. Eventually, our nation will be memorializing our heroes, both the dead and alive.

The question will be how.

Read Judges 6:24. Gideon placed a stone to mark his encounter with God and named it

Yahweh-Shalom, ―the Lord is Peace.‖ Give this concept some thought. If you were to

mark a site associated with the September 11 terrorists attacks, which site would you

choose and what would you name the stone?

The purpose of the memorial stones in the Old Testament was to remind the people of an

important event. After crossing the Jordan River into the Promised Land, ending their

four-decade traipse through the wilderness, the Israelites placed 12 stones beside the

river to remind future generations of the miraculous things the Lord had done to deliver

them from slavery in Egypt: ―…to serve as a sign to you. In the future when your children

ask, ‗What do these stones mean?‘‖ (Josh. 4:6). There was a danger that they would

forget.

Consider for a few minutes how to make these stones of remembrance living stones.

How can we let those who lost loved one in the attacks know we remember their loss at

this time? Who in particular can we pray for this holiday season?









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HANDOUT

What Makes a Hero?

Page 2









Consider this list:



 the President

 a national leader

 a cabinet member

 someone you know who is in the military

 a national guardsman who is away from home and family

 a rescue worker dealing with post-traumatic stress syndrome

 an older person who suddenly feels the world is unsafe

 a child who needs extra reassurance now

So many gave money for the victims. How can we give to meet the spiritual needs of

people in New York and Washington, D.C.?

Make plans now to turn your ―stone of remembrance‖ into action during the holiday

season. Whom will you invite to join you in this act of worship?









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Blood, Sweat, and Prayers

One man’s journal of ministry among New York City’s firefighters and

police officers at Ground Zero.



By Gordon MacDonald, for the study ―What Makes a Hero?‖







Gordon MacDonald has been pastor of churches in

suburban Boston and in New York City. He has written

books on the nature of ministry in the modern world—

including Ordering Your Private World (Nelson). But he

experienced a new dimension to ministry when he and

his wife, Gail, were given security clearances to join

the Salvation Army in caring for the people removing

debris and bodies after the terrorist attack on New

York City. The following are journal excerpts from their

last few days there.





September 20

One young police officer approached Gail and began to tell her that he had

worked in the Trade Towers for some time and that it would have been easy for

him to have been there at the time of the disaster. She asked him if he‘s

pondered the notion that God may have spared his life for a reason.



He clearly understood that.



He went on to tell her that life as a policeman was terribly discouraging;

before coming into the site yesterday, he had dealt with four gang murders in

another part of the city. She asked him what he really wanted to do.



―Become a teacher‖ was his answer. She encouraged him to think about the

possibility that this was a ―call.‖



Some of his buddies came to get him because it was time to go into the pit.

He asked them for a few minutes and turned back to Gail and asked her for her

name. He wanted to come back and talk some more. She prayed for him and

sent him off.



Many men are coming to us with blistered hands and terribly sore feet. The

only thing that seems to take the smells of the pit off the hands of workers is

alcohol, and Gail and the other Salvation Army workers spent a lot of time

washing hands with alcohol and then rubbing in hand cream. Eyes are terribly







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bloodshot and sore from impurities in the air. So they wash out eyes. As Gail

said, ―I‘m learning how to do a lot of new things.‖



Father Matthew, my Franciscan friend, stops by our site often now. Late in

the day, we met inside the pit just feet away from the bucket brigades. He

looked absolutely spent, and I realized that the unmarried clergy of the

Catholic tradition don‘t have the companionship that I have with Gail.



I said, ―Father, you look drained. You are praying for everyone. Who‘s

praying for you?‖ He looked at me as if the question had never been asked

before. I saw tears. So I said, ―How about one of the blessings you‘ve been

giving everyone else?‖ He nodded, and I gave it to him. He‘s been giving the

last rites to body parts.

I spent a large part of my day in the pit with buckets of water. There is a

well-coordinated effort now going on. The men move in, clear out the

manageable debris.



Then suddenly the shout goes up for a dog to sniff out a body. The dog

comes in with little sock-like pads on the paws, jumps around, and finally

locates what everyone smelled.



Men go to their knees and gently uncover the final debris and remove what

only faintly appears to be a body or, more likely, a part. It is put in a body bag

and evacuated to the morgue.



As I talk to and pray for firefighters, it suddenly occurs to me that I have

not touched a man whose shoulders aren‘t enormous. They are, for the most

part, tough men. But they have deep hearts.



One firefighter said to me, ―My sister is a real Christian. And she‘s been on

my back because I‘ve backslidden. This thing has really wakened me up. I‘ve

got to stop the backsliding.‖



I suggested we could put a stop to the backsliding right then and there. He

thought that was a great idea, so I prayed, ―Help my friend, John, to cut out

the backsliding. Give him a new heart; help him to make you proud.‖



He wept and was so grateful—and headed for the pit.



We are very mindful of the growing threat of disease. No one knows what

germs are now in the air, how bad the air might be for our lungs. The smell of

death has really settled in now, and we occasionally get terrible waves of it. But

somehow, even though we are cautious, we care less for our own safety and

more for bringing Jesus‘ love to these wonderful men and women.









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Gail and I talked about the phrase in 2 Corinthians 2 that speaks of ―the

smell of death‖ and ―the fragrance of life.‖ Now we know what death smells

like. That passage will no longer be an abstract thought.



Late in the evening I sat down (for the first time, I think) with two police

officers, one a man, the other a woman.



―What‘s your world like?‖ I asked.



Both bit their lips and looked at each other. ―It‘s more than we ever thought

we‘d face.‖ And then, ―But you know what keeps us going? It‘s how thankful

everybody is. People keep thanking us, cheering us on. Everyone asks, ‗Need a

drink?‘ And everyone does exactly what we ask them do to.‖



They seemed amazed by this.





September 21

There is a growing resignation to the fact that there will be no more

survivors. Many of the firefighters and police are finally getting a day‘s rest.

Those from other parts of the country are beginning to head back home. Many

of them simply dump the tools and materials they‘ve been using at the first

convenient place. There are shovels, respirators, gloves, and boots all over the

place. We are forever stacking these things at the rubbish point so that the

sanitation people can truck them out. All of it is considered contaminated.



I had a good conversation with a firefighter who was leading a team in the

pit. He said that there were several fires still burning in the basements of the

towers, and every time they get a ―breath‖ of air, they flare back into flame. It

creates a very dangerous situation for those men who go into the little

passageways in the rubble, seeking bodies. Still they go. We said a prayer

together for their safety.



Later in the night, I wandered over to the first-line medical tent, which is

staffed by military personnel who are schooled in handling battlefield

casualties. The head of the team, a physician, and I got into an interesting

conversation.



He was scared for the men in the pit, he said, because he knew what was

coming ―downstream.‖ He predicted an unusual spike in the suicide rate and a

serious outbreak of manic depression: ―These firefighters in New York are

more tightly bound to one another than at any place in the country. Almost

every one of them has had his life saved by someone else in his company…. It

creates an incredible bond. Many of the men will be unable to live with these

losses at the WTC. It‘s going to take an unspeakable toll on them.‖









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I think I can already see the evidence of what he is saying. The number of

men coming in with headaches is increasing. The despair is very clear in their

eyes. We see more and more of them walking slowly out of the pit and finding

places to sit alone, where they simply stare out in space. Men ask for cigarettes

and often admit that they don‘t ordinarily smoke. But they want to smoke now,

simply to keep their nerves under control.



One firefighter talked with me during the night, and when I asked him if he

had buddies in the rubble, he said, ―Yeah, 14 of them.‖ He said that they‘d all

been in the midst of a shift change when the first plane hit, and everyone

grabbed a coat and started down the block toward the WTC. They never looked

back as they charged into one of the buildings.

His vivid and emotional description reminded me of a time in my

childhood when there was a missionary fervor not unlike that of the firemen.

Missionaries, following this kind of conviction, went out to other parts of the

world as the men went into the building.



Sam, another man who wanted to talk, was actually older than me (perhaps

the first man I‘ve talked to who wasn‘t younger). He came by for some water

and ended up talking.



―What are you doing in there?‖ I asked.



―I‘m a climber,‖ he said.



What he meant is that he specializes in crawling into small spaces deep in

the rubble to see what he can find. It occurred to me that he had about as

much courage as any man I‘ve met all week.



―I came all the way from Florida and represent the senior citizens.‖

Laughter.



I prayed for him: that God would continually bring him up out of the pit, as

the psalmist had once said. In this case the prayer was literal.



There is an abundance of good stories—really good stories. There is a man

at our corner whose job it is to record the trucks as they leave the pit with their

load of rubble. He is from Jamaica, and he has one of the most radiant smiles

I‘ve ever seen. He brings a kind of spiritual sunshine to the entire intersection.



I watch him—with his red, white, and blue hard hat—talking to each truck

driver as they wait their turn to go in and get a load. He brightens men up. In

the midst of all those smells, the dust, the clashing sounds, he brings a

civilizing influence to the moment.

Occasionally I go out to where he stands and bring him some water.









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At other times, he comes over and chats with us. We always laugh when we

engage.



I said to him last night, ―You‘re a follower of the Lord, aren‘t you?‖



He gave me an enthusiastic ―Yes! Jesus is with me all the time!‖



When I offered to pray for him, he nodded vigorously. So I prayed, ―Lord,

you‘ve given my friend a beautiful face and the gift of cheer. Keep him safe

among those trucks. And make every person he deals with feel the love of

Christ through him, even if they don‘t know his name.‖



Somehow this guy represents to me the quintessential picture of the ideal

follower of Christ: out in the middle of the chaos, doing his job, pressing a bit

of joy into a wild situation.



All night long the workers stream by, most often in groups of two or three.

They stop to see what we can offer that will help. Gail and the other women

have arranged the various salves and ointments that will treat blisters (every

man has them). We have fresh gloves, kneepads, clean T- shirts, and antacid.



Interestingly enough, the thing we cannot get but need as much as anything

is shoe inserts. The rubble is often hot, and the feet of the workers become very

painful. We just feel terrible when we have to tell men that there are no inserts

anywhere.



When workers approach our station, one of the things I like to say is, ―We

can give you something to drink, something to eat, something to wear, and we

can also give you a blessing if you want.‖ Most men and women look at me and

say that a blessing would be real nice.





September 22

We have [a] challenge of creating order at our Salvation Army station.

When we got there today, Gail found all the medical supplies in disarray. Some

of the folks on the other shifts are simply not given to arranging things

(putting them in their proper place or sorting them out when they are

delivered). We have scores and scores of medical and medicinal products:

everything from toothbrushes and solutions for contacts to aspirin, Pepto-

Bismol, and ointments for blisters.



On every shift Gail takes it upon herself to sort and stash everything in its

proper place. Her philosophy, she keeps telling me, is that we have to create

places of order in the center of our worlds—a return to Eden, she calls it—so

that our attitudes and demeanor will be orderly.









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Blood, Sweat, and Prayers

Page 6









A New York policewoman, Regina, came to the station seeking some hand

lotion. After Gail had helped her wash her hands, she rubbed lotion into them.

It reminded me of the woman who cleaned Jesus‘ feet with her tears and

perfume.



While this was happening, I asked Regina how she was doing. Her face lit

up, and she said she was just fine.



I said, ―Now, come on, what makes it possible for you to be so fine?‖



She said, ―This!‖ And with that she opened up her police jacket and showed

me a Sony CD Walkman harnessed to her side. Then she opened up the lid

because she wanted me to see the name of the CD. It was full of Christian

praise choruses. Then she lifted the flap on a large pocket in her pants and

pulled out a small Zondervan Bible. ―Can‘t miss being anything but fine when I

have those two things,‖ she said quite confidently.



Somehow this struck me as wonderfully funny: this cheerful policewoman

with a big pistol strapped to her side, a Walkman full of praise choruses

strapped to the other side, and a Bible in her pants pocket, the one where

police ordinarily carry their wallet for giving out tickets.



―So you‘re a sister,‖ I said.



She came back, ―Yep, and proud of it.‖



I keep remembering Annie Dillard‘s words: ―It is madness to wear ladies‘

straw hats and velvet hats to church. We should all be wearing crash helmets.

Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to the

pew. For the sleeping God may awake some day and take offenses, or the

waking God may draw us out to where we can never return.‖



One of the finest Salvation Army officers I‘ve met this week is Molly

Shotzberger. She‘s in charge of the counseling over at the morgue. She first got

her experience in this business after the TWA 800 crash. She‘s an expert in

crisis counseling. Molly is both tough and tender. She described to me what

life is like at the morgue as they bring in body parts.



Each time they ascertain that they have evidence that they‘re handling a

police officer or a firefighter, everyone in the morgue stops what they are

doing. The body bag is wrapped in a flag while everyone stands at attention

and salutes.



