Greg Proffit Writing

Tag: bible

There Is A Grand Canyon Between You and Jesus

Photo by Christine Roy on Unsplash

# 35 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: There is a Grand Canyon between you on your best day and Jesus on his worst. Being “Christlike” is a fallacy. Genuine Christianity has never been about imitation or method acting.

A Grand Canyon of Difference

Take honest inventory of your spiritual life, and you’ll realize there is a Grand Canyon between you and Jesus. Even on your best day, when you’ve dressed up, said your prayers, had a devotional time, listened to Christian music, and meditated on God—you cannot produce the Spiritual resource needed to live the Christian life. That resource is Christ Himself, through the person and power of the Holy Spirit.

Yes, dear friend, even dear brethren, there is a Grand Canyon between you and Jesus, the gulf formed by the differing sources of power relied upon for life.

Allow me to introduce Watchman Nee (cover your toes)

Watchman Nee, a Chinese National and Christian author, in his book Not I, but Christ, stirred controversy when he wrote this:

“If you can teach a dog to be a Christian, then you can teach a man to be a Christian. There is none who can live the Christian life but Christ.”

This quote, also from Nee, is like it:

God is not seeking a display of my Christ-likeness, but a manifestation of His Christ.
~ Watchman Nee

and finally this:

We think of the Christian life as a ‘changed life’ but it is not that. What God offers us is an ‘exchanged life,’ a ‘substituted life,’ and Christ is our Substitute within.
~ Watchman Nee

Follow the links provided to learn more. His writing will change your view of the Christian life.

Christianity as strength training

In my 35 years as a believer, I’ve seen many good-hearted people and many well-meaning preachers speak and act as if being a good Christian is like going to the gym. Through your disciplined efforts; you get stronger and stronger. Soon, you can do more and more reps. Gradually, you get fit; you lose weight. You keep working at it, persevering to put in the effort to get the results, feeling the smile of God, and being congratulated by your fellow-believers for all your dedicated, inspiring work. Work hard enough and your life gets better. But, it’s hard, relentless work. Friend, I’ve been you.

The gym for Christians is church attendance and prayer and bible study and meetings and maybe tithing or doing some good works. It’s stopping drinking and smoking and cussing and listening to bad music and hanging out with bad people (any non-Christians). It is voting the right way and saying the right things and replacing the magnets on your refrigerator with bible verses.

Is this as good as it gets until we die and go to Heaven

But it is also mingled with failure and discouragement. It is struggling with habitual sin, and backsliding and repenting, and keeping up appearances and attending services—but still being defeated. So you grit your teeth and say, “God is Good.” But you can’t escape the gnawing, empty feeling that there has to be more to the Christian life than what you’re experiencing. And all the while, you blame yourself for your lack of “progress”, and feel guilty for letting God down. But you hang in there knowing that Heaven will be worth all the hard work and effort.

The typical idea suggests that one can become a “strong Christian”. In some circles, you’ll actually hear that term applied to particularly zealous and serious examples. The truth is—when we are weak, then we are strong, for then Christ’s power can rest upon us. God will let us be as strong as we want to be, but God is attracted to weakness.

That’s why He likes me so much. 😉

(And will be attracted to you the same way; as soon as you embrace your weakness as I have my own.)

The Canyon separates Jesus from self-empowered fiasco

I say, there’s a Grand Canyon between us and Jesus if that’s the extent of it.

It is either Christ manifesting Himself in and through us, or it is a human fiasco dressed up in church clothes saying churchy things. Many of the things we try to do for God are performed, not by the Spirit, but by self conjured effort, relying on our own “wisdom” and willpower, not on the power of God. Perhaps that’s why we see little of it in our day.

What God wants done by us, He will do in and through us. Let’s not confuse that into thinking that anything we say or do in the Name of Jesus is done by Jesus. It’s just not.

Please don’t take offense. If you understand me correctly, and accept my motivation for writing this, you’ll embrace the living Christ to manifest Himself in and through you. The true Christian life has always been about who Jesus is and what He is in us, not about you or me. He’s the only one who can live the life He’s called us to live, let’s trust Him to do just that, shall we? Because there is a Grand Canyon between you and Jesus.

