Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: standards

  • The What-About Lifestyle

    The What-About Lifestyle

    Especially in political discussions we frequently here something like “but what about,” followed by a misdeed of the folks on the other side. In turn, we hear complaints about “what-about-ism,” which tends to annoy people on the other side, whichever other side that may be.

    This is not, as you might think, a preface to a political post. Rather, I have found myself asking just where this “what-about” approach comes from. And as I thought about it, I almost immediately realized that this is a lifestyle. Not a rare one either!

    Whether it’s in our personal lives, our work, or in our ministries, we have this tendency to look down the road, across the aisle, or over there somewhere, and we find someone or some organization that we can put in the “what-about” position.

    “My church is not doing well. But it’s doing better than that church down the road.”

    “My language is inappropriate sometimes, but not as often as _____’s.”

    “I’m occasionally rude, but there are others much more rude than I am.”

    “My church is really quite mission oriented. Well, more mission oriented than most churches in our area/denomination/conference.”

    We usually talk about judging and Matthew 7:1 as a command not to hurt other people. That’s not a bad lesson. We shouldn’t be judgmental. (I’m only a little judgmental, much less judgmental than several people I could name!) But there’s another point here. When we start living by judging other people, we start deteriorating ourselves.

    Paul said something about this:

    We do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some of those who commend themselves. But when they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they do not show good sense.

    2 Corinthians 10:12 (NRSVue)

    Many feel that if we aren’t vigorously judgmental, people will feel that they can slack off. They’ll do worse. But because the only standards we can achieve are fallible human ones, this judgmental approach actually achieves the opposite effect. There are some who become discouraged on being judged and give up. But there are many who, expecting judgment, carefully blunt the standards to make themselves look good.

    One key way of blunting the standards is to point at someone else.

    The northern Kingdom of Israel demonstrated this. It’s interesting to read the judgments given of the kings. Kings are generally judged to the first king of the northern kingdom, Jeroboam I. Later kings are either more evil than he was or evil, but not as much. The general standard is that they kept on repeating the sins of Jeroboam I.

    What strikes me about this sequence is the final king, Hoshea.

    In the twelfth year of King Ahaz of Judah, Hoshea son of Elah began to reign in Samaria over Israel; he reigned nine years. 2 He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, yet not like the kings of Israel who were before him.

    2 Kings 17:1-2 (NRSVue)

    He did evil, but he wasn’t as bad as his predecessors. And Samaria fell and the northern tribes went into exile in his reign.

    Hoshea could have said, “What about Ahab? He got to complete his reign!”

    [L]ooking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith….

    Hebrews 12:2 (NRSVue)

    Put your eyes on the right standard. Better, let Him draw them.

    Some years ago I did a short presentation on this, which I titled “The Sin of Jeroboam.” Video here is kind of ancient, so bear with it!

  • Psalm 119:141 – Despised

    Psalm 119:141 – Despised

    Though I am small and despised,
    I do not forget your precepts.

    There are two times when it is difficult to stay on the right track: When things are going well and people are praising you, and when things are going badly, and people look down on you. Either of these can make you turn away from the right path.

    Well, then there’s the third option, which is that things are going moderately well. Well enough for you to be comfortable, but not so well that people are coming and praising you. Then there’s a major temptation to apathy, to contentment with things being not so bad.

    In real life, we may be confronted with any of these situations. We can find that ridicule prevents us from doing what is right or speaking of what is right. Or when things are going well, we find pride taking over, and we start to think too well of ourselves, and often speaking too highly of ourselves to others.

    Then there is the way that is simple, but very hard. That is to think of ourselves as we ought to. Paul speaks about this in Romans 12:3 —

    I tell all among you through the grace that has been given to me that you shouldn’t think of yourselves as better than you are, but you should think of yourselves properly {or wisely}, each according to the wisdom God has measured out to them.

    This verse doesn’t tell you that you should always think of yourself poorly. You don’t have to say that you are small and despised as did the psalmist. It’s likely you’ll feel that way sometimes, but that’s not some type of “holy” goal. Nor should you consider yourself more important than others. Rather, you’re supposed to think of yourself as you really are, as God sees you.

