John Fischer The Catch

For as long as I can remember, it has been considered a virtue for Christians to be different from everyone who is not a Christian. The more different we are, the more spiritual we are. This is a tragic misinterpretation of the truth. This false virtue has played into legalism and Pharisaical attitudes in a big way. At least as I learned it, there was never any difference between different and better. To be different was to be better.

The connection to legalism is an obvious one. The easiest way to define different is by way of behavior: what you do and don’t do (with usually an emphasis on what you don’t do, as in Christians don’t drink or party or dance or swear, etc.). As long as spirituality can be defined as something we can control then we can assure ourselves of being better.

Then along comes Jesus to redefine everything. This is why the Pharisees hated Him so much: He messed up their system of being different. Jesus came along and basically redefined the law. It was as if He said: You say you haven’t killed anyone; I say if you have ever had hate in your heart, you are a murderer. You say you have never had your neighbor’s wife; I say if you have ever lusted for a woman in your heart you have committed adultery with her. You say you live by your vows; I say don’t vow anything because you won’t be able to keep it. You say someone should pay for what they have done wrong; I say turn the other cheek. If they force you to go one mile, go two. If they take your shirt, give them your coat, too. You say love your neighbor and hate your enemy; I say love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you. In other words, if you want to be righteous you’re going to have to be more righteous than these Pharisees here who think they have righteousness neatly wrapped up and under control and set themselves apart (as different) from everyone they judge. (Matthew 5:20-48 obviously paraphrased)

In each case, Jesus turned spirituality from an external behavior they could easily keep into an internal attitude they couldn’t. And when you realize you can’t is when you realize you are just like the people you are trying to rise above. You are just as big of a sinner as the next guy.

And here’s what I’ve discovered about this: there is a correlation between the false virtue of being different and being indifferent. The more different you think you are, the more indifferent you become to others and their needs. This is certainly the lesson learned from the Isaiah House women. The closer we get to them, the more we realized we are the same, and the more we realized we are the same, the more we care.

The more you realize how much the same as everyone else you are, the less indifferent to their needs you will become; you will come to care for them because you identify with them. This is why we all love and hate Marti. She turned a project into an involvement. It would have been much easier to drop a meal by the homeless and get back to your own home, but when you get close enough to realize how much the same you are, you can no longer maintain your indifference. Now we really care for these people; what will we do now?

Sooner or later we realize: We are all homeless; we are all adulterers; we are all murderers; we are all poor; we are all hungry; we are all mental cases; we are all lawbreakers, and we all need a savior.

Thanks to Jesus Christ, we all have one.

Girl’s cabin

My daughter, Annie, is in her ninth month of a 14-month intensive Emergency Room training for Physician Assistants at the Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton, CA. It’s a huge state-of-the-art general hospital smack in the middle of one of the poorest, gang-infested areas of Southern California. The training is on-the-job, and the job is in one of the most demanding E.R. centers in the country. Annie comes home every weekend with stories from a third world country an hour and a half away.

But this story comes not from the hospital, but from a special camp in the San Bernardino Mountains for junior high and high school kids with type 1 diabetes. Type 1 means their bodies do not create insulin and they have to monitor their blood every two hours (yes, at 3 and 5 in the morning, too) by taking a pin prick of blood and stabilizing their levels of insulin and sugar with either an injection or a snack. These are healthy, active, normal kids who can drop unconscious any minute if their proper levels are not maintained. They have also learned to live with this constant pricking and poking, and will have to for the rest of their lives. Annie’s job was to be medically responsible for two cabins of kids, monitoring everything they ate and drank and figuring their treatments and administering them every two hours.

Annie entertained us for a whole afternoon and evening with stories from the week. How she came up with tying up her hair and filling it with syringes so she could quickly inject a cabin-full of kids. (Her demonstration of this resembled a swashbuckling Three Musketeer in a sword fight.) How she took part in everything they did. How she would drag them out of the pool, prick them, shoot them and throw them back in.  How she once had them push her into the pool fully clothed so she could hang with them a little longer. How she got them to drink their water when no one else could. (“You’re teaching them a beer drinking game?” one of the doctors said with an appalled look quickly followed by one of acknowledged admiration. “Who said anything about beer?” said Annie. “This is water pong.”) How in a downhill mountain bike race, Annie’s competitiveness took over and instead of stopping to help a kid who got a flat tire, she called out “That sucks!” and blew past him into second place.

