God and GPS (Is this really the right way to go?)

 I have a love-hate relationship with my GPS.

Maybe you do, too.

I realized this while driving a friend’s car from Birmingham to Minneapolis, about a 15-hour drive which I broke up over two days. (The reason for the drive is another story, for another time).

I suppose it’s a cliché about men, that we don’t like to ask for directions. Because I have family in St. Louis, I know the various routes to get there from Birmingham. But even though I have made this drive to Minnesota three years in a row, I’m still not entirely confident in knowing the best way to get from St. Louis to Minneapolis.

However, I have made the drive enough to be somewhat familiar with the roads and landmarks along the way. So, I plugged in the address to my GPS, hit “start” and was following the directions just fine until …

Until I started to second-guess the GPS. As I said, I had made this drive twice before and recognized enough landmarks that were familiar, and so I had those moments in which I thought, “I wonder if the GPS is really on the best route.”

Again, maybe it’s a guy thing. Or maybe just me. My wife laughs at how I argue with the GPS just driving around town. I admit I’m a bit of a Luddite – someone who resists technology – and identify with John Henry in his ultimately futile fight against the steam-powered hammer.

The system I used for this trip is on my phone. But what I like and dislike about this particular system is often the same thing: communication.

Sometimes my GPS gives me random but very useful information, letting me know an accident had been reported ahead, or one lane is closing due to construction, or even there is a reported speed trap ahead; not to mention the usual “take the next exit” or “at the next traffic light, turn left.”

But then sometimes it goes silent. I’ll be driving along, passing exits, and nothing comes from my GPS system. Sometimes it goes on for so long that I begin to wonder if it has somehow disconnected. I check to make sure the system is on and I haven’t somehow lost the signal. Usually, it’s during a particularly long stretch of staying on the same highway.

Sometimes it talks to me almost too much, which becomes annoying, particularly offering instructions about what not to do, when I wasn’t even considering making that turn or following another highway.

Then sometimes it doesn’t talk to me enough. It doesn’t give me enough acknowledgement that I’m on the right road, doing a good job. A simple “attaboy” just to let me know it’s still there and knows what I’m doing would be appreciated.

But ultimately sometimes it tells me to go in one direction when I wonder if this other direction wouldn’t make more sense. It tells me to go straight when something makes me think turning on another road seems like the right way to go.

And it struck me that’s kind of like my relationship with God.

Sometimes I’d like a little more confirmation from God about what I’m doing, what road I’m taking in my life. Sometimes I feel like I’m hearing from God enough to feel I’m right where He wants me.

Then sometimes I’m cruising along and suddenly feel like I haven’t heard from Him in a while, and I wonder if He’s still there. I wonder if He’s paying attention.

And then there are the times I wonder if I don’t know better what to do in a given situation.

Remember when God told Abraham, at the advanced age of 75 (and his wife Sarah was 65), that Abraham was going to have a son and be the father of a great nation? Abraham believed. But then nothing happened. God, as far as we know, went silent, like my GPS on a long stretch of Iowa state highway. And Abraham and Sarah decided that maybe God needed some help.

First, they decided that Abraham’s servant, Eliezer of Damascus, would be the heir. Then they decided to produce a son by Sarah’s slave, Hagar. It was like saying, “I know where we’re trying to get to, God, but I think this route would be faster.”

The result was worse than simply a wrong turn that cost time on an already long trip - particularly in the son conceived through Hagar. Abraham and Sarah’s idea produced Ishmael, whose descendants are the reason for so much of the conflict in the Middle East today. “He will live in hostility toward all his brothers,” is how the story goes. And so he has.

After 25 years, God did what He said He would do: Sarah conceived a son by Abraham. Abraham was 99. If Abraham had only believed and been patient, he’d have saved himself – and the world – a lot of trouble.

That’s a lot more serious than doubting my GPS, I know. And it’s a lot easier to correct the mistakes I make by sometimes deciding I know better than by GPS which way to go.

If only I could trust, and be patient, and wait … on my GPS, and on God.

But sometimes I just can’t help but think that maybe God needs some help, or maybe God is expecting me to do something about my situation, or maybe God just doesn’t really understand what’s going on.

It reminds me of the story of the guy who was out hiking in the mountains. He slips, and goes over a steep cliff, but about 20 feet down he manages to grab a bush that is sticking out of the side of the cliff face.

He’s hanging there, looking up at the top with no idea of how to get back there, and looking down at the bottom, some 75 feet to rocks and certain death.

