Honest Work

Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. (Ephesians 4.28-29)

We hear a lot about the “social safety net.” I genuinely believe the vast majority of us agree we need it, as most are wise enough to understand that we as a nation would be in far worse shape without it. Deciding who’s entitled to support is where the conversation unravels. These programs cost a lot of money—funds taken from us in taxes and essentially redistributed without our consent. And because it’s our money, we want to feel confident those who receive financial support are legitimately in need and not playing the system. It’s a fair expectation.

What’s not fair—what should be patently unacceptable to every believer—is the presumption that a large portion of the net’s beneficiaries is comprised of lazy people who’d rather “steal” from the system than find work. The stereotypes we often hear—“welfare queens” and “leeches”—don’t come from nowhere. We know these species exist. Yet when we paste such labels on those who rely on government provision to survive, not only do we defeat the net’s purpose. We give poverty a foul name. And as people who worship a God Who chose poverty as a way of life, we are highly aware that relying on common kindness (as Jesus did) is no slur on one’s dignity and worth. Second Corinthians 8.9 reminds us, “Though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor.” It should distress us greatly when believers promote ideologies that slander the destitute and dependent as thieves. “Get a job!” is their panacea to poverty—a facile answer that disregards many impediments to gainful employment: availability of work, deficient experience and education, childcare and health issues, transportation, criminal record, and so on. (And McDonald’s isn’t the answer.)

Ephesians 4.28 is a favorite for many Christians in defense of their simplistic go-to-work stance. Yet if we look at it clearly, it’s evident they’ve got it backwards. First, it’s written to the Church; it’s not a social policy statement. And it’s about actual thievery, not sloth or abusing kindness. Most of all, why does the writer urge us to find honest work? So we may have “have something to share with the needy”! This passage validates the social safety net, without any mention of who “deserves” to benefit from the fruits of our labor. (And frequently—conveniently—the expectation that we share what we earn with the poor gets amputated from the quote.) The writer goes on to caution us about we say, telling us, “Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up.” (v29) If our thoughts and words about the poor aren’t constructive, we’re out of line.

When we vote for candidates who endorse policies that deprive the poor, we add our voices to cynics who would rather compound the sufferings of the needy than part with a buck. We have quit our calling to build up, and joined ranks with believers and non-believers intent on tearing down. Working only for our benefit—demanding that those who don’t enjoy advantages we’ve been given do likewise—is how honest work becomes dishonest.

Sold Out

Do not exult as other nations do; for you have played the whore, departing from your God. You have loved a prostitute’s pay on all threshing floors. (Hosea 9.1)

How did we not see the Great Recession of 2007 coming? Long before millions of Americans lost their jobs and homes and savings, economists warned that the bubble would one day burst. Yet we spent and borrowed like there was no tomorrow. As a nation, we pursued high-cost agendas in retaliation for 9/11. We slept—enthralled by grandiose dreams of wealth—while lobbyists and special interests plied our elected officials with seductive notions about lowering regulatory gates to unleash a tsunami-like cash flow that never materialized. Instead, rivers of riches poured into a handful of pockets, leaving everyone else high and dry. But that was not before we mortgaged our common sense to buy up any and everything that reeked of success.

We became a people deliriously infected with possession obsession. Whatever we wanted, we got, unconcerned about the ridiculous prices we paid to get it. Then tomorrow came. It was a tsunami all right—just not the one we’d been promised. We watched in horror as countless lives washed away because we sold out, doing precisely what Hosea accused ancient Israel of doing: “For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. The standing grain has no heads, it shall yield no meal; if it were to yield, foreigners would devour it.” (Hosea 8.7) Whether or not foreign debt existed in Hosea’s time I don’t know. But his words surely must chill us to the bone.

The recession should have ushered in a season of chastening, a time to ponder our error and course correct. It didn’t. Our rebellion persists in willful ignorance of where we went wrong. Meanwhile, we shovel blame and disgust on our leaders for not moving fast enough to set things right. But what does God say? Before we answer, perhaps we should ask if we even care, because we’ve paid no heed to divine warnings not to put faith in material wealth, not to horde treasures, not to measure our lives with spreadsheets and status symbols. To truly believe that the prophets of old speak God’s truth to the ages, we must first deal with our Creator. Hosea 9.1 issues a scathing indictment: “Do not exult as other nations do; for you have played the whore, departing from your God. You have loved a prostitute’s pay on all threshing floors.”