But nothing equaled the story that happened one night when someone gave the wrong reading on the root beer floats they had before bed, and the entire camp was unconscious at the first watch. How Annie and another P.A. stared at each other when one of them asked, “How could the counselors let this happen?” and with a look of shock they realized the counselors, kitchen staff, and some of the doctors were all type 1 diabetics, too. And how they sprang into action, Annie running full tilt from cabin to clinic to cabin to clinic. And for the next half hour as counselors and staff came to, the comment most heard was “Annie was there,” or “Annie got that.”

“What about cabin 12?”

Boy’s cabin

“Annie got that.”

“Cabin 13”

“…Annie.”

“What is she, Wonder Doctor?”

Well according to the kids on the last day as the bus pulled away and Annie wiped her eyes after closing the door of her truck, they all screamed out: “Best doctor ever!”

And why do I tell you this story except as an excuse to brag about my daughter? I tell it because of what these kids have to deal with every day and every night, and what Annie told me: That she never heard one complaint from even one of them all week.

Suddenly I don’t have anything to complain about either.

Annie and Maggie: Annie’s match already for Chandler

Today’s Catch is a little different. Today’s Catch is made up of two contributions I received based on yesterday’s Catch, which, if you haven’t read, you should do first. The first is a song from Marc by Derek Webb that in Marc’s words “says it all.” The second is a candid and thoughtful piece of writing by James. It is truly unique how these two pieces compliment each other.
 
If either of these touches you or better yet, makes you think, write me and tell me how and why. I’d love to hear from you. (I’d especially like to know what you think the new law is.) And if you would like to comment to Marc or James, you can do so through our “Comment” link below.
 
John

To Let Go…
 
To let go of all that keeps us from knowing Christ (and fear is a main contributor) requires a depth of faith and understanding which in truth so many people struggle to obtain even though within themselves they can hear God offering counseling.
 
Through fear we too often choose to ignore what we hear on the basis that it couldn’t have been God and most likely was only our own thoughts, so no action need be taken.
 
Fear will keep us from knowing all that a loving father wants his children to experience: the joy, the peace, the energy, and the challenges positively embraced in the certainty of reward when Gods ways are believed.
 
On what authority do I make these comments? As one who even now allows fear to keep him from being the person God has in mind, and whose heart aches and will continue to do so until it’s given absolutely and without fear to its Creator.
 
James

In this season it is good to check your emotions.

There are two that are especially prevalent, and seem to grow as political activity increases. Neither should be found as a motivator for a follower of Jesus Christ. I am speaking of the emotions of fear and anger.

I became aware of the presence of fear especially among Christians some years ago when I realized how strong the desire for safety was in the Christian subculture, and how it was the driving force behind much of what is now without a doubt a multi-billion dollar industry providing signature goods and services to Christians who desire a safer alternative to what the world has to offer. As pioneers in what came to be known as “Christian” music, we had no idea how widespread the Christian label was to become.

At first I was excited about how fast this was developing, but I quickly became aware of something sinister lurking underneath this fast moving market. It was the need for safety, and underneath that, the dominating presence of fear.

Today, the Internet is a feeding ground for fear. Conspiracy theories, rumors, false stories, and promises for protection roam cyberspace looking for fearful hearts to exploit. Some ask for money, others sell a safer alternative. Both ministries and politicians regularly succumb to the knowledge that the quickest way to someone’s wallet is to make them afraid and then offer them something that will alleviate their fear. Think of how many appeal letters follow this pattern.

My encouragement to you is to be on guard for the fear syndrome. You’ll find it everywhere: in political ads, in sermons, in Christian radio and television – anywhere someone is trying to motivate people to do something. Fear makes one turn in towards the self, circle the wagons, and run away from the world that Christ sent us into. I can say without question that if fear is anywhere in a proposal or a motivation, the enterprise is outside the Spirit of God. God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and a sound mind.

1 Peter 3: 14-15 says this: “‘Do not fear what they fear; do not be frightened.’ But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord.” The alternative to fear is the presence of Christ in someone’s heart. Perfect love casts out all fear.

