An Open Letter to the Church from a Lesbian

  An Open Letter to the Church from a Lesbian

"You are willing to compromise the word of God to be politically correct. We are not deceived. If we accept your willingness to compromise, then we must also compromise...We do not ask for your acceptance of our sins any more than we accept yours. We simply ask for the same support, love, guidance, and most of all hope that is given to the rest of your congregation. We are your brothers and sisters in Christ. We are not what we shall be, but thank God, we are not what we were. Let us work together to see that we all arrive safely home."

CCEF: Holding Out for a Better Offer

"Discontentment reigns today. As a general rule, the more options, the less contentment, and the less contentment, the more people we will hurt. What a gift that the word of God reveals a different way to live.  When we say “yes” we are led in freedom, not bondage. Our “yes” becomes the will of God for us, and when we know we are living as our Father intends, life is good...There is freedom and contentment in not holding out for a better offer."   This is such a great article by Ed Welch, one I was both encouraged and challenged by!  

click HERE to read the rest of Welch's article

Lecrae: Hope When Life is Hard

When asked about the biblical promise he turns to most, Lecrae responds with:

"The biblical promise that I turn to most is that all things work together for the good of those who love God and are called by him (Romans 8:28). I have to lean on the reality that even if it doesn’t look good to me, or feel good to me, God is ultimately being glorified. And in the end, even if it’s not until I am in heaven, it will work out to my benefit. Even if I don’t realize it until heaven, it will work out for my benefit.

I lean on that because life is difficult. Life is hard. It’s complicated. It’s not peachy keen, as a lot of people would like to make it seem. It takes a lot of leaning on the hope that is in Jesus. Without that hope we are just left to go insane, to be at our wit’s end. So this is the promise I hold to."

McDonald's Fries and Idolatry

When I see movies or commercials, read books, listen to the radio, etc., I like to ask the following:  What is this telling me about God and myself?  I have my mom to thank for this.  For as long as I can remember, she would always ask me and my sibling what a particular movie or book was communicating to us about God and man.  At the time it drove me crazy!  I wanted to watch my movies and enjoy my books without having to examine the underlying message.  Now, however, I am grateful that my mom established this habit, for the older I get, the more I realize that no words are neutral.  Words have meaning and therefore possess the power to influence by conveying attitudes, opinions, convictions and worldview.  Simply put, everything has a message.     

That being said, I’m not a huge fan of comedian Jim Gaffigan.  He can be crude and I don’t believe he’s as witty as say, Tim Hawkins or Brian Regan.  I was recently shocked, however, by a portion of Gaffigan’s act, whereby his rave on McDonalds turned into quite the lesson on our human condition.  Indeed, this particular act was deeply theological in nature.  According to Jim Gaffigan, many of us live in “McDonald's denial”—we realize McDonald's is terrible for us, and yet we keep going back for more.  As I listened to Gaffigan mock the individuals, including himself, who return again and again to the golden arches, I was struck by the profundity of his comments, for at the core of Gaffigan’s act was this message: We all worship something.  Gaffigan spoke about McDonald’s fries in a manner that eerily resembled idolatry.  In fact, Jim Gaffigan offered amazing insight into the nature of idolatry, and all without ever once mentioning the words “sin” or “idol”:  

“I think everyone’s lying.”  Me too.  If we know that 6 billion burgers are sold and only a fraction of people are admitting to purchasing these burgers, then most people clearly aren’t telling the truth.   Either they’re reducing the number of burgers they claim to have purchased or they are denying purchasing them altogether.  So if McDonald's is comparable to sin, as I am suggesting in this example, how many of us are lying about our sins or idols?  Maybe you and I refuse to acknowledge and confess our sins in full detail, ashamed that we think or act or speak as we do. Perhaps we have tried to cut back on McDonald's and perhaps we have tried to withstand our sins.  Perhaps these attempts have been futile, and realizing our inability to say no, we feel shame.  Maybe we can’t give up our idols and thus realize that we don’t own them.  Rather, they own us, and we are enslaved to them! This bondage is a source of shame, and perhaps that is why we lie.  Perhaps we don’t want to admit we’re really that weak. 

 “Have you ever eaten too many McDonald's fries? Of course not!  There’s never enough of them!”  Isn’t it the exact same way with our sin?  Sin promises to satisfy our needs and cravings, yet it never does!  In fact, we are so hooked on our sin that we go in search of meager “fry crumbs,” scanty pleasures to fill our gnawing hunger and deep longings.

But what happens when we finally obtain our craved and sought-after fries?  Jim Gaffigan tells us: “Those fries are amaaaaazing.  For what? Like seven minutes?  And then they turn into something that’s most likely not biodegradable.”  Once again, doesn’t sin play out in a strikingly similar fashion?  We find only momentary satisfaction in our sin.  Seven minutes in this case!  What is more, we do not return to our pre-McDonald's state.  Rather, we find ourselves worse off than we were originally: Whereas we once simply craved these things—either fries or idols—now we carry the non-biodegradable effects with us.  We walk away from these encounters with something that cannot be broken down and has the potential to destroy life if allowed to accumulate. Isn’t this what our idols do?  