July 21, 2021
Don’t Let The Love Of God Hit You In The Back

Photo by Eleni Bellou on Unsplash

# 34 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: The love of God is like light from the Sun. If you turn your back on the Sun, the light will hit you in the back.

I’m writing so you don’t let the Love of God hit you in the back. In the Bible, or Christian scriptures, there are many references to the love of God. Here is a listing of some of the more well know of them. Leaving aside very thorny, legitimate questions about the existence of evil and pain in the world for now, I will focus on one verse:

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
~ 1 John 4:8, NKJV

This verse, pregnant with meaning, tells the reader all they need to know about the essential nature of God. God is love. Love is not an attribute, feature, or property God has or sometimes flexes. Love is God’s essence.

Does the Sun HAVE light and heat or IS it light and heat?

We could say, speaking about the star at the center of our solar system, the sun has light, or the sun has heat. But when we think about the sun, it is most accurate to think about what the sun IS than what it has or what it does. For us, the sun is light and heat, therefore energy and life. It is the energy source of all living things on the planet. Every calorie consumed (a measure of thermal units) is stored, portable energy from the sun.

Now we may imagine a person living in isolation, closed off in a room with heavy light blocking shades drawn, pulled closed against the intrusion of all sunlight. We may imagine duct tape at the edges to create an atmosphere devoid of even the leakage of light. But we know that all those efforts to avoid sunlight won’t make the sun itself stop shining. It will shine on the exterior of that building. It will shine on the back of those shades. Yes, those inside can ignore that and shut themselves off from it, but the sun will shine on undeterred.

The Love of God is the same

I see the God who is Love the same way. Since God is Love, there is nothing any of us can do to create love in God. And since God is Love, there is nothing any can do to shut it off, either. For God to stop loving would be to cease being God. The ode to Love and the God who is Love in the fourth chapter of 1 John in the New Testament is so compelling, one might almost invert the words to Love is God and still be just as true.

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God;
and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
~ 1 John 4:7, NKJV

Love needs a recipient

I decided a long time ago. If God is love, then the one thing an essential Love of that magnitude needs is a recipient, a “beloved” if you will. I decided God doesn’t have to look past me. I will absorb all the Love God wants to shine my way. For over 35 years, I have kept my face turned in the posture of recipient, the beloved. You can do the same. Turn towards that love. Don’t let the love of God hit you in the back. If you wake each day to the simple truth that God is Love, and you are still here, therefore you are loved, it will change your life.

I recognize that I’m not loved for my perfections, nor unloved for my sins. Nor am I loved for anything other than existence. I’m loved in spite of myself. I am loved because I’m here, and just like light from the sun, God’s love is shining upon me whether I face it or turn my back on it. Best to throw my arms and heart wide and give that God who is Love, what that Love is after… a home.

“And we have known and believed the love that God has for us.
God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.”
~ 1 John 4:16, NKJV

Yes, perplexing questions remain. They are above my pay-grade. Most are beyond my capacity to understand at all. Doubtless you and I both have unanswered, bothersome, and painful questions, but they don’t negate the answers I have. And the single greatest answer is God is Love… not has, or shows, or gives Love, but IS Love. Don’t let the Love of God hit you in the back.

July 21, 2021
Never Ignore Your Conscience—Even If Tempted By Camisoles, Honeysuckle, and Dreams

Photo by Jan Segatto on Unsplash

# 82 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: Never ignore your conscience. It is the only internal compass you have to accuse or excuse your behavior. Ignore it at your peril.

Your conscience is to your future moral life as the ability to feel heat from a burner is to your future sense of touch. Ignore it at your peril. You should never ignore your conscience. It’s a pre-loaded tool that either excuses or accuses your thoughts and behaviors. A moral compass if you will.

A clear conscience, free from internal, self-directed accusations and recriminations, is essential to peace of mind. And peace of mind, one of the highest of all ends to be sought for its own sake, is essential to a good life. Therefore, if you hope to have the peace of mind that enables a good life, don’t ignore your conscience.

