Zach’s Theological Musings

  In a recent post I mentioned an observation that people who have a dishonoring attitude toward their parents often take on, in some sense or another, a “surrogate parent” (or “parents”) to fill the void. As an addendum, I would like to warn against a particularly subtle, deceptive, and destructive way this can happen: when God is put in the position of “replacement parent”.

  Now, make no mistake about it, God definitely is the ultimate, true Father of all who have received and believed in His Son Jesus Christ (John 1:12). But that is just as true for those who have a great relationship with their biological parents as it is for those who have a sour relationship with them. His role as true, eternal Father does not replace the role and respect due to the physical, earthly mother and father He ordained to give to each of us. Receiving His Heavenly Fatherhood only intensifies, rather than diminishes, our responsibility to honor our earthly parents in ways pleasing to Him.

 And [Jesus] said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written,

   “‘This people honors me with their lips,
   but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me,
   teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’

 You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.”

 And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban”‘ (that is, given to God)—then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.” (Mark 7:6-13)

  I think Americans have a hard time wrapping their heads around the above passage. Did Jesus really scold people for “giving money to God” (we could say, “giving to the Lord’s cause”) rather than to their parents? Yes, that is my understanding of this passage. But doesn’t Jesus command us to hate our “own father and mother…” compared to our love and devotion to Him? Yes, absolutely. I will be the first to acknowledge and proclaim that fidelity to God trumps everything else in life (Matt 10:34-39). So if God wanted you to give your money to the temple rather than your parents, then by all means that is what you must and should do. But that’s not the way He wants it. The way He wants us to honor and obey HIM is through honoring our parents, which includes providing for them in their old age. If you wrap a pious explanation around sinful disobedience to God’s command, it remains just as repulsive, in fact more so; not only is your heart far from the Lord, but you have “covered over your tracks” by honoring Him with your lips. This kind of hypocrisy made Jesus quite angry.

  Just as then, so now, the “traditions of men” (e.g. pop-evangelical psychology) reject and make void the commandments of God whenever we (explicitly or implicitly) tell people that it is OK to dishonor their parents because God is now their real Father.

  Christian citizens submit to human governments because God the Great King commands them to. Christian wives submit to their husbands because Christ the Forever Bridegroom commands them to.  Christian children (including adult, grown children!) honor their parents because the Father commands them to. The Lord’s Kingship, Husbandship, and Fatherhood do not undermine our human-to-human responsibilities. Indeed, because I have a Benevolent King I can deal with the wickedness of human leaders, because a woman is so deeply known and pursued by the Lover of her soul she can live with her husband’s shallowness, because our Father in Heaven raises and cares for us in all the right ways we can accept the fact that our parents didn’t.

  When we are not fully satisfied in God, all human relationships go awry because we will inevitably try to extract the infinite satisfaction we were designed for from finite beings. When we are fully satisified in God, then no one can disappoint us because we need nothing from them, the only “need” we have is spread the love, forgiveness, understanding, mercy, grace, and kindness that overflows from us in abundance (Rom 13:8). The image of a “God-shaped vacuum” appears to have come from the following quote by Blaise Pascal:

What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself. [Pascal, Pensees #425]

Our fallen, sinful parents leave a “Father-shaped vacuum” in each of our hearts. When God fills that vacuum we are not freed from the obligation to honor our parents, we are freed to honor them fully, from the heart, regardless of circumstances and without expecting anything in return.

Mark 12:28-34:

  One of the scribes came and heard them arguing, and recognizing that He had answered them well, asked Him, “What commandment is the foremost of all?”

  Jesus answered, “The foremost is, “HEAR, O ISRAEL! THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD; AND YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH.’  The second is this, “YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

  The scribe said to Him, “Right, Teacher; You have truly stated that HE IS ONE, AND THERE IS NO ONE ELSE BESIDES HIM; AND TO LOVE HIM WITH ALL THE HEART AND WITH ALL THE UNDERSTANDING AND WITH ALL THE STRENGTH, AND TO LOVE ONE’S NEIGHBOR AS HIMSELF, is much more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

  When Jesus saw that he had answered intelligently, He said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” After that, no one would venture to ask Him any more questions.

  This is one example of what I’m talking about when I say that I feel evangelical Christianity is sometimes uncomfortable with the gospel in the gospels. How could Jesus say to this scribe, “You are not far from the kingdom of God” following a discussion about the greatest commandments in the Law? Wouldn’t it have been better evangelical theology for Jesus to have said, “Repent of your sins, trust in my substitutionary sacrifice which is coming soon, and you will certainly be a son of the kingdom”? But that’s not what He said. And whatever God does say is certainly more fitting for the moment than what any person thinks God should have said.

  I do not believe that Jesus here was teaching that salvation comes through a man’s own efforts to fulfill the Law. On the other hand I don’t think that Jesus was teaching salvation by grace through faith either! One interpretive error that evangelical Christians can make is when we try to force everything in the Bible into the “faith vs. works” dichotomy. Don’t get me wrong, I fully believe that when a man put faith in Christ’s righteous life, Christ’s death in our place, and Christ’s victorious resurrection, such a man is declared righteous in God’s sight without regard to his record of sinful living (for that record is washed away at that moment). Hallelujah! But what God wants us to know and love about Him and what He has done for us consists of more than just the fact that His gift is received by faith rather than works, as important as that fact is.

  Take the above passage. The Pharisees, like all Jews, were (supposedly) anxiously awaiting Messiah and His kingdom. But when He came they missed Him. They didn’t merely ‘miss’ Him; they rejected, humiliated, tortured, and killed Him. Why? In large part because the kind of kingdom they were looking for wasn’t what Christ’s kingdom is like. That’s why Jesus spent so much time talking about, and demonstrating, what His kingdom IS like.

  The kingdom of God is where God’s rule is joyfully recognized. God always rules, everywhere. But His rule is generally spurned by man. Where there is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost, that’s the kingdom of God! (Don’t you want to be a part of the kingdom?)

  I think the Pharisees would have agreed with this, in the sense that they were looking for a kingdom in which God’s rule, God’s Law, would be fulfilled. Their problem was that they totally misunderstood and misrepresented God’s Law. (I’ll have to expand on that statement in a subsequent post.) Jesus wasn’t fulfilling the “law”, i.e. traditions, they had made up, and therefore they assumed He couldn’t be the one to usher in God’s kingdom.

  But if you, like the scribe in Mark 12:28, can see that God’s Law is summarized in the command to love God and love your neighbor then when you look at Jesus you will see the perfect, joyful fulfillment of God’s Law. In other words, you will see the kingdom. At least one major reason this scribe was close to the kingdom was because he knew what to look for. He knew what the kingdom should be like.

  If someone is looking for the wrong kingdom, then telling them that “faith not works” is the way to enter the kingdom does them no good. There are many people today who are exercising “faith not works” to receive a “gospel message”, but it is a false gospel. If you have “received Jesus by faith”, and what that means to you is that you have trusted Jesus to give you a comfortable, prosperous, suffering-free life, then you are still dead in your sins and you are barreling down a path toward eternal suffering in hell.

  Biblical Christians needs to declare to the world not only how to enter the kingdom of God, but what that kingdom is like, lest people think we are inviting them into the kingdom of their own imaginations. And, as I’ve said before, when it comes to showing what the kingdom of God is truly like, the four gospels really shine. And Romans does too! And Exodus, Genesis, Daniel… Hallelujah! Praise God for His kingdom in which His glory lighting up the skies is our greatest delight, and in which all mankind loves one another as their own flesh.