We sold out, as a nation and individuals, wherever it profited us. Like streetwalkers, we traded in false pleasures that betrayed God’s desire that we be a righteous people. We soon will be given a new chance to mend our undoing. Will we sell out to the highest bidders, to merchants who reduce us to commodities that feed their wealth and enjoyment? Or will we be gathered in common effort to restore equity and justice to a land that has turned a deaf ear to precepts that please God?

Right Religious

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world. (James 1.27)

In the month preceding the US elections, Straight-Friendly will offer brief reflections on what God requires of us, in hopes that we can enter the polls fully confident that our candidates of choice will promote policies that align with our personal convictions. Nothing here should be misconstrued as an endorsement of one candidate over another. It is simply meant to remind us of our responsibilities as faithful believers and citizens.

Every time we vote we make a vow, a personal pledge to care for our nation and its people. Every election presents us with a sacred moment, when we’re deeded the opportunity to look beyond ourselves—our immediate needs and long-held dreams—so that we can consider the needs and desires of others. Voting is the ultimate expression of community, a concept that we, as people of faith, inherently understand. And we know how community works because Jesus taught us a new way of building one. Community building (a concept that, sadly, has been ridiculed by many religious) reverses human “me-first” logic: “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all,” Jesus says in Mark 9.35. So, as Christians, we enter the voting booth at the end of a very long line of people we must serve. Their needs come first, their dreams above our own.

In case we’re unsure who these first-comers and preferred dreamers are, James spells it out. They are “widows and orphans in their distress”—the bereaved and abandoned, the easily blamed, readily overlooked social and economic casualties among us who are struggling to survive. And we should be very clear: they are not the lay-abouts and system-abusers that so many paint them to be. (We’ll discuss the indolent and parasites in a future post.) The people James calls us to care for are genuinely in distress due to misfortune. They are the homeless, the hungry, the sick, the disowned, and the defeated—the ones who inevitably find themselves at the end of the line. It is our duty as Christ’s followers to interrupt the social order and put them first, giving them our place and taking theirs. The world doesn’t see it that way, of course. But we we seek a higher plane that lifts us above the world’s ways. Right religion begins with honoring Christ’s community-building principle. Anything less stains us with the ugly sinfulness of a faithless world.

Every vote is a vow—to God, our nation, and every citizen in distress—a promise to care for all in need. Every election is a sacred right to live out the teachings of our Savior and advance God’s kingdom in very real and tangible ways.

Brought to Glory

It was fitting that God, for Whom and through Whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the Pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings. (Hebrews 2.10)

Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it. (Mark 10.15)

Huge Burdens

Ethel Covington, my grade-school librarian, remains one of my greatest heroes. She had an impeccable flair that brought great joy to instilling in us the wonders of literature. Her library was the friendliest, safest, most adventurous place on earth and it often rang with her laughter as she roamed its premises to find out what we were reading. Miss Covington adored Dickens and firmly believed he was essential reading for young people, since many of his tales revolved around the plight of children. I trust there are still librarians who share her conviction, although I tend to doubt it. We now live in an age that romanticizes childhood as a blissful state of innocence—a world that bears not the slightest resemblance to Dickens’ universe. Consistently, in Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, and other novels, children are at the mercy of a greedy, unstable society that views them as liabilities. They’re tossed from pillar to post, vulnerable to the connivances of vile criminals and callous bureaucrats, forced to hang on by the slenderest of threads. Of course, Dickens’ genius rested on his ability to countermand the evil arrayed against them with improbable twists of fate. But he never let his readers forget these lucky children were exceptions to the rule.

To be a child during England’s Industrial Revolution was to suffer tremendous hardship—to be abandoned, exploited, and ignored, to cause more grief by living than by doing everyone the favor of, in Scrooge’s infamous words, dying and decreasing the surplus population. We find such attitudes appalling now. But when Dickens wrote, less than two centuries ago, not much had changed since the time of Christ. And if we’re to grasp the import of Sunday’s readings, we first must recognize the “children” they mention are not the precious tykes we coo over and coddle. They’re the most useless, needy members of society. Until they’re old enough to pull their weight, they’re huge burdens to their families and communities, and their premature deaths are often greeted with sighs of relief, not inconsolable mourning.