I have learned so much from the marvelous dedication of the Salvation

Army officers. I don‘t want to lionize them, but the fact is that they have a

simple and powerful understanding of service. More than any group I have

ever known, they seem to understand the real bandwidth of Christian love:

that it starts with selfless service and goes on to a proclamation of the gospel.





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ARTICLE

Blood, Sweat, and Prayers

Page 7









Up at what the Army calls Site One is a feeding station that can turn out

1,000 hot meals per hour. Over at the morgue they are counseling distressed

people who have to work with the gruesome results of death. At canteens and

stations like ours, they are pouring coffee, getting out messages of assurance to

the loved ones of workers, and finding cots for the exhausted. And always,

whenever appropriate, they provide a word of hope and a prayer for strength.

Occasionally, they lead a person to Jesus Christ.



Tonight was the first time we did not have to walk a long way out of the

disaster area to our car. An ATV came by delivering ice, and the driver

volunteered to drive us out. We sat on the tailgate of the ATV and left the

floodlit scene of the rubble.

―We‘ve lived 12 straight days in abnormality,‖ I said to Gail. ―What‘s it

going to be like to get back home where things are so quiet?‖



Over and over again, I‘ve thought of T.S. Eliot‘s marvelous words: ―Who is

the third who walks always beside you? / When I count, there are only you and

I together, / But when I look ahead up the white road / There is always another

one walking beside you.‖



We know who that One is.



On the next-to-last day we were in the pit, I was walking (I forget to where)

in the street where there is a spaghetti-like maze of fire hoses and utility lines.

People were rushing back and forth all over the place. Suddenly a firefighter

called out my name.



―Hey, Gordon,‖ he yelled. Since my name is written in bold letters on the

peak of my hard hat, I‘m not difficult to spot.



He came over to where I was and said, ―Remember me? I‘m Ken. You

prayed for me the other day. I wanted you to know the prayer has been

working. I‘m okay!‖



As we embraced in that special manly way, my cheek brushed his, and I

could feel the sweat and the grittiness of the dust and dirt on his skin. Perhaps

at another time I might have recoiled from this. But not in this hour. I felt

proud to share his smudges.



I whispered a blessing into his ear as we stood there in the middle of the

street, and then we parted.

Gordon MacDonald is a former pastor in New York City and

Lexington, Massachusetts. He is author of Mid-Course

Correction: Re-Ordering Your Private World for the Second Half

of Life (Nelson, 2000).

CHRISTIANITY TODAY, November 12, 2001, Vol. 45, No. 14, Page 44









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LEADER’S GUIDE - STUDY 6



Letting Go of Guilt

The early warning signs.



Some people struggle with guilt; others have simply learned to live

with it. Philip Yancey says there‘s a better way for believers to

handle guilt. It can even work for us as we seek to grow in Christ‘s

likeness.



In this study we‘ll ask, ―If God forgets our sins, why can‘t we? Or

should we?‖









Lesson #6



Scripture:

Hebrews 10:1-3, 10, 14, 15-22; 1 Timothy 1:15-20; 1 John 1:6-9; Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51:10, 12, 16-17



Based on:

“Guilt Good and Bad.” CHRISTIANITY TODAY. November 18, 2002. Vol. 46, No. 12, Page 112.

LEADER’S GUIDE

Letting Go of Guilt

Page 2









PART 1

Identify the Current Issue

Note to leader: Prior to this class, provide for each student the

article, “Guilt Good and Bad” from CHRISTIANITY TODAY

magazine.

Philip Yancey understands guilt. From his strict, religious

childhood he learned much about his sinfulness. Only after

many years of reflection could he report that some of his

childhood experiences were helpful. Yancey says some of his

guilt has a purpose.



Discussion starters:



[Q] What are the sources of our guilt? Which are legitimate?



[Q] How do parents use guilt? Do you see parallels between a human parent‘s use of

guilt and God‘s use of guilt with us?



[Q] Do you think Menken‘s caricature of the Puritan survives in our coarse society?

Do you know anyone like that?



[Q] How does your background affect your present tendency to feel guilty?



PART 2

Discover the Eternal Principles

Pastor, professor, and author Calvin Miller tells a story from his youth that

wonderfully illustrates our need to feel forgiven:



Revival in my own life has been brought together by the connection of two

events—first, by a character in the late 60's who stepped onto a Broadway

stage and, dressed in blue jeans and a T-shirt, cried, "I wanna get washed!"

It was the beginning of Godspell, and it spoke to a double hunger. We all

want to get washed, and we all want to be in the presence of God.

According to the old cry, we want to "Get washed—the kingdom of God is at

hand!"



The second event came when I bucked hay bales in northern Oklahoma. By

nightfall these little alfalfa "groaties" would be fused to my skin with sweat—

those itching, ugly, hayfield microbes, gargantuan chiggers that gnawed at

you like fanged fire ants, which bit through the dermis and stung like

cornered scorpions. It was hard to lead us hayfield workers to Christ—we

could hardly be threatened with hell. For we who suffered the hayfield

groaties lost all fear of purgatory. In the fiery itch of our days, we scratched

and dreamed of only one thing: the evening shower.









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Letting Go of Guilt

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We had rigged an old barrel under the windmill and set it high on a two-by-

four framework. It stood up in the Oklahoma sun all day long, warming until

it was ready for field hands to stand beneath its generous flow and be clean.

Its walls were corrugated tin on three sides, but the fourth side was open

wide to the setting sun. We stood in the water like Adam in Eden. We would

face the west and rebuke the field demons, "In the name of Jesus Christ, get

off of us, you dogs of hell!" Then we'd turn the tap and sing, "Just as I Am"

as the water flowed, and we were born again! And if anyone of you asked

me on any late June day what I most wanted in life, I would have said, "O

God, I wanna get washed!"



(From a sermon, “I Wanna Get Washed,” PREACHING TODAY tape 118.)



Many Christians can identify with this feeling of wanting to be washed. People who

have a dramatic conversion experience can well relate to the before and after feelings

of dirty and clean. But many Christians suffer from the nagging feeling that we‘re still

dirty or that we‘ve gotten dirty again. That nagging feeling is called guilt.



Teaching point one: Why do we feel guilty?

Ask a volunteer to read Hebrews 10:1–3, 10, 14.

We can answer this question from two perspectives: historic and personal.

The writer of Hebrews raises the issue of a clean conscience when he describes the

need for the sacrificial system. God gave instructions to the Hebrews for their

sacrifices, only to say that the sacrifices were unnecessary after Jesus‘ death. So why

then did he institute sacrifices in the first place?



The sacrifice of unblemished, firstborn animals and of the best crops provided a

means for restoring the broken relationship between humans and God. The

restoration was temporary, however, because humans would sin again. Feelings of

guilt would often signal that broken relationship. These feelings served as a warning

that sin had again become a barrier in the person‘s relationship with God. If heeded,

these feelings would spur the repentant person to sacrifice so that the relationship

with God would be restored again.

The writer of Hebrews speaks particularly to the cyclical nature of sacrifice: sin, guilt,

sacrifice, restoration, sin again. The worshipers‘ guilty feelings in verse 2 are often the

goad in this cycle. But whether people felt guilty or not, they knew they were

objectively guilty because of the law. But systematic sacrifices that lasted for 1,500

years served to show over time the futility of the system. A final sacrifice was needed,

a perfect sacrifice that would put the penitent person in right relationship with God

for all time.

That sacrifice was Jesus (v. 10).



Through Jesus, we have been made holy once for all.



[Q] If that is the case, why do we still feel guilty? Some would suggest it‘s

psychological; we were taught to feel guilty. Or it may be that guilt is part of our

fallen nature. After all, we are guilty of sin on a daily basis. Yancey says guilt is

symptomatic. In your experience, of what is guilt symptomatic?









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Letting Go of Guilt

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Hebrews 10 offers some insight into the tension between being forgiven and feeling

guilty. In verse 14, the author says, ―because by one sacrifice he has made perfect

forever those who are being made holy.‖ Consider the distinction between ―has made

perfect forever‖ and ―being made holy.‖ We have had our relationship with God

restored through faith in Jesus Christ, our once-for-all-time sacrifice, at the time of

our salvation. That is a completed action, whereas being remade in his image is

ongoing. It will continue for the remainder of our earthly lives. Justification is

complete; sanctification is ongoing.

Therefore, guilt feelings serve a different purpose for believers. They are not meant to

spur us to salvation but to encourage our sanctification. Guilt can cause us to grow.

The issue for us becomes one of balance.



[Q] Yancey describes guilt‘s extremes: unbearable uncertainty whether one‘s sins

are forgiven, and forgetting one ever sinned in the first place. Do you tend

toward one of these extremes?



[Q] Respond to this statement by one of Martin Luther‘s confessors: ―My son, God

is not angry with you: it is you who are angry with God.‖ Why would Luther

have been angry with God? How did extreme guilt indicate this anger?



[Q] Yancey says Luther eventually agreed that his fear of sinning showed a lack of

faith. But isn‘t cautious concern about sin a good moral defense?



Teaching point two: Does God really forget our sins?

Ask a volunteer to read Hebrews 10:15–22 aloud.



God told Israel through the prophet Jeremiah how its relationship with him would be

changed once Jesus was sacrificed. These verses from Jeremiah 31 were quoted by the

writer of Hebrews (10:15-18) to explain that it was the sacrifice of Jesus that

facilitated the new covenant, one in which God made a tremendous promise: he

would remember his people‘s sins and lawless acts no more.

God‘s intentional forgetfulness, whereby he no longer holds our sins against us, is a

feature of the new covenant. Rather than an agreement written on stone tablets, this

is a covenant that changes minds and hearts. God writes his law on the minds and

hearts of his people, meaning that our relationship with God is both binding and life-

changing. By writing his own character on our hearts and minds, God is rewriting our

character. He is recreating us in his image.

This act has its effect on God, too. God does not want his people‘s past record to affect

his relationship with them, so it is expunged. Like a juvenile whose court record is

sometimes purged after the sentence is completed, a believer‘s sentence is declared

finished as God wipes out the record. He will not hold it against us. In this sense, our

sins and lawless acts are forgotten.



David used poetic language to describe God‘s act of separating us from our sins: ―As

far as the east is from the west‖ (Ps. 103:12). It is God‘s desire to forgive us in this

way: ―As a father has compassion on his children‖ (Ps. 103:13). ―Let the wicked

forsake his way…Let him turn to the Lord…for he will freely pardon‖ (Isa. 55:7).









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Letting Go of Guilt

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Behind David‘s plea for forgiveness after his adultery with Bathsheba is the certainty

that God will forgive: ―Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a right spirit

within me‖ (Ps. 51:10). And David attests one outcome of a renewed spirit: ―Restore

to me the joy of your salvation‖ (Ps. 51:12).

Even David, 1,000 years before the crucifixion of Jesus, pointed out the futility of

repeated sacrifices. David knew God wanted more than animals laid on the pyre:

―You do not delight in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a

broken spirit and a contrite heart, O God, you will not despise‖ (Ps. 51:16–17).



[Q] From David‘s example, what is the difference between guilt and sorrow?

Between guilt and contrition? How did guilt work to David‘s good?



We Protestants (generally) do not have the confessional booth as part of our religious

practice. Some people say it is easier to confess to another human being than to the

invisible but all-knowing God. The person confessing can still hide things from

another person, but God knows all. That is a scary thought for sin-shamed humans.

But we should be encouraged that God‘s omniscience also means he knows the extent

of our forgiveness and the price he paid to draw us unto himself. One thing greater

than our sin is his forgiveness, and the love that drives it.

A pastor once described the silence between the corporate prayer of confession and

the declaration ―In Jesus Christ, we are forgiven‖ as almost unbearable. That silence,

while waiting for assurance of forgiveness, describes the life of the perpetually guilty.

How can Protestants obtain absolution in a way that makes us more sure of the

forgiveness of God?

Ask someone to read 1 John 1:6–9.



The invitation to confession is always open. God is waiting to forgive those who

confess their sins, and he promises he will forgive. It‘s his nature.

Confession for the believer serves several purposes: it frees us from the delusion that

we are sinless. It draws us closer to God and to fellow believers. And it sets ―our

hearts at rest in his presence‖ (1 John 3:19). In other words, we are freed from guilt;

our consciences are cleansed. Even when our hearts condemn us, God knows the

greater truth about us: we are forgiven, cleansed, and welcome in his presence (see

Heb. 10:19–22).



Teaching point three: If God forgets our sins, why should we

remember them?

Ask a group member to read aloud 1 Timothy 1:15–20.

The letter to the Hebrews tells us the value of a clean conscience. Paul emphasized

that in his first letter to Timothy, too, but he added that we shouldn‘t forget the

reason we needed cleansing.

Paul is not proud of his sinful past nor does he sound guilt-ridden, but he remembers

his own sinfulness, calling himself ―chief‖ among sinners. It proves God‘s mercy, he

says. Paul‘s admonition to Timothy in verse 19 to hold to a good conscience is

dependent on that point.