Let’s check and make sure the right thing is motivating us. Jesus wants us in the world, not running away from it. He knows it is dangerous, that’s why he prayed for our protection when he was here (John 17:15): “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.”

With Jesus in our hearts, and the Holy Spirit surrounding us, what else do we need?

“Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them… When Peter saw him, he asked, ‘Lord, what about him?’ Jesus answered, ‘If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me.'” (John 21:20-22)

There is a popular argument for not believing that Jesus is the only way to heaven. How could Jesus be the only way to heaven when not everyone on the planet has even heard about Jesus? Would a just and loving God condemn people to hell for the crime of growing up where they never heard about Jesus?

There is more than one approach to this question, but one of the most important is that introduced by the example of Jesus and Peter in the dialogue above. Peter is wondering how John was going to die, and Jesus says, “What is that to you? You must follow me.”

What about the guy who grows up a Buddhist and never hears about Jesus? The answer is the same: “What is that to you? You must follow me.”

One has to already know a good deal about Jesus to even be asking this question, and to use it as an excuse not to believe is ludicrous. That’s saying you are not going to be accountable to what you know about Jesus, or could find out if you tried, because there is a guy somewhere in the world who in your estimation can’t find out anything.

When Jesus said: “You follow me,” He was saying: “You follow what you know of me — what has been revealed to you. You are not responsible for what has been revealed to someone else; that is between my Father and that person.”

This also applies to our experience in life. When you want to compare your life to someone else’s — someone else has had it better or worse than you — guess what Jesus says. “What is that to you? You must follow me.”

God’s not mad anymore, so why are we?

We often speak of gratitude around Thanksgiving, but why not step into the righteousness of God all the time and be grateful (in awe… astonished…) not in ourselves, but for what we can see when we look from His perspective.

Gratitude is essential. It is seminal. It is impossible to avoid because the need for it is so great, rising out of the fact that nothing we have comes from us. If one piece of it were mine — one small portion, the result of my hard work, connections, earning power, or pedigree — then I would not need to give thanks for that. I would take it to myself because I deserved it. But that is not the case. All things come from God. The worst and the best are both from Him, and so they both call for us to give thanks.

“Always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Ephesians 5:20)

There is also a reduction principle to gratitude. It simplifies our lives. We are either worrying or giving thanks, complaining or giving thanks, conniving or giving thanks, stealing or giving thanks, lying or giving thanks, envying or giving thanks, lusting or giving thanks, cheating or giving thanks, blaming or giving thanks. See how much easier it is to just give thanks? Only one thing to think about.

Jesus at the home of a Pharisee

One of our readers commented that she liked this look at Jesus as a radical or a rebel. In saying this she implied that it was a new perspective, or at least one that she hadn’t considered before. I replied that the concept is certainly not new. Jesus has always been a radical and a rebel in the face of the ruling religious authorities (that’s why they killed Him) and the story has always been there in the Gospels for anyone to see. It’s just that when movements become structured and institutionalized they have the tendency of taking on the characteristics of the Pharisees and not of the founder. And with the “Pharisees” in charge, everything gets skewed to their perspective. So you’re not going to see the radical nature of Christ’s teaching advocated from the pulpits of our churches on a regular basis. That might upset too many people, make them feel uncomfortable or force them to change.

A mentor of mine used to teach us that any great movement in history always begins with a Man (it could be a woman, too, but for sake of alliteration…), then it turns into a Movement, then to a Machine, and finally, it becomes a Monument. I think this is the natural course of things in human nature. As movements become institutionalized (the Machine stage), they lose the radical nature of their founder. That’s why we need to continually go back to Jesus – the Jesus of the New Testament – and go back to what He said and did, and if that becomes difficult or hard to take or understand, we mustn’t just pass it off or pass it by. We must find out why. Why don’t we hear this part of Christ’s message, or why don’t we see these things exemplified in His followers and in our own lives? If something Jesus said or did makes us uncomfortable, that’s probably because it should. Preachers should make their congregations uncomfortable on a regular basis. If they’re not, you have to wonder if they are teaching the truth. Preachers should be making themselves uncomfortable for that matter, because the things Jesus said are hard to take, and even harder to do.

If you’re not following the founder you may be following a Pharisee. Leaders who are following the founder leave their own lives open on a regular basis, because the truth cuts them as deeply as it cuts everyone else.