Unlawful Control

While Mark is the slimmest and oldest gospel, in many ways it’s the most “modern.” The writer’s mastery of juxtaposition constantly invites us to read between the lines, detecting richer meaning in the tightly scripted passages by noting how and where they’re placed. In Sunday’s selection (Mark 10.2-16), we revisit one of his most beloved passages and see how this works. When parents bring their children to Jesus, the disciples speak “sternly” to them, the suggestion being that these little ones are unworthy of Jesus’s attention. But Jesus is “indignant” and tells the disciples, “Let the little children come to Me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that kingdom of God belongs.” (v14) By itself, this episode conveys a lovely, atypical sentiment for Jesus’s time. And verse 14 is often used in our day in a sentimental way, e.g., “Jesus loves the little children of the world.” But the power of Jesus’s words can’t be fully extracted without including the text immediately preceding them.

The Pharisees come to Jesus with another of their religiously and politically charged questions—in this case, the legitimacy of divorce. In their culture, marriages are contractual affairs that deed women to men as property by which they ensure the family line. Ideally, love would bind husband and wife together, creating a nurturing environment for marital offspring. But since marriages are typically negotiated long before the partners reach maturity, common assumptions we make about them—romance, sexual attraction, and compatibility—are off the table. Naturally, this leads to a lot of unhappy unions. Jesus cites a loophole given by Moses, permitting “a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” (v4) He instantly rebuts the law, saying Moses allowed it “because of your hardness of heart.”

Jesus isn’t interested in splitting legal hairs. He wants to talk about faithfulness reflected in a lifelong commitment. Later, with the disciples, He’s more frank, saying anyone who divorces a spouse for another commits adultery, a sin punishable by death. These are very strong words, and we’re wise to contemplate the gravity that provokes them. Jesus reviles divorce and remarriage as a disruption of divine order, a sin that effectively creates widows, widowers, and orphans by disowning one household for another. The Greek word He uses for “adultery” carries overtones indicating those who abandon spouses and children for other partners and offspring “usurp unlawful control.” In their neglect, they take it upon themselves to destroy lives entrusted to them. Such decisions are not theirs to make, Jesus says. Then we read on, where the disciples do the very thing that Jesus just told them to avoid: they turn parents and little children away. Is it any wonder Jesus is indignant?

Where Are We?

One of the assets—and liabilities—of Mark’s compact style is that it provides enough low-hanging fruit to satisfy every taste. As I studied this weekend’s passage, I easily imagined preachers cherry-picking favorite portions without bothering to shake the whole tree. Many will focus on the wonders of childhood, no matter that ancient childhood—as in Dickens—is far from wonderful. They’ll equate entering God’s kingdom with naïve trust, rather than the suffering and hardships that childhood presents to Jesus’s listeners. Others will capture the vulnerabilities of youth and extrapolate a message of compassion for the “little ones”—the undervalued and oppressed—a note that Mark consistently strikes throughout his gospel. Finally, many will no doubt reach for Jesus’s remarks on marriage with the same enthusiasm that provoked the Pharisees to broach the subject: to validate obsolete laws that promote inequality and the convenience of dismissing anyone who doesn’t meet with their liking. Personally, I struggle with how such a reading is justifiable, as this passage stresses the radical inclusion central to Christ’s Gospel. Nonetheless, it’s there for the taking, if one so chooses.

Yet as I looked at Mark, I kept asking, “Where are we in this passage?” Are we reckless spouses who shirk our responsibilities to pursue something we want so badly we’ll sacrifice anything to get it? Many times we are. Are we spiritual adulterers who usurp unlawful control of God’s kingdom and disrupt God’s plan? It’s possible. Are we disciples who take it upon ourselves to decide who is or isn’t worthy of Christ’s attention? Sadly, we do that too. Still, something inside me wouldn’t settle for quick reduction of so complex a text, or the ready-made guilt of human failure. There had to be more in this than first meets the eye and Sunday’s New Testament offering brought it to light.