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LEADER’S GUIDE

Letting Go of Guilt

Page 6









Many believers are weighed down by guilt, and it renders them useless in the battle

against evil. Our qualification to ―fight the good fight‖ is not our goodness, but God‘s.

Likewise, our good conscience is not simply because we have confessed but because

God has forgiven.

God had a kingdom purpose for Timothy (note ―prophecies‖ in verse 18), but the

young minister‘s purpose could only be fulfilled if he held fast to the faith and to his

good conscience. The same is true for us. Our remembrance of our sins is only for our

testimony. The over-guilty are rendered powerless by their failings. The appropriately

guilty are empowered by God‘s forgiveness.



[Q] The saints, Yancey says, have a ―finely calibrated sense of sin…they live in full

awareness of falling short‖ but ―true saints do not get discouraged over their

faults.‖ How is that possible?



[Q] What do you think of Yancey‘s statement: ―What is forgotten can never be

healed‖? If God forgets our sins, why shouldn‘t we?





PART 3

Apply Your Findings

[Q] Do you know someone who seems burdened by guilt? How does this attitude

seem to affect them?



[Q] Based on your findings in this study, what would you say to the person who

confesses nagging guilt?



[Q] Can you recall a time when guilt hindered you from ―fighting the good fight?‖

What will you do about it next time?





— Study prepared by Eric Reed, LEADERSHIP journal’s

managing editor.









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ARTICLE

Guilt Good and Bad

The early warning signs.



By Philip Yancey, for the study, ―Letting Go of Guilt.‖







Love means never having to say you‘re sorry,‖

proclaimed a sappy romance novel from the 1970s. I have

come to believe the opposite, that love means precisely

having to say you‘re sorry. A sense of guilt, vastly

underappreciated, deserves our gratitude, for only such a

powerful force can nudge us toward repentance and

reconciliation with those we have harmed.



Yet guilt represents danger as well. In his novel The

First Circle, Alexander Solzhenitsyn described a prisoner

who obsessively marked a pink sheet of paper for every bad thought or

―defect.‖ I have known Christians who go through life with hyperattention to

defects. Some raised in oppressive environments go through life afraid, heads

down, fleeing anything that might be perceived as pleasure, and terrified that

they are somehow offending one of God‘s laws.



Martin Luther, in his early days as a monk, would daily wear out his

confessors with as many as six straight hours of introspection about minuscule

sins and unhealthy thoughts. ―My son, God is not angry with you: it is you who

are angry with God,‖ said one of his exasperated advisers. Luther eventually

came to agree that his fear of sinning actually showed a lack of faith, both in

his ability to live purely in an impure world, and in Christ‘s provision for his

sin. ―To diagnose smallpox you do not have to probe each pustule, nor do you

heal each separately,‖ he concluded.



H. L. Mencken‘s caricature of a Puritan—―a person with a haunting fear

that someone, somewhere is happy‖—hints at how far the church or society

can stray from God‘s standards of right and wrong. Jesus himself was

criticized by the ―Puritans‖ of his day. A mature Christian learns to

discriminate between false guilt inherited from parents, church, or society, and

true guilt as a response to breaking God‘s laws clearly revealed in the Bible.



A second danger flows directly from the first. Guilt, like physical pain, is

directional. Just as the body speaks to us in the language of pain so that we will







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Guilt Good and Bad

Page 2









attend to the injury site, the spirit speaks to us in the language of guilt so that

we will take the steps necessary for healing. The goal in both is to restore

health.



In his book Legends of our Time, Elie Wiesel tells of a visit to his

hometown of Sighet, which was then part of Hungary. Twenty years before his

visit, Wiesel and all other Jews in that town had been rounded up and

deported to concentration camps. To his dismay, he found that the current

residents of the town had simply erased the memory of those Jews. It struck

Wiesel that forgetting one‘s sins may be as great an evil as committing them in

the first place, for what is forgotten can never be healed.



Guilt is not a state to cultivate, like a mood you slip into for a few days. It

should have directional movement, first pointing backward to the sin and then

pointing forward to repentance.



In my reading of spiritual masters, I have noticed that persons we now view

as saintly have a finely calibrated sense of sin. Aware of God‘s ideal, aspiring to

holiness, free of the vanity and defensiveness that blind most people, they live

in full awareness of falling short. Thomas Merton makes this point in an odd

comparison between Adolf Hitler and Theresa of Avila:



Saint Theresa thinks everybody is the same as she is because

we are all sinners. Hitler thinks everybody is different from him,

because they are, some of them less pure, some of them less

noble, some of them less intelligent, some of them less

beautiful, all of them less godlike, all of them less perfect. It is

the Hitlers who think they are perfect—because nobody else

thinks so. It is the saints who know they are not perfect,

although sometimes other people say of them that they are

saints: the saints themselves know themselves only as sinners,

liable to lose their love and the sight of Christ through a

movement of impatience or selfishness or pride.



True saints do not get discouraged over their faults, for they recognize that

a person who feels no guilt can never find healing. Paradoxically, neither can a

person who wallows in guilt. The sense of guilt only serves its designed

purpose if it presses us toward the God who promises forgiveness and

restoration.



I once thought Christians went through life burdened by guilt, in contrast

to carefree unbelievers. I now realize that Christians are the only persons who

do not have to go through life feeling guilty. Guilt is only a symptom; we listen

to it because it drives us toward the cure.

“Guilt Good and Bad.” CHRISTIANITY TODAY. November 18, 2002. Vol. 46, No. 12, Page 112.









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LEADER’S GUIDE - STUDY 7



Too Much Stuff

Give it away before it controls you.



In a classic from TODAY‘S CHRISTIAN WOMAN, Mayo Mathers

confesses that greed is her ongoing temptation, and that it takes on

some unexpected forms. These personal and homey examples of

greed might seem worlds away from the multi-billion dollar

scandals that have put Enron and WorldCom into the headlines, but

the essential temptation is the same for all of us—including the

Christian executives we learn about in CHRISTIANITY TODAY‘s online

weblog.





Lesson #7



Scripture:

Proverbs 11:4, 28; Proverbs 23:4-5; Ephesians 5:5; Deuteronomy 15:7-15; 1 Timothy 6:17-19



Based on:

“Too Much Stuff.” TODAY’S CHRISTIAN WOMAN. January/February 1999. Vol. 21, No. 1, Page 52

“Are Christian Executives More Ethical?”, CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S Weblog Posted on August 13, 2002

(www.ChristianityToday.com/ct/2002/131/22.0.html).

LEADER’S GUIDE

Too Much Stuff

Page 2









PART 1

Identify the Current Issue

Note to leader: Prior to meeting, provide for each person the

article “Too Much Stuff” from TODAY’S CHRISTIAN WOMAN

magazine, and from the article “Are Christian Executives More

Ethical?” from CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S weblog, included at the end

of this study.



Discussion Starters



[Q] Many of us wage an ongoing battle with clutter—the stuff

that seems to stack up in our closets, on our desks, and in

our lives. What kind of clutter tends to accumulate in your

home?



Read the following excerpt from ―Too Much Stuff‖:

Several years ago while on vacation, our family ate at a restaurant that claimed to

have the largest buffet in the United States. We swarmed the mind-boggling array of

culinary delights as though we‘d never seen food before. By the time we finished

gorging ourselves, we could barely walk out of the restaurant.

Unfortunately, our restaurant experience reflected my lifestyle at the time: excessive

possessions … and desires. While our house had reasonable storage space, our

belongings had expanded from the attic to the garage and beyond. My daily calendar

was filled with back-to-back meetings…. My cluttered life left me no significant time

to spend with God, and fractured my family time. But I had no clue how to begin

creating more physical, emotional, and spiritual space in my life.

Then one morning I read in my Bible, ―Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds

of greed; a man‘s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions‖ (Luke

12:15). I‘d never considered myself greedy, yet my home was filled with more clothes

than I ever wore, more dishes, books, gadgets, and knickknacks than we ever used.



[Q] Why do you think people live such ―overstuffed‖ lives?



[Q] Mathers identifies this over-accumulation of stuff as ―greed.‖ Do you agree?

Why or why not?



[Q] What was your reaction when you learned in the CT weblog that Christians are

among Fortune magazine‘s ―America‘s 25 Greediest Executives‖?









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Too Much Stuff

Page 3









PART 2

Discover the Eternal Principles

Teaching point one: Greed is a sin.



[Q] What would you say is the essence of greed?

It‘s a craving for material things. The concept is rendered well by Ecclesiastes 5:10:

―Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never

satisfied with his income.‖



[Q] A greedy person is called a miser, which comes from the same root as

―miserable.‖ What would you say is the connection between greed and misery?

Greed is a joy bandit. Greed can prevent us from enjoying what we do have. Writing

in LEADERSHIP, Randy Rowland observes: ―Greed can flourish in the presence, or the

absence, of material wealth. I used to think time and again that I deserved better pay

in my jobs. I would constantly chafe at the amount I was paid and assert I was worth

more. The problem was, even when I did get raises, they didn‘t come as gifts, or even

as perks for working hard and accomplishing goals. Instead they came as morsels that

I couldn‘t enjoy because they represented less that I thought I was worth. Greed steals

the enjoyment of what we have because we‘'re fixated on ‗more.‘‖



[Q] What are the ways that people rationalize their greed?

Leader’s Note: Some might include “I deserve more,” “I need more,” “It’s my

life and I can do what I want,” “There’s nothing wrong with being

comfortable,” and “More possessions are a sign of God’s blessing.”



[Q] Which of the Ten Commandments would place limits on greed and the way we

accumulate personal wealth?



Teaching point two: Greed is dangerous.



[Q] What are some of the dangers of greed?

Not only can it hurt victims of other people‘s greed (as Enron shareholders painfully

discovered), those who are greedy can also be led into traps. A number of Ponzi

Schemes have drawn in Christians and cost them thousands of dollars.



[Q] What would lead otherwise sensible people to part with their savings?

Greed makes people look for their security in the wrong things. German pastor and

theologian Helmut Theilicke (1908-1986), provides a vivid illustration in his book

How to Believe Again:



“I once heard of a child who was raising a frightful cry because he had

shoved his hand into the opening of a very expensive Chinese vase and then

couldn’t pull it out again. Parents and neighbors tugged with might and main

on the child’s arm, with the poor creature howling out loud all the while.

Finally there was nothing left to do but to break the beautiful, expensive







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Too Much Stuff

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vase. And then as the mournful heap of shards lay there, it became clear

why the child had been so hopelessly stuck. His little fist grasped a paltry

penny which he had spied in the bottom of the vase and which he, in his

childish ignorance, would not let go.”



The Bible describes greed‘s misplaced values as perilous. Read Proverbs 11:4, 28 and

23:4–5.



[Q] What kinds of situations in life do these proverbs make you think of?



[Q] In some ways, greed is a symptom of a deeper condition. What would you

identify as the underlying issue?



Ephesians 5:5 puts it this way: ―For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or

greedy person—such a man is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of

Christ and of God.‖

Greed simply reveals what we consider most important in our life, and what authority

we acknowledge. Recently, in light of corporate corruption scandals, a study was done

of college students and the ethics they were being taught. The poll, intended to

analyze the ethical education that our colleges and universities are providing, was

conducted for the National Association of Scholars by Zogby International in April

2002.

The results are dismaying. Although 97 percent of all seniors believe college has

equipped them to perform ethically in their future professional lives, when asked

which statement about ethics was most often transmitted by their professors, 73

percent selected the proposition ―What is right and wrong depends on differences in

individual values and cultural diversity,‖ as opposed to only 25 percent who picked

―There are clear and uniform standards of right and wrong by which everyone should

be judged.‖



Priscilla Weese, writing in the Daily Herald on August 21, 2002, observed: ―As we

watch Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Rite Aid, Global Crossing implode in scandal, we may

be drawing the wrong lessons. Where did these CEOs learn their ethics? If individual

values determine right and wrong, what if someone‘s individual value is ‗personal

enrichment‘? Is it any wonder that such values lead to greed and on to such corporate

scandals as we have witnessed?‖



Teaching point three: There is an antidote to greed.

What is the antidote to greed? The Bible makes it clear that the cure for greed is

generosity, giving away things you value. It prescribes such treatment as secret giving

(Matt. 6:3) and giving cheerfully (2 Cor. 9:7).

This spirit of generosity was part of the Old Testament law. Read Deuteronomy 15:7–

15.



[Q] In this text, what are the reasons God gives for his people to be generous?

In the New Testament, Paul instructs: ―Command those who are rich in this present

world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to

put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.







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Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing

to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for

the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life‖ (1 Tim. 6:17–

19).



[Q] What are the benefits he identifies that come from conquering greed?



PART 3

Apply Your Findings

[Q] How can you become more generous and less prone to greed?

