Multiplication Tables and Marriage Proposals

It explains why people talk about freedom yet live in a prison of guilt and fear. It helps me deal with those who talk about grace and give very little of it. It is the only way I know to understand why I, a teacher of grace, live a life that is sometimes marked by obsession with rules, being perfect and doing everything right. It explains why so many people have to be right and work so hard to appear good.

Frankly, I don't really believe that those who drive me nuts with criticism and condemnation of other Christians aren't redeemed. I just believe that I (and they) are saved but sometimes don't know Jesus.

You may have heard of the "Facts/Faith/Feelings" teaching about how one gets one's feelings into line. There is something to that. The Christian faith really is based on facts and, according to this view, once one determines those facts are true and "acts" accordingly, the feelings follow. But what do you do if the "feelings" don't follow?

For many years, I followed Christ in a not dissimilar way to the way I followed the multiplication table. I knew that it was true. It didn't move me deeply, it didn't make me "feel good all over" and it didn't feel "warm and fuzzy." During that period in my life, I simply didn't understand those who had an emotional connection with Christ. I, from my arrogant, self-righteous and superficial position of intellectual commitment, felt that they "needed" all that but all I needed was the truth.

"Just the facts man, just the facts"

After all, once you see truth, you can't unsee it. Only a fool, once seeing it, refuses to live according to the truth one has seen.

As I look back on it, the problem was that I tried to make the Christian faith into an affirmation of propositions. It was intellectual assent and I thought that was enough. It wasn't enough. Not nearly enough.

In the last century a New England man in Amherst, Massachusetts, proposed to his wife this way: "I hope I have no foolishness called romance; I am too well balanced for that sort of nonsense. But we might look forward to leading respectable and useful lives and enjoy the respect of the neighbors."

If you think that was a good marriage proposal, there's something weird and bent about you and everybody knows it. But, if you believe something like that about your relationship to Christ (the Lover of your soul) and even teach it, making the Christian faith into a "respectable and useful" religious commitment, everybody will think you're godly. You're not. You're neurotic.

I know. I'm not preaching at you. I've been there and, God help me, still live there sometimes. It's having it in your head but having trouble getting it into your heart.

I don't know if I have all the answers. I do have at least one of them though. Most Christians live reasonably Christian lives in the sense that we aren't serial killers; don't rob banks and do pay taxes. If you sometimes have trouble getting what you know to be true into your heart, what follows might help.

With me, 1 think, the real problem was (and sometimes still is) control. In my need to control my situation, my church and all the circumstances of my life, I was saved but I didn't know Jesus.

Jesus said about the Scribes and Pharisees, "The Scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat, so practice and observe whatever they tell you [i. e. they have the propositions and the doctrines right]- but not what they do. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders. You [the Scribes and the Pharisees] shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. You travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves" (Matthew 23:24,1-15).

You see, you can analyze, teach, and line up doctrines and propositions. There is something logical and proper about Biblical theology. Apologetics will not only win arguments; it makes one feel secure in one's "rightness." On the other hand, what goes on in the heart/feelings can be quite wild and we must not have that. Trusting your heart, listening to your heart and acting on your heart's "reasons" can get you into all sorts of trouble. Once you start going down the road to the heart, you can't control what happens. Not only that, there is something... well... uh... you know... kind of crude about all that emotional stuff.

Am I saying that Biblical doctrine isn't of any consequence? Am I suggesting that what Francis Schaeffer called "true truth" isn't true or, if it is, it isn't all that important? Do I think that the eternal verities of the Christian faith are to be subjugated by the "things of the heart"? Are you crazy? Of course not!

I am, however, saying that all of those things have one purpose: to point you to Christ so that He will love you and empower you to serve and to enjoy Him.

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Copyright 2002 Key Life Network. Today's Daily Wisdom is from Steve Brown. His Bible teaching is heard daily on hundreds of radio stations through the Key Life Network. For the frequency of a station near you go to www.keylife.org

Today's Daily Wisdom post was edited by Keith Todd, moderator of theSermon Fodder list which offers Christian humor and modern day parables forenjoyment and for use as sermon illustration material. To subscribe go to http://www.sermonfodder.com or drop an email note to Sermon_Fodder-subscribe@yahoogroups.com