I have a confession to make as a recovering legalist.
It's pretty ugly.
Much worse than smoking an occasional cigar or pipe.
It's even worse than admitting to listening to NPR from time to time. Just FYI, a friend recommended "NPR Tiny Desks Concerts" to me. You should Youtube it after reading this post. It will make your Monday morning.
But this is something that many legalist will identify with.
We love to watch leaders fall.
Not just any leaders.
We hate to see our spiritual leaders fall. That's a black eye for us. Then we get lumped in with the rest of the world's opinion about Christians being hypocritical. We don't want to admit that we are as bad as the rest of the world.
But when a secular leader falls, boy that feels awfully good.
Do you feel this way? Hopefully not, but if you are a recovering legalist like me, this might describe you.
Do you like it when the people with the power fall?
When your boss screws up? Or when the CEO of a company is fired for something wrong?
We love their misfortune or (better yet) their deserved demise.
This is when the self-righteous can stick out their chests and strut around prouder than a peacock. Which if a peacock has ever tried to mate with you, you know that's pretty proud. Not that I speak from experience...
The legalist can say, "You see there's no hope in them." Or "They are all the same. Every person in power is a womanizer, drunk, greedy..." It makes us feel better to be morally superior to the positionally superior.
David Petraeus is a perfect example.
Here was one of the world's most powerful military leaders and spies of our time. When your resume includes Jason Bourne and James Bond like attributes, you are man not to be messed with. He could have taken on the man who trained Batman himself, Liam Neeson. He probably played Words with Friends with Chuck Norris. And he messed up big time.
Part of me enjoys this.
I find myself flipping to Fox News to find out the latest gossip like a baptist on the phone after a deacons meeting to hear the latest "prayer request". His moral failure makes me feel superior to him. Because let's be honest, while he may have power at least I have been able keep my pants up around other women so far.
I can be such a tool.
That's when Jesus reminds me that he isn't through with David Patreaus yet.
You see there once was another military leader named David. This David was far worse than David Patreaus. He too was an adulterer. The woman he committed a sin with wasn't his biographer, but another man's wife. The woman's husband was one of David's own special ops men. One of his 30 lean mean killing machines. But as always, our sin gives birth to something else and she became pregnant. Isn't it amazing how sex can do exactly what it was created to do? And we think we can outsmart creation? David tried to cover his sin by getting the Navy Seal to sleep with his wife, but the man had integrity and didn't. So David did what anybody with CIA power would do. He covered up his mistake. He whacked him.
And amazingly God wasn't through with David yet!
Was David rebuked? Yes!
Were there consequences for David's sin? Certainly!
Even though David fell, God wasn't through with him. Because God is about relationships not rules.
Do we know better than God? Sometimes, we act like we do.
Why is it that when our government leaders fall, we are through with them? Why did God find David worth redeeming, but we can't forgive Patreaus? Why did God decide to use Moses and Paul after their mistakes, but we still view President Clinton as a sleaze ball? I refused to vote for Newt Gingrich in the GOP primaries. Why? Because I have moral fiber (or I'm self-righteous) and said that if you can't trust a man with his wife, then you can't trust him with a country. God, however, didn't feel this way when it came to David.
You know what my favorite part about the David and Bathsheba story is?
God redeemed David and Bathsheba's relationship. It was Bathsheba's next child that would one day rule Israel. Even more astoundingly, God showed his love and favor for David and Bathsheba by choosing them to be a part of the lineage of His very son, Jesus. Astounding!
Christian, our righteousness isn't found in our deeds. Our righteousness is found only in Christ. In a Christ who doesn't want to rule over you, but have a relationship with you.
So with that confession, I have to say that God isn't through with David Patreaus. And even better for you and me, he isn't through with us yet. He has a lot of work to do, but he has found us worth it.
Question:
Any recovering legalist have any confessions?
Showing posts with label Recovering Legalist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Recovering Legalist. Show all posts
November 19, 2012
October 29, 2012
The Sequel: Unsinning with Cigars
Here's a follow up from Unsinning with Cigars:
Last weekend, my family had dinner with our best friends. He grilled us dove, which was delicious (I don't know how Jesus kept from eating the dove that descended upon him). After we ate sweet helpless dark meat wrapped in...wait for it...bacon, my buddy and I retired to the back porch to smoke a pipe. I gave up the occasional cigar since my taste buds felt like I licked a chimney the next day. That and the chest hair growing due to my manliness was scaring little kids.
So now I smoke the occasional pipe. By occasional, I mean not often.
My buddy had never smoked a pipe and I wanted to corrupt him. Recovering legalists love good company. We were far from pros. He isn't the best person to smoke with since he is hilarious. Which would normally be a plus, unless you are smoking something that you don't inhale into your lungs.
