Prioritization: The Key to Getting in the Right Conflicts and Staying Out of the Wrong Ones

Posted on August 27, 2012 by Pastor Foley

Conflict isn’t bad, you know. It’s not even just an unavoidable problem with which we have to do as we mutually muddle through our marred human existences. As Ken Sande notes, conflict actually provides us with almost unparalleled opportunities to:

  • Glorify God (by trusting, obeying, and imitating him)
  • Serve other people (by helping to bear their burdens or by confronting them in love)
  • Grow to be like Christ (by confessing sin and turning from attitudes that promote conflict).

This doesn’t mean, of course, that we rationalize our tendency to spoil for a fight every time our personal ox is gored. After all, the Apostle Paul commands us in Romans 12:18, “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.”

As odd as it sounds, our Christian maturity ought not to reduce the number or severity of conflicts we get into (see “Calvary, Cross of” and check out 2 Timothy 3:12); instead, it ought to get us in more of the right conflicts and keep us out of more of the wrong ones.

Prioritization is a seldom-noted principle of Christian conflict resolution, but its importance can’t be overstated. It all begins with rightly ordering our loves and knowing what we owe to whom:

36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Our highest duty–joy, purpose, command–is love to God. Interestingly, Jesus doesn’t command us to love our neighbor as we love God. He commands us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. In the parable of the good Samaritan he offers a reflexive definition of neighbors as those in our sphere of influence to whom we show mercy. In Matthew 18:15-31, Jesus makes clear that the mercy we extend to others is a re-presentation of the mercy extended to us by God.

There is an ordering here, a prioritization which Jesus models for us throughout his ministry. Nowhere better do we see this than on the Cross. Though it is popular these days to croon about how I was on Jesus’ mind when he hung on the Cross, the Scripture reveals a different focus of Jesus’ thinking that day: The Father. God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son, and the Son loved the Father so much that he only ever did what he saw the Father do. Christ’s perfect love for us is evidenced in his unfailing focus on his Father.

Loving God with all our heart will inevitably put us in conflict with others–even (and not infrequently) in conflict with our own family members. But this is not because love of God and others is a zero-sum game where we must wisely parse out how much love/time/energy/commitment to give to God and how much to give to others. That, after all, is the error of the priest and the Levite in the parable of the good Samaritan.

Instead, what causes the conflict is that often what others want from us will be something other than the love of God. This is what Jesus notes when he says in Matthew 12:46-50:

“Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” 49 Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. 50 For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

Jesus’ family came to collect and take him home. But Jesus–and we–are not called to give others what they want. We are called to give others what God gives to us. In this way Jesus does not here authorize us to neglect our parents and love God instead, as if there were only so much love to go around. He shows us that what we owe to our parents–and to ourselves, and to our neighbors–is the debt of the love of God. This debt constrains us to remember that our identity has been completely transformed. We are now sons and daughters of God. We may–in fact, are called to–always offer to others that which is after the Father’s own heart, without reservation.

If that is not what they want–and frequently it’s not–then there will be conflict. But for that kind of conflict Jesus teaches us to call ourselves blessed. There is a reward for right priorities at the end of the age, he says. It is then that God will give to us all that others–even our own family members–did not want.

Himself.

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Totally Forgiving God Is A Totally Misguided Practice

Posted on August 24, 2012 by Pastor Foley

The blog era seems to have sanctioned the puzzling practice of reviewing books one has not read. (Note to self: What a great idea for a new blog! “A Review of Books I Have Not Read.”) So please note that this is not a review of R.T. Kendall’s new book, Totally Forgiving God, since I have not read same. (For a review of Kendall’s book by someone who admits he has not read it but wants to review it nonetheless, you can check out this piece by Sam Storms.)

Instead, I want to review Kendall’s concept of totally forgiving God, which he presents in two pieces that may save you the price of the book. First, there’s his Will You Forgive God? piece in Charisma Magazine. Second–and, in my view, preferably–there’s his live interview with DrAlvin.com, which, though clocking in at a lengthy 14:22, is really worth a full-length listen. You just have to hear the skeptical tone in Dr. Alvin’s voice as Dr. Alvin makes what to me is the achingly obvious point in the matter, namely, that someone who feels the need to forgive God is clearly not a person who knows God very well:

Dr. A: Let me ask you something. Just between me and you. We’re sitting here, you know, you got some ice tea, I got some lemonade. We’re just talking, OK?

RT: (Cautious.) All right…?

Dr. A: Now when a person tells me–

RT (Puzzled)–Are we on the air?

Dr. A: Yeah, we’re on the air. We’re on the air.

RT: OK.

Dr. A: We’re just, we’re just–

RT: You drink lemonade on the air?

Dr. A: We’re just visualizing sitting talking, OK? Now if someone came to me and said, “I’m mad at God,” for me, that would let me know that they must not know God, because if they really knew God, they wouldn’t ask that question…. One thing I’ve discovered is that if you have an intimate, personal, one-on-one relationship with God, that kind of question–there’s no way in the world I would ever even ask God that kind of question, because I know the nature of God. So when a person’s upset with God, just between me and you, doesn’t that indicate that they really don’t have a one-on-one relationship with the true and living God?

Correct response: Yes. That’s exactly what that means. But RT Kendall disagrees, and, in the process, offers a peculiarly thin conception of forgiveness:

RT: You forgive God first of all by telling him what you feel, and you don’t tell the world… I draw an analogy between total forgiveness when we–we show that we have totally forgiven others who have hurt us when we don’t tell what they did; we only tell the Lord. And so, too, when it comes to totally forgiving God: Don’t utter your complaints to the world. Just say to God, “I don’t understand this.” Because he can cope with that.

