Size does NOT matter!

    The phrase "Size does not matter!" appears often in many different areas of conversation.  Some of which we will not go into for this article.   It is a human condition to compare ourselves to others.  We do it on Facebook, we do it the car, at work, at the gym.  Heck we even do it at church too!

    Jesus addressed this issue when he was at a dinner party of a noted Teacher of the Law.  While he was there a woman of bad reputation (probably the prostitute he saved from stoning) came in and washed Jesus' feet with her tears, dried them with her hair and poured expensive perfume on them.   The host took offense to it and thought that if Jesus' was a true prophet he would know this woman was unworthy of being in his presence.   Jesus tells him this parable

    "There were 2 men who owed the King money.  One owed him 5 denari (a weeks wage) and another 500 denari (2 years wages).  Both of them did not have the ability to pay him back and so the King had mercy on them and cancelled their debt.   Who of the two men do you think loved the King more?".   The host replied, "I guess the man who had the larger debt!".

    I am a numbers person.  I love numbers.  When I read this parable I can't help but visualize the two debts sitting on a table.   One stack of 5 verses 100 stacks of 5 (arranged in a 10x10 square none the less!).   The problem is when we do this we miss the most important part of the parable.   Jesus said, "Both of them did not have the ability to pay him back".   Both were flat broke without a penny to their name.  In this parable Jesus illustrates that some people are "less sinful than others".   There are "good people" out there.  We often get confronted with that by unbelievers who love to point to very good and well-meaning people out there.   In the credit-card-of-life some people live very responsible lives for the most part.   They don't run up huge debts and live very reasonable lives.   While others run off to Vegas and go on a betting streak!   But in the end, BOTH have no means to pay it off.

     All too often we try to impress on non-believers that their debt to God is this HUGE mountain of debt and we are a bit put off when they seem to shrug their shoulders and say, "I don't think I am a bad person!  I am not as bad as Hitler!".   They see themselves as the person with the 5 denari debt and it not being that big of a deal.  The real issue is not the size of the debt but the total lack of income to pay for the debt no matter how small it is.  For some, they think they can "work the debt off" with their good works.   The problem with this idea is that there is no "over time credit" in God's economy.

    To illustrate this imagine you work for a small company and you get paid $100K per year.   A sign at the door reads:

All employees must be at their desks at no later than 8AM and go home no sooner than 5PM with lunch from 12:00 to 1:00 , Monday-Friday.  

    One day you make a mistake that costs the owner $20K.   You go to the owner and say, "To work off the $20K I will be at work from 8-5 Monday thru Friday and only take 1 hour for lunch!".  The owner would point to the sign and say, "That won't pay it off!  That's what I require all my workers to do!"  He then tells you "Since you lost 20% of your salary I am going to require you to work 20% MORE!  You will work on Saturday from 8-5 with 1 hour for lunch for the entire next year!"

    But in God's world the sign doesn't read: "Be holy 40 hours a week!", instead it reads "Be holy!" (24/7).  There is no overtime in God's business.   There is no extra we can do.   It's what God already requires us to be, so when we give to the poor, that is what God expects of us anyway.   Even if we try to use our money or even our very bodies as "guilt offerings" we accomplish nothing because all our money and even our bodies is HIS!  He owns everything and using them to pay off the debt is like you trying to use the company credit card to pay off your debt.

    Instead, God asks us to trust him that he loves us and has take care of it all.   But to get there we must first admit we are flat broke and have nothing to offer of our own.  Like those 2 men in Jesus' parable who trust showing themselves in front of the King and telling him they are flat broke.   We must trust our loving and merciful Father who has already paid the full amount because he is the only one with the resources to cancel the debt.  Jesus declaration on the cross of "IT IS FINISHED!" is his stamping on our debt "PAID IN FULL". 

Don't use a hammer to drive a screw!

    Recently the Supreme Court threw out a court ruling by an Oregon court to force a Christian-owned bakery to pay $135,000 in fines for refusing to bake a wedding cake for gay couple.  Regardless of which side of the gay-marriage issue you stand on; the SCOTUS decision was the right one in my opinion and it will benefit all of us.  The problem stemmed from the Oregon state anti-discrimination law which forced all the people of Oregon to get in line on gay-marriage and ruled that one could be compelled by a government to turn away from their religious faith and to say whatever people want them to say.     The SCOTUS ruling dictates limits on such laws and that the government has no say in such matters.

    This is not just a win for religious freedom but also a for an individual's right to their freedom to speak, or in this case, NOT to speak.   All Americans won with this ruling and not just Christians.

     At the heart of the issue is people using the wrong tool to fix what they perceive as a problem.  Back in the 1960's we had a problem of segregation in the US.  This problem took 2 separate forms.  The first was in the separating of the schools into White-only and Blacks-only schools.   This was enforced by the local governments and the school boards that ran the schools.  It was a government initiated problem and therefore it needed a government-initiated solution to end the problem because government problems are typically immune to free-market responses like boycotts etc.   The famous case of Brown-vs-the-Board-of-Education was brought before SCOTUS which decided that "WE THE PEOPLE" cannot be read as "WE THE WHITE PEOPLE" and "WE THE BLACK PEOPLE" and therefore governments cannot provide segregated services even if they can be assured to be "equal".     This is a case of a hammer driving a nail.  