As a group, identify some steps you can take. To spark your thinking, read these

―Four Ways to Beat Greed‖ by Ed Young (adapted from Fatal Distractions, Nelson,

2000).

1. Learn the secret of admiring without desiring. If you can look at something

and admire it without feeling you have to own it personally, you will save yourself

thousands upon thousands of dollars. Develop the ability to look at something in a

store window and say, ―Wow, that‘s really awesome,‖ but don‘t say, ―That‘s really

awesome, so I‘ve got to own it.‖ Refuse to allow goods to become gods.

2. Learn the secret of giving stuff away. About once every three months, I try to

give away something that I truly value. No strings attached. It helps me to stay free

of greed and to put things into perspective. We‘re to love people and use things to

show love to people. Greed sets in when we start to love things and use people to

get things.

3. Learn the secret of being generous toward God. When the former rip-off

artist Zacchaeus told Jesus what he planned to do with his wealth, Jesus replied,

―Today salvation has come to this house‖ (Luke 19:9). Jesus didn‘t mean that

Zacchaeus‘s soul was saved because he gave away money. He meant that Zacchaeus

was on the road to getting things right with other people and with God because

he‘d repented of his greed and was making a move toward generosity. When things

lose their hold on us, we truly are free.

4. Learn the reality of death in its relationship to things. Death marks the

final failure of things. We might flash our cash on this earth, but we cannot take

anything with us when we die.





— Study prepared by Marshall Shelley,

vice president of editorial, CHRISTIANITY TODAY International.









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ARTICLE

Too Much Stuff

If clutter's got you down, try these secrets to simplifying.



By Mayo Mathers, for the study ―Too Much Stuff.‖







Several years ago while on vacation, our family ate

at a restaurant that claimed to have the largest buffet in

the United States. We swarmed the mind-boggling array of

culinary delights as though we‘d never seen food before. By

the time we finished gorging ourselves, we could barely

walk out of the restaurant.



Unfortunately, our restaurant experience reflected my

lifestyle at the time: excessive possessions, commitments,

goals, and desires. While our house had reasonable storage

space, our belongings had expanded from the attic to the garage and beyond.

My daily calendar was filled with back-to-back meetings for church and other

ministry functions and civic groups. And they all had to be woven around

family and work! My cluttered life left me no significant time to spend with

God, and fractured my family time. But I had no clue how to begin creating

more physical, emotional, and spiritual space in my life.

Then, one morning I read in my Bible, ―Watch out! Be on your guard

against all kinds of greed; a man‘s life does not consist in the abundance of his

possessions‖ (Luke 12:15). I‘d never considered myself greedy, yet my home

was filled with more clothes than I ever wore, more dishes, books, gadgets, and

knickknacks than we ever used. Was God telling me to simplify my

overcrowded existence?



I thought of a church family who‘d adopted a Romanian girl. She‘d spent

her first five years in an orphanage, and after living in America for a few

months, her new father asked her how she liked it.

―Oh, Daddy!‖ she said, laughing. ―I love America. In Romania we had no

stuff. But in America WE HAVE STUFF!‖



Like the little girl, I liked my stuff, but if God saw my excess as greediness,

it needed to be eliminated.









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I immediately set to work to declutter my house, only to find my stuff had a

stronger hold on me than I‘d realized. So I focused on the area of my greatest

excess: my closet. I love shoes and owned more than 50 pairs. The thought of

parting with any of them was painful. First, I boxed up all but one pair of each

color and moved them to the garage. That way, if I went into shoe withdrawal,

I knew where to get a quick fix.



To my surprise, once the shoes were out of sight, I never thought of them

again. So I did the same with my clothes and accessories. I boxed them up,

moved them to the garage, then eventually passed them on to a secondhand

store.



The more spacious my closet became, the stronger my sense of freedom

grew. Before, when my alarm clock went off in the morning, the first thing I

faced was a jumbled closet. It made my day feel jumbled before it even started.



After the successful closet campaign, I advanced the battle to the

bathroom, cleaning out makeup drawers (why have six tubes of lipstick when I

only wear one?), medicine cabinets, and cleaning supplies. I started severely

limiting the array of choices in my home.



I was shocked at how much time had been devoured by the upkeep of all

these unnecessary possessions. My growing sense of freedom and time was

exhilarating!



My next step was to limit my shopping excursions. Most of my excess was

the result of casual shopping. Going to the store for a jug of milk, I‘d return

home with a pair of sale earrings from the drugstore next door. Now I limit

myself to shopping once a week for groceries, household supplies, clothes—

everything. One shopping trip a week doesn‘t leave much time for casual

shopping.



My success at decluttering made me take a hard look at the other areas in

my life. My calendar was chronically overbooked with too many commitments.

A critical, prayerful look at my commitments showed me ones that were

unnecessary. I resigned my position in a local speaking organization and

looked for other things to prune from my schedule, asking God to guard the

time I freed up, filling it only as he directed.

I also listed the things of greatest importance to me. To my surprise, my

list was short; it consisted entirely of people, not goals or dreams or

possessions: my husband, my sons, my family, and friends. I realized that no

matter how fulfilling a career is, it‘s temporary. But my relationships as a wife,

mother, daughter, sister, and friend remain—and deserve more attention. I

pray God will help me never to become more committed to temporary things

than to the permanent relationships in my life.







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By creating material and physical space, I automatically created more

emotional space, but I knew that to keep that space intact, I needed to take

more deliberate steps.



In his book Margin, Dr. Richard Swenson recommends planning pauses

into each day. He suggests doing things that force you to slow down, such as

choosing the longest line at the bank or grocery store instead of the shortest.

This has been the hardest habit to develop! I seem driven to find the shortest

line and feel stress building when another line moves faster than the one I‘m

in. Forcing myself to step into the longest line and relax still requires great

effort—but I‘m learning.



Another way I‘ve created emotional space is by taming the stress

promoters in my day. Since we operate a business from our home and the

telephone rings incessantly, my greatest source of stress was the telephone. My

stomach always coiled in a knot from the constant interruption of this

necessary evil.



One day it occurred to me that I behaved as though I had to answer every

call. So I started letting our answering machine take over when I didn‘t want to

be interrupted. At first, I felt guilty about ignoring calls, but it so completely

diffused my stress that I soon forgot about my guilt.



Along the way I've learned other ways to create emotional space: a brief

walk or a few moments of solitude behind a closed door. Talk show host Oprah

Winfrey encourages viewers to create emotional space by keeping a gratitude

journal in which they list five things they‘re thankful for every day. These

simple actions promote a shift in attitude that keeps troubles in perspective so

they don‘t affect me negatively.



Finally, I knew I needed to declutter my spiritual life. Much of my time is

devoted to ―spiritual things‖; I speak to Christian groups, write for Christian

publications, work in women‘s ministry, and serve with an international

missions organization. But as important as all this Christian stuff is, it

becomes sin if it crowds my relationship with God. I must never allow

anything to interfere with that.



I can only maintain that all-important relationship by spending a

significant amount of time alone with God each day. If I don‘t build space into

my days to allow my relationship with God to mature, I‘ll never be able to

maintain a healthy amount of physical and emotional space.

It‘s been two years since I first began decluttering my life. It hasn‘t come

easily; it cuts against the grain of my natural desires. When a store advertises a

huge sale, I still find myself getting in my car—even though I don‘t need

anything. An invitation arrives in the mail that I long to accept—even though it







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will steal time from my family. My struggle to maintain physical, emotional,

and spiritual space is ongoing, but the rewards of my perseverance are as

enticing as that giant food buffet we encountered on vacation: a serenity,

order, and satisfying sense of God‘s approval. It‘s impossible to accumulate too

much of that kind of stuff.





—Mayo Mathers is a TCW regular contributor

who lives in Oregon



“Too Much Stuff.” TODAY’S CHRISTIAN WOMAN. January/February 1999. Vol. 21, No. 1, Page 52









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ARTICLE

Are Christian Executives More Ethical?

Compiled by Ted Olsen, for the study, ―Too Much Stuff.‖







Religion in the post-Enron marketplace

"In the current climate of corporate scandal, many workers are questioning

their employers' decisions, and some are beginning to use their spiritual

beliefs as a compass to guide them at work," Cynthia Ingle reported on

yesterday's edition of the Minnesota Public Radio program Marketplace (the

segment starts 22 minutes and 24 seconds into the program).



Some companies with strong Christian values were especially lifted up as

havens for those fed up with the Enrons and Qwests of the world.



"When there's an ethical code, people know where I stand on issues as

opposed to the greed mentality that's driving a lot of decisions in large

companies throughout the country," said Keith Richardson, president and

founder of Sierra Trading Post. His company headquarters has a prayer and

meditation room and all employees are instructed about the Christian

principles guiding the company.



Likewise, Chick-Fil-A founder Truett Cathy (who has a new book out) says

his Christian values—closing on Sundays, following the Golden Rule, leading

by serving, etc.—are the secret to his success. "I see no conflict between good

business practice and solid biblical principles," he said. "You don't have to be

crooked to be successful. You can make a business successful by being honest,

truthful, and generous to your employees."



But what Ingle doesn't report is that the Enrons and Qwests of the world

were also run by some of the country's best-known Christian executives.



Check out, for example, Fortune magazine's new list of America's 25

Greediest Executives. At the top is Qwest's Philip Anschutz, who sold $1.57

billion worth of company stock in May 1999. Regular Weblog readers will

remember Anschutz as the man financing the Narnia films who said he wanted

to do "something significant in American Christianity." Weblog doesn't

recognize a lot of the other executives as Christians, but they may be. There is,

of course, AOL Time Warner's Steve Case (sold $475 million of stock), who









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Page 2









was attacked by gay activists for donating $8.3 million to D. James Kennedy's

Westminster Academy. Enron's Ken Lay doesn't make the list, but the

difference between his actions and his Christian commitment has been much

discussed over the last year.



By the way, the Marketplace segment immediately preceding "Faith on the

Job" is on the Metropolitan Community Church, a mostly gay denomination

that Marketplace reporter Jason DeRose says has been untouched by the

clergy abuse scandal. Wait a second—what about this story? Well, at least the

article concludes by pointing out another sinister threat menacing churches

nationwide: 15-passenger vans.





“Are Christian Executives More Ethical?”, CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S Weblog

Posted on August 13, 2002 (www.ChristianityToday.com/ct/2002/131/22.0.html).









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LEADER’S GUIDE - STUDY 8



What‟s Fueling

Your Anger?

Let‘s do something uncomfortable: examine our hearts. Let‘s search

them for anger and its sources. Based upon the article by author

Garret Keizer and many biblical passages, this study will help us do

this—if we let it.









Lesson #8



Scripture:

Joel 2:12-14; Nahum 1:2-3a; Matthew 5:21-24; James 1:19-20; Mark 11:15-16



Based on:

“The Enigma of Anger.” BOOKS AND CULTURE. September/October 2002. Vol. 8, No. 5, Page 8.

LEADER’S GUIDE

What‟s Fueling Your Anger?

Page 2









PART 1

Identify the Current Issue

Note to leader: Prior to meeting, provide for each person the

article, “The Enigma of Anger” from BOOKS AND CULTURE

magazine, included at the end of this study.

Everyone has heard about Madelyne Gorman Toogood. She‘s

the mother caught on videotape beating her four-year-old

daughter in an Indiana department store parking lot. She‘s had

her daughter taken from her and placed in foster care. She faced

charges of battery, which could put her in prison for up to three

years.

The media had a field day with this case. And columnists and

media pundits have castigated the poor woman for what she‘s done. But why this

woman, since this sort of thing happens everyday throughout the country? Was it

because she was caught on video?



Discussion starters:



[Q] Rather than responding so judgmentally and moralistically to this one case, we

might look within ourselves: Are we capable of such anger and frustration that

we could take it out on a four-year-old child? Have we ever been so angry with

another person that we actually hit that person? Or at least thought about it? Or

worse, fantasized about killing him or her?

Many marriage counselors repeat the comment of one old saintly woman, who had a

long and loving relationship with her husband. When she was once asked: ―Did you

ever at any point in your marriage think about divorce?‖ she responded: ―Divorce,

no. Murder, yes.‖



[Q] Take a look at the article on anger by Garret Keizer. Discuss the incident that he

relates about his trees being trimmed by the highway department without his

permission. Was his response proportionate to the incident? Do you think he

had a right to be angry?



 Supposing that the storm hadn‘t caused a change of heart on his part, how

should he have handled the situation?

 How do you think you would have responded? Think of a particular

situation in which you have or might have responded as angrily as he did.

Why would you respond in such anger?



[Q] Review the three specific reasons Keizer gives for writing about anger. To what

degree can you agree with his reasons?

 Are your angry responses disproportionate to the situations?

 Do your responses distress others, including those you love?









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 Do your angry feelings and responses actually detract from remedying the

situations?