My daughters would come back and forth to the window and watch. At times my five year old would almost cry while she watched and then at other times she would joke with me. She didn't quite know what to say.
Somewhere along her five short years, she picked up that smoking and drinking beer are things you do with Satan. We haven't taught her that, maybe it's in her DNA (she has a lot of SBC in her blood). She will see someone drinking a beer at a restaurant and she'll whisper and point, "They are drinking beer." Just the word seems to be a sin. Maybe offspring of a legalist have a greater chance of becoming one themselves.
Once we got home she told me, "Dad, if you're going to smoke, then you have to get a tattoo!" Don't worry, that's not coming. It's not that it's wrong. It's just tattoos don't look good on a pale, scrawny white man who favor a question mark.
I intentionally attempt to live out the gospel as best as I can in front of my children. I'm far from perfect. But one gift I want to give them is the gift of freedom that comes along with being obedient to Christ. So smoking an occasional pipe isn't something that I should hide from them. If I have to hide it, then I shouldn't be doing it. Christian, if there is something that you have to do in secret, then it's probably a sin or a heart issue.
But I did make a huge mistake. My timing was way off.
Two days later started Red Ribbon Week.
For the layman out there "Red Ribbon Week" is a week that schools encourage students not to smoke, drink, or do drugs (throw sex in there and the church would participate as well). For parents, you know it's a crazy week of extra special dress up days.
The week we get our students pumped up about not smoking is when I chose to smoke in front of my kids. I have a preschooler and a kindergartener in the school where I teach. All week I've gotten mini-lectures about my terrible habit:
"Did you know that you can get very sick from smoking?"
"You know you're going to have to sleep in a chair at night because the smoking causes you to cough so bad."
"Daddy, did you know that tobacco has 40 calories?"
When the topic of smoking came up, I'm certain that Chloe Cupcake's and Ellie Grace's hands go up and at a sonic boom breaking the sound barrier they inform everyone that Daddy smokes (and Uncle Les)!Nothing like having four and five year olds judging me. One threw a pickle at me and another told me my lungs were going to rot out.
It's hard being a recovering legalist, but at least I don't have to hide it.
Do you ever hide things from others that aren't wrong?
Last weekend, my family had dinner with our best friends. He grilled us dove, which was delicious (I don't know how Jesus kept from eating the dove that descended upon him). After we ate sweet helpless dark meat wrapped in...wait for it...bacon, my buddy and I retired to the back porch to smoke a pipe. I gave up the occasional cigar since my taste buds felt like I licked a chimney the next day. That and the chest hair growing due to my manliness was scaring little kids.
So now I smoke the occasional pipe. By occasional, I mean not often.
My buddy had never smoked a pipe and I wanted to corrupt him. Recovering legalists love good company. We were far from pros. He isn't the best person to smoke with since he is hilarious. Which would normally be a plus, unless you are smoking something that you don't inhale into your lungs.
My daughters would come back and forth to the window and watch. At times my five year old would almost cry while she watched and then at other times she would joke with me. She didn't quite know what to say.
Somewhere along her five short years, she picked up that smoking and drinking beer are things you do with Satan. We haven't taught her that, maybe it's in her DNA (she has a lot of SBC in her blood). She will see someone drinking a beer at a restaurant and she'll whisper and point, "They are drinking beer." Just the word seems to be a sin. Maybe offspring of a legalist have a greater chance of becoming one themselves.
Once we got home she told me, "Dad, if you're going to smoke, then you have to get a tattoo!" Don't worry, that's not coming. It's not that it's wrong. It's just tattoos don't look good on a pale, scrawny white man who favor a question mark.
I intentionally attempt to live out the gospel as best as I can in front of my children. I'm far from perfect. But one gift I want to give them is the gift of freedom that comes along with being obedient to Christ. So smoking an occasional pipe isn't something that I should hide from them. If I have to hide it, then I shouldn't be doing it. Christian, if there is something that you have to do in secret, then it's probably a sin or a heart issue.
But I did make a huge mistake. My timing was way off.
Two days later started Red Ribbon Week.
For the layman out there "Red Ribbon Week" is a week that schools encourage students not to smoke, drink, or do drugs (throw sex in there and the church would participate as well). For parents, you know it's a crazy week of extra special dress up days.
The week we get our students pumped up about not smoking is when I chose to smoke in front of my kids. I have a preschooler and a kindergartener in the school where I teach. All week I've gotten mini-lectures about my terrible habit:
"Did you know that you can get very sick from smoking?"
"You know you're going to have to sleep in a chair at night because the smoking causes you to cough so bad."
"Daddy, did you know that tobacco has 40 calories?"
When the topic of smoking came up, I'm certain that Chloe Cupcake's and Ellie Grace's hands go up and at a sonic boom breaking the sound barrier they inform everyone that Daddy smokes (and Uncle Les)!Nothing like having four and five year olds judging me. One threw a pickle at me and another told me my lungs were going to rot out.