     At the same time in the 1960's there was segregation occurring at the private institution level.  One of the most prominent was the separation of blacks and whites on public buses.   MLK saw the problem and found the right answer to the problem.  He did not run off to the courts to force the bus companies to end their segregation.   Instead MLK lead one of the most successful boycotts of the bus system to force these companies to end their appalling programs.  It did not take long for the bus companies to realize their dependence on the black community and it hit them where it hurt them the most:  their pocket books!  A free-market-solution solved a free-market problem.  This was an outstanding case of a "screwdriver driving in a screw".  MLK used the right tool for the right problem and all Americans benefited from his wisdom.

 
      Now come 50 years later and we have lost our abilities to distinguish nails from screws anymore.  Today, too many on the left, view everything as a nail and see only a hammer (the government) as the solution to be used.  The case of the Oregon baker's vs the Oregon state government is a perfect example of a hammer being used to drive a screw.  You may not agree with their decision to not bake a case for a gay-wedding but forcing someone to do something their conscience is not right either.   Do we really want a country where people lay in fear for what they believe?   Do we really want a country of people who "turn off their conscience" and do what the government dictates?   A conscience is a terrible thing to waste in my opinion.  I would rather have a country full of people acting on their conscience and analyzing their morals and ethos rather than a country full of mindless, morally bankrupt and soulless beings.

     I believe the real solution would have been for the gay-community and it's protractors to launch a boycott of the bakery.   If enough people stop buying from them then they will go out of business unless those who support their beliefs back them up monetarily.  There was no reason to use the "hammer" in this situation as there was no governmental influence forcing the gay-couple to purchase from this bakery.

    Maybe now, we can get back to using hammer-for-nails and screwdrivers-for-screws and create a more fair, reasonable and moral country again.














 

The dead are better off than the living

In Ecclesiastes 4:1-3 Solomon says,

    I saw the tears of the oppressed and they have no comforter;  power was on the side of their oppressors and they have no comforter. 

    And I declared that the dead who had already died, are happier than the living, who are still alive. 

    Better than both is the one who has never been born, who has not seen the evil that is done under the sun.

     I don't know if it's just a product of getting older, but I often feel akin to what Solomon writes in these verses.  How often do we see news-stories of people who are taken advantage of by those in power.  It may be city council person who doesn't want a certain person to speak at a town-hall and has that person physically removed from the premises by "security guards".  It may be a person whose house has been "condemned" by a county who wants to sell their land to a business or owner of a shopping center because they would get more tax money from those uses of the land than from the homeowner.   It could be a high school principal who fires a teacher because they "go off script" and teach what the 1st or 2nd Amendments are really about or maybe a YouTube channel we tune into that has been taken down because some people down like what they say.

    These stories punch us in the gut and we throw up our hands and say "How can this be happening in America?!! How can these people abuse their power and destroy people's lives so carelessly and callously?"   

    Oppression is a subject we all can relate to on some level in our lives.   We have all felt it's effects.  Maybe it was a teacher who didn't like us and made our lives hell.   Maybe it was a boss who played favorites to others who didn't have families to care for.   Whatever the cause, we have all been on the receiving end of oppression.   It's painful and it can feel like you have no options but to leave and try somewhere else.

   Solomon goes on to say that the dead are better off than those living through oppression.

   I had a good friend of mine, Tim, who I had known since the 3rd grade.  Tim and I were fast friends.   He was the first kid to reach out to me when I moved to the new town.  We did everything together.  We graduated high school together and were at each others weddings.   I remember getting the phone call from my brother telling me the news that Tim had just been diagnosed with terminal leukemia and would not live more than 48 hours.   He left behind a wife and 3 kids in the blink of an eye.    At first I was sad for Tim because he was going to miss out on seeing his kids grow up and have kids of their own.  But lately I have felt more like Solomon and in many ways I feel jealous of Tim because he doesn't have to see this country he loved (he served in the Navy) fall apart and politicians abuse their power to destroy those they don't like or agree with. 

    Power is a corrosive force in nature.  It's like salt water which will destroy the strongest of metals given enough exposure and enough time.   Power seeks more power.   Finding people who can withstand it's siren's call is a daunting task.  When King George heard that the famous General Washington, who had defeated his once proud army and navy, had returned to work as a farmer and had not allowed himself to be anointed "king"  he said,

"He must be the greatest man to have ever lived, for it takes great power to say 'no' to power". 

     George Washington showed us how to handle power appropriately by walking away from it.     Sadly, today we have no George Washington's in America anymore.   Instead, we have many lining up for the job as President who see it as a way to control its citizens rather than to give freedom to them.   They want to wield power to put people in line with their views by punishing those who don't.   We are a nation slowly disintegrating by the abuse of power and oppression. 

     May God have mercy on America.