Goodness as a Reflection

My husband was just telling me about this article he had read in some National Geographic magazine which intrigued him to no end.  It was about Singapore, a country 1/8 the size of Delaware. It states: "Out of a malarial swamp, the tiny island at the southernmost tip of the Malay Peninsula gained independence from Britain in 1963 and, in one generation, transformed itself into a legendarily efficient place, where the per capita income for its 3.7 million citizens exceeds that of many European countries, the education and health systems rival anything in the West, government officials are largely corruption free, 90 percent of households own their own homes, taxes are relatively low and sidewalks are clean, and there are no visible homeless people or slums.  If all that, plus a typical unemployment rate of about 3 percent and a nice stash of money in the bank thanks to the government's enforced savings plan, doesn't sound sweet to you, just travel 600 miles south and try getting by in a Jakarta shantytown."1  Sounds nice, right?

But when you start to read about their laws and how their enforced policies extend to every little facet of life, you wonder if the price of their prosperity and security is worth it. There are fines for chewing gum, spitting, even bringing durian fruit into certain places.  Littering trash or a cigarette butt will get you a $200 fine the first time; next time you'll find yourself doing community service and picking up others' litter.  If you're found with even small amounts of drugs, you'll be sentenced to a court-ordered caning.  Penalty for drug trafficking is death.   And woe to the foreign immigrants who find themselves in a family way!  Pregnancy means deportation.  Couples are encouraged to marry within their own status so college graduates should marry other college graduates, and the "Two is Enough" slogan gives you an idea of their population control.  The article goes on to explain the minister's ideas on humanity: "'The Confucian theory was man could be improved, but I'm not sure he can be.  He can be trained, he can be disciplined.'  In Singapore that has meant lots of rules - prohibiting littering, spitting on sidewalks, failing to flush public toilets - with fines and occasional outing in the newspaper for those who break them."  According to the minister, the idea "'that man could be perfected...was an optimistic way of looking at life.'  People abuse freedom.  That is his beef with America: The rights of individuals to do their own thing allow them to misbehave at the expense of an orderly society.  As they say in Singapore:  What good are all those rights if you're afraid to go out at night?"

Even if it still sounds somewhat like an Utopian society to you, here's how some of Singapore's citizens summed up their thoughts:  "I do lament our lack of freedom to express ourselves, and the government's seemingly unmitigated grip on power and what appears to be an inconsistent willingness to listen to public sentiment that does not suit it." and another sentiment "Singapore is like a warm bath.  You sink in, slit your wrists, your lifeblood floats away, but hey, it's warm." Utopia?  Hmmm...

I was reminded of the above article when I came across a quote today in a book.  

"I was taught right and wrong as a kid.  But the truth is that I drive completely differently when there is a cop behind me, and when there isn't.  It is hard for us to admit we have a sin nature, because we live in this system of checks and balances.  If we get caught, we'll be punished.  But this doesn't make us good people; it makes us subdued people.*  Just think about the Senate and the House, even the President.  The genius of the American system is checks and balances.  Nobody gets all the powers.  Everyone is watching everyone else.  It's as if the Founding Fathers knew intrinsically that the soul of humanity, unwatched, is perverse."2 

The idea that just because we might know right from wrong and live accordingly doesn't make us good.  It makes us subdued.  Only the Father is good.  Only Christ is good.  Only the Holy Spirit is good.  And the more we give ourselves over to God and allow the goodness of the Holy Spirit to shine through us, the more good we'll seemingly look to others.  But we will never be good ourselves and on our own terms.  Countries can mandate good behavior, but goodness or righteousness can never be attained.  Let us never forget that we are only the reflection of God's goodness to others.  Having no light of our own, we are the moon to His sun.  

1. From the January 2010 National Geographic magazine titled "Merging Man and Machine"

2. Quote from Jazz Notes: Improvisations on Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller

* Bold font mine.

Note: Any references/notes pulled from Nat Geo or the book Jazz Notes does in no way mean I agree/believe with the philosophies put forth by either resource.  

"Here's the Church, and Here's the Steeple. Open the Doors and See All the People."

Our churches today are filled with the rich while the poor sit on our doorstep.  Where do the poor go when needing help?  Who do the rich give to when writing checks?  Thanks to the welfare system, all involved can now ignore their own spiritual condition.  Those in need never have to step inside a church to receive help, and those inside the church never have to step outside of it to give it.

Let's step out and see who we can help!

