Keeping Things in Perspective

Imagine that you live in a broad valley. It is fertile and rich, full of rivers and crops and fruit-trees. There is every imaginable type of land and every imaginable type of person, such that there would be no need to move outside this valley (remember, it is very broad) in order to find a new adventure or a different type of landscape. Above all, this valley is ruled by a perfect King.

This valley has no walls, and there are paths leading out of it. Along the way are warnings, posted at regular intervals. They are varied, and there are hundreds of them, reading like this: "Warning! Pitfalls ahead." "Danger--man-traps." "Wild beasts ahead; turn back." "You are entering inhospitable lands." These become louder and more urgent the more one progresses.

If a man reaches the plateau above, he will find just what these signs predict. If he continues walking he will be harried, bruised, and cut. More warnings signs will appear. If he walks far enough, then of course he has proven he was never a citizen of the valley at all, but this post does not discuss those sort of people.

It probably does not take much mental gymnastics to see that I am making an extended metaphor of temporary wandering in the Christian walk. My point is more than simply illustrative, however, because every Christians knows that he, along with his brothers and sisters in Christ, all wander at times.

There was a guest pastor at our church today, filling in for our regular pastor, who is on vacation/business elsewhere, and this guest pastor's sermon gave me some food for thought. He talked about the parable of the Prodigal Son, but about half his sermon was on the "good son" who never left his father. He made the interesting point that this son is just as estranged from his father as the prodigal son, and--most interesting of all--that the good son obeyed his father in order to keep his father "out of his life." That is, he obeyed his father not out of love for him, but out of a desire to keep his father at a distance.

In the same way, this guest pastor argued, we sometimes obey God in order to keep Him (so we think) out of our affairs. That is, if we are faithful husbands or faithful wives, raise good children, work at successful jobs and never murder, cheat, or steal, God might not really feel the need to impose all those other rules on us like loving our neighbor (as long as help the old lady with her garbage), and so on.

Some of the points he made in this sermon occasioned in me the thought that in this area we have entirely the wrong perspective. Apparently one of the largest effects of our latent sin nature is keeping the wrong mental perspective on information that we know to be true. I know it is wrong to be proud; I know it is wrong to think uncharitable things about an undeserving acquaintance. Yet I have committed both these sins, and sometimes, at least on the surface, I somehow think my life might not be as "fun" if I completely repudiated them. I know, intellectually, better than that. But my perspective is off.

It is alluring to climb to the top of a valley and see what is there, but there are some places we were not meant to go. When sin draws us, it can mask itself under the pretense of a man with keys, releasing us from some kind of internment, as though the Christian life is a series of bars. But the Christian life places no different kind of restraint on a man than my mother put on me in my youth when I tried to cross the road in front of a car I did not notice. It is time that we move from the intellectual knowledge that the Christian life, life in the valley, is superior, into the practical application. Next time sin comes knocking, think about this. There are two kinds of restraint in the spiritual world: Satan's gaol and God's mansion. There is no such thing as completely independent freedom, as though we move through this world without the guiding hand of any external force. Humans are created to worship and serve. It is time we stop thinking of God's laws as some kind of Divine grounding, keeping us at home when we could be having fun with our friends. They are the bonds of love.

~Connor, the Musing Protestant