It's hard being a recovering legalist, but at least I don't have to hide it.
Do you ever hide things from others that aren't wrong?
October 16, 2012
Unsinning with Cigars
I grew up in a godly household where my parents weren't overbearing with Christianity, even though my dad is a pastor and in my teenage years I claimed a relationship with Christ for myself. However, somewhere, somehow, I picked up that if I could please God with my behavior it made him love me more. It must have been when I memorized Leviticus word for word. Which is just great because anytime I see someone who isn't as righteous as me getting blessed or I don't get my way, I get a little angry at God.
I hate being this way.
I'm such a legalist and would often find myself boasting in myself about what I had never done. For instance, I never had tasted alcohol. Well correction, I tried one sip of Wild Turkey in 8th grade and never had another sip of alcohol until this year! I'm such a legalist that on my honeymoon where drinks were free and plentiful, I made my new bride check it first for alcohol because I was a seminary student and had signed an Ethos statement saying I wouldn't drink the devil's drink. Seriously, how sad is that? But how awesome is my lady to be my cup bearer?
So with that I'm confessing: I'm a recovering legalist.
I'm going to warn you if you are a legalist, you might not like this too much. In fact, I might even disappoint you a little. A few years ago it would have infuriated me. But that's okay, because with being a recovering legalist comes the responsibility of doing things that before I would have snubbed my nose at and thought people to be less holy than me. Things that I found I could boast and be prideful in myself, instead of boasting in Jesus and the amount of love I have for others.
So with that you get to enjoy a story from a recovering legalist.
My favorite thing to do to fight off my legalism (besides praying of course) is to smoke a cigar from time to time.
My first true experience was nothing short of epic.
I was visiting a close friend in Pennsylvania. He took me to a cigar smoke shop. You know one of those classy joints with leather couches and big flat LCD TVs paid for by expensive cigars. He chose three, so I chose three. His wife told him to take it easy on me before we left. I'm much more manly than he is, so I knew I had this.
We sat around a table talking about all the church's problems and methodology centering around the ancient oratory art of sermon giving. He smoked a cigar. I smoked half a cigar and I liked it...a lot. He lit another cigar. So even though I was only half finished, I lit another cigar. I smoked a fourth of that cigar and my friend started his third one. He made it look easy and artful. Me...well, not so much.
In the middle of our discussion, all the sudden I felt the room start spinning.
"I think I'm going to be sick."
He asked, "You need a break?"
"No, I need to go outside."
I stumbled out of the room leaving my dignity behind and made it to the grass next to the building before I threw up my lunch. My ego took a big hit there, but that's good for a recovering legalist.
My friend had made it out just in time to see me spew.
We sat by a bench (actually, I laid out on a bench) with him mocking me by still puffing on his third cigar. Even doing something manly like smoking cigars ends with me doing something girly like sun bathing. I felt much better, but then the nausea hit me again. I got up and gave the cigar shop some modern art on their lawn and this time, I really lost my lunch. The entire time, my friend is laughing at me like a good friend should in that moment. But I'm laughing back at him giving him thumbs up. It's the only time I ever remember laughing while I threw up, but I knew I was in the midst of something special.
I returned to the bench when all the sudden my belly started rumbling. My friend let me know that it can cause a disturbance down in the south of your body as well, if you know what I'm saying. So I'll skip that part for your sake.
It's about this time that I realize that if we don't hurry, I'm going to miss my flight back to my old Kentucky home. We were in a small commuter town in between Philly and New York City, and the commuter traffic was heavy, so my friend was showing me his best NASCAR skills to speed things up. We were at a stop light turning left with cars surrounding us, when he started talking about my epic hurl. To which I replied, "Like this?" and opened the door and proceed to ralph out the door. God loves me so much that he made sure the light turned green. So here I am, my head out the door and throwing up with rush hour traffic all around. My friend has to start driving at this point and cars are swerving to miss what I just shared with everyone. He asked if I needed to pull over to which I pointed with my thumb to pull off the road, but he thought I was giving him a thumbs up and kept going, which only made turn a darker shade of green.
We made it back to the house and my stomach finally settled. But I learned a something that day as a recovering legalists, not taking yourself so seriously is a good thing.
Why?
Because I'm tired of thinking I'm better than everyone else when I'm not.
I'm tired of being a self-righteous prick. And do you know who Jesus disliked the most in his day? The self-righteous pricks called the Pharisees.They loved to snub their noses at others and even Jesus for being less holy.
I'm tired of feeling like I can earn God's love and manipulate him into doing what I want him to do by keeping a checklist.
I'm tired of losing myself because of myself.
