Bring me More Free Stuff

I got appalling news this morning.

I got up and got on the scale and got a very pleasant reading. I weighed myself again a few minutes later to confirm it, and I got the same reading. Before getting in the shower I removed everything I was wearing and weighed myself a third time, expecting a slightly better result. The weight shot up seven pounds! I reset the scale and tried again. No difference!

Looks like my scale is crazy. I have since weighed myself on a balance scale, and it looks like I am seven pounds fatter than I believed. So my recent weight loss has been merely fantastic. Not shocking and extreme.

I can live with that. Fantastic is not bad. I may have to amend my weekly McDonald’s breakfast order, though. I don’t care. It doesn’t mean what it used to mean to me. The good Lord has made portion control extremely easy, so I guess I can do whatever I have to.

Time to toss the electronic scale. I thought they were more reliable than that. Seven pounds is a huge error.

It’s wonderful to know I don’t have to worry about rebound weight gain. For the first time in my life, I don’t have to think about that. What happened to me is better than having the weight disappear instantly. If that had happened, like virtually every dieter who ever lived, I would be a fat person who was temporarily thin. Instead, I was permanently cured of fatness. That means that now I’m a thin person who is temporarily fat. That’s incredible. Once the fat is gone, it can’t return unless I invite it back.

I was thinking about grace this morning. What a hard message to preach. For centuries, we’ve been telling people they were bad because they did wrong, and we’ve been condemning them and even wishing punishment and failure on them. And we thought we were right. “God helps them who help themselves”; isn’t that what we’ve been told? It sounds evil and self-indulgent to say God will fix your behavior for you. But it’s absolutely true.

Think about it. How did Adam live? He was the first person God created, so presumably, his lifestyle tells us what God intended the rest of us to have. What did Adam do for a living? Did he plant corn? Did he slop hogs and cut hay? No. His job consisted of reaching up and picking fruit off trees God had grown for him. That, quite literally, was his livelihood. God did not want him to work, in the sense that we “work” today.

We are not supposed to earn things. We’re supposed to cooperate and obey and have faith. We’re supposed to go to school and get jobs. We’re supposed to try to be good. But it’s not supposed to be drudgery. The work of our flesh is not supposed to make heroes and martyrs of us.

If you earn things, what does it mean? It means you don’t owe them to God. It means you did it yourself. If that describes your belief, what are you? What word describes you? “Righteous”? No. “Proud.”

On the other hand, what if God gives you the strength to behave, and he gives you peace, and he allows you to prosper without working yourself to death? How are you going to feel? Grateful. Unworthy. Somewhat ashamed. What word sums that up? “Humble.” Doesn’t the Bible tell us over and over that God likes humility? Is there anything it condemns more than pride?

God would rather give us things and have us humble than make us earn them and have us proud. I’m sure of it. How else can you explain the crucifixion? God could have given us tasks that would purify us, but he didn’t. He insisted on making it a gift.

God wants us to have his nature. That’s why he wants us to give all the time. God has a compulsion to give. Generosity is a fundamental aspect of his nature. No sane Christian would deny that; it would be blasphemy. If that’s true, aren’t we obligated to humble ourselves and receive? How can God give if we won’t take?

Am I saying God would spoil us? No. What you give people doesn’t determine whether they’re spoiled. Their attitude determines that. Abraham and Job were obscenely rich. Were they spoiled? I wouldn’t dare say so; it would be a slander. On the other hand, we have poor people in America who are horribly spoiled. They wait for the eagle to fly instead of going to work, they do nothing for others, they vote for people who give them other people’s money, they indulge every unhealthy desire they have, and they still say the system is unfair to them. You can’t hurt a humble, grateful person by giving him stuff and doing things for him. On the other hand, an ungrateful, proud person can only be hurt by gifts. That’s why God often withholds things from people he cares about.

I don’t deserve to be thin. I don’t deserve the other types of deliverance God handed to me free of charge. I will never deserve these things. I have sometimes felt that I had to respond to these gifts by trying to be worthy of them, but that’s stupid. I can’t be worthy of them. I still have to be good, but the purpose isn’t to earn anything. It’s to show my gratitude and to acknowledge that sin and iniquity (evil inclinations) can bring these things back on me.