Alternately, you can lie to yourself, cover up your faults, sins, and poor treatment of others telling yourself you’re not as bad as Osama Bin Laden or Hitler, so you’re probably still not on God’s naughty list, since you aren’t as bad as you could be.

But face it, a good life is really a life in which you’re as good as you can be in every area of which you exercise any degree of agency and control. No one would define the good life as the one in which you fail to be as bad as you could have been.

Fear and Longing in a Camisole

I remember my initial wrestlings with my conscience and the FEAR OF GOD!

Boy, do I! It involved some strange things happening in my dreams because of a raven-haired “sitter” who read me sections of the Hobbit in a too-sheer camisole . (She was my grandfather’s second wife’s 19-year-old daughter.) I remember the feel of her silken smooth arm against my pre-teen shoulder, propped up on pillows, listening to Gollom’s riddles. I remember how she smelled of honeysuckle. And I remember the unbidden and uncontrollable, and horrible longings all that innocent sensuality provoked.

Soon, the honeysuckle-scented camisole’d sitter was in my dreams too! How did she get there? And, well… let’s just say my conscience worked just fine.

It was my first encounter with the lifelong truth so ably depicted in the Grateful Dead’s Dupree’s Diamond Blues:

“That jellyroll will drive you so mad!”

Look, there are things you can control and things you can’t. Don’t fool yourself. And don’t attempt to fool God either, remember:

“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.”
~ Galatians 6:7, NKJV

The Takeaway

Look, after all that 19-year old in a camisole, and honeysuckle, and dreams, you’re not stupid. You get the takeaway. I’m trying to keep a clear conscience here.

July 12, 2021
The Bible Is Not The Sole Repository Of Truth

The letter kills but the Spirit gives life, making the Bible both the most life-giving, and potentially dangerous, book ever. Within its pages is not the only place truth can be found.

# 33 on my, 99 Life Tips – A List is: The Bible, while true if rightly understood in terms of scope and purpose, is not a science book, nor is it the sole repository of truth.

I believe in God (generally), and I’m a Christian (specifically – with my own non-standard definition). As such, my tips for life and my writing touch on this topic. This is another Bible associated tip. It is related to the one preceding it, which suggests that the reader see the Bible as a spiritual menu. I believe that the Bible is true. However, not in the same way that a scientific research paper, or a mathematics text book is true. And, the main point with this tip is to insist to the reader that it (The Bible), is not the sole repository of truth. It’s ok to find truth outside the box.

God hasn’t gone mute and is still speaking

It is odd that anyone who believes the Bible at all would think that it is the complete record of all truth for all time. There are several verses in both Testaments that make the assertion that God is both a ”speaker” and that He is still speaking. Here is a very small sampling (Psalm 29 (all); Hebrews 1:1,2; Hebrews 12:25 (”speaketh” – Greek present, active, participle signifying continuous and repeated action).

Creators gonna Create…this “extra-biblical” truth is baking intelligent noodles everywhere

If that is not enough, the fact that cosmologists have discovered an ever-expanding universe is enough to bake anyone’s noodle. Talk about a metaphysical and philosophical quagmire. Into what is the universe expanding? What exactly is the previously non-existent space (area) that is being annexed? This fact even poses problems for evolutionists. What is in this frontier space area that is evolving? In response to environmental pressures in an environment that does not exist? Right…

This also poses problems for classical physicists. The first law of thermodynamics states that matter can be neither created nor destroyed. And yet…the universe expands. Something is being created by something to fill something. This premise seems more like an article of faith than empirically verifiable science. Here is an article from Scientific American with some impressive mental gymnastics attempting to explain the contradiction.

Thus endeth the digression

OK, enough of that digression. Back on the road here. Truth isn’t confined to the Bible. You can find it everywhere. I find it in the midst of the most elaborate lies…in great literary works of fiction. I also find it in sunsets, Grateful Dead songs, Quentin Tarantino movies, and in the gliding flight of a hawk in a lazy summer sky. Not that those those other sources have equal authority to be esteemed as on par with the Bible. Truth is not stagnant. It is still being disseminated.