Just One Stinking Vice

I think we're all pretty good people, don't you? Oh, we have our individual vices to contend with, but for the most part we treat others nicely, have good marriages, kids to brag about and certainly could never see ourselves on the evening news sporting a lovely mug shot. I think that's why it's harder when we're challenged to be "perfect" in Christ.

God spoke to Moses and Aaron, "When you enter the land of Canaan, which I'm giving to you as a possession, and I put a serious fungus in a house in the land of your possession, the householder is to go and tell the priest, 'I have some kind of fungus in my house.' The priest is to order the house vacated until he can come to examine the fungus, so that nothing in the house is declared unclean...If the fungus breaks out again in the house after the stones have been torn out and the house has been scraped and plastered, the priest is to come and conduct an examination; if the fungus has spread, it is a malignant fungus. The house is unclean. The house has to be demolished - its stones, wood, and plaster are to be removed to the garbage dump outside the city."1

Now what can the rites and detailed procedures found in the book of Leviticus teach us? My commentary writes: After replacing the plagued stones with new stones, if the plague reappeared, it was chronic and couldn't be dealt with simply by removing a few stones. A house with leprosy speaks of the heart. In Ephesians 3, Paul prayed that Christ might dwell in our hearts, or literally be at home in our hearts. Is Christ at home in your heart - in every room of the home of your heart? Or are there closets and attics that are leprous? You can't simply lock the door or seal them off. No, the stones are to be ripped out and carried away. Otherwise, the leprosy will spread. We think if we've given the Lord five out of eight rooms, we're doing pretty well, when, in actuality, if there's even one room with leprosy, the entire house will ultimately be affected.2

This seems like a pretty stiff challenge to me. I'm not even allowed one "Monica closet"3 in my apartment/house. I feel like that's a pretty tough assignment - tougher than keeping my actual home spotless throughout (which if you've seen my house, you know is an impossibility for me).
Gary Thomas in Devotions for a Sacred Marriage writes about unwillingly giving up soda, his one vice, for Lent. "Can't I have just one stinking vice?" I protested. "Just one?!..." Admittedly, whether I drink a daily Pepsi is a very trivial matter - but the principle behind it goes much deeper. My statement "Can't I have just one stinking vice?" has infected my own and many other marriages on a much more significant and profound level. Husbands may say, "Look, I don't have affairs. I don't gamble with the mortgage money. I'm home in the evening. Yeah, I occasionally lose my temper and wound you with a few careless words, but am I not allowed one vice?"
Wives may say, "I've been a faithful wife. I don't bust the family budget. I'm there for my family. Maybe at times I talk negatively about my husband behind his back when he really ticks me off, but all in all, I think he has it pretty good."
And so we excuse something we know we should change, but we ignore it, based on the faulty assumption that, since we are generally good husbands and wives, we can maintain our "one little vice."
But the Bible doesn't give us permission to ignore "one little vice." II Corinthians 7:1 urges us to "purify ourselves from everything that contaminates the body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God" (emphasis added). When we say, "All in all, my spouse has it OK," we're not perfecting holiness; we're excusing wickedness.4

He goes on to say, The truth is, I'm not granted "one little vice." Jesus said, "Be perfect, therefore as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48). If something injures my relationship with [my wife], out of love I will work with God's Spirit to root that habit out of my life. I won't make excuses by pointing to the lack of other negative things about me, and I won't try to hide behind my strengths. A weakness is a weakness, regardless of many strengths that surround it. Sin is sin, regardless of how many virtues accompany it.4

So how do we become perfect? By giving ourselves to Christ on a daily basis. And there's always something to work on, isn't there? God, in His graciousness, always has me working on one lesson or another in order to change my heart. And even more gracious of Him, He doesn't come to me and say, "Yeah, here are the ten things wrong with you. Get to work!" It seems He always brings just one thing to my attention so that I may spend some time allowing Him to work on that one issue at that time. "Create in me a clean heart" becomes the prayer on my lips, and I'm thankful that it is Christ who does the cleaning and not me because I'm not a very good housekeeper.


Crystal


1. Leviticus 14:33-36a, 43-45 as written in The Message
2. Jon Courson's Application Commentary Old Testament, pg. 403
3. Anyone who is a die-hard fan of the show Friends remembers the episode where Monica, a complete neat-freak who keeps her apartment spotless, is horrified when her one horrendously messy closet is discovered.
4. Devotions for A Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas, Chapter 14 "One Bad Habit"