Speak-Life for 2015
Grace vs. Law
This has been roasting within me for years, and the start of the new year is a perfect time to air it out. Before anyone from my past gets’ offended, I am speaking about me and no one else. Just want to make sure you know where I am coming from. It really started over 30 years ago, when I jacked up my law beliefs and built a tribe of ‘like minded’ folks to help bolster my somewhat hollow and useless belief system. My first lesson learned was… when you build a tribe of like minded folks, and convince yourself you are right, for the sake of being right, so the tribe sees you right, you no longer speak to, or relate to the masses. This really started to hit for me when I was studying for full time tribe work. I would get so deep into my tribes world, it stopped making sense.
“The purpose was lost in the procedures”.
I didn’t see it or understand it, but something wasn’t right. We kept trying to go back to the ‘old’ ways, but they stopped working, and only appealed to a smaller and smaller group of people. It was easy to say the world was ‘going to hell in a handbasket’ when few to no one agreed with me. When those outside my group failed to make our way work for them, I would just jack up the critical thinking (and acting), and divide further so I could find the ‘more perfect approach or procedure’. Because, surely, this would work. (It didn’t matter that it wasn’t working for me.) It is the same kind of thinking that ‘pure logic always comes out on top’. If you didn’t know by now, it doesn’t. We are human and part of what makes us different is our need and ability to have emotion and feeling. These attributes connect us in a way that facts cannot. You would think after reading of my Master’s approach to life, I would have known better. Oh well, to err is human.
Some of you don’t believe the way, or what, I believe. That’s cool, and I am totally okay with it. At the end, it isn’t ‘my life’ you are living. It’s YOURS. You don’t have to believe like me, you don’t have to think like me, and you certainly don’t have to look or act like me.
I keep running into this common issue and common theme. Christianity… really what is it? I can go all ‘gansta bumper sticker’ on you and hit you with ‘It’s a relationship, not religion”…which is true. I can make analogies to it like it is medicine, and say things such as, “if you have the sickness of sin, you need the prescription of Christ”. All of these fit well on a church marquee or the back of your Pinto bumper but don’t address our dying need inside.
It’s a wonder the world looks at us and doesn’t get it. We claim grace but we, a high percentage of the time, turn said ‘grace’ into something obtained by works. Okay, once you are in the club, let’s go backwards and make you live by the ‘rule of law’. I mean, we can’t have people living in sin, or doing wrong, and not paying the price for it or thinking about ‘fallen’ we are. That would be unfair… or something like that. If you have to suffer, so does everyone else… it goes sorta like that.
Christ’s death on the cross was to FULFILL the law, not to jack it up to another level of rules that can’t be met. It already can’t be met which is why HE came. We start off by saying you need to be things like be ‘saved’, ‘converted’, you need to accept Christ… then once that happens you are set for eternity, but what about the ‘now’? Well, baby, you better not drink, cuss or act like the world, because you are set apart, you are the salt and this is the ONLY way they world will see and know you are different.
Really? Is that really true? So it really is a performance still, on some format. What happened to ‘they will know you because of your love for one another’, or ‘they will know you by your fruit’?
It seems to me that maybe, just maybe, our lives around our religion have become more and more akin to how we look at politics. It’s isn’t about truth as much as it is about perception. And, anyone with common sense can see that when ‘perception’ becomes our driver, we as a human race run totally off the road. (Just look at Washington DC. I think we can all agree the inner beltway doesn’t represent us any longer.) You end up with ‘perceived’ truth becoming more important than ‘just the facts’ of the situation. How often do we watch the media and Washington build an issue, create a lot of heat and stir a lot of folks up, only to find out that what ‘was reported’ wasn’t actually true?
Now, we tout that the only way folks come to a loving Christ, is by seeing you ‘live differently, live by a higher code, live by a set of standards’… that attracts others to you. Hmmm… interesting thinking.
As my future stepson would say, “That’s attractive’… NOT!
Though we ‘love to glory’ about ‘grace’, when we see it, it flows like syrup on a cold day sometimes, when grace challenges our comfort zone.
Grace – “the free and unmerited favor of God, as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowal of blessings”.
It’s hard to legislate Grace.
Why try?
I was running the other morning and these words from a Toby Mac song belted from my Mobile phone.
Some days, life feels perfect.
Other days it just ain’t workin.
The good, the bad, the right, the wrong
And everything in between.
Its crazy, amazing
We can turn a heart with the words we say.
Mountains crumble with every syllable.
Hope can live or die
So speak Life, speak Life.
To the deadest darkest night.
Speak life, speak Life.
When the sun wont shine and you don’t know why.
Look into the eyes of the brokenhearted;
Watch them come alive as soon as you speak hope,
You speak love, you speak speak speak…
You speak Life,You speak Life.
Some days the tongue gets twisted;
Other days my thoughts just fall apart.
I do, I don’t, I will, I wont,
Its like I’m drowning in the deep.
Well it crazy to imagine,
Words from our lips as the arms of compassion,
Mountains crumble with every syllable.
Hope can live or die.
So speak Life, speak Life.
To the deadest darkest night.
Speak life, speak Life.
When the sun won’t shine and you don’t know why.
Look into the eyes of the brokenhearted;
Watch them come alive as soon as you speak hope,
You speak love, you speak speak speak…
You speak Life, You speak Life.
Lift your head a little higher,
Spread the love like fire,
Hope will fall like rain,
When you speak life with the words you say.
Raise your thoughts a little higher,
Use your words to inspire,
Joy will fall like rain,
When you speak life with the things you say.
Lift your head a little higher,
Spread the love like fire,
Hope will fall like rain,
When you speak life with the words you say.
So speak Life, speak Life.
To the deadest darkest night.
Speak life, speak Life.
When the sun won’t shine and you don’t know why.
Look into the eyes of the brokenhearted;
I wish for each of you, that life ‘flows’ out of your very being and 2015 is the best year ever.
Safe Travels,