”Sometimes the light’s all shining on me, other times I can barely see…”
~ Grateful Dead: Truckin’

Look, the Bible is ”living literature” as Jordan Peterson says in his book list. I like that. Although not written in the canon of scripture, it rings true to me. As living literature, it speaks to each person differently at different times.

Two important things I’ve learned about reading it. The first is, it is most definitely not a book for me to read to find out how you should live. One passage compares scriptural truth to a mirror. You don’t look at yourself in a mirror to find out how someone else looks. The minute a Bible reader does that, they’ve veered from the purpose of the texts.

The second is: When you hear truth in its pages, be a doer and not a hearer only. (John 7:17, James 1:23,24). Otherwise, reading it is doing you more harm than good.

Suppose God is the Author of all truth, wherever it is found

Here’s an interesting thing to contemplate. What if we agreed that God is the author of all truth wherever you find it? And, that as such, it is impossible for God to lie. Yes, I know. That means there is something an all-powerful God cannot or at least will not do. If we accept that premise, it becomes easy to see that the Bible is not the sole repository of truth. It becomes possible to believe that God can speak to you at any time, from any source. It might even make you open your ears, and pay closer attention, no? After all both of the following are true.

”You ain’t gonna learn what you don’t want to know.”
~ Grateful Dead: Black-Throated Wind

and;

”It is senseless to pay to educate a fool since he has no heart for learning.”
~ Proverbs 17:16, New Living Translation

Reality

In one of the most oft-quoted verses, Jesus states,

”I am The Way, The Truth, and The Life…”
~ NT, John 14:6

That Greek word for Truth is alētheia. This word does not limit itself to doctrinal, logged, codified truth. It is the word for REALITY. If we accept as true what Jesus says about being, Himself, Reality, then, of course we must admit that the Bible is not the last, sole, comprehensive repository of all truth.

”Maybe you’ll find direction around some corner where it’s been waiting to meet you.”
~ Grateful Dead: Box of Rain

May 24, 2021
The Bible Is A Menu Not A Magic Book

An Outback Steakhouse menu even has pictures, but even these won’t feed you…looks good though, doesn’t it?

# 32 on my, 99 Life Tips – A List is: The Bible is a menu describing a life that is available. Memorizing a menu won’t feed you.

I realize that, to many people, those words will come across as either sacrilegious, anti-Christian, or both. Nevertheless, after 35 years of careful consideration, I am willing to say again, the Bible is a menu. It describes a life that is available. Memorizing a menu won’t feed you. It is not that I don’t care if some are offended. But, I care more that too many have not well considered the matter and thus venerate the menu, mistaking it for the things it describes.

In an interesting synchronous side-trip, this morning, having already decided to write on this subject, I got the following link to Seth Godin’s blog. His post today is called, Code Words. In it, in his characteristic, brief, minimalist way, he makes the argument that all words are code, or rather, that every word is a code. This…this is what I mean by my tip.

It’s probable that I cannot sum up all of language theory in a sentence. A quick Google search, it turns out, isn’t so quick. Major research universities devote entire departments to the study of language. For example, this link to the Department of Linguistics at Georgetown University. So, it’s a big discipline to try to summarize. Here goes: Language, whether spoken or written, is representative of actual ideas or things and not the ideas or things themselves. That will suffice, I believe.

You Can Memorize A Menu And Still Leave Hungry

That being the case, I ask each of you how many times you have read the words Bloomin’ Onion and Bone-In Ribeye from the Outback Steakhouse menu and pushed away from the table satisfied? What if you memorized the menu? Would that help?

I understand the silliness of my comparison. But, can we agree the menu is not the point of the restaurant experience? You do not go to a steakhouse to read the menu. The food, the steak, is the point. If you look at a menu, see an item, order it, then eat it, the menu has accomplished its purpose. It led you to the thing itself. To get full, or receive any nutritional effects, you will need to take some additional steps after reading the menu.

