Character: I Did It His Way
By Bob Adams
Ignacio Loredo and Miguel Bollatti were the best friends the students had at the International Baptist Seminary in Argentina. Ignacio taught them about Christian conduct and Miguel helped them live according to Christians standards. Ignacio taught them to beware of the three greatest, most obvious, and most insidious temptations they would continually face and Miguel helped apply the code of Christian conduct that they agreed to. The three greatest temptations-misconduct with money, sex, and power. Ring a bell? In Bible times, throughout Christian history, in South America and in North America, and around the world, the problems are still with us. Christian character flourishes or fails on the basis of our handling of these drives.
I have been teaching Christian ethics since 1969. I have taught ethics in South America and in North America. I have taught in churches, church camps, a Christian academy, on Caribbean islands, in a university and in eleven seminaries. For stretches as long as ten years and as short as a week. In institutions that were coeducational, or only accepted male students or only accepted female students. In one place, if students were married, both had to enroll in degree programs. On an institute level, where the only educational requirement was a rudimentary level of reading. All the way to doctoral seminars. Before I became a teacher, I served nearly ten years as a minister in university settings. I have served as church pastor, part or full time, in eleven churches. I have worked in or directed nearly one hundred and fifty Vacation Bible Schools.
By reciting this pedigree, I intend, if possible, to establish my credentials. I know Christians in general and I know Baptists in particular; and I know that all of us have to confront the three major character issues that Ignacio and Miguel confronted, and we relate daily to people who confront them.
Christians are recovering sinners, on-the-road but not-yet-arrived. If you haven`t yet repented of your sins, you need to stop here and do that and ask Jesus to begin saving you. On the other hand, if you feel you have fully arrived spiritually and that this focus on character is for those who haven`t yet arrived at your full state of sanctification, you`re on the wrong theological road and will someday, sooner or later, fall off a cliff, crash, and burn. Get on the narrow road that Jesus described and join his crowd of recovering sinners who are honestly striving to build character, growing in grace and in the knowledge of Christ.
I`m about to get down to the nitty-gritty. Some of it may be deemed to be X-rated but it is not pornographic. Pornography does its best to entice you into some kind of sex-related sinning and trap you there. Moses and Peter and Paul and the rest of the Bible characters knew sin and sins, repented of both, and trusted in a faithful God. Their purpose in talking about sin, sometimes in gruesome detail, was to help people get away from it, not get into it. That`s the difference between the Bible`s frankness about sexual sin and pornography. I`m going to try to be as frank as the Bible, but don`t misunderstand my motive or my purpose!
There`s nothing wrong with sex. There`s nothing wrong with the medium of exchange called money. There`s nothing wrong with power-that which gets things done. God made human beings with the capacity to use all these. They are, in a real sense, a part of God`s good created order. But they can be misused and thus be terribly destructive. Run down the list of people you either know personally or know about, Christians, who are in deep trouble. They don`t keep their pants up or their skirt down. They have a love affair with money. They use power as a weapon. They fall. Of course, non-Christians get into the same kinds of trouble. But they don`t fall; they`re already down! They haven`t taken the first real step yet. The Christians who are in deep trouble have fallen off the road into the ditch. Of course, all Christians are saved only by grace. Grace and the daily struggle form character and shape the Christian life.
A lot of God`s laws in the Old Testament were given by God to help his people know where the deep ditches were on either side of the road they were to walk. Those laws can be very instructive for us today. Some of the laws in the Old Testament were like a compass, showing people the direction they were to go even though there was as yet no road. Those laws can also be of great help to us today. But, both first and finally, we look to Jesus who is the way and we look to his teachings, which provide our compass bearings as we steer toward Christian character. And we look to people like Phoebe and Paul and Peter who followed Jesus and are our mentors. We follow with them, take counsel and direction from them. We all are following Jesus. Unlike some of today`s heroes and ikons who revel in their life-long ego trips, "I did it my way," Christian character calls for us to "do it his way."
The teachings of Jesus in their context, give us boundary markers. We are to live inside them. An example: The Old Testament says, "Don`t commit adultery." Jesus reinforced that by saying that a lustful look and a wayward thought put a person on the wrong road. Don`t go down that road! But not committing adultery doesn`t automatically make a good marriage. What does make a good marriage? Commitment. The C word, is the beginning place. "For this cause a man shall leave his mother and his father and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh` That is commitment! Jesus quoted it when he wanted to point out the basis of a marriage that endures. Commitment alone doesn`t make a good marriage, but a good marriage won`t be fashioned without commitment. So, we live out marriage within the markers of commitment to God and to one another, which excludes any other sexual partner; and that lays a foundation for what can become a good marriage. Paul comes at the same thing from another perspective. A wife has charge of her husband`s sex activity, and a husband has charge of his wife`s sex activity. THAT is commitment! Will that alone make a good marriage? No, but it places boundary markers inside which a marriage can become good, and can get better. When a person gets outside the boundaries, that`s bad. Staying inside makes for a good marriage. What about a person, now a Christian, whose upbringing included lustful looks and follow-throughs on the look? We`ll get to that at the end of the whole thing, for there are many Christians whose upbringing included lustful looks and follow-throughs in more areas than sex.