[Q] What is your assessment of the three additional points Keizer makes about

anger in relation to our culture (the reductionism of the self-help movement,

the acquiescence to social and economic injustice, and the notion that anger has

no place in the life of any human being)? Why do you agree or disagree with

Keizer on these points?





PART 2

Discover the Eternal Principles

The Bible does not shrink from dealing with the realities of anger. In addition to

narrating examples of anger (Cain killing Abel out of jealousy, for example), the Bible

has much to teach us about how to handle our anger and what might be appropriate

or inappropriate forms of anger.



Teaching point one: God is slow to anger.

A study of anger in the Bible shouldn‘t begin with human emotions and actions, but

rather with God and his character. A repeated refrain throughout the Old Testament

is that God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.

If God does get angry, his anger lasts only for a moment (Ps. 30:5).



Read the following texts: Exodus 34:6–7; Numbers 14:18; Nehemiah 9:16–17; Psalms

86:15; 103:8–9; 145:8–9; Joel 2:12–14; Jonah 4:1–4; Nahum 1:2–3a.



[Q] What do these texts have in common?

 How do they differ?

 Notice how some of these references emphasize that even though God is

merciful and slow to anger, the guilty are still not going to get off the hook.

Compare especially Joel 2:12–14 and Nahum 1:2–3a, examining how the

image of God differs in each.

 What human responsibility is suggested in Joel?

 Why does God tell Jonah he has no right to be angry?

 Cumulatively, what do these texts tell us about God and anger? How do you

balance the wrath of God with the refrain that God is merciful and

gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love?



Teaching point two: Not just murder, but the anger that leads to such

must be rooted out of the life of the Christian.

Read Matthew 5:21–24.

This is a text meant to shock—anger treated as tantamount to murder. ―Murder you

know is wrong,‖ Jesus said. ―But I say to you that if you are angry with your brother

or sister you stand in judgment already.‖ Now common sense would say to us that

being angry with someone doesn‘t necessarily have the same consequences as







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murder, and there are forms or occasions of anger that usually don‘t lead to murder.

But Jesus wants us to look at the root of sin: the human heart.

As Eduard Schweizer put it, Jesus is eliminating ―a sharp line between willing and

acting. Wishing to kill is as bad as killing; what is needed is a new heart, created by

God‖ (The Good News according to Matthew). This is to say, then, that anger isn‘t

necessarily evil, but anger that wills to eliminate or attack or put down another

person is. What stands in judgment isn‘t just the outward response but also the inner

disposition of malice toward others.



[Q] Have you ever been angry enough at someone else that you fantasized about

killing that person?



 How did you act out your anger? Did it get you into trouble?

 If you violated another person as part of your angry response, have you

made things right with him or her (see Matt. 5:23f.)?



Teaching point three: Acting out our anger can lead to destructive

activity rather than God‟s righteousness.

As part of their credentialing, doctors are mandated to take the Hippocratic oath,

which begins with the advice: ―Do no harm.‖ James has something like this in mind.

Read James 1:19–20.

Here is very practical, threefold advice on human relationships: first, be ready

(―quick‖) to listen to others; second, be slow to speak; and third, be slow to anger.

Anger can have devastating consequences. James spells out some of them in 4:1–5:6,

saying anger sometimes is an expression of our desire for possessions, power, and

prestige; if others stand in our way of these things, then we want to be rid of them.

That can lead to murder and to oppression of the poor.



If we were to apply this formula in all our relationships, how much less pain would we

cause others and ourselves? How often do we wish we could take back some harsh

words we spewed on impulse? As is sometimes said, we were given two ears and one

mouth for a purpose; we should listen at least double the amount of time that we

speak. But the real clincher is to be slow to anger. How often does the flash point of

our anger lead to destructive behaviors that we wish we could undo?



That acting out our anger doesn‘t lead to the righteousness of God must be seen in

light of knowing that all good gifts come from God (James 1:17). These good gifts

from God include kindness and generosity and mercy. Too often when we act out our

anger, we are not producing these ―fruits‖ but just their opposite.



Teaching point four: There is a legitimate place for righteous

indignation, but it needs to be expressed with wise, spiritual

discernment.

Read Mark 11:15–16.

Sometimes this incident in the life of Jesus is used to sanction violence. But this is a

distortion of what really took place. No one was hurt or killed by Jesus‘ actions in

casting out the moneychangers, nor did he take control of the temple, politically or







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religiously. Jesus‘ action was something like street theater, a symbolic demonstration

to make a point that God‘s house was intended as a place of prayer for all nations. It

was a reference to Isaiah‘s vision of a peaceful world at prayer, not a world at war

(Isa. 56:7; cf. 65:25). But, Jesus said, the people had made the temple a den of

robbers, a reference to Jeremiah‘s call to repentance for stealing, murder, adultery,

false testimony, and idolatry (Jer. 7:1–15). Thus, Jesus was calling the people to

restore the temple to its rightful place—not a center of commerce but a place where

people of all nations could come to pray peacefully.

Jesus‘ action hardly had a violent intent, much less violent tactics. Still, Jesus was

expressing what is sometimes referred to as righteous indignation, outrage at some

injustice or unrighteousness that others are doing. There is a place for such righteous

anger in the life of Christians, but it can also take us down a slippery slope. Hence,

Spirit-filled discernment is needed within the community of faith, lest our righteous

indignation lead to sin. We aren‘t divine like Jesus; our motives may be tainted. We

may think we are speaking up for justice and righteousness, when we are really being

proud, self-righteous, and judgmental. When we act out righteous indignation, we

may simply be committing the ―original sin‖ of pride. So, whereas God created us in

his image, our ―original sin‖ is trying to recreate the world in our own image.



[Q] What situations in the church or world do you think call for expressions of

righteous indignation?

 What forms should this take?

 What process of spiritual discernment do you think would be necessary to

assure that it is an expression of righteousness? (Hint: Look for the

presence of the fruits of the Spirit.)





PART 3

Apply Your Findings

The concluding exercise involves a personal inventory on anger. You may have the

group members do it during your time together or during their prayer time at

home.

Remember a situation in your life when you were really angry, perhaps even out of

control. Then ask yourself the following questions about that incident.



Recall the circumstances: What provoked you? On a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the

most angry, rate your anger during that occasion. How long did your anger last? How

did you handle it? How did your anger influence others? Did you have to make

amends? Are there ongoing consequences of your anger? Now ask yourself whether

there is something from your past that may have triggered this angry experience. If

so, how do you think you can be healed? Ask God for healing in your prayer time this

week.



Now ask yourself: How often do you typically get angry (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.)?

In what circumstances are you most susceptible to angry feelings and actions? What

people are most likely to make you angry? In other words, is there a pattern to your

anger? If so, what does it say about you, your life, or the people who tend to anger









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you? Are you ever guilty of scapegoating others or projecting your own feelings of

inadequacy onto others? If so, what does this say about you?

Some psychologists argue that anger is a secondary emotion. Whenever we become

angry, we need to look within ourselves for the primary source of our emotional

response, whether it be fear, hate, insecurity, jealousy, or grief. Only in this way can

we constructively get at the root of our anger. Think about the incident you focused

on above: Were there other, primary emotions at work? How can you address those

in a healing manner?

If this is a group exercise, take time as a group to share insights that individuals have

gained from this exercise. Sharing should be elective, however.

Conclude with prayer for forgiveness and healing.



Follow-up suggestions for individuals: If anger is a persistent problem for you,

keeping an ―anger journal‖ can be useful. Record incidents when you are angry, then

ask yourself the questions raised in the exercise above. Second, make your anger a

special prayer concern. Better still, pair up with a Christian brother or sister with

whom you can share your anger journey, someone who will also pray with and for

you. Three, examine yourself to see whether you need to set things right with anyone

with whom you‘ve been angry in the past. Make this a prayer concern and perhaps a

matter for discernment with your friend, spiritual director, or a prayer partner.





— Study prepared by Richard A. Kauffman, former associate editor of

CHRISTIANITY TODAY and author of numerous studies in this series.









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ARTICLE

The Enigma of Anger

Reflections on a sometimes deadly sin



By Garret Keizer, for the study, ―What‘s Fueling Your Anger?‖







“Be not too hasty,” said Imlac, “to trust, or to admire,

the teachers of morality: they discourse like angels,

but they live like men.”

—Samuel Johnson, Rasselas



Only three limbs of a sugar maple tree, none thicker

than my arm but each broad enough to shade a horse, lay

in a sprinkling of sawdust by the side of the road. On the

trunk above them, three pathetic stumps oozed sap. This

was my tree, one of the beautiful ancient maples that line

our rural Vermont property where it meets the road. Those trees had caught

our eye even before my wife and I had seen the ―For Sale‖ sign on what is now

our home. I love to walk past those maples on afternoons when I finish work,

and evenings before turning again to more work; I had especially longed to do

so on that cloudy June day before unbuckling a briefcase full of final exams

that would keep me up much of the night. Mine was a smug little joy, I realized

even then, as much the pride of ownership as the appreciation of nature, but I

didn‘t care. We want our joys to be harmless; we don‘t need them to be noble.

But now even that small joy was cut short by the sight of those sawn-off limbs,

enigmatic and almost insulting at my feet.



The town road crew had cut them off the tree; I was sure of that. The men

had been grading that section of road in the afternoon just before I came

home. I was less sure as to why they had cut them. The limbs had not hung out

over the road. They had not been near any telephone or power lines. They had

not been rotten or in danger of falling off. The only plausible reason I could

imagine was that the road crew had cut off the limbs to make it easier to turn

the grader, though there was an access to a hay field where they might have

done the same thing less than a hundred feet away. Could they really have

been so lazy?



But then, there didn‘t have to be a plausible reason, did there? Maybe one

of the men had just felt like sawing off a few limbs—no different, really, from a







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kid in my classroom feeling in the mood to toss a rumpled wad of paper over

my shoulder and into the trash can or to stick out his foot when another

student walked by—except that no kid in my classroom would dare do such a

thing. Well, some of the men around here (I muttered to myself) believe that

nothing grows out of the earth or slips through a birth canal for any purpose

better than to be cut down or shot. Today the limbs, tomorrow the whole damn

tree, what the heck. If there‘s dynamite available, so much the better. And I did

not think it irrational to suppose that there was a message intended by the

gratuitous sawing off of those limbs, something like the message I‘d found

soaped on my car windows on the first Halloween after we‘d moved in: ―F—

you‖ plus ―Ain‘t Vermont great?‖—a message to the flatlanders lest they get too

cozy in their precious little farmhouse and forget who was really in charge

around here. We had scarcely lived in town long enough to strike up a

conversation, let alone to make an enemy.



That was going to change. Tomorrow morning at 7, or whenever the town

garage opened, I was going to deliver a little message of my own, which is that

if you want to touch something that belongs to me, you‘d better talk to me first

or be prepared to talk to me afterward; and talking to me afterward, as I was

fully prepared to demonstrate, is never a good way to start your day. And

nobody had better give me any regulatory drivel about ―right of way‖ either;

you want to pull out your little rule books, I might show you a few rules you

never heard of. Three healthy limbs sawn off a tree—for absolutely no reason.

And I knew how this stuff worked—you don‘t teach school without learning

how these things work: It‘s a matter of incremental aggression, beginning with

something so deliberately small that you‘ll look like a fool if you complain and

ending with something so outrageously nasty that you‘ll feel like a fool that you

didn‘t. So much for that bit about choosing your battles. The battle I choose is

every single battle that chooses me, and I fight to win every last one. Go on, tell

me it‘s only three limbs off a tree. I want somebody to tell me it‘s only three

limbs off a tree. How about if I break only three limbs on an idiot? God, was I

mad!



God…was I mad?



I am a descendant of angry men. My father had a temper. I used to help

him work on his cars, and it was rare that we could finish a job without at least

one minor flare-up. It was just as rare that we closed the hood with hard

feelings. My father once confided to my mother, who wisely shared his

confidence with me: ―Gary could tell me to go screw myself, but I would still

know he loved me.‖ It was the truth. It had been the truth for men in our

family before either of us was born.









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My great-grandfather, a Dutch Reformed minister, is said to have cursed

his Heavenly Father following the deaths of his wife and two young daughters

from tuberculosis. He is also said to have refused to sign a doctrinal confession

affirming the damnation of all heathen souls. Though after long wanderings he

returned to the pulpit (first crossing the Atlantic to the United States) and

though it‘s doubtful he ever lost his faith (one doesn‘t curse what one doesn‘t

believe to exist), the image of his clenched fist shaken in the face of heaven,

and perhaps in the faces of his seminary too, has long been with me.