So finally, he calls out, “Is anybody up there? Can somebody save me? Hello! Anybody there? Somebody – anybody – help!”

And he hears a voice. “Yes. This is God. Trust me. Let go of the bush and I’ll save you.”

The man looks down at the rock far below. He considers where he is. He calls out, “Do you understand where I am right now? Are you sure about this?”

God says, “Just trust me.”

The man thinks for a minute, looks down at the rock below, and then says, “Hey - is there anybody else up there?”

Sometimes, like the GPS says, we all have to recalibrate.

Adios and vaya con Dios

 

Listening to “Toes” by the Zac Brown Band. I didn’t realize the title of the song was “Toes,” but it fits. Maybe you know the premise:

“Got my toes in the water, ass in the sand

Not a worry in the world, a cold beer in my hand

Life is good today, life is good today”

I loved Jimmy Buffett music in the 1970s (still do), and the whole Caribbean beach vibe, kind of carefree, hedonistic attitude of his songs, an attitude that I’ve never really had but like the idea of. For that matter, I really don’t like the beach (although I do love the Caribbean). But Buffett kind of begat Kenny Chesney (at least his stuff from the last 20 years or so) which led to songs like this one by Zac Brown, and I’m drawn to those.

And for some reason, in my warped brain, as I listened to “Toes” I couldn’t help but think of the story of the Prodigal Son.

Who doesn’t like the story of the prodigal son?

It may be one of the most used parables from Jesus. The younger son demanded his share of his inheritance from his father. He uses what he’s given to go live the high life. The money runs out, so does the fun (as Zac Brown sings in “Toes” – “The señoritas don’t care-o when there’s no dinero, yeah I got no money to stay”). He decides there is nothing left to do but tuck his tail between his legs and go back and see if his father will take him on as a servant, knowing he doesn’t deserve to be treated like a son.

But the father has apparently been looking, hoping every day for the son’s return, and when he sees him coming, drops everything and runs out to welcome him home. The son gives his “I am unworthy” speech but the father cuts him off, cleans him up and puts him in fine clothes, and throws a party to celebrate his return.

Then the story takes a dark turn. The older brother is coming in from a long day in the fields, doing what he had been doing every day since long before his worthless little brother ran off. He’s been working while the other brother has been playing. And when he sees the party going on and finds out why, he’s bitter. He doesn’t think it’s fair.

“‘My son,’’ the father says to the older son, “you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’” (Luke 15).

There are so many applications to this story. We love the lost son returning and being forgiven and welcomed back into the family. We love that because many of us have had the experience of finding ourselves in a tough situation, feeling deserted, maybe close to being broken, with nowhere to turn.

If the younger son still had money, would he have come back? No, he had to be brought to a place of abandonment – like the Zac Brown song: he was no longer welcome when there was no more money. His friends disappeared when the credit card was declined.

In that situation, what the younger son realized was he needed a real relationship with someone, the kind of relationship that survives hard times and difficulties, that isn’t built on ‘what can you do for me.’

So the younger son goes from “I don’t need anybody” to “I’m don’t have anybody.” I think a lot of us have, at times, been there.

Then we have the older brother. If you read the story in Luke, you realize Jesus was really talking to the “Pharisees and teachers of the law,” the “older brothers” of the Jewish culture. They would have been the ones who would have seen God (in the physical form of Jesus) embracing “the tax collectors and sinners” as it says, welcoming them back into the family. And they don’t think its fair.

It reminds me of those of us who have grown up in the Church and don’t have a previous life of chasing “tequila and pretty señoritas” (to quote Zac Brown again). We’re the ones who have remained faithful, doing our duty, trying to make Dad proud of us.

It’s easy to have this uneasy feeling that as hard as we have worked, as much sacrifice we have made to be faithful, have we really pleased God? And in this story that we know as “the Prodigal Son,’’ there is a suggestion that, while the father loves both sons, he seems really pleased with the younger son. That’s the one he throws the party for, while the older son says, “You never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends.”

There is a lot to unpack; I know that. But here is what “the restless brain of an ordinary guy, wondering about an extraordinary God” (as I explain my reasons for these writings) started wondering about.

We know God loves us. Of course He does. He loves everybody! And that means He loves even the people that will reject Him and wind up in Hell. He doesn’t want them to make that choice (with apologies to the predestination folks). It breaks His heart.

