Compromising the Gospel

Some of the things Jesus said to His disciples, if taken literally, would so upset the way the world works we wouldn’t recognize it. They would overthrow the way we've set up everything. So we have to find a way to acknowledge what He says while allowing ourselves not to take His words too seriously.

“If someone says bad things about you, say only good of them. Don’t return evil for evil.”

“If someone slaps you, let them slap you again without slapping back.”

“If someone steals from you, give them even more of what you own.”

“Don’t look on one another with lust or see each other as objects of self-gratification. Treat everyone as you would like them to treat you.”

“Forgive those who do you wrong, not once, but over and over again; forgive them so many times you lose count. This is how our Father in Heaven forgives you. As you are forgiven, forgive.”

We all know better than this. A life lived according to these principles would be unstable; nothing you owned would be secure, people would take advantage of you all the time, you’d probably end up getting killed. That’s what happened to the One Who said these and other impossible-to-follow things.

So we compromise His words and teachings. We learn to be Selective Christians. “We” here is inclusive—I’m not sitting on a throne, speaking down, but on a stool, talking to my friends. I’m a picture perfect example of a Gospel compromiser. Because I am, the world of selfishness and sorrow lives around me. Because I water down the Gospel in my everyday life—in everyday ways—the Gospel doesn’t have the power it is meant to have for me and those around me. The world around us, even in its fallen state where the Law of the Survival of the Fittest is ever at work, is a world of resplendent beauty. Even death and decay can’t hide the glory of its Creator. You and I, though, can hide some of its remaining goodness. The more you and I live by the Laws of the Fallen World, the more those Laws hold us in their power.

But you and I have a chance, every day, dozens of times a day, to overturn the Laws of the Fall. We can, every now and then, share in the New Life, by saying a gentle word to those who speak unkindly to us or harshly of us. When we forgive wrongs which really hurt us, with a Gospel forgiveness that seeks nothing for itself and wants to hold no advantage over another, the Gospel is set free and grace abounds—not just for the forgiver and the forgiven, but for all those around. The Russian St Seraphim said, “Save your own soul, live the Gospel words, and ten thousand souls around you will be saved.” That grand old Christian curmudgeon, G K Chesterton, said the same in ways we can relate to best: “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”

The next time you get a chance (you won’t have to wait long!), do Jesus a favor. Don’t compromise His words. And let me know what happens.

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A Divine Bioluminescence

Fireflies are an unmingled delight. I know their crepuscular bioluminescence is intended to attract both mates and prey, but I still find them utterly delightful. When I was a young boy, I would sit with my grandfather on the family homestead and we’d spend the hour or so before summer suppertimes watching the fireflies blink on and off in the evening shade. I remember wanting to catch some in a jar and the old man telling me they’d “lose their light and die” if I did. Now I sit on the porch of my little homestead and watch the fireflies again and discover my delight in them is still as fresh. Now I know they won’t die in the jar from sorrow because they “lose their light” but because they suffocate; now I know they don’t sprinkle the dusk with their illuminations for sheer joy but as a survival mechanism, but every time I see the stab of light in the evening’s darkness, something in me lights up, too. The little beetle is indeed bioluminescent by nature, but his brief night-time flash says more than he knows.

The firefly shines so he can be seen. He’s invisible, otherwise—I certainly wouldn’t know he was there if he didn’t make a show out of himself. My delight in him is the unexpected flash of light he gives in the midst of darkness. It’s not enough to see him for more than a second, just enough to say he’s there; a light shining in the darkness.

It’s probably scandalous, or at least a bit unwise, to write this, but the firefly shines with something of a Divine Light.

Not merely because he recalls the Scriptural statement that the Light shined in darkness (which failed to understand What it was seeing), but even more compelling, the firefly is invisible for those many, many seconds when he’s not shining his light. So too with God. The wondrous moments of illumination which periodically dot our lives with signs of God’s presence are separated by long periods when God seems invisible, inaccessible, hid from our eyes. It’s easy to understand why people so often lay aside belief. This isn’t a “modern” crisis; it’s been the case with all of us since the beginning. That’s why the little glow, that instantaneous flash of light—here, then gone!—delights. Between flashes, life can seem a drudgery, one problem or disappointment after another, but then, for those who know to look, there’s a flash, and then, there, another! Faith enables us to see there is meaning in the light that shines in our darkness. When we realize the darkness can’t overcome it, that the flashes of light persist, then, as the old Quaker hymn says, “How can I keep from singing?”

Perhaps, from time to time, as we delight in the Light, you and I can flash too, and briefly illumine the darkness for others.


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Don't keep yourself from singing.