So have the stories of his son, my grandfather and namesake, another angry

ancestor I never knew. One day he came home from work to discover that a

neighbor had conveniently emptied the contents of his cesspool next to the

sand pile where his son and daughter played across the street. My grandfather

threatened to hoist the neighbor up by his ankles if every trace of filth was not

removed within 24 hours. ―And when you‘re finished, you cheap Holland

bastard,‖ roared the minister‘s son, ―you get on your knees and pray.‖



The phrase ―Dutch temper‖ and the phrase ―cheap Holland bastard‖—

uttered by a Hollander no less—are two signifiers of my heritage, a patrimony

passed with fiery love from father to son. They are not the only signifiers,

however. Life would be too easy if they were. My first reading of the Gospels

was from a New Testament presented by my great-grandfather to my father

when my parents were first married. That too was part of the same heritage,

and it ensured that my Dutch temper could seldom exist without Christian

remorse, nor Christian meekness without some inner resistance. The story of

my journey in faith has often amounted to the story of my struggle with anger.



I am writing about anger for at least three specific reasons. All of them are

vividly personal, though I trust that they are no less common than anger itself.



1. My anger has often seemed out of proportion—that is, too great or too

little, but more often too great—for the occasion that gave rise to it.



2. My anger has more often distressed those I love and who love me than

it has afflicted those at whom I was angry.



3. My anger has not carried me far enough toward changing what

legitimately enrages me. In fact, the anger often saps the conviction.

It‘s fair to say that I am writing not only about anger, but also in anger. In

other words, anger is in some ways my inspiration as well as my subject. I can

give three reasons for that as well.

First, I have grown increasingly impatient with the blithe reductionism of

the so-called self-help movement. I have grown impatient at seeing the

laudable idea that life is a series of struggles to be undertaken—or questions to









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be asked or burdens to be borne—replaced with the idea that life is essentially

a set of problems to be solved by the adoption of the right program (spiritual

or electronic) or the purchase of the right product (pharmaceutical or

electronic).



I have also grown increasingly angry at our full-bellied acquiescence to

social and economic injustice. I‘m referring to the notion that everything other

than the perfectible self is too vast and complex to admit to any remedy

whatsoever, and that our best course of (in)action lies in ironical detachment

or in the cultivation of an abrasive attitude that delivers some of the release,

but packs none of the punch, of well-aimed rage. Our advertising and even our

arts convey the idea that we as a society are brash, irreverent, and free of all

constraint, when the best available evidence would suggest that we are in fact

tame, spayed, and easily brought to heel.



And finally, I am writing in petulant resistance to the idea that anger is an

emotion with no rightful place in the life of a Christian or in the emotional

repertoire of any evolved human being. Darwinian evolution I can buy; most of

the other forms, however, I can neither buy nor stomach. Darwin saw us linked

with the animals, and therefore to the material creation as a whole; so do the

Old and New Testaments. But the popular theology (most of it Gnostic) that

portrays perfection as the shedding of every primitive instinct, and portrays

God as an impersonal sanitizing spirit, is to my mind evidence of a satanic

spirit. The Lord my God is a jealous God and an angry God, as well as a loving

God and a merciful God. I am unable to imagine one without the other. I am

unable to commit to any messiah who doesn‘t knock over tables.



A few years ago I told a dear friend of mine that I was going to write a book

someday for angry men and women. ―I think there need to be more of them,‖

he quipped. I‘m inclined to agree. But if he‘s right, if more of us need to be

angry, then it follows that we shall require a more careful application of anger

and a finer discernment of when anger applies.

I never did go to the town garage the morning after I found those three

severed tree limbs. That night as I sat at the kitchen table correcting final

exams, I began to hear a noise ―as of a rushing wind‖ but of such an immediate

and dreadful intensity that I could not at first be certain it was the wind. I

remember fixing my eyes on one of the dark windowpanes, which seemed

about to shatter at any second, and thinking that the force outside could not

possibly increase. It increased. I did not think I was dying, but the unreal

sensation of those moments must be what it is like suddenly to realize that you

are about to die. The rain was falling too hard. The next crack of thunder might

be louder than we could bear. The lights snapped off. The roof sounded as

though it were being ripped from the house.







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I rushed my wife and our year-old daughter into the basement and then

foolishly went upstairs to see what was happening and what I could do, which

of course was nothing. Within a few minutes, the worst of the storm had

passed. The rain subsided enough for me to see through the windows. One of

the maple trees in our yard was snapped in two. Moving to the front windows,

I saw to my horror that half of the roof of our large barn across the road was

gone, rafters and steel together.



For the next three days we were without electric power. Two-hundred-year-

old maple trees and limbs the size of telephone poles lay across the road for

more than a mile. The central path of the storm—and there is still

disagreement more than a decade later as to whether it was a small tornado or

simply a thunderstorm with a terrific downdraft—crossed the road about a

quarter mile from our house and cut a swath of toppled trees and peeled roofs

that extended through an entire county and beyond. In spite of the commotion

we had heard, our house roof was spared. But 20-foot-square sections of steel

and beam from the barn lay hundreds of yards behind our house in a hay field.

They had been torn from the barn and blown over the house. They might just

as easily have been blown through it.



How puny my three limbs seemed in comparison to such carnage. And how

puny my anger seemed in comparison to such fury. It was difficult for me not

to think of them as related in some way, as temptation and warning, as sin and

punishment, even as the psychological cause of a meteorological effect. Or as

I‘ve since come to think of them, as a man‘s paltry anger defused by God‘s

tremendous mercy.



I took my chain saw out to the road and began to cut one of the massive

limbs that lay across it. One of the road crew drove up, rolled down his

window, and thanked me for saving him some work. Had he gotten out of his

car, I would have thrown my arms around him.



— Garret Keizer is the author of No Place But Here: A

Teacher‘s Vocation in a Rural Community and A Dresser of

Sycamore Trees: The Finding of a Ministry, as well as a

novel, God of Beer. He lives in northeastern Vermont with

his wife and daughter. This essay is excerpted with

permission of the publisher Jossey-Bass, a Wiley

company, from Keizer’s new book, The Enigma of Anger:

Essays on a Sometimes Deadly Sin. Copyright ©2002 by

Garret Keizer



“The Enigma of Anger.” BOOKS AND CULTURE. September/October 2002. Vol. 8, No. 5, Page 8.









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LEADER’S GUIDE - STUDY 9



Who Are We to Judge?

Did Jesus forbid us from judging others?



The reader‘s question is arresting: Did Jesus forbid us from judging

others? Our immediate answer is ―yes!‖ ―Judge not,‖ right? But

what did Jesus mean by that? Is his instruction in the Sermon on

the Mount being properly applied in our day? This Bible study and

the commentary from Lewis B. Smedes are sure to prompt lively

discussion.







Lesson #9



Scripture:

Matthew 7:1-5; Luke 6:36-45; Romans 14:9-13; 1 Corinthians 5:12-13; James 4:11 and 2:12-13



Based on:

“Who Are We to Judge.” CHRISTIANITY TODAY, October 1, 2001 • Vol. 45, No. 12, Page 70

LEADER’S GUIDE

Who Are We to Judge?

Page 2









PART 1

Identify the Current Issue

Note to leader: Prior to meeting, provide for each person the

article “Who Are We to Judge?” from CHRISTIANITY TODAY

magazine, included at the end of this study.

Christians are often accused of being judgmental. Yet one of

Jesus‘ basic teachings is that we are not to judge others.



Discussion starters:



[Q] Why, in your opinion, are Christians accused of being

judgmental?



[Q] When is it wrong to judge?

 When is it right?

Leader’s Note: You may wish to offer an example or two from your local

newspaper. Ask participants to determine whether judgment is right in each

case, who should do the judging, and on what basis.



[Q] In our time, we hear a great number of calls for tolerance. In the January 11,

1999, CHRISTIANITY TODAY article ―Are you tolerant? (Should you be?),‖ Daniel

Taylor says that ―tolerance means I voluntarily withhold what power I have to

coerce someone else‘s behavior.‖ If defined as such, can tolerance accompany

judgment? In other words, does judgment have to exclude tolerance?



[Q] Is God intolerant? Would moderns call him judgmental?



[Q] What would the world be like if there were no judging?

Leader’s Note: Smedes notes the effects on achievement, community,

forgiveness, and interpersonal relationships.



[Q] Smedes says we need more judging these days. What do you think he means by

that?





PART 2

Discover the Eternal Principles

Teaching point one: Judgment is sometimes forbidden and sometimes

encouraged.

To determine what Jesus meant when he said ―do not judge‖ in Matthew 7:1, let‘s first

consider the other texts Smedes addresses. Read each of the following passages. Stop

after each one and ask each of the questions listed below:







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 Romans 14:9–13

 1 Corinthians 5:12–13

 James 4:11 and 2:12–13



[Q] Who is speaking?



[Q] Who is being addressed?



[Q] Who will be judged?



[Q] Who will be judging?



[Q] What is the offense?



[Q] What is the penalty?



[Q] Are there any lasting consequences from the offense or the judgment?



[Q] When you‘ve read all the passages, ask: What similarities do you see in these

verses?

 Based on these passages, is judgment forbidden?

 If so, what kind of judgment?



Teaching point two: If we judge by the letter of the law, we ourselves

will be judged by it.

In Matthew 7:1–2, from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells people not to judge. As

Smedes points out, the key to this prohibition is found in verse 5:20, which provides

the context for what follows, including ―Do not judge.‖

Jesus is speaking to a large crowd of people familiar with the judgments of the

Pharisees and Saducees. In Matthew 5:20, he qualifies what follows in this way: ―For

I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the

teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.‖ Jesus was

telling the people not to become judges in the manner of the scribes and Pharisees,

who judged others based on the letter of the law—which they themselves could not

keep. His prohibition seems to attack hypocrisy and not the reasonable act of

ascribing value to things or behavior. If we judge by the letter of the law, we ourselves

will be judged by it. Jesus‘ saying in 7:2 is a proverb: the measure you use is the

measure that will be used on you. Jesus is therefore warning us to choose carefully

our measuring instrument: Will it be grace or law? Will it be a set of criteria we want

God to judge us with, or will it turn out to be our very condemnation?

People often say that justice is blind, that is, impartial. Various artists have portrayed

justice as a blindfolded woman holding a scale. As D. A. Carson points out in The

Expositor’s Bible Commentary (Zondervan, 1984), Jesus did not advocate blind

justice, but rather generous mercy. And if not for the sake of others, we should at

least show grace and mercy for our own sakes.







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[Q] Why is it for our own benefit to show grace and mercy to others?



[Q] How do we find balance in judging sin while still showing love to the sinner?



Teaching point three: Judging is a vital part of the Christian life.

Following Matthew 7:1–2, verses 3–5 do not forbid judging the actions of others.

What is forbidden is judgment without first judging ourselves. We should see our

own sins before we see the sins of others. And we should deal with our own sins first.

When we have dealt with our sins, then we can see more clearly other people‘s sins

and ways in which we can help them. Verse 5 concludes, ―Then you will see clearly to

remove the speck from your brother‘s eye.‖ Judging is allowed, even encouraged, as

part of the Christian life. One Christian helps another see her sin and remove it.

Parallels drawn from Luke 6:36–45 are helpful for understanding Matthew 7. There

the ―Do not judge‖ statement comes on the heels of his exhortation to be ―merciful as

you Father in Heaven is merciful‖ (Luke 6:36). ―Do not judge‖ then is Christ‘s

command for us to extend mercy and grace to sinners such as us. The parable of the

trees in Luke 6:43:45, however, does encourage us to think critically about people

and behavior based on their results. ―Each tree is recognized by its own fruit,‖ Jesus

said. In the same way, we can judge (evaluate) human behavior, endeavors, or

situations. If their results are bad, we ought not to get involved in them.





PART 3

Apply Your Findings

[Q] Smedes points out a process for making judgments. What four steps did he

identify in his article?



Leader’s Note: Know the facts. Consult Scripture. Pray for discernment.

Make the judgment.



[Q] How would you apply this process to current events?

 What about a personal situation?



Leader’s Note: You may wish to walk through the process with the group.



[Q] Based on our study, what are the limitations on our judging? Think in terms of

persons who are judged, enforcement, and attitude.



[Q] What role should mercy play in judging?



[Q] How can we judge with humility from the position of a fellow sinner?

 How does the realization of our own sinfulness govern the words we use?



[Q] How will this humility affect our relationships with other Christians and with

unbelievers?







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A HANDOUT FOR FURTHER STUDY

Who Are We to Judge?

Did Jesus forbid us from judging others?





Read John 8:1-20 In this passage there are several instances of judging. Read carefully

and list who is judging whom and why.

The Pharisees might have contended that they were only keeping the law. Refusal to

judge the woman would have been considered by some as a dereliction of duty. What do

you think of Jesus‘ response to these religious leaders?

On what does Jesus base his judgment? How is Jesus‘ judging different from our own?

Does Jesus judge the woman? Does he judge her sin? Do you see a difference between

judging the person and judging the person‘s actions? The adage ―love the sinner, hate the

sin‖ would seem to apply here.