    This invites a change of vision, a change of perspective. And the psalmist tells us where we need to be. We need to be looking at what is right. He speaks of God’s precepts, as he has elsewhere spoken of God’s word, God’s testimonies, God’s statues, God’s judgments, and God’s commands.

    That’s all the long version of saying, “What’s right.”

    That is often our problem. We aren’t concerned with what’s right, but rather with what other people think of us. That is never a good place to be. Sometimes the person whose opinion matters to you is himself out of sync with what is right, and may be despising you for the things you won’t do in order to get ahead.

    How are you going to look at yourself today?

  • Psalm 119:112 – I Choose

    Psalm 119:112 – I Choose

    I choose to keep your statutes
    absolutely forever.

    My meditations went in one direction and then I encountered a blog post that tangentially relates to this verse. I want to call attention to that and comment, and then I’ll return to what I was actually meditating on during the day and not just for the last 10 minutes!

    The article is on Crossway, and is titled Do the Psalms Contain Self-Righteous Boasting? (Psalms 7, 17, and 26). The article is extracted from the ESV Expository Commentary, Volume 5. The article bounces a bit off of C. S. Lewis’s book Reflections on the Psalms, amongst other books. The key point is to challenge the idea that some Psalms are self-righteous. I recommend reading the article, but even more reading Lewis’s book.

    I bring this up to point out that there is no reason to assume that all the Psalms reflect perfect, theologically correct ideas. The Psalms tell us about the worship life of Israel, which was no more likely to be perfect in all ways than our own is. I would suggest that the most important error that the Psalms would need to avoid would be giving a false impression of the people who are praying, lamenting, praising, worshiping, and exhorting. I believe one of the greatest blessings of the Psalms is its reality.

    This doesn’t mean we can’t get valid theological points in the Psalms. The Psalms are much quoted in the New Testament, and have been a great blessing to many in different faiths over the years. I believe this value is enhanced by authenticity.

    This is something we should emulate in church leading and teaching. My own pastor comments most weeks about how he has to preach his own sermon to himself before preaching it to the congregation. That’s an attitude that I value, as I know him and I know this isn’t an act. This is what he believes and practices. He tells the congregation where he has failed during the week. This authenticity, rather than weakening the message as some might think, makes it much more effective.

    I think we all have a story in our lives of being falsely accused, and proclaiming our innocence. We like to tell stories of when that innocence was eventually proven. Realizing that we have failures doesn’t mean we can never claim to be right, either in beliefs or in practice. Realizing our failures means we know that we are not always right, and we can be corrected. But it’s quite possible to honestly pray, “Look, Lord, I didn’t do anything to deserve this! Avenge me! Make things right again!”

    Usually by the next morning we may realize that we have done more failing than we imagine, but nonetheless, we may well claim innocence, and claim to be the ones wronged, with some validity.

    And that leads me to what I was actually meditating during the day. No, comments on the number of words I expend on something I only considered for a few minutes are not welcome!!

    This verse states an intention that no human is likely to be able to accomplish. Keeping the whole law is a very difficult, even impossible thing to accomplish. But here’s where I look at perfectionism, and having high goals.

    Perfectionism requires one to try for a goal that is never to be accomplished. “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” There’s a reason for that. Two things often happen to a perfectionist. The first is that, being certain that perfection is required, whether by God or ones own mind, the person simply decides that whatever he does is, in fact, perfect. From that perspective, one can look down on other people, rejecting all possible evidence that one is not superior. That’s one form of self-righteousness.

    Alternatively, one may simply give up on trying at all. If perfection is required and I can’t attain it, why try at all? This results in carelessness and apathy.

    One can also set a goal somewhere between. “I have to be this good, but not perfect for it to be acceptable.” The problem with lowering the standard is that we tend to fall below whatever point to which we have set the standard. Then we keep lowering it to make it possible.

    Whether it is our own psychology at work or our belief in God’s requirements, any of these approaches can be very instructive. Failure to attain the standards we set for ourselves can attack our very identify.

