"To Him be glory forever": God's holiness

Showing posts with label God's holiness. Show all posts

Sunday, November 13, 2016

"You Shall Be Holy…"

The 2016 election for the President of the United States is over. Two major candidates. One won, and the other lost. Many Americans are relieved that the election itself is over. There were strong opinions on each side and I had the sense that whichever side a person was on there was the feeling that if their candidate won all would be well and if they lost it would about the worst disaster that ever befell these United States.

After the election I got involved in a discussion where I expressed the viewpoint that in my opinion each of the major party candidates was disqualified from serving as President on the basis of significant problems with their character. I felt their character faults were such that I could not vote for either one.

That opinion received a bit of "push back." How could I dare equate the character of these two candidates?

My response was to offer one example for one candidate and one example for the other. I said that it may be an "apples to oranges" comparison, but the result was the same, that their character faults were so severe that I could not vote for either one.

I know that there were a lot of people voting who held reservations about the person they were voting for. Their plan was to basically pinch their nose and vote for the lesser of two evils. I had considered that option earlier this summer but here is the thing: A vote for the lesser of two evils is still a vote for evil. And when I considered my vote that way I knew the "lesser of two evils" wouldn’t be an option for me.

And this is where I am actually thankful for the post-election conversation push-back, because it helped me to understand my position from a point-of-view shaped by the Bible.

The "lesser-of-two evils" argument makes a certain kind of practical sense. We use it when faced with two poor choices and there doesn’t appear to be any other way to go. And I will grant that the character faults I found in the two major party candidates may not have been any kind of big deal to many other voters. Over 60 million people voted for each one. Nonetheless, I knew that I, in good conscience, could not vote for either one.

As children of God we are not called to make choices solely based on their practicality. Instead, God calls His children to live with a completely different point-of-view, one grounded in who He is. In Leviticus 19:2 God says,

"You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy."

God doesn't suggest that we consider being holy. He commands that we who follow Him "be holy," and He commands it based on His own holiness. And that command shapes our choices and way of living beyond the practical thoughts of the here-and-now.

While it is a command of God, living on this side of heaven it is a command we can pursue but never fully achieve. Our world is fallen and saturated in sin. Every Christian will struggle with sin for as long as they draw breath. But the Good News is that in Jesus we can know the forgiveness of our sins, those times when we fail to make holy choices and live holy lives.

So let us be people who live with open eyes to the world around us and the choices that lie before us. Let us be people who seek to live in ways that reflect who God is and to shine His light into the world. And when we falter, let us seek the mercy and grace that only come at the hand of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Addendum: In a bit of irony I didn’t cast a vote for President last week. I had intended to write-in my vote, only to arrive at my polling place and learn that write-in votes are not allowed in New Mexico. There were eight candidates on the ballot. Besides the two major party candidates I was only familiar with three of the minor party candidates and since I wasn't going to vote for them either I left the presidential choice on my ballot empty.

Monday, May 20, 2013

A few random bits and pieces…

Spring has come to southeast Minnesota…

“The heavens declare the glory of God…”

“…and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

The fragments above have been circulating around in my mind most of the day. The first is a general observation about the changing of seasons where we live. The second is from the opening verse of Psalm 19 and the last is from Micah 6:8. And while I have been considering them over and over I can’t come up with enough from any of them to write what I would like to produce for a coherent blog post. So today I present a few random bits and pieces.

First of all, spring has come here, which for us is most evident by the blooming of the crab apple trees where we live. Whites and pinks, with a hint of red line, our driveway. It was a long winter and the warmth and new life are welcome.

Which leads me to the opening of Psalm 19. As the seasons change we have had some powerful weather recently, particularly last night. The heavens declared the glory of God through thunderstorms, which were relatively benign as we listened to them last night.

Yet, as I ran this morning, I saw farm fields that are way behind schedule that now have pools of standing water in them. They will be unplantable for at least another week. In other parts of the country those same storm systems spun off tornadoes that left much destruction in their wake.