How about leftovers?  Jim Gaffigan asks his audience how many of them have tried to reheat their fries. These reheated fries “aren’t even good anymore,”

and yet according to Gaffigan, it “doesn’t stop you from eating them!”  Isn’t this the definition of insanity, eating something that has lost all appetitive value?  Don’t you and I do the same thing with sin?  We keep returning to our sins, knowing they won’t satisfy, and yet nevertheless hoping that this time they will.  It’s insanity, repeatedly doing the same thing and expecting different results.  It just ain’t gonna happen.         

“We know those McDonald’s commercials aren’t realistic. I’d just like to see one commercial that shows people five minutes after they ate McDonald's.”  Wouldn’t we all?  But of course those commercials aren’t realistic!  They were created to entice you and I, to draw us in.  Sin does the same: it lies. Sin adorns itself with all the false trappings of peace, joy, pleasure, and fulfillment, but all of these are only a thin masking for the ugly evil lurking beneath. And just like commercials, our idols will not show us the deep consequences and complications resulting from out sin until we have tasted and bought the lie.  So why do we believe these lies? I don’t think it’s solely because we are the victims of malicious schemes.  That is indeed one portion of the issue, for we are under attack (Ephesians 6:12) and Satan does indeed disguise himself as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14).  I believe, however, that much of it stems from the fact that we see what we want to see—we want to believe those fries are really that tasty, or that those burger buns are really that light and fluffy (as opposed to the squished, soggy, lop-sided buns we actually receive in the drive-thru).  We want the lie to be true! Likewise, we want to believe our idols will come through.  Our idols ensnare us by making false promises, yet we keep returning in the hopes that some day, those promises will become reality.  They never do.  Ever.   So I think it’s safe to say that the root of all sin and all idolatries can be traced back to belief in a lie.  Just go back and read what happened with Eve in the garden!  What lie did she believe?  What lies am I believing? 

“They get us in there….some of those deals they offer are just cruel!”  Fast food sure is enticing.  It lures us in, just like sin.  We are offered satisfaction at a bargain we cannot seem to resist.  And what happens next?  We become gluttons and gorge ourselves.   And who can honestly say they feel satisfied and content after such a gorging?  No one.  We feel sick, both physically disgusting and emotionally disgusted.  And so our idols may appear beautiful and desireable, but they are only bitter in memory.  Sin’s pleasure is only for a season, for by nature sin enslaves, entraps, destroys and kills, leaving us with heartache, sorrow and suffering.

And finally, here is what I found the most profound: “I have friends that brag about not going to McDonald's...I’m tired of people acting like they’re better than McDonald's.  It’s like, you may have never set foot in McDonald’s, but you have your own McDonald's.  Maybe instead of buying a Big Mac you read Us Weekly.  Hey, that’s still McDonald's!  It’s just served up a little different.  Maybe your McDonald's is telling yourself that Starbucks Frappuccino is not a milkshake.  Or maybe you watch Glee. It’s all McDonald's, McDonald's of the soul: momentary pleasure followed by incredible guilt eventually leading to cancer...We all have our own. We all have our own McDonald's….” Wow.  Jim Gaffigan hit the nail on the head with this one.   Those words are haunting. What is the McDonald's of my soul?  What is my idol?  What is it that I turn towards for my pleasure,  satisfaction, comfort and identity?  In what or in whom do I find my joy?  Is it Christ alone, or Christ substitutes?  And then there’s cancer.  It’s a silent killer.  Too often it goes undetected, only to be discovered once it is too late.  So I must ask myself this, what seemingly harmless idol am I feeding that will soon rear its ugly head?  What cancerous idol am I allowing to rule my life?     

Human beings—you and I—were created to worship.  The only question is, who or what do we worship?  Do we worship God or God substitutes?  If I am not worshipping God, it does not necessarily mean I am bowing down to the image I carved from the old tree in my yard. An idol can be anything or anyone in whom I place ultimate concern, value, allegiance, etc. My idols, then, are anything apart from Christ in which I place my hope and trust and identity. Idolatry, therefore, can just as much be—if not more so—an affair of the heart.  We are prone to wander, prone to leave the God we love.  But as believers, you and I have been granted an incredible gift of life and hope and freedom in Christ:

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.

 (Hebrews 2:14-15)

 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions.  Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.  For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.  We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin.  Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.  We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.  For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God.  So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

(Romans 6:5-14)

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

(Romans 8:1-4)

“What you treasure will ultimately require you die for it, but Jesus is the only treasure that died for you.” 

–Tim Keller

Click HERE to watch Tim Keller on: What is idolatry?