In Hebrews 2.10 we read, “It was fitting that God, for Whom and through Whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the Pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings.” We are God’s children and we will suffer the outrages of abandonment and abuse. People will disown us in favor of others. Some will use archaic laws to legitimize their scorn and neglect. And—if not literally, spiritually—some would prefer we die and decrease the surplus population, rather than burden them with our needs and longings. But each of us, regardless of who we are and how we’re made, are being brought to glory through Christ, the Pioneer Who made perfect our salvation through taking on our sufferings. He is our Leader, faithful beyond measure and wedded to us for life. It’s not about the villains. It’s all about the Victor Who says, “Let the little children come to Me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that kingdom of God belongs,” adding this assurance: “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” (v15) The Child Who is the Christ welcomes us to God’s kingdom. May we receive this divine invitation with a whole-hearted “I do!”

Despite our frailties and liabilities, the ever faithful and true Christ welcomes us to God’s kingdom.

Too Much

“If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell.” (Mark 9.43)

Centipede

I left college brimming with lofty ambitions and no earthly idea how to make them happen. I kept falling into low-paying positions—private high school English teacher, church music director, freelance movie critic, among others—that required taking odd jobs to stay afloat. After writing a Christmas pageant for my church, a gospel theater troupe engaged me to write a contemporary musical they could produce in Los Angeles and hopefully tour the country performing. They gave me the premise: three talented sisters get famous singing for their local congregation and must deal with tensions between faithfulness and worldly success. I thought it smacked a little too much of Dreamgirls. (The L.A. Times critic agreed in his unflattering review). But it was good money. So I threw myself into cranking out a script worth every cent I’d been paid. In my original version, every imaginable gospel stereotype turned up to, as the Bard put it, “strut his hour upon the stage.”

As we began assembling scenes we’d rehearsed separately, it was all too apparent I’d written too much by half. The first complete run-through timed out at nearly four hours. The producer and director sat down with me to discuss drastic cuts needed to trim the show’s length. They gently assured me they loved everything I’d written. Yet as good as it was, it wasn’t good enough to fasten an audience to its seats until midnight. “Folks will start walking out at 10:30 and by the time it’s over there won’t be a soul in the place,” the producer said, reminding me one or two nights of that would hasten the show’s untimely end. The problem was, I’d fallen in love with every character, every scene and song, every point I wanted the play to make. 

Once it became clear I would push back on the cuts they suggested, the director threw up his hands. “If you had a baby that with 10 arms and legs, would you force it live like a centipede? Or would you have its extra limbs removed so it could succeed?” he asked. Then he said, “These kids have worked really hard to get this play up on its feet. Are you ready to destroy that just so you can hang on to ideas you love so much?” I took out my red pen on the spot and hacked away, sadly—yet firmly—accepting losses that, not five minutes before, seemed too terrible to contemplate. Despite the Times’ reservations, The High Life was hit in L.A. and enjoyed a profitable East Coast tour that helped pay my rent for a couple of years.

Faith Suicide

Sunday’s Gospel (Mark 9.38-50) resounds with echoes of my backstage episode. The disciples come to Jesus in alarm. Someone outside Jesus’s tight-knit circle has been touched by the gospel flame and is now working wonders in His name. The disciples try to stop the impostor, no doubt believing Jesus will appreciate their efforts to control His message. But Jesus’s response surprises them. Rather than acknowledge their good intentions, He praises the outsider for reaching people He might never meet. “No one who does a deed of power in My name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of Me,” Jesus explains. “Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives a you cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.” (Mark 9.39-41) In other words, this person the disciples are so eager to shut down is a true friend—a partner whose efforts advance Christ’s mission. Instead of taking offense at him, they should be grateful and support him!

The warning that arises from this situation is issued not to the outsider, but to the insiders. In attempting to control Christ’s message and discredit the witness of another, they put the outsider’s faith at risk. “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in Me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea,” Jesus says. (v43) To ancient minds, the Sea is the most fearsome, deadly place there is. To die at sea is to be lost forever, completely erased from memory, unburied, leaving no proof you existed. Intentionally throwing oneself into the Sea is utter madness. Yet Jesus tells us it’s by far a saner alternative than what we do to ourselves when we contest another Christian's witness. Believers whose faith doesn’t fully square with our own are not against us. They’re for us. And when we try to censure and obstruct their belief, we end up committing a thing worse than faith suicide. Better we should vanish entirely than cause them to stumble, Jesus says. The question concealed in His statement asks us, Are we willing to destroy others just so we can hang on to ideas we love? It’s a big question we all have to answer.