Today`s world fosters unbridled individualism, the big I, the big Me and the big Mine along with the kindred idea that I have a legal and moral right to get all I can for Me no matter how much trouble that may cause others. It goes something like this: "If I should decide to help someone else, I may do so but I am not obliged to. The world is a large arena in which a WAR is raging, a war of all against all, each individual fighting against all other individuals in getting and keeping and I intend to get mine for me and mine!" The idea goes back to the beginning of human history as recorded in the Bible and finds recent justification in the works of people like Ayn Rand. "Community is out and I am in! It will all work out for the better if not the best for all because the bigger the incoming tide of goods and things the higher each of our boats will be lifted!" Never mind that some will have built yachts, some will be in small rowboats, some on flimsy rafts and most are naked and can`t swim. "Each for himself!" This is materialism gone mad, it`s selfishness lamely justified, and theologically it`s that thing called hubris, pride. Jesus said it another way, "You can`t serve God and money." Money, the love of which is at the root of all kinds of evil. Again, what about the person, now a Christian, whose upbringing, training, and practice include this idea about things, and their common denominator, money? Also again, we`ll get to that at the end of all this. For we are still dealing with lustful looks and follow-throughs.
What about that without which nothing gets done, Power? IF we are convinced that we know how things should come out and IF the reason they wouldn`t come out that way is that we were squeamish about the use of power, then surely it is true that we should get and use all the power we can to make things come out as we know they should! Here is the greatest and most subtle character assassin facing most Christians in today`s world. The powerless believe that if they could only grasp the reins of power, they could make everything come out right. This is the greatest mistake of most Liberation Theology proponents. Its analysis of the corruption and wrong are on target. Its willingness to use coercive power to right wrongs, however, is off Jesus` mark. He didn`t do things that way in the face of the same kind of injustice, nor did he allow his disciples to do so. On the other hand, the powerful among Liberation Theology`s supporters believe that they must use the coercive power at their disposal to make things stay right and get even better! Among both Liberation Theology`s adherents and opponents are Christians who are convinced that they must use coercive power and violence to achieve their ends. They believe that nothing gets done without the use of power!
Jesus` disciples were convinced that Jesus was right and that if he would just use the power at his disposal, he could make things come out right. The problem for them was that Jesus wouldn`t use his power the way they thought he should. Did they think that if he would let them get hold of it and use it, they could make things come out right? They were exasperated with him. He wouldn`t let them call down fire from heaven and fry the stubborn, unbelieving Samaritans. He insisted on going to Jerusalem where, if he didn`t use his power, he would surely be trapped, perhaps killed. Once in Jerusalem, Jesus and the disciples were faced with violence against him and them. His opponents had no qualms about using violent force. During the last supper, Jesus had one more talk with his disciples about his use of power and the world`s use of power. He warned them about the consequences of using power the world`s way even for the best of spiritual purposes.
Jesus deliberately, thoughtfully, calmly and after much real, not fake, agony, kept his course of active, non-violent opposition to evil. That`s what got him nailed on a cross! And our failure to do that is what keeps us off our cross. Many Christians are in such a self-righteous frenzy over real or imagined wrongs that they are ready to nail somebody on a cross. Some seem ready to nail fellow-Christians on one. Jesus died with a spear in his side, but He never lived with one in his hand. Right on! But that`s hard, hard to think about, harder to accept, hardest to do. Every age has had its Christians who actively and non-violently opposed small and great evils, and were silenced. But not finally silenced. They are like those witnesses in the last part of Hebrews 11 who were silenced in their day, but who now live on in God`s list of the immortal heroes and heroines of the faith. Three lessons are to be learned here; faith, faithfulness, and patience. Their faith was in the God who acts, although not always by our human timetable. They were faithful to their vision of how God would have them live. And they stayed "under the burden," which is the New Testament`s phrase for patience. To do otherwise, to take things into their own hands in order to make those things come out right could not, would not, work God`s purpose. By their faithfulness they developed exemplary character and became examples of patient endurance, living stones, and faithful witness.