But what I sometimes struggle with is the question, not does God love me – again, he loves everybody - but does God approve of me? Am I really pleasing Him?

Can I picture the Lord – God – the Father – running to me, throwing His arms around me, killing the fatted calf and calling everyone to a big party celebrating me!

Maybe I think too much, but I can’t help but feel sometimes – no, very often – that what I do is not enough. That I do it for the wrong reasons. Perhaps like the older brother, I can’t help but go through my life of attempted loyalty and somewhat obedience wondering, “When do I get my party?”

Thinking that, somehow, God owes me!

That’s when the mask comes off. That’s when I see myself as I really am.

And I realize that I am as lost as the younger brother. It doesn’t look the same. But then, are there degrees of sin? In the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5), Jesus mentions two sins that we’d consider “big” – murder and adultery – and equates them with unjustified anger and lust. Going back to the story of the Prodigal Son, the younger son may well have committed one or both of those “big” sins; but there is an equal chance the older brother committed both of what we’d consider the “lesser” ones. And Jesus seems to say they are, in God’s eyes, equal.

That is hard for us self-righteous types to recognize and admit.

But when I do, when I recognize and confess … remember what the younger brother said when he saw his father? “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” Just as the younger brother confessed, so too must the older brother recognize his own pride, his own sin, and repent.

Sometimes we pass over what the father told the older son: “Everything I have is yours.” When you really look at the story, even though it doesn’t say the father ran to get the older brother as he did the younger, it does say that the father came out and went to the older son. He didn’t send a servant to go get him; he didn’t yell out to him to come on inside. The father wasn’t so caught up the welcoming party for the younger son that he forgot about the older one. The father pursued both the one who chased harlots as well as the hypocrite.

If God accepts us at all, He accepts us completely. Wholeheartedly. No half measures.

Then it hit me: the Apostle Paul was the older brother. Paul – when he was Saul – was the law-keeper, the pharisee, the one who faithfully kept all the rules and did everything to “earn” God’s favor. Saul saw God as the command-giver, and Saul was the command-keeper. If anyone deserved the party with the fatted calf, it was Saul.

Until one day, on the Damascus Road, God came out and met Saul. And suddenly Saul – now Paul - recognized his own hypocrisy. From then on, Paul dedicated his life to going after the younger brothers, the wayward sons.

Paul rejected his own self-righteousness.

I want “the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith” (Phillippians 3:9). I want what was said of Abraham in Romans, “If, in fact, Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about—but not before God. What does Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.’” In other words, as Paul writes later in that same chapter, “Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed.”

In this story, the wandering prodigal came home, while the homebound prodigal did not.

I can hear the younger brother now.

“Adiós and vaya con Dios. Going home now to stay.” (Zac Brown, “Toes,” 2008)

Now that’s a party.

Turning the other Cheek (It's not natural; it's a command)

 

There are two sayings regarding how to respond to someone hurting you that it seems like almost everyone knows.

One is, “An eye for an eye.” It’s one of those things that it seems like almost everyone knows. It’s in the Old Testament (and the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi), Exodus 21:23-27. The idea is for reciprocal justice; whatever someone does to you, you do the same to him.

The other is, “Turn the other cheek.” That’s also from the Bible, words spoken by Jesus, recorded in Matthew (5:40) which says, “… If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.”

The first is easy. It seems only fair. It fits our sense of justice. A child intuitively understands that idea.

The other is much harder.

I started thinking about this in regard to protests, and that somehow the expectation of so many protestors today is that they should be protected, not subject to any repercussions for their protests, even when they break the law or disrupt civil order. This is not the way protestors in the 1960s – at least those led by Dr. Martin Luther King – thought. The power of that movement really was in the fact that these protestors fully expected repercussions and accepted them peacefully which, in the end, is what turned the tide of American sentiment in their favor.

But as I thought about it, it became more personal. So much of my thinking, as I’ve gotten older, is less about the great “out there” – my community, culture, the world, whatever – and more “in here,” as in, what does my life reflect?

Does my life reflect “turn the other cheek?” We just passed the greatest day in history, what we often call Resurrection Sunday. It’s a direct contrast to the worst day in history – not the crucifixion, but rather that day when Eve, then Adam, disobeyed God’s direct command and sin entered the world. Everything that is wrong with the world started in that moment back in the Garden; everything was made right with the world on that Sunday morning when Jesus rose from the dead.

It was really an act of love. Isn’t that what “turn the other cheek” really means? That’s what the message is even in the Old Testament. Leviticus 19:18: “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people but love your neighbor as yourself. I Am the Lord.”