What do you think Jesus was writing in the dirt? Some people have speculated that he

was writing the Ten Commandments. Others suggest that he was writing the names of

the men who had been with the woman, some of whom might have been standing in the

crowd ready to stone her. Or perhaps he was writing the sins of those in the crowd. If you

were in Jesus‘ place, what would you have written?

In a sermon based on this text, Frank Lewis, pastor of First Baptist Church in Nashville,

Tennessee, named the stones the people were holding for the attitudes they might have

represented (e.g., anger, jealousy, self-righteousness). He called out each attitude as the

rocks hit the ground one by one.

As a devotional exercise, go outside and pick up several stones, naming them for your

attitudes toward others whose behavior offends you. Say the attitudes aloud and drop the

stones, one by one. Ask God to give you humility and love in their place.









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ARTICLE

Who Are We to Judge?

Did Jesus forbid us from judging others?



By Lewis B. Smedes, for the study ―Who Are We to Judge?‖







In three words, blunt and absolute, Jesus commanded

us, ―Do not judge‖ (Matt. 7:1). But did he really mean that

we should never judge others? He goes on to suggest that

it‘s not the act of judging but the attitude with which we do

it that God is most concerned about—―For in the same way

you judge others, you will be judged‖ (7:2).



There are other Scriptures that either cloud or shed

light on the issue. Paul told the Christians in Rome not to

judge one another (Rom. 14:13) but taught the Corinthians that they were to

judge sinful believers and leave people outside the church to God (1 Cor. 5:12-

13). James said he who judges his brother speaks against the law (4:11) but

also implied that our judgments of others must be done with mercy (2:12-13).

Common sense suggests that if no one ever judged other people, there

would be no real human community. In a sinful world, no community can exist

for long where nobody is ever held accountable: no teacher would grade a

student‘s performance; no citizen would sit on a jury or call a failed leader to

account. And, when you come to think of it, nobody would ever forgive anyone

for wrongs he had done; we only forgive people for what we blame them, and

we blame them only after we have judged them.



I would suggest that, in our day and age, we need more—not less—

judgment. Modern Americans suffer from a fear of judging. Passing judgment

on the behavior of fellow human beings is considered an act of medieval,

undemocratic intolerance.



Why? Because, our culture tells us, we are all flawed people, and people

with flaws have no right to judge other people‘s flaws. Furthermore, modern

Americans do not believe that there are objective standards by which to judge.

And where there are no standards, there is nothing by which to measure

behavior.









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Of course, the person who takes Jesus at all seriously does not kowtow to

modern relativism. Judgment, for Christians, is an important piece of work

that God calls us to do, especially in a world going morally haywire.



When a person judges, she also forms an opinion. But an opinion is not

necessarily the same as a judgment. Opinions are often framed by our fears,

pride, or ignorance. If all we had were human opinions, we might agree with

those who say we should never judge.



Judgments are opinions that we form only after we have made a serious

effort to know the facts, and, for those of us who are Christians, only after we

have consulted the moral teachings of Scripture and prayed for Spirit-

informed discernment. Any lazy or biased fool can have opinions; making

judgments is the hard work of responsible and compassionate people.



For all of these reasons, common sense indicates that Jesus could not have

meant that we are never to make judgments on what people, including

ourselves, are up to.



But our common sense is hardly the litmus test of what Jesus meant, for in

the end it is his Word that we live by. It‘s helpful, then, to consider Jesus‘ bold

command in its biblical context.



Jesus may have been moved to speak as he did by the haughty way the

Pharisees had of judging people. In Matthew 5:20 through 7:6, Jesus warns his

disciples against following the traditions and practices of the Pharisees, who

judged others as if they themselves were beyond judgment. What‘s more, they

judged people by the letter, not the spirit, of the law.



So, most likely, Jesus meant, ―Do not judge at all if you judge others the

way the Pharisees do. If you do judge people this way, you will be judged with

the same severity.‖ Jesus‘ intent comes out in his metaphor of motes and

beams (Matt. 7:3-5). We all have beams in our eyes, so to speak; to judge

people for the little motes stuck in their eyes while we have big beams in our

own is devilish arrogance as well as folly.



Nobody with a beam in his eye can see things clearly. He is dangerously low

on discernment. And, since we all have this distorted perspective, we need

either to be very humble or else leave judging to God alone. We have a moral

responsibility to judge the moral behavior of others—but only if we are humbly

aware that we will sometimes be dead wrong and never totally right. We must

remember that our ability to judge is limited and especially that we are sinful

people who will ourselves, one day, come under judgment.









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Lewis B. Smedes is professor emeritus of theology and

ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena,

California.



CHRISTIANITY TODAY, October 1, 2001 • Vol. 45, No. 12, Page 70









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LEADER’S GUIDE - STUDY 10



Church Unity Myths

We should question some refrains of unity in diversity.



What draws believers together? What drives them apart? James

Edwards contends that unity is not based on sentiment and that

many attempts to bring unity to the church are misplaced

experiments in sociology. In the Book of Acts, Edwards finds a

better basis for bringing believers together.









Lesson #10



Scripture:



Based on:

“Unity Not of Our Making.” CHRISTIANITY TODAY, August 6, 2001 • Vol. 45, No. 10, Page 48

LEADER’S GUIDE

Church Unity Myths

Page 2









PART 1

Identify the Current Issue

Note to leader: Prior to meeting, provide for each person the

article “Unity Not of Our Making” from CHRISTIANITY TODAY

magazine, included at the end of this study..

A pastor in a rural town told this true story about a church not

far from his. The church had outgrown its facilities and decided

to build a new sanctuary. When the building committee

presented the plans to the congregation, some were aghast: the

new building was to be faced with buff brick. This vocal segment

declared that churches (especially in that area) should be red

brick in the Colonial style. The argument over the color of the

brick was long and rancorous. Eventually, the red-brick crowd left the church and

started their own church in rented facilities just down the road.

The new church grew, and after several years it was time to build a sanctuary. The

building committee recommended to the church the construction of a buff-brick

sanctuary. Again, the red-brick diehards were outraged. After debate, again long and

rancorous, the red-brick advocates left and started a third church just down the road

from the second.

Today, on a one-mile stretch of that country highway, you will find three churches:

two buff, one red brick, and each a little smaller than the one that preceded it.

Some arguments in churches are about things that seem, especially to outsiders,

minor. The color of the brick, pews versus chairs, instrumentation. Other arguments

are major: matters of doctrine, the nature of God, whom to ordain or to marry.

There are four usual conclusions to these arguments: (1) one side becomes convinced

that the other side‘s stance is correct and unity is reached; (2) both sides agree to

keep their divergent views but peacefully coexist; (3) one side remains unconvinced

and the debate continues; (4) one or both parties decide they cannot peacefully

coexist and part company.



Discussion starters:



[Q] Which of these four conclusions do you think most people would say should be

the goal?

 Does the subject matter of the disagreement make a difference?



[Q] Which conclusion is most influenced by the growth of pluralism in our society?



[Q] How does the word ―tolerance,‖ as it is commonly used, influence our attempts

at unity?



[Q] Which of these do you think is the biblically correct picture of unity?









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Church Unity Myths

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PART 2

Discover the Eternal Principles

Teaching point one: Unity is based on passion but not on feelings.

James Edwards points us to the Book of Acts to discover examples of true unity. The

biblical word Luke employs is homothumadon. This is a compound Greek word

formed from two root words. The first is homo, meaning ―same‖ or ―alike.‖ The

second is thumadon, meaning, in its root form, hard, as in ―breathing hard‖ or

passion. Brought together as homothumadon, the word indicates a mindset of people

who have the same passion about something. It is sometimes translated ―in one

accord‖ in Scripture, or in Edwards‘s words, ―of one mind and purpose.‖

Luke uses the word repeatedly in Acts. And while Edwards draws our attention to the

―one accord‖ of the new believing community and the eventual accord of the

Jerusalem council, not all of Luke‘s uses of homothumadon apply to Christians.

Unbelievers also may have one mind, and their actions show a shared passion, not all

of it positive.

To better understand the concept, let‘s briefly look at the use of homothumadon in

Acts, before we apply it to our present-day church body.



[Q] Read the following verses. Ask for a short description of the scene. Who is

demonstrating homothumadon? How is the word translated? Is it, in each

instance, positive or negative? Does it describe physical activity, social

relationships, or doctrinal stances? You may wish to make a chart.

Here are the verses and the words in Acts that have been translated from

homothumadon, first from the KJV, then from the NIV:

1:14 with one accord joined together

2:1 with one accord together

2:46 with one accord meet together

4:24 with one accord together



5:12 with one accord meet together

7:57 with one accord all

8:6 with one accord all

12:20 with one accord joined together

15:25 with one accord we all agreed

18:12 with one accord united

19:29 with one accord as one man

As you compile the list, you can see that Luke applies ―having the same mind‖ to a

variety of situations. Sometimes he describes believers: being physically in the same

location, praying and studying together, reaching agreement on doctrinal matters.







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Sometimes he describes unbelievers, Romans and Jews: stoning Stephen together,

presenting a united front to Herod, attacking Paul. Homothumadon is about passion

in common, feeling so deeply about something that one is driven to join with others

to act on that passion.



Teaching point two: Unity does not encompass diverse beliefs but

rather diverse people.

Edwards is careful to say that feeling is not what brings this one-mindedness, rather,

it is the cause or belief to which the people are committed that is the source of their

unity. This concept turns our ―unity in diversity‖ on its ear. Today we are comfortable

applying the idea of diversity to our beliefs. Two groups hold opposite opinions on

divisive issues such as gay marriage or the ordination of women, but they try to

remain in the same denomination, calling this ―unity.‖ Ask the students if they think

it‘s because these parties disregard the Scriptures or because their interpretations of

some biblical passages vary. In Acts, the diversity is not so much in the beliefs but in

the people themselves. The believers in the early church were Jews and Gentiles,

slaves and masters, men and women. At Pentecost they were ―in one accord‖ in a

physical sense by being together in Jerusalem and together in the temple. They were

together in their activities: praying, eating, and spreading their newfound faith. And

eventually they were together on essential truths. The diversity was in the people

themselves; the unity in the faith they shared in Christ. Their like-minded passion for

Christ and the central truths of the gospel held them together in spite of their

differences.



Teaching point three: Unity comes from outside ourselves.

You may wish to expand your study of Acts 2:42-47 and 15:1-29 at this point.

Examine the unity in chapter 2, where homothumadon is expressed in physical

togetherness and in sharing worship, meals, and resources. This is what many

Christians think of as unity. In chapter 15, at the Jerusalem Council, there is heated

debate over whether Gentiles who come to faith in Christ must be circumcised.

Edwards contends that encountering the word homothumadon in the final report

from the committee is most unexpected. It is like coming across ―lollipops‖ and

―rainbows‖ in a newspaper account of a train wreck. His point: homothumadon in a

Christian context, does not grow from within. It is not from feelings, common

backgrounds, social relationships, or even shared experiences. Unity, while expressed

in those things, is from outside ourselves. It comes from our commitment to Christ

and his Word. Anything less than full agreement with Christ and his Word makes real

unity impossible.



For discussion:



[Q] By what indicators do we usually judge unity in our church?



[Q] Are those standards legitimate measures of our unity?



[Q] What is the biblical standard for unity that Edwards points to in John 17?

Edwards moves from the acts of the early church that showed their oneness to the

prayer Jesus offered that believers may have unity, specifically that we may be one as







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Jesus and the Father are one. But again, the author shows that unity is born of truth,

and that truth is the Word of God. It is his truth that sanctifies us and brings us

together. Unity that represents God comes from God.





PART 3

Apply Your Findings

Some people will be uncomfortable with this definition of unity. It is exclusive to say

that unity is defined by adherence to God‘s truth; that our union with other believers

is only possible when we are all in agreement with God himself. Edwards seems to

take a hard line when calling God ―the Great Intolerance.‖



[Q] Do you think most Christians are comfortable with that concept?

 What changes will be required of us if we come to understand God in that

way?



[Q] Perhaps we should consider adding a new phrase to the Christian lexicon.

Rather than ―unity in diversity,‖ we could say ―unity of the diverse.‖ How would

that change our expectations of unity?

Action Point: Consider your own church, study group, or family. Name an issue to

which you think this view of unity should be applied.









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A HANDOUT FOR FURTHER STUDY

Church Unity Myths

We should question some refrains of unity in diversity.





Old Testament Pictures of Unity: Psalm 133

While Edwards treats unity as believers being ―in one accord‖ with God‘s truth and

commitment to something outside ourselves, true unity has great effect on our

relationships with other believers. We see that in Acts 2. There are also many Old

Testament examples. Psalm 133 is one of the better-known poetic descriptions of unity.