The Trash Heap

As dramatic as this suicidal image is, Jesus isn’t content to stop there. He goes on to summon a series of shocking visuals that remind me of the director’s centipede analogy. When we answer Christ’s call and our faith begins to grow it assumes a life of its own. We easily become fond of certain characteristics, behaviors, and rituals that support the points we want to make with our lives. If we’re not keenly aware of the shape our faith takes, it can become grotesquely deformed and inept. Too much of a good thing is never good. “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and go to hell,” Jesus advises in verse 43. He says the same of clumsy feet and shortsighted eyes that result in tripping over our good intentions. Better to be lame or blind than land in hell, Jesus says.

The mere mention of “hell” makes a lot of people uncomfortable—which is exactly what Jesus means to do. If we’re to fully appreciate what He’s saying, we have to account for His terminology. Jesus uses Jewish slang here, a metaphorical reference to Gehenna, a valley southwest of Jerusalem where residents burn their rubbish. It’s a foul, suffocating, constantly smoldering trash heap—the most oppressive of all places to live, and hence a common term first-century Jews used to imagine eternal punishment for evildoing. Like drowning, it is a fate worse than death. And we can’t escape Jesus’s implications of what comes of our determination to hang onto ideas and behaviors that cause harm to others and us. It’s not our deficits that send us to the trash heap. It’s our insistence on placing too much value on debilitating ideas and practices that turn us into centipedes stumbling over our faith and tripping up other sincere believers. We mean well, but it’s too much.

Sunday’s Gospel expects us to examine how we live out our faith, to recognize detriments we create by refusing to let go of notions that create divisions and undermine the “little ones” Jesus loves so dearly. It’s not our show. God, our Producer, and Jesus, our Director, warn us that assuming everything we hold dear is vital to their story is a deadly proposition. Our brothers and sisters will suffer. We will suffer. Perhaps it’s time for all of us to reach for our red pens, prayerfully evaluate how much is too much, and start hacking away—not for our sake, but to protect those who stand with us on the Lord’s side, whether we agree with them or not.

Stubbornly hanging on to personal beliefs and philosophies can turn us into faith centipedes. We easily wind up tripping over ourselves and, worse still, risk causing other believers to stumble.

Inverting the Totem Pole

He took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in His arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in My name welcomes Me, and whoever welcomes Me welcomes not Me but the One Who sent Me.” (Mark 9.36-37)

Jesus: The Documentary

We’ve all seen at least one Hollywood treatment of the Jesus story, and despite variances, they all boil down to scene upon scene of cinematic spectacle: multitudes and miracles and meaningful encounters of tremendous narrative import. Knowing the Gospels’ grittier side, however, deflates these epics. By and large, Jesus runs a small-time operation and spends much of His time (especially in the early stages of His ministry) avoiding the spotlight. He and His disciples mostly work the villages and countryside. They never establish a headquarters, as John the Baptist does when he sets up shop on the Jordan. They don’t settle down for extended periods in one place. Jesus’s reputation as a healer and teacher precedes Him, which enables Him to attract big crowds wherever He goes, yet also allows Him to move on once He finishes whatever He came to do. Unlike the big-budget movies—in which an invisible cathedral, complete with choir and orchestra, seems to float above Jesus’s head at all times—the Gospels portray a lot of scrambling and improvising and figuring things out on the fly. They read more like a low-budget road picture than The Greatest Story Ever Told.

This prompts me to wonder what a behind-the-scenes film might look like. Shot with a hand-held camera, Jesus: The Documentary focuses on conversations and logistics that keep things moving, rather than the epic events Hollywood memorializes. Mark 9.30-37 (Sunday’s Gospel) gives us a snippet of this reality. It catches up with Jesus on the heels of two spectacular sequences: the Transfiguration and healing of a profoundly troubled boy. As often happens, Jesus whisks His followers away to teach them privately. He tells them He’ll be betrayed, executed, and rise from the dead after three days. The first half of His prediction perplexes them, as it seems highly improbable that anyone would conspire to destroy Him. Even if that were so, it’s unthinkable His public would allow it. Add to that His mention of resurrection and the disciples are totally befuddled. “They did not understand what He was saying and were afraid to ask Him,” verse 32 says. Their worried looks are pure documentary gold.