Big huge disclaimer here: I'm not suggesting that anyone do as I'm doing and I definitely will not knowingly do something that is contrary to God's word. I struggled with this post, just because I don't want you to think you have a licenses to sin, because that definitely isn't the case. Nor do I think smoking cigars is a sin if you 18 and are out on your own. But this helps me to know where my righteousness comes from and it's not from my works, but the grace found in Jesus.
Question:
Are there any recovering legalist out there?
I hate being this way.
I'm such a legalist and would often find myself boasting in myself about what I had never done. For instance, I never had tasted alcohol. Well correction, I tried one sip of Wild Turkey in 8th grade and never had another sip of alcohol until this year! I'm such a legalist that on my honeymoon where drinks were free and plentiful, I made my new bride check it first for alcohol because I was a seminary student and had signed an Ethos statement saying I wouldn't drink the devil's drink. Seriously, how sad is that? But how awesome is my lady to be my cup bearer?
So with that I'm confessing: I'm a recovering legalist.
I'm going to warn you if you are a legalist, you might not like this too much. In fact, I might even disappoint you a little. A few years ago it would have infuriated me. But that's okay, because with being a recovering legalist comes the responsibility of doing things that before I would have snubbed my nose at and thought people to be less holy than me. Things that I found I could boast and be prideful in myself, instead of boasting in Jesus and the amount of love I have for others.
So with that you get to enjoy a story from a recovering legalist.
My favorite thing to do to fight off my legalism (besides praying of course) is to smoke a cigar from time to time.
My first true experience was nothing short of epic.
I was visiting a close friend in Pennsylvania. He took me to a cigar smoke shop. You know one of those classy joints with leather couches and big flat LCD TVs paid for by expensive cigars. He chose three, so I chose three. His wife told him to take it easy on me before we left. I'm much more manly than he is, so I knew I had this.
We sat around a table talking about all the church's problems and methodology centering around the ancient oratory art of sermon giving. He smoked a cigar. I smoked half a cigar and I liked it...a lot. He lit another cigar. So even though I was only half finished, I lit another cigar. I smoked a fourth of that cigar and my friend started his third one. He made it look easy and artful. Me...well, not so much.
In the middle of our discussion, all the sudden I felt the room start spinning.
"I think I'm going to be sick."
He asked, "You need a break?"
"No, I need to go outside."
I stumbled out of the room leaving my dignity behind and made it to the grass next to the building before I threw up my lunch. My ego took a big hit there, but that's good for a recovering legalist.
My friend had made it out just in time to see me spew.
We sat by a bench (actually, I laid out on a bench) with him mocking me by still puffing on his third cigar. Even doing something manly like smoking cigars ends with me doing something girly like sun bathing. I felt much better, but then the nausea hit me again. I got up and gave the cigar shop some modern art on their lawn and this time, I really lost my lunch. The entire time, my friend is laughing at me like a good friend should in that moment. But I'm laughing back at him giving him thumbs up. It's the only time I ever remember laughing while I threw up, but I knew I was in the midst of something special.
I returned to the bench when all the sudden my belly started rumbling. My friend let me know that it can cause a disturbance down in the south of your body as well, if you know what I'm saying. So I'll skip that part for your sake.
It's about this time that I realize that if we don't hurry, I'm going to miss my flight back to my old Kentucky home. We were in a small commuter town in between Philly and New York City, and the commuter traffic was heavy, so my friend was showing me his best NASCAR skills to speed things up. We were at a stop light turning left with cars surrounding us, when he started talking about my epic hurl. To which I replied, "Like this?" and opened the door and proceed to ralph out the door. God loves me so much that he made sure the light turned green. So here I am, my head out the door and throwing up with rush hour traffic all around. My friend has to start driving at this point and cars are swerving to miss what I just shared with everyone. He asked if I needed to pull over to which I pointed with my thumb to pull off the road, but he thought I was giving him a thumbs up and kept going, which only made turn a darker shade of green.
We made it back to the house and my stomach finally settled. But I learned a something that day as a recovering legalists, not taking yourself so seriously is a good thing.
Why?
Because I'm tired of thinking I'm better than everyone else when I'm not.
I'm tired of being a self-righteous prick. And do you know who Jesus disliked the most in his day? The self-righteous pricks called the Pharisees.They loved to snub their noses at others and even Jesus for being less holy.
I'm tired of feeling like I can earn God's love and manipulate him into doing what I want him to do by keeping a checklist.
I'm tired of losing myself because of myself.
Big huge disclaimer here: I'm not suggesting that anyone do as I'm doing and I definitely will not knowingly do something that is contrary to God's word. I struggled with this post, just because I don't want you to think you have a licenses to sin, because that definitely isn't the case. Nor do I think smoking cigars is a sin if you 18 and are out on your own. But this helps me to know where my righteousness comes from and it's not from my works, but the grace found in Jesus.
Question:
Are there any recovering legalist out there?
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