Two settings for Psalm 133 have been suggested. One is the festival times when the

people of Israel would journey to Jerusalem for sacrifice and worship, feasting and

celebration. A present-day event such as the Fourth of July offers an image of people of

many backgrounds gathered for a single purpose. In such an event, the walls of

difference are brought down for a while by patriotic music, the ―ooo‘s‖ and ―ahhh‘s‖ at

the fireworks, and the celebration of freedom. For a while, early in July, we feel one with

fellow Americans.



The psalm may also refer to a specific event: when all the tribes of Israel joined together

at Hebron to make David their king. After civil war and the death of Saul, the nation was

ready for healing. Crowning David brought peace and unity to a divided land. (Read 2

Samuel 5:1-10 for background.)



Now read Psalm 133.









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Here the psalmist offers two word pictures to show the benefits of unity: oil and dew.



Oil is a sign of blessing and abundance. The absence of oil is cause for mourning, a sign

of deprivation, or even judgment. In daily life, oil was occasionally poured on the head

for grooming, as in preparation to attend a celebration. Running down on the beard, this

oil is plentiful—no ―a little dab will do you‖ here. In religious life, oil was used to

consecrate the priests, the descendants of Aaron who were reserved then commissioned

for the service of the Lord. Moses also used the anointing oil to consecrate the

tabernacle.



In New Testament, the elders are instructed to anoint the sick with oil, and oil represents

the Holy Spirit.



The second picture is dew. Another evidence of God‘s blessing, the dew in this psalm is

specifically the dew of Mount Hermon. The highest mountain in Israel, Hermon had the

heaviest dew, and as result the land was fruitful. The psalmist transports the heavy dews

of Hermon to Mount Zion. In other words, God‘s life-giving water is poured out on God‘s

holiest place.



This is a psalm of superlatives: the best oil, the heaviest dew, the holiest place. All this is

bettered by the final blessing the Lord bestows of life evermore.



Tthat is how good and pleasant unity is.



An exercise: pray this psalm for yourself and others. As you pray this psalm aloud,

supply the names of people you know for the word ―brothers,‖ both men and women,

boys and girls. Supply the name of your church or group involved for ―Mount Zion.‖ And

address the psalm to the Lord, supplying ―you‖ for ―the Lord‖ and ―yours‖ for ―his.‖



You may also contemporize this psalm by supplying present-day word pictures that

convey the blessings of oil and dew.









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A Unity Not of Our Making

We should question some denominations’ refrains of unity in diversity.



By James R. Edwards, for the study ―Church Unity Myths.‖







A unity in diversity is a catchphrase in mainline

churches today. In a recent pastoral letter, the bishops of

the Episcopal Church celebrate the ―richness of diverse

perspectives‖ and ―the creative interaction of a variety of

convictions‖ while seeking ―to restore all people to unity

with God.‖ Much of the language suggests that experienced

unity—a feeling of oneness—should characterize our

communions.



I find myself in two minds about such theological

refrains, which flow freely from nearly all denominational headquarters

nowadays. I find them encouraging because they voice genuine concerns in

meaningful scriptural categories, such as Paul‘s metaphor of the church as one

body consisting of diverse members (1 Cor. 12:12-30). But the excessive

reliance on unity-in-diversity-language, indeed the near obsession with it,

seems also to conceal an apology for the rampant pluralism and heterodoxy

that is sweeping the church.



Such language sometimes leaves me feeling as though I am playing a game

of Scrabble in which the object is no longer to spell a word with the various

letters in my hand, but rather to gather a hand of disparate letters from which

no word could be spelled. Is the object of the game to spell a word, or to

celebrate odd letters? What amazed Paul, after all, was not diversity but the

mystery that the diverse members formed one body (1 Cor.12:20). The mystery

is particularity working toward unity, rather than, as in a prism, a unity being

refracted into particularity. We see this mystery described in the prayer group

of Acts 13, which was composed of a Cypriot, two persons (probably of color)

from North Africa, an aristocrat from the Herodian dynasty, and a Pharisaic

Jew. A diverse group of pray-ers, but one prayer. Or, more remarkable yet, the

honor roll of 30-plus names at the end of Romans, among which are women,

men, slaves, free persons, aristocrats, Jews, Greeks, and Romans. It is a

veritable cross-section of the ancient world—wide diversity, yet one church.









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How did the early Christians do it? The Book of Acts and the Epistles of

Paul employ a virtually unknown term that, in my judgment, is a key to

understanding the early church‘s unity in diversity—and to resolving the

present challenge of addressing the one hope of salvation in Jesus Christ to all

people, irrespective of ethnicity, nationality, color, sex, or ideology. The term,

in Greek, is homothumadon.





An „Alien‟ Unity

This polysyllabic tongue-twister may never be embraced like koinonia or

agape, but it is no less important. Homothumadon means ―of one accord,‖ or

―of one mind and purpose.‖ It occurs only 11 times in the New Testament, and

all but one of them (Rom. 15:6) in Acts.

Homothumadon occurs like a signature refrain in Luke‘s description of the

harmony and unanimity of the early church. Immediately after the ascension

of Jesus, Luke describes the 11 disciples and family of Jesus gathered in the

Upper Room ―with one accord‖ in prayer (Acts 1:14). Shortly thereafter, the

growing Christian community was headquartered in the temple, continuing

―with one accord‖ and sharing common meals in homes (Acts 2:46).

After the arrest and release of Peter and John by the Sanhedrin, believers

glorified God ―with one accord‖ (Acts 4:24). Again, after mighty works

performed through the hands of the apostles, the fledgling Christian

community gathered ―with one accord‖ in Solomon‘s Portico in the temple

(Acts 5:12). We are told that people in Samaria listened ―with one accord‖ to

the gospel preached by Philip (Acts 8:6) after the death of Stephen. Finally,

after the Council of Jerusalem, Luke writes that the early church was ―of one

accord‖ in promulgating the decision of the Council to Gentile believers in the

Diaspora (Acts 15:25). Both Luke and Paul employ homothumadon in order to

designate the exemplary harmony of the early Christian community.



We do not have to read between the lines of the Book of Acts, however, to

discover that the early church was as acrimonious as churches in our day. Thus

some argue that Luke used homothumadon merely to show what the church

should be. But that is a misunderstanding of the term. In secular Greek,

homothumadon does not convey the personal sympathy that members of a

particular group share. Rather, it specifies a commitment to a specific course

of action. The Greek orator Demosthenes appealed to the Athenians to put

aside their personal feelings and differences and join homothumadon to

defend themselves against an invasion of Philip of Macedon. The unity for

which Demosthenes appealed was imposed from without by the invasion of

Philip. Homothumadon was thus an extrinsic unity—indeed, in Demosthenes‘

understanding a compulsory unity—rather than an intrinsic unity.







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This subtle distinction is significant. The unity of the early church was not

the kind of unity that we find in a country club or a college, for example, where

members join because of common interests. Rather, the unity of the church

was produced by something from the outside that bound members together.

The Reformers were fond of talking of iustificatio extra nos, the alien

righteousness that comes from the outside to justify sinners in spite of

themselves.



The use of homothumadon by Luke and Paul implies an equal and

corresponding concordia extra nos, an alien harmony or consensus that comes

from the outside as God‘s gift from the proclamation of the gospel.

Homothumadon is the result of the unmerited grace of God extra nos. Our

unity stems solely from the fact that we are sinners forgiven by the unexpected

and undeserved grace of Jesus Christ.





A Purposeful Unity

Furthermore, homothumadon is not measured by mass, quantity, or

numbers but by conformity to the purpose of God in Christ Jesus. This is made

evident by the surprising use of the term in Acts 15.

After the Council of Jerusalem, the early church circulated a letter that

instructs contentious churches of all ages, including our own in which the

church is deeply divided over human sexuality and the person of Jesus Christ.

Luke does not disguise the conflict and bitterness that ensued over the dispute

to include uncircumcised Gentiles in the church (Acts 15:2, 7). It was the most

crucial issue the church had faced—and probably would ever face. Jewish

scholar-author Chaim Potok referred to the Jerusalem Council as ―the turning

point in the history of Christianity.‖



The outcome of the Council was the victory of the evangelical faith over an

understanding of the gospel that would have made Christianity an addendum

to the Jewish synagogue. Christians of Pharisaic persuasion sharply disagreed

with the decision of the Council (Acts 15:5). No doubt other groups disagreed

as well. It is therefore wholly unexpected for Luke to report the outcome of the

dispute as one in which the church was homothumadon (Acts 15:25).

Historically and humanly speaking, the outcome of the dispute was most

certainly not ―of one accord.‖



Is Luke‘s use of the term merely disingenuous? No. Luke does not

understand homothumadon to include or placate all viewpoints. Rather,

homothumadon is like the kind of unity that students with a correct answer

share with their instructor—even though many of their classmates may

disagree with them at first. In Acts 15, the use of homothumadon means that









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the unity of the church is one in correspondence and continuity with the

proper understanding of God‘s will—as revealed in Scripture (Amos 9:11; Jer.

12:15, as quoted in Acts 15:16-17) and as corroborated by the Holy Spirit (Acts

15:28). The unity of the church derives from the testimony of Scripture as it is

attested to by the Holy Spirit—even if a significant number of believers

disagree.



The same understanding is evident in Jesus‘ high priestly prayer ―that they

might be one even as we are one‖ (John 17:11). A remarkable aspect of this oft-

quoted prayer is that it occurs in the most polemical of the Gospels. The

Gospel of John is unambiguous about the dissension and division in the

community to which John writes. At the time, the fledgling Christian church

was being forcibly expelled from the Jewish synagogue, and antagonism was

stiff. The context of the Gospel of John is uncomfortably familiar: a precarious

coexistence has been shattered, resulting in two hostile faith communities.

How then can John boldly commend Jesus‘ prayer for unity within such a

tragically divided house? The answer is that the prayer for the unity of

believers is not understood as a sociological unity but is based on the gift of

God‘s Word (John 17:14), which alone is God‘s truth (John 17:17). The unity of

the church is not patterned after an ideological movement but after the unity

of Jesus and the Father, ―that they may be one even as we are one‖ (John

17:22).



The homothumadon of the Book of Acts, although different in wording, is

thus built on the same theological foundation. The concordia of both Acts and

John is further echoed by the apostle Paul. In a curious expression in Romans

6:17, Paul says that believers are to be wholeheartedly obedient to the form of

teaching to which they were entrusted. The wording at first seems backward:

surely it is doctrines that are entrusted to believers rather than believers to

doctrines.



Paul‘s wording is right, however. As we once obeyed sin to death, so we are

now to obey righteousness to life (Romans 6:22). The righteousness to which

Paul refers here is identified expressly with the ―form of teaching‖ of the gospel

in verse 17. Hence, it is not the doctrines of the faith that are entrusted to us,

but rather we who are entrusted to the doctrines of the faith. We do not

possess the gospel, but the gospel possesses us. It is God‘s Word of judgment

and grace, extrinsic to ourselves, to which we must submit, in order through it

to be conformed to the image of his Son.





The Great Intolerance

Karl Barth wrote in his The Epistle to the Romans:









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Tolerance is, no doubt, a virtue without which none of us can live, but we

must, nevertheless, at least understand that it is, strictly speaking, destructive

of fellowship, for it is a gesture by which the divine disturbance is rejected. The

One in whom we are veritably united is himself the great intolerance. He

willeth to rule, to be victorious, to be—everything. He it is who disturbs every

family gathering, every scheme for the reunion of Christendom, every human

cooperation. And he disturbs, because he is the Peace that is above every

estrangement and cleavage and faction.



God is the great Intolerance who will not allow our differences to cancel or

prevail over his Tri-unity—and the consequent unity that he gives to the

church. In every age, the church must decide whether it will allow the alien

concord of God to transform its life, through Scripture and the Spirit, or

whether it will ground its righteousness in its own causes and elevate them

above the Peace that disturbs. The disturbing Intolerance of God is his grace. It

rescues us from entrenchment in our own image so that we may be

transformed to his image.



The unity-in-diversity rhetoric of mainline churches today leaves the

impression that the ground of unity is the concept of unity itself. The church,

however, cannot attain unity by looking to itself, nor by adapting to changing

social norms, nor by diluting or dismantling its theology in hopes of achieving

a broader or more generic consensus. The true unity of the church is an alien

gift of God from the outside, reflecting both God‘s nature and governance, ―on

earth as it is in heaven.‖ The church is indeed diverse, but the goal of the

church is not diversity. It is rather unity with God, which is a gift of the Spirit

when the church seeks to live in conformity with God‘s will as revealed in

Scripture. The church is most universal when it is most particular in

proclaiming the sole, saving efficacy of Jesus Christ and by bearing a clear

moral witness, both personally and socially. Only then can the church pray

with St. Chrysostom, ―Almighty God, you have given us grace that this time

with one accord—homothumadon.‖





James R. Edwards is professor of religion at Whitworth

College in Spokane, Washington. He is author of The

Divine Intruder: When God Breaks into Your Life

(NavPress, 2000).



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