That’s how it is with the Bible. It is not a magic book. The Bible is a menu. The words themselves have no power apart from their ability to induce belief. The words are pointing towards the thing itself. They are not the thing. To make the Bible more than that is the equivalent of making the menu the point of going out to eat. But think with me, if all the Bibles in print vanished simultaneously, would the God described disappear too?

May 23, 2021
The Idol of Trump: Redux

Do you find it curious that Christians get engrossed and upset about politics?

I do.

Consider:

Christians claim belief in a God who sent His only-begotten Son into the world during the time of a brutal Roman occupation of what is now Israel.

From this fact, one might deduce that politics and governmental systems aren’t a requirement for God to His thing.

It appears that if God wants to do something in the world, He can do it under the most oppressive, tyrannical regime imaginable. Can’t He? He might even use that brutal regime, unbeknownst to it, to accomplish His very purposes.

And since there are no red words in the bible that say anything about running for office, or supporting a candidate, or overturning the political system, even the casual reader of the bible might conclude politics is irrelevant when it comes to Jesus’ real mission.

There’s a passage in the New Testament that does touch on something Jesus cares about: saving the lost.

At one point He tells his followers to lift up their eyes and look at the fields. They are white and ready to be harvested, He says, telling them, ”Pray to the Lord of the Harvest that He will send forth laborers into the harvest.”

They must have listened. In the very next passage they are ordained as Apostles and sent out two by two to preach the gospel, heal the sick, and cast out demons. They are to give as freely as they’ve received, being wise as serpents but harmless as doves. He tells them, ”Whoever receives you, receives Me.”

These passages would be sermon material for months. But here’s a thought; these first, real Evangelicals were sent out, not to register voters, not to carry political flags, not to pray to golden idols of failed politicians, but to reach the lost.

In light of Jesus’ stated mission to ”seek and save the lost”, this occurred to me:

Many of the country’s affected by the pre-Covid travel ban imposed by our former President (the guy anointed by today’s misguided, seemingly-biblically-illiterate, Evangelicals and Charismatics as “God’s choice”), do not allow Jesus to be preached as Savior in those lands. It is illegal. It is punishable by imprisonment; sometimes by torture and death.

Yet, with that ban lifted, the people living in lands where the preaching of the gospel is forbidden will once again be able to come to the United States, where they will have the chance to hear it (or at least some Americanized version of it) on every street corner and on television, radio, and the internet.

If you are God, and you are actually concerned that the lost hear the Truth, would you not want them to come to a place where they can hear it?

Or would you be too concerned about the political optics of allowing people from Muslim nations in?

Bottom line: Jesus isn’t political and He won’t allow Himself to be co-opted for political purposes.

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say, wherever the Holy-Spirit-filled people in this country and around the world are, and whoever they may be; you’re not likely to find them on television, or on Twitter. I’m willing to bet they aren’t thinking much about politics, or entangled with political issues.

I feel confident they’re enjoying communion with God, abiding in His Presence, unmoved by whichever party holds political power. Pretty sure they routinely pray that the Lord of the Harvest will send out laborers into the harvest while there is yet time.

Note: I realize my viewpoint may offend some readers who identify as Christians. My intention is not to cause you offense, but to raise your awareness. Christians are given explicit instructions in how to act towards political leaders in 1 Timothy 2:1-4:

”I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men;

For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.

For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior;

Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.”

I don’t see anything here that indicates so-called Christians should lay hands on an idol of a disgraced former president, utter false prophecies about him either staying in, or reclaiming political power, or get involved in attempts to legislate the social hot-button issues of the day.

According to the verses above, Christians are to pray for ALL that are in authority. They are to lead quiet and peaceable lives in godliness and honesty. THIS is good and acceptable in the sight of God. He wants to use Christians as the instruments of bringing the knowledge of the truth to the lost that the lost might be saved. That won’t happen if we soil our garments in the murk and muck of politics, especially when we try to append Jesus’s name to our own political actions. He is not a member of either political party, nor the water-carrier for any politician, period.

March 2, 2021