Turning the other cheek was not a new commandment given by Jesus. Like so much of his teaching, it was a clarification of the OG’s – original commandments – that, over time, had become so convoluted that people didn’t really understand the original intent of it all. It’s how 600-something commandments (did you really think there were only 10?) became the thousands of “clarifications” that were supposed to provide context and guidance for people to follow the Law, but over time those clarifications more often became confusions.

It’s why the Apostle John, in his old age, says (I John 2) “I do not write to you because you do not know the truth …” John says they do know the truth. A little later in that chapter he writes, “See that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you.” Or, in essence, “You know this. You’ve always known this. What I’m telling you is not really a new command, but an old one that you’ve had from the beginning.”

But to “know” to turn the other cheek? No, that is something a person must willfully do. It goes against human nature. It’s not natural. But it’s Biblical. It’s what Jesus commanded.

How do we do that?

Let me ask another question: how do you know if you’re a follower of Christ?

John says it here, in 2:4, “Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person.”

John is often thought of as this kindly Apostle, “the one whom Jesus loved,’’ who speaks in such a loving, almost grandfatherly way. Yet here he is pretty blunt: he says if you do not do what Jesus commands, you’re a liar. The truth is not in you. Some people get so caught up in the love aspect of Jesus’ words that they forget what usually follows any such declaration of love: live differently. “Go and sin no more.”

It’s what Jesus said, as recorded in the Gospel of John (chapter 14): “If you love me, you will obey what I command” and “Whoever has my commands and obeys them is the one who loves me.” Later, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching.”

And I do that. Sometimes. That’s the problem, isn’t it? I don’t follow this all the time. Does that make me a liar and an un-truthful person?

Well, to a degree, yes. What it really points out is that, even as a Christ-follower, I’m a sinner. But then John isn’t saying that we, as Christians, will be perfect 100 percent of the time. There was a time, when I was a young Christian, that I thought that one day I could achieve perfection in this life, that if I followed Christ’s words long enough, studied hard enough, prayed like Jesus prayed, allowed myself to be completely taken over by the Holy Spirit, that at some point I could achieve living a perfect life.

I was wrong. At least, I was wrong about me.

Maybe there were moments. But only moments.

John covers that. He starts this letter by saying, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”

So, which is it?

It’s both. We seek to know Jesus’ commands and follow them with the help of the indwelling Holy Spirit and yet know that we still carry that old strain of humanity within us that we’re constantly at war with. As Paul famously said in Romans (7:15), “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” Or, as Eugene Peterson paraphrases in The Message, “What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise.”

Someone put it this way: if you hear Beethoven being performed horribly, you don’t blame Beethoven. If you see a Christian behaving badly, you don’t blame Christ.

Have you ever wondered about your salvation because of your sin? I’m not so sure that’s not a good sign. Shouldn’t the new nature that is trying to take over your old nature be telling you something is wrong when the old nature has its way? It’s like when I know something is wrong with me physically; it’s a sign I need to go to the doctor – to someone who will help me get healthy. As a Christian, I go to Jesus – through prayer, confession of my sin, repentance (committing to living a different way), and then get up and go on.

Which, hopefully, brings us back to the beginning. An eye for an eye? Or turn the other cheek?

The unbelieving world understands conflict. They understand revenge. They get “an eye for an eye.” What the world doesn’t understand is true reconciliation. Making it right. What the world doesn’t get is what your mother might have called “hugging it out” after a disagreement or even a hurt. Or as a guy I knew once said about another guy he was having a problem with, “He’s a friend of mine that I don’t like very much.”

Someone does something. You’re offended, perhaps rightfully and justifiably so. You point it out. Then you forgive. You “turn the other cheek” and risk whatever it was that happened, happening again.

Because that’s how they will know we are Jesus’ followers: by our love.

Love is kind and gentle and all those things. But love also knows how to speak the truth, and truth often causes storms. Love knows how to survive the disagreements, how to not seek vengeance, but to … love.

Jesus, as always, is the example. He was silent before his accusers and did not call down revenge from heaven on those who assaulted him. He was tried and executed even though he was never convicted.

Instead, he prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

Not that what was happening wasn’t unjust, unfair, just plain wrong on so many levels. But forgive them, because they didn’t know any better.

If they knew who they were crucifying, chances are they wouldn’t have done it.

It’s my responsibility to show them who that was.