Come again?

RT: Totally forgiving God is something you’re going to have to do as long as you live. Never think that just because you do it once it’s over with, it’s dealt with. The truth is, as I teach, that total forgiveness is something that you’ve got to keep doing as long as you live. So in the same way we will always have things that we won’t understand, that we’ll say, “Lord, why did you let this happen to me? Why, when I needed you the most–or why, when I was trying to get so close to you, and I was praying more than ever, reading my Bible, going to church, and I lose my job, or I have this financial reverse, or my best friend betrayed me, God, you could have stopped that! It looks like you don’t love me.” The truth is, this is why we have to set him free, and let him off the hook, and we have to do this as long as we live.

But as Brauns notes in his excerpt from Caneday, there are two salient facts that are just awfully hard to square up with Kendall’s approach here:

  • Forgiveness always concerns sin.
  • God forgives confessed sin.

So unless God confesses a sin to you, you’d be out of line to forgive him. And if God does confess a sin to you, you had better double-check with whom you are speaking.

Kendall is fond of citing Jeremiah as an example of someone who voiced his complaints to God. (It sure seems like the news got out to the world, given that it got included in the Bible and all, so that would seem to violate Kendall’s first forgiveness dictum of not telling anyone else). In his Charisma Magazine article he says, “I do know that Jeremiah said, ‘O Lord, you deceived me, and I was deceived’ (Jer. 20:7, emphasis added).”

God, however, does not seem to be particularly eager to be let off the hook by Jeremiah–though he is quite gracious in extending forgiveness to Jeremiah for Jeremiah’s egregious thinking. Notes one of the commentators at the bottom of Kendall’s article:

Instead of asking Jeremiah to “forgive” God, the Lord instead told him: “You must repent of such words and thoughts! If you do, I will restore you to the privilege of serving me. If you say what is worthwhile instead of what is worthless, I will again allow you to be my spokesman (Jer 15:19)”

“The privilege of serving God”–that’s a powerful (and all too seldom practiced) attitude. Rather than letting God off the hook, let’s count it a privilege to be hooked to the God in whom there is no shadow of turning–and as Dr. Alvin suggests, let’s count it all privilege to get to know him better, regardless of the season through which he is shepherding us.

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Forgiveness As Evangelism

Posted on August 22, 2012 by Pastor Foley

I was teaching about proclaiming the gospel to our North Korean Underground University students in class this past weekend. I asked them if they recalled the official announcement of Kim Jong Il’s ascension to power and, if so, who made the announcement, where did they hear it (e.g., radio, television, meeting), and what were the specific words that were shared?

One by one the students recalled how they first heard the message. One student remembered the announcement being made triumphantly by a famous news announcer. Another shared about a cadre bellowing out the news in a communist party meeting in his village. They recalled the messengers using words like “Dear Leader” and “Beloved Father.”

I explained how the word “gospel” was a technical term that predated Jesus and meant the announcement of the ascension of a new leader. “August Caesar is Lord!” would be a typical formulation of the gospel (or “Kim Jing Il is the Dear Leader” in North Korea), to which those who heard the gospel would be expected to respond in kind, even bowing the knee in submission. This gives us new insight into Philippians 2:9-11 (NIV), where Paul says:

9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

That’s what a gospel proclamation looks like, and that’s how we’re called to respond when we hear one. In Rome, that meant publicly affirming that Jesus was Lord; in today’s North Korea it would mean publicly affirming that Jesus is the Dear Leader.

Our manner of evangelism suggests that we modern evangelical Christians understand the Jesus is Lord/Dear Leader part (I hope we understand that, anyway), but not the bending the knee.

Bending the knee is an unmistakable sign of submission, surrender, and fealty, and it is a key response to the proclamation of the gospel. Every culture has a different version of bending the knee, and no doubt every culture knows what that gesture of submission is. It reminds us that the Christian gospel is not only the announcement of a new leader but also the extension of forgiveness to those in rebellion. I like the phraseology of Dan Phillips of Biblical Christianity here, in a comment posted on Chris Brauns’ blog. Dan writes, “(A)bandon your case against God, repent, and humble yourself in genuine faith.” Preface that with Acts 17:30-31 (NIV) and you have yourself a pretty accurate and compelling presentation of the gospel:

30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”

For years, evangelism stressed the personal vision aspect of the gospel (“God has a wonderful plan for your life”). Now, narrative and testimony are big. But labeling rebellion as rebellion and issuing a call to lay down arms–“(A)bandon your case against God, repent, and humble yourself in genuine faith”–reveals a far deeper understanding of the authority issue that’s involved anytime a gospel is proclaimed.

Even new North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, son of Kim Jong Il, understands that. As the “gospel” of Kim Jong Un’s ascension is proclaimed, North Korea’s agents are spreading the word to North Korean defectors: Return home. All will be forgiven. Kim Jong Un Has a wonderful plan for your life.

“They went back to the North via China after being lured by the North’s promise not to punish them for deserting their country as well as new homes in Pyongyang and new jobs,” she said. “The number of North Korean defectors who returned to the North this year is estimated to top 100.”

Sum it up and say: any gospel proclamation that announces a new reign but does not invite a new repentance doesn’t understand life in North Korea or in the Kingdom of God.

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