Redefining Greatness

But their confusion isn’t the half of it. As they proceed through the provinces, the filmmakers capture an argument brewing among the disciples. If, as Jesus says, they’re headed for serious trouble, it stands to reason their character and loyalty will be tried. A contest for bragging rights breaks out. To this point, they’ve functioned as a company of equals. Now they splinter, with each insisting he has the right stuff to be named the greatest among them. Mark doesn’t record their comments, but we can fill in the blanks. Peter, Andrew, James, and John pull rank as Jesus’s first followers. Thomas prides himself on keeping a cool head that insists on rational proof to understand what’s going on. Matthew points to his political savvy as a tax collector. Judas boasts of his commitment to the poor and disenfranchised. Every disciple’s claim to greatness rests on the presumption that he’s indispensible to Jesus in ways the others are not.

Evidently the disciples haven’t been as discrete as they hoped. When they arrive at their next stop, Jesus asks, “What were you arguing about?” (v33) They clam up. Jesus doesn’t condemn their position-jockeying outright. Instead, He turns their debate upside down. “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all,” He says. (v35) It’s not about who will take charge when things fall apart. It’s about who will honor Christ’s charge to serve others in humility and self-sacrifice. Jesus inverts the totem pole and in the process forever redefines greatness. He draws a little child into His arms and tells the disciples, “Whoever welcomes one such child in My name welcomes Me, and whoever welcomes Me welcomes the One Who sent Me.” (v37) Returning to our imaginary film, the camera slowly pans around the room, resting momentarily on each disciple’s blank stare. This is not what they want to hear.

Willingness to Welcome

Now, as then, we define greatness by a person’s following—not only in number, but also in the quality and status of those in one’s camp. The pastor with the biggest church filled with the most influential members must be the greatest. The politician with the most votes and powerful allies must be the greatest. The neighbor with the most friends and enviable success must be the greatest. While these achievements may be admirable, Jesus makes it clear there’s more to it than popularity and impressiveness. He defines greatness by a single, completely unexpected trait: willingness to welcome the least attractive, impressive, and powerful into our ranks.

Jesus: The Documentary ends. The theater lights come up. And the image of the little one nestled in Jesus’s arms is seared into memory. This child isn’t the freshly scrubbed, angelic tyke from Central Casting. It’s a frail, grungy kid who’s constantly begging for attention and complaining of hunger and getting in our way. By extension, it’s the maligned adult and starving believer and inconvenient interloper. It’s everyone who doesn’t fit our romanticized picture of what religion looks like. Jesus’s greatness paradigm turns the worldly success adage on its head: it’s not who you know, but what you know. And what Jesus wants us to know is opening our arms to everyone—embracing the most vulnerable and naïve among us without restraint—results in greatness. It is what makes us indispensible to Him, to God, and one another.

In redefining greatness, Jesus turns the worldly success adage on its head: it’s not who you know, but what you know.

Certainty and Its Dangers

How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge? (Proverbs 1.22)

Black-and-White

What makes certainty dangerous is that we seek—and find—it in all the wrong places. Wherever we encounter a patch of gray, our hard-wired survival instinct immediately compels us to transpose it into black-and-white. We formulate an opinion and block out any possibilities there might be another answer, or many answers, to help us decipher what we’re looking at. We crave certainty, because certainty makes complexity simple and simplicity aids decisiveness. And after we distill complex challenges and situations down to a chosen response, we underscore our certainty by claiming it’s “the right thing.” Put that way, craving the reliability and comfort of certainty sounds foolish. Laughing at other possibilities seems reckless and unwise. And in Proverbs 1.20-33 (Sunday’s Old Testament reading), we’re explicitly told such stratagems are indeed foolish, reckless, and unwise. 