Finally, what can we do to become the kind of persons whose lives would be characterized by what I have described? "Characterized." How does that work? I come now to the explanation which, in an old-fashioned camp meeting of the Methodist or Baptist variety, precedes the invitation. Perhaps, exhortation would be the word which gathers together and sums up both explanation and invitation. Can we be exhorted to have character? Yes. The question is, How? How can we become persons, men and women, of the Hebrews 11 kind of character?
Let me seem to digress. You will see that this is not a digression. My wife, Sheri, is a theologian. She also teaches theology. The two are not necessarily the same, but she is and does both. I intend being an ethicist. I also teach ethics. We study things together and talk about things together. For going on fifteen years we have taught the same students. She, theology and I, ethics. We have done this on two continents, in Spanish and in English. We talk together about the Bible, about our students, about our churches (most of the time she has attended and worked in one and I in another), about our world, about our daughters (she and I have one and I have another three), about the needs of us all-the two of us, our students, our churches, our world, our daughters, about the things we enjoy and the things we don`t, about the things that we like and the things we don`t.
We have reached some conclusions. You would think we would, of course, after fifteen years. Let`s start with the needs and what we all may do about them. We are increasingly convinced that our greatest need in building character in our own lives is to read over and over again, then again, then once more the Bible. All of it: the pretty parts, the ugly parts the more easily understood parts and the less easily understood parts, the parts that uplift and inspire us and the parts that bring us to our knees. And although we are also convinced that all of it is important and none is to be left out, yet it is the accounts of Jesus that we must concentrate on in order really to get at the rest. We are not Marcionites (that is, we are not Gnostics denying Christ`s humanity and believing that matter and all things physical are inherently evil), nor are we anti-Pauline. To the contrary. Yet, there is Jesus, standing at the pinnacle of it all, beckoning us to follow him. And there are Paul and Phoebe and Peter and Mary and James and John and all the rest, following him and beckoning us to follow with them. Which we intend to do and which we do, running and stumbling and excited and out of breath most of the time. Following him. That`s what we all need to be doing. Together, with no one left out. The sexually charged and those with less libido. The rich and the poor and the in-between. The powerful and the powerless and the power-hungry (that`s all of us). And in our best moments Christians all want to do it his way.
We learn that sometimes we have disobeyed him out of ignorance. When we do that, it`s knowledge we need. That`s where reading the Bible and praying about it come in. And all of us reading it, together when possible, because some of us can see things that others of us can`t. We need the Bible and the Holy Spirit and prayer and each other to cure our ignorance.
We realize that we fail and sin because we are weak. Each of us is weak in ways that others aren`t. Each of us is strong in ways that others aren`t. "Confess your sins to one another" is not an idle admonition. Yet we don`t do it. And we pay the price. The big, powerful super-church and television enchanter-preachers are also weak-but to whom are they going to confess their weaknesses. They avoid being seen as weak! "Bear one another`s burdens," the Bible tells us. How can you do that, however, if you don`t know what the burdens are? It seems that when John the Baptist exhorted, people came confessing their sins! Nowadays when one comes forward at the invitation, sometimes we preachers repeat the formula that so-and-so has come forward "confessing their sins and publicly confessing Jesus as Savior." The rest of us don`t know what those sins are that are really not confessed to anyone. And that`s the last we hear of that! Until maybe the rumor mills start grinding. Rumor is not prayer. It is not confessing our sins although it may be calling out (confessing) their sins. Rumor is not bearing one another`s burdens. It is adding to another`s burdens. We need to disciple one another. It is not easy. But it is a way of building character.
And then sometimes we are not particularly ignorant nor are we particularly weak but we go on and sin anyway. The Bible calls that a sin of presumption. It is really dangerous. Could it be the most dangerous thing we can do to undermine character? It is presuming on God`s grace, that God will forgive us even though we did it deliberately, even though we knew better, even though we weren`t weak. "If God is in the forgiving business, let`s throw a lot of business his way." Or, "Shall we sin the more, that grace may more abound?" Paul answered that one with the strongest negative at his command: "No way!" In the Old Testament sacrificial system, there was a procedure, either sacrifices or offerings, for sins of ignorance and sins of weakness, but not even a hint about any procedure for sins of presumption.
What about it?
Character.
We find out about its importance. We confess to one another. We help each other. We fall down and get up with our brothers` and sisters` and God`s help. We change. We begin to look more like Jesus. We begin to act more like Jesus. We begin to talk more like Jesus. We begin to think more like Jesus. We begin to learn to do it his way.
It doesn`t happen overnight. It takes a lifetime. That`s what a lifetime is for.