    But both in Israelite religion and in Christianity you have a high standard for living, but at the same time the recognition that attaining this is not humanly possible. Even when he did not attain to perfection in keeping the law, the Israelite knew that he was still one of God’s people, God’s chosen. That was who he was.

    Now if you determine to keep God’s statutes forever, and plan to do it on your own, and judge yourself by your success at this enterprise, things will not go well. But once you find your identity in belonging to God, something which cannot be lost through your failures, you can make a determination, and keep right on pressing on the upward way.

    After all, as this Psalm concludes in verse 176, “I have one astray like a lost sheep. Seek your servant ….” Then you can confidently determine again to stay on the path. God’s got it. God’s going to get you in the end!

    What should you determine to do today? What failures should you put behind you?

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI. I particularly like the fact that it looks like the guy isn’t really connected to the mountain he’s climbing and should at any moment be falling with nothing to stop him.)

  • Psalm 119:75 – Humiliated

    Psalm 119:75 – Humiliated

    I know, LORD that your judgments are righteous.
    It’s in truthfulness you have humiliated me.

    If I were making a translation for publication, there would be a footnote on “truthfulness” that would include “faithfulness,” “honesty,” and “trustworthiness” as a minimum. It’s important not to imagine that a Hebrew word brings all of its applications into each use. The Amplified Bible does this by giving many synonyms in a single verse.

    But in poetry, we can see a less limited way of reading, because the text is intended to be brief and to evoke a range of related ideas.

    I’m leaving “righteous judgments” for another day. But righteous judgments are also truthful judgments. In much of what I’ve read of court cases, I get the feeling that the judgments rendered by human judges are often constrained by current custom, and less so by written law or by principles of justice. I would say that the idea of divine justice involves an expectation of total truthfulness and faithfulness as well as adherence to statutes of law. This is an unreachable goal for humans, I think, though it is a good goal for which to strive.

    I couldn’t think of an efficient way to say it, but the final words of this verse suggest that we are brought humiliation by truthfulness/faithfulness. One might say “integrity.” God simply brings truth to bear on our actions, and it’s humiliating.

    It’s in our human nature to get upset at this. We don’t want to be humiliated. But how often does reality do that to us? We think we’re great, and then reality strikes and something goes wrong. We announce that we can handle a situation, make a repair, or pass a test. Then reality comes to get us.

    Most spiritual things have everyday analogies. Spiritually, we decide to do things a certain way, accomplish certain goals, spent certain amounts of time in prayer or service, keep our motivations pure, avoid unjust anger. And then we get busy and we don’t get that time in prayer, we don’t read out Bible as we planned, and we find we have less time and resources to serve others as we had determined.

    I can give an example from this series. On the one hand, I’m happy to be 75 verses (and days) into a 176 verse plan. But I can’t count the number of times I’ve actually forgotten which verse I was working on during the day. I’ve sat back, intending to bring the verse to mind, and I can’t remember it. I’m supposed to be meditating on it. That’s a minor failure, but it’s still a failure, and it annoys me that I do it.

    I wish I could say that my faults are generally small, like forgetting a verse. I can always look it up again. But when I speak hurtful words in anger, for example, the problem is not so easy to repair.

    So what shall I do? To echo Paul, “Who will rescue me?”

    Well, actually, the same God who provides the truth that puts me in my place over and over. The same God the psalmist has been praising for these 75 verses and will continue to praise for another 101. This help comes in three ways:

    1. This God claims me as his own and allows me to call him mine. See Psalm 119:57 – Still Mine!
    2. I can learn to know my own limitations. It may be humiliating to come up against the truth, but if I’m not arrogant, it’s not going to hurt as much!
    3. The same God also provided this law, this distant goal, that helps keep me pointed in the right direction.

    Coming up against the real standard is good for us in all these ways. We tend to want to pretend that the standard is lower so we can feel better. We’d like God to protect us from the results of our own stupidity and failures. But those options results in a lack of growth. God wants to grow you up. To take the next step. And the next.

    What next step does God want you to take today?

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

    Some books:

    Holiness of Heart and Life
    Walking Together