As I edit and revise this post my wife just told me of death at two elementary schools in Oklahoma. My original sentence here was "The same storms that spur my praise of God also call me to ask Him to be merciful to those affected by the damage that accompanied them." but now I am at a loss for words. I know that God is good, all the time, and I pray that His goodness eventually becomes evident to those whose lives are reeling.

Which brings me to the verse from Micah, which was the concluding part of the devotional reading I did this morning, Micah 6:1-8. I have heard this verse a number of times and I have a vague memory of hearing it preached once. I can remember the preacher and I think he emphasized the justice/kindness piece. But I can’t remember if he said anything about what it means to “walk humbly” with God, and that is the part of the Bible reading that I have repeatedly pondered today.

Before we can “walk humbly” with God we have to first know who God truly is and we have to be in a saving relationship with Him. Any attempt to “walk humbly” with God that is absent a saving relationship with Him is a self-serving deception. But a relationship that is grounded in knowing our brokenness as sinners, and then being reconciled to God by faith through the saving work of Christ, is the place where humility with God can be authentic on our part.

I don’t know about you but if I had to come up with one word to describe God, one word to characterize the essence of God, it would be that God is holy. In order for me to “walk humbly” with God I need to remember, again and again, that He is holy, that He is God, and that I am not.

And that last thought, about God being holy, brings me to my last random thought, which is a certain David Crowder song that has also been floating through my mind during the day, After All (Holy). The song reminds me that God’s holiness points me to His glory. Here is a link to the lyrics.

Thanks for reading. May some of your random thoughts today point you to God, the one true God, whose holiness and glory are without end. Amen.

Monday, September 3, 2012

A thought about prayer

“DearandholyGodwethankyouforthisdayandforthisfoodamen”

That sentence, from time to time, is our youngest daughter’s default prayer. She uses it at mealtime and she uses it at bedtime. She uses it when prayer is something that stands in the way of something else. She uses it at mealtime when there is something particularly appealing to her appetite. She uses is at bedtime when we have finished reading the Bible and invite her to pray first and she isn’t particularly inclined to.

We have prayed with her at bedtime since the day she came to live with us, when she was two years old. Our habit has been to read from the Bible and then for Robin and I to pray aloud. At some point, fairly early on, maybe when she was three, she decided that she could pray too.

So we let her. We didn’t give her much guidance. She just seemed to follow along the lines of how we prayed with her, thanking God for various things in her life, or the activities of her day, and/or praying for people who were important to her. That could be a set of cousins one night and her grandparents the next.

In the last year we’ve taught her the Lord’s Prayer, which she sometimes uses as a transition in prayer from her turn to one of her parents. And sometimes we, and God, hear the run-on sentence prayer above.

Our children, all of them, are not really ours but God’s, given to us to raise for a time. We can shape them in some ways while they are home and young and less so as they grow and strike out on their own. We feel this most acutely with our youngest, who came to us through God’s unsolicited invitation to adopt, but it is true of them all. That was the perspective that allowed a sense of peace while the oldest was in Iraq with a Marine unit in 2007. Worry could have dominated our emotions then but we were in a better place praying for his well-being and trusting that whatever happened God was always in control.

In Luke 11:1 the disciples have observed Jesus in prayer and then ask,

“Lord, teach is to pray, as John taught his disciples.”

Jesus then proceeds to teach his disciples the Lord’s Prayer. And in a similar vein we are teaching our youngest to pray. We pray with her at meals and at bedtime. We pray with her at times during the day when it seems to be the right thing to do, such as when we realize we have been mean to someone and need to seek forgiveness, or when we hear the hospital helicopter fly over our house. She knows that her mother and I pray together each day and that we also have our own quiet time with God.

While we are not fond of her run-on sentence prayer and are gently trying to teach her that it shows that her heart is not in her prayer, it is not a prayer that is completely without merit. She is learning that God is holy and that God is to be thanked. So we will continue to teach her to pray, knowing that in the process God is still teaching us to pray as well.