In my own life, the tension between craving certainty and living with uncertainty has been most strongly felt in my faith. I come from a tradition that prides itself on iron-clad certainty based on a literal reading of sacred texts and a definitive theology that orders everything in life, from the workings of the cosmos down to minute moral dilemmas. When the need to find community among accepting, supportive believers drew me to the Reformed tradition, I experienced genuine culture shock. I’d never heard ministers and theologians confess they didn’t have all the answers. I wasn’t accustomed to people questioning the validity of Iron Age concepts and customs. Where I came from, one didn’t complicate matters by asking questions. You accepted everything the Bible says as written (based on your reading of it) and you called that “the truth”. Such an approach raises a really big question, however, and introduces an elephant to the room that one must choose to ignore.

When we rely on certainty that reduces everything to black-and-white, we remove faith from the equation entirely and settle for human religion. It’s taken me years to detect the inherent contradiction in professions like, “I know without a shadow of a doubt.” Removing doubt’s shadows—or refusing to acknowledge them—erases any need for faith’s light, a dangerous proposition by any measure, as it diminishes the Holy Spirit’s power to speak to us in new and relevant ways through God’s Word. We must be unwavering in what we believe, but we must never confuse faith for certainty. That’s when we find ourselves reflected in Proverbs 1.22: “How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge?”

A Cautionary Tale

Sunday’s Gospel (Mark 8.27-38) spins a cautionary tale about certainty’s pitfalls. Jesus and the disciples are in the region of Caesarea Philippi, a Roman outpost not far from Galilee. Everywhere they look they see temples and altars erected to pagan deities, and the sight of such religious diversity may be what prompts Jesus to raise a question out of the blue: “Who do people say that I am?” The disciples rattle off a list of names they’ve heard associated with Jesus: John the Baptist, Elijah, and other famous prophets. Then Jesus asks, “Who do you say that I am?” All of them, save one, don’t know what to say. Only Peter replies, “You are the Messiah.” (v30) In Matthew’s version, his certainty is rewarded. Jesus ordains Peter as the founder of His Church. But we see something very different in Mark. There is no praise for Peter’s certainty. Jesus tells the disciples not to tell anyone about Him. And in short order, we see why this is.

Jesus explains what being the Messiah will entail—and it’s nothing like the picture Jewish teachers have conjured up based on literal reading of the Prophets. There is no divinely ordered coronation in Jesus’s version, no overthrow of oppressive regimes, no end to violence and political strife. In fact, what Jesus describes is the exact opposite of what the disciples expect. Verse 31 says, “He began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” This rocks Peter’s world. His black-and-white certainty is suddenly blanketed in shades of gray. He pulls Jesus aside and rebukes Him! Jesus turns and looks at His followers, as if to say, “Watch this,” and blasts Peter in return. “Get behind me, Satan!” He hisses. “For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” (v33) In a mere three verses, certainty downgrades Peter from a divinely inspired confessor of Christ to a foolish simpleton. He scoffs at the idea of Jesus’s death at the hands of the very people who, according to his understanding of Scripture, should hail Him as the Messiah. He rejects the knowledge Jesus lays before him, that death is not the end of the story. Christ’s power will be revealed in bodily resurrection—a concept so alien to Peter that he finds it intolerable.

Nothing’s as Simple as We’d Like

After this decidedly uncomfortable exchange, Jesus calls the crowd around Him and issues a startling edict: “If you want to become My followers, you must deny yourselves and take up your cross and follow Me.” The context is plain. Self-denial in pursuit of discipleship begins by letting certainty go and following Christ by faith. It’s simply not essential that we know the workings of our faith without a doubt. Indeed, from Peter’s example, we learn that certainty is faith’s enemy. It can only entertain possibilities that agree with its limited understanding. It wants to simplify everything so that every detail in life is predictable and clear-cut. And that’s not how God works in the world or our lives. Peter is right to proclaim Jesus as Christ. Where he goes wrong is to confuse faith for certainty, to embrace a set of human expectations of how things should be at the expense of trusting God’s supreme knowledge of how things are.

We can’t know everything for certain and we won’t. All we need to know is that nothing’s as simple as we’d like it to be. What seems laughably absurd to us is serious business to God. And, as Proverbs says, we hate knowing that, because it jettisons us into gray patches that resist black-and-white reasoning. Not having answers is the cross that we, as followers of Christ, must bear. But thanks be to God for all of life’s gray areas and the myriad questions we can’t definitively resolve. Without them, we’d have no need for faith and the wisdom to accept what we can’t possibly understand or explain.

Without questions and doubts, faith cannot exist.