May 06, 2013
Hard Stuff
I cringe when I hear
someone speak the truth of the WORD, followed by an apologetic caveat, “This is hard stuff. This is one of those
teachings in the Bible that is just hard.” No doubt the sentiment is meant
to convey empathy, but what many hear is, ‘I know you may struggle with what
the Bible tells you to do, but just do the best that you can.’ I’m reminded of Jesus
teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum when the topic was eating the flesh and
drinking the blood of the Son of Man. “On
hearing it, many of his disciples said, ‘This is a hard teaching. Who can
accept it?’” (John 6:60 NIV) Sadly, this was a turning-back moment for many
of Jesus’ disciples. If the Scriptures were difficult to understand, accept and
apply, Jesus would not have asked us to take his yoke and learn, “For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
(Matt 11:30 NIV)
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----Much of what makes stuff hard to understand is its difficulty to do. Not its physical difficulty, like lifting a boulder, but its spiritual difficulty, like lifting your mind from that sexy thing next door, or from that nightly bowl of ice cream before bed-time. That is why I like to say the best classroom for learning the Bible is the sidewalk. What I mean is that if you want to know what it means, then go do what it says, just because it says it, whether or not you want to do it. The feelings and thoughts reverberating within you after such doing settle into more truthful patterns within the heart inclined to the right, and are spun into more deceitful ones within the heart inclined to the left. It sorts out itself within you by your allowance and obedience.
-----This sorting we all do not do so well. That’s because we are not the Sorter, though we try to be. But how can we be? A sorter must know what criteria sorts to the left and what sorts to the right before it can sort anything either way. If we are learning the criteria, we can sort some, but we can not sort all. And although we do learn well to sort on a general basis, we sort only some of our more recurring particulars well, leaving the overwhelming majority of particulars regarding ourselves, others, or the Word of God unlearned, and therefore, being to us either total unknowns or crude surmises. Then many things in the Bible indeed are hard stuff, from seemingly inconsequential trivia, like whom Danel of Ezekiel 14:14,20 and 28:3 (properly rendered from the Hebrew) might be and how he might tie in to the rest of the Bible and why such tie-in might be important, to Jesus verifying that not all men can receive a saying (Matt. 19:11,) to Paul’s proclamation that it is better to remain unmarried, but since most can’t, then marry (I Cor 7.) As is its bent, Ecclesiastes makes easier sense of the conundrum, saying, “In my vain life I have seen everything; there is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his evil-doing. Be not righteous overmuch, and do not make yourself overwise; why should you destroy yourself? Be not wicked overmuch, neither be a fool; why should you die before your time? It is good that you should take hold of this, and from that withhold not your hand; for he who fears God shall come forth from them all.” (Eccl 7:15-18) We are the sortees more than we are the sorters. Those who sort-out to the right, by nature of what they’re found to be eventually understand the Word as God means it to be, regardless of its difficulty. Those who sort to the left make their own graffiti of it, if they receive it at all, because of its difficulty.
-----Nor is the sorting finished until our breathing is finished. Therefore, even those of us found to be of the spiritual right will go to the grave knowing some of God’s incredible Word to be hard stuff. What is important here is not that some of it is hard, but that as much of ourselves as we can currently give to it is soft. Maybe the impressions it then leaves upon us will become understanding as we observe them effect how we maneuver upon life’s sidewalks.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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