I am a charity case. I am not a hard worker who earned a just wage. I am receiving welfare and food stamps from God, because I am incapable of taking care of myself. I have nothing to be proud of.

I’m politically conservative, but you could call me socialist in my religious beliefs. Man’s socialism, imposed by governments, is evil. It’s a vile mimicry of the pure, right socialism of the kingdom of God, which is based on voluntary participation by individual believers motivated by the Holy Spirit. I resent giving money to wasteful government programs that addict the poor to handouts and teach them to be proud and weak. I am grateful for the opportunity to donate to the church and religious charities. The money is not the issue. The issue is whether a charity is secular or God-guided. The second type is a fountain of blessings. The first is a money toilet.

Look, Jesus said his yoke was easy and his burden was light. Was he a liar? Seriously, would he lie to us about that? Am I supposed to go on pilgrimages, crawling up and down the streets with bloody knees and a cross on my shoulder? Should I abstain from marriage? Should I beat myself with a flagellum and wear a hair shirt? I don’t think so. I think actions like those are rooted in pride, regardless of how they may look on the surface. I think I’m supposed to be thrilled with what I received and that I should try to help other people receive it. I’m supposed to enjoy the good things I get, without letting them become more important than the one who gave them to me or the other people he wants to help.

If we spend our time yammering at people who misbehave (as I have), telling them how awful they are, we hold ourselves out as superior, which is wrong and counterproductive. The way they are now doesn’t matter. It passes away when they accept Jesus and get filled with the Spirit and begin to get free of their demonic bondages. We need to be telling them that their problems are caused by sin and lack of faith, that they are surrounded by invisible enemies much stronger than they are, that they can be fixed right here on earth, and that it doesn’t matter what they’ve done in the past.

The Bible compares us to unfired pots that have been marred. You wouldn’t throw one out; the clay can be reshaped. It’s stupid to fixate on the defects, because they’re curable and have no relationship to the quality of the final product. And when the repair process begins, you don’t get upset over setbacks. You don’t worry that it takes time, and that it’s a gradual process. You know it will work, so it doesn’t matter if it’s not instantaneous. These things are true, so how can condemnation be a good idea? Warning, sure. Condemnation? Probably not.

It’s so easy for the enemy to fight this message. Our consciences agree with him. They tell us we can’t expect to be spoon-fed and pampered. It feels so righteous when we claim we need to work real hard and bleed and suffer and deny ourselves. But there’s nothing righteous about it. It’s evil. You are not supposed to obey your conscience. It makes mistakes. You’re supposed to obey God.

Many times, God commanded the Jews to ignore their consciences. He forbade them to pity the people he had selected for death or punishment. Under Joshua, the Hebrews had to slaughter children and pets and old people. What you think is right isn’t what matters. Fortunately, we don’t have to do things like that any more. But we do need to give up the idea that we have to earn things from God, using our own strength as the primary means. God is like power steering. We provide a little bit of strength–in faith–and he provides the rest. Admit your faults, repent, fast, and pray. Fight your demons God’s way. They will lose, and you will change.

The enemy hates this message because it provides acceptance and hope, and because it’s based on the reality that evil spirits exert control over most people, not just a few. We can run these spirits off and experience greater self-control and happiness; then we’ll be able to help others do the same things. That’s what we’re supposed to do. Jesus told us to preach the gospel, heal the sick, and cast out demons. If you’re casting out demons, you’re overthrowing Satan’s kingdom. It’s a revolution, and Satan is being deposed. He’ll do anything he can to shut this message up, and he has pretty much succeeded for almost 2000 years. I believe we are now seeing a reawakening, and that grace–God’s unearned help–is going to set hundreds of millions of people free from sin, disease, and curses in the coming years. I think the war has resumed in earnest.

One test of the validity of a doctrine is the anger it stirs up in well-meaning Christians who cling to error and live in failure. If you don’t make the blind guides furious, your message is probably just making things worse. The enemy has always killed and persecuted those who told the truth. He doesn’t usually crucify his servants. He loves opposing the truth from within the church. Many prophets have been killed by believers instead of heathens. Believers tried to push Jesus off a cliff on the first day of his ministry. The Romans had no interest in him until some of his own people demanded that he be killed.

I can see why the Bible predicts increased persecution toward the end of the age. This message is getting more popular, and it has always drawn a violent response.