Then Jesus called to the crowd to come and hear. “All of you listen,” he said, “and try to understand. It’s not what goes into your body that defiles you; you are defiled by what comes from your heart.”
Then Jesus went into a house to get away from the crowd, and his disciples asked him what he meant by the parable he had just used. “Don’t you understand either?” he asked. “Can’t you see that the food you put into your body cannot defile you? Food doesn’t go into your heart, but only passes through the stomach and then goes into the sewer.” (By saying this, he declared that every kind of food is acceptable in God’s eyes.)
And then he added, “It is what comes from inside that defiles you. For from within, out of a person’s heart, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, lustful desires, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. All these vile things come from within; they are what defile you.”
Rigid Fundamentalist
Most people use the word “fundamentalist” to mean a religious person with a narrow mind, a judgmental attitude toward others, and who is so extreme as to be completely out of touch with the real world. Since 9/11 many have added “physically violent” to the definition.
Jesus was none of these things. Yet what he said to the crowd, after verbally beating up the religious leaders for their rigid loyalty to tradition, suggests that Jesus was a rigid fundamentalist of his own kind. He refused to budge an inch on moral integrity. What God declares wrong cannot be changed by anyone, anywhere or anytime.
Jesus, acting as God with human skin on, does make one huge change.
Instead of making God’s moral standard less demanding, he takes it to a deeper lever by internalizing it. For example, murder is still wrong, but he calls us to focus on the anger issues inside ourselves.
To the consternation of those who feel self righteous because they have one or two of these sins banished from their actions, Jesus pierces the heart to reveal sin long before it leaps into visibility. No wonder pride is on his hit list. No one dare think him or herself better than anyone else on the planet.
As much as I reject religious fundamentalism, as popularly defined, today I’m forced to confront a “Jesus Fundamentalism.” Rather than refusing to define some things as sin, I must accept both his definition and his focus on the source of all sin. I must seek inward, heart cleansing. In other words, God must define my deepest loves, desires, and thoughts.
Pure and Holy God, I not only give you my body with its actions, but I give you my heart that rules my body by its loves, desires, and thoughts. Reign supremely in all my life that I would increasingly reflect your beauty. - Mike Leamon
Ugly Duck
ling RealityI’m not quite so vain as to think I am good looking, but I sure try hard to look good. I think I am at least average in my looks, not ugly by any means, unless you find a receding hairline ugly. All joking aside I have a pretty good self-image when it comes to my looks. I am comfortable with how I look and when I start feeling “fat” or out of shape, I try to do something about it so I can feel good about myself again.
I am constantly running into people who feel the same way about themselves spiritually. They think they are OK because they are not that bad, they don’t have any of those major flaws. In fact they probably feel pretty comfortable about where they stand with God based on what they do or don’t do.
The reality of our situation is completely different. Jesus throws out conventional wisdom. You can no longer judge the pot by how it looks on the outside. What happens under the exterior is where the truth lies. Inside each of us is a cacophony of evil screaming to be released. Evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, lustful desires, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness all come from within me.
I don’t like this picture of me at all. Thankfully, most of these voices have been muted by the grace of Christ in my life. But if for one minute I think they never existed I am fooling myself. Every one of us possessed these vices, albeit at differing degrees. I am humbled and amazed at God’s work in my life when I realize who I was, and still would be if God’s grace was not active in my life. Reality reveals ugliness on the inside, but God’s grace is transformative. He turns ugly ducklings into beautiful swans.
God of grace that transforms my ugliness into beauty thank you for the work of grace you have done in my life. Thank you for the promise of your continued transformative power in my life muting the voices of pride, envy, lust, anger, foolishness, evil thoughts, immorality, and deceit. I want to live in the power of your transforming grace every day. - Dan Jones
No comments:
Post a Comment