“It is the duty of every citizen according to his
best capacities to give validity to his
convictions in political affairs.”

- Albert Einstein

One day last week a co-worker on maternity leave brought her new little daughter to the office for show and tell. There's a distinctive commotion when someone brings a baby into the workplace, marked by multiple, high-pitched cooings and cluckings. It's completely different from the sound of someone bringing doughnuts, for example.

Nevertheless, I looked out over the cubicle walls anyway and saw about a dozen female heads clustered together focusing on something in the midst of them, and I figured they weren't watching a football game. I walked over in time to see the mother hand the infant off to one of her friends who, within moments, began the distinctive side-to-side rocking motion adults do when holding a child. Not only that, but within minutes the entire cluster was swaying sympathetically as well, including myself. I'm sure it's a phenomenon we're all familiar with.

I remembered this little scene again on Sunday morning at church. After we began with praise and worship there was truly a sense of the presence of God in our midst and as I stood in the moment I found myself gently swaying side to side in the exact same way I had earlier in the week, and the recognition of that kind of startled me. I looked around the room and easily two-thirds of the congregation were also quietly swaying in the same way.

Something in us or passed on to us naturally makes us adults rock to comfort a baby that's hungry, scared or has made a mess. Just as naturally, something in us or passed on to us draws us, even as adults, when we are hungry, scared or have made a mess of things. Then God takes us in his arms, and the breath of His spirit goes "Shhh-shh-shhh, it's going to be all right." And it is.

A few days ago I put up a post referencing how safe our lives have become and suggesting that we had to go looking to find things to kill us, and usually found them embedded in the things we've used to make our lives easier.

Our desire for easy and convenient kills us with useless calories, toxic drink dispensers and mutated nutrients while we celebrate progress and our exceeding cleverness. Why, to do without these fruits would be regressive, even primitive.

Morally we also like things easier, and we don't like to put the hard work in to examine ourselves and cut the slack out of our lives, thinking that as long as everything "looks good" then we must not be too bad. We certainly don't want to be bothered with the work of taking a stand in the hopes of changing others (unless we're one of those who can't wait to change everyone but themselves), so we watch that video, play that game, revel in those lyrics. Why, to do without our rationalizations, to be willing to say something is actually evil, would be regressive, even primitive.

It's far easier to act as if the "science" of our morality has all been settled, that evil has been driven from our land along with the wild, man-eating animals, leaving us this convenient, easy life where we assume everyone's just naturally got it all figured out and evil is merely a quaint concept to be manipulated for power and ratings, or to describe how someone else votes. Or else a venial sin is blown up into a huge paper dragon so that certain warriors can similarly puff themselves up to do battle with it. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

And then someone shoots up a school, pours acid on a playground slide or opportunistically twists another person's name and reputation for personal gain on a national stage and we gape in horror and wonder how anyone could do such a thing even though it happens in one form or another every day. Meanwhile, the TV networks that won't show a fan running out onto an athletic field because it gives the yahoo the exposure he's looking for and only encourages others, trip all over each other to broadcast the addled rantings of a self-absorbed maniac.

A friend who is a carpenter recently opined, after touring several million-dollar homes, how disappointing the workmanship was in these beautiful and expensive abodes. Things certainly looked nice, but to a practiced eye the mistakes and cover-ups for the mistakes were jarring. Something might look right, but if it's not properly squared up it's eventually going to sag and crumble, no matter how expensive and modern it is.

I can't imagine the architect is too pleased.

One of the songs we sang in church on Easter Sunday had these words:

I'll never know how much it cost
To see my sin upon that cross.

We've sung that song a few times before and each time I usually think to myself that I do know how much it cost to redeem my sin — it "cost" Jesus having to come to earth in human form, being beaten, crucified, dying and rising again. Yesterday, however, it really sunk in for me that there is a difference between "knowing" and "experiencing". Or, to put it in the words that occurred to me, it's the difference between receiving a check for $1 million and writing a check for $1 million.

That's not to say that most of us haven't tried to write out our own check for our salvation, either out of our man-made doctrines or new age spirituality, or based on our "good works". Inherent in all of those thoughts is that deep down we assume we're not "that bad" (even "good"), so how big a check are we really talking about? The thing is, there is no check that we can write ourselves that would pay that debt, even on an installment plan. That's because we all fell for the marketing incentives and opened our accounts at the First Bank of Hell (hey, I got a free toaster!), and those checks are always going to bounce. They'll come back stamped NSF — Insufficient Faith. And man, those penalty charges eat you up.

Nor do I get any closer by taking that revelation and thinking that I'm a worm, a worthless sinner (especially if done with an all-too-human sense of pride at my humility). True, on my own that is what I'd be, but Jesus looked at the value and decided I was worth it. I don't know which revelation makes me weep more.

It is a gift that I can't explain, rationalize or justify; all I can do is either accept it or waste it. There were many over the weekend who tipped their hats to the "message of Jesus" without realizing the sacrifice he made. There were the ones, even in Christian leadership, willing to call him "Teacher" but not "Lord". I know; I've been there, done that myself. As C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity (and KingDavid reminded me):

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg--or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that [alternative] open to us

Filings is an ongoing section of this blog where the posts focus specifically on issues of Christian life. The name comes about because “filings” are the natural by-product of Proverbs 27:17: “as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.”

One of the songs we sang in church on Easter Sunday had these words:

I'll never know how much it cost
To see my sin upon that cross.

We've sung that song a few times before and each time I usually think to myself that I do know how much it cost to redeem my sin — it "cost" Jesus having to come to earth in human form, being beaten, crucified, dying and rising again. Yesterday, however, it really sunk in for me that there is a difference between "knowing" and "experiencing". Or, to put it in the words that occurred to me, it's the difference between receiving a check for $1 million and writing a check for $1 million.

That's not to say that most of us haven't tried to write out our own check for our salvation, either out of our man-made doctrines or new age spirituality, or based on our "good works". Inherent in all of those thoughts is that deep down we assume we're not "that bad" (even "good"), so how big a check are we really talking about? The thing is, there is no check that we can write ourselves that would pay that debt, even on an installment plan. That's because we all fell for the marketing incentives and opened our accounts at the First Bank of Hell (hey, I got a free toaster!), and those checks are always going to bounce. They'll come back stamped NSF — Insufficient Faith. And man, those penalty charges eat you up.

Nor do I get any closer by taking that revelation and thinking that I'm a worm, a worthless sinner (especially if done with an all-too-human sense of pride at my humility). True, on my own that is what I'd be, but Jesus looked at the value and decided I was worth it. I don't know which revelation makes me weep more.

It is a gift that I can't explain, rationalize or justify; all I can do is either accept it or waste it. There were many over the weekend who tipped their hats to the "message of Jesus" without realizing the sacrifice he made. There were the ones, even in Christian leadership, willing to call him "Teacher" but not "Lord". I know; I've been there, done that myself. As C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity (and KingDavid reminded me):

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg--or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that [alternative] open to us

Filings is an ongoing section of this blog where the posts focus specifically on issues of Christian life. The name comes about because “filings” are the natural by-product of Proverbs 27:17: “as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.”