What To Do With Those Stinking Hypocrites

Some people are worth our help, our grace, and our forgiveness. But some are worthless. Right?

No? I fear that evidence in our lives proves that many of us hold to this philosophy.

Over the past couple of years I've had the opportunity to share some of my past -- some things of which I'm not at all proud -- with a few brothers in Christ. Not at some group confessional, but in one-on-one situations when I've felt that some of my screw-ups (rather, their solutions) would help those friends in situations they've been going through.

The reason they're able to listen to those stories and not write me off as a completely dispicable person is that they know I'm not still that guy. I've had to repent of some big things, and now my goal, my desire, is to continually change to be conformed to the image of Jesus. Some of you, probably most of you, would give me that same grace given current conditions. You may know me personally or have read enough here to know that I don't want to be the old Dean anymore, and that God has done some serious things in my life. He's made minor and massive "adjustments" that were painful to me, seemed illogical, and weren't even changes I wanted for myself.

But what if you knew me when I was going through those situations? What if you knew that I called myself a Christian yet I did things that completely belied that description; things you'd probably call "evil" without a second thought? (No, I've not killed anyone or done anything nearly so heinous as that.)

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Recovery...

Hi. My name is Dean Lusk and I'm a recovering spiritual elitist.

If you know me or if you've followed this blog for a while, even loosely, you'll know that at the end of April my family moved out of the typically-understood "church" setting. I resigned my position on staff as worship pastor at a local fellowship and we began to meet with a much smaller group in homes.

This was the result of at least two years of intense study of the Word and prayer. Although I've read various books on church history and have certainly read a couple of books on organic church (a phrase I've discovered is considered with disdain by many Christians, is often misunderstood, and is often twisted by house churches) the primary influence, and the only serious deciding factor in our decision, was the Word.

It took a few months after our move for me to realize and admit that I'd developed a thing called "spiritual arrogance." It's embarrassing, but it's true. Along with that attitude can come legalism, a lack of grace, inner turmoil, and a general superiority complex. It can come, and it did.

How Christ-honoring.

I've repented; I've confessed this to God, asked for His forgiveness, and turned from it. I'm daily keeping my eyes on Christ, and although I know I've slipped into that trap here and there, I pray that I've recognized it far more often than not and avoided it. If you see me pulling that crap again, please call me on it.

To summarize and wrap up, I ask you, my readers, for forgiveness for my elitist attitude. It's come across in blistering ways here. I can't promise that I won't talk about controversial topics. I know that I will. But I'll be doing my best to be Spirit-led, Spirit-filled, and exhibit a bunch of grace.

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I am not entitled...

Once upon a time, not so long ago, I was frustrated with another party who seemed -- to me -- to be completely overlooking some of the ground floor, simple teachings of Jesus, particularly in Matthew 5 (there are a lot of them there; I'm not going to talk specifics). In a nutshell, I felt they were overlooking grace and were simply self-concerned.

The thing that made my observation so off-base was that I felt they were overlooking grace toward me.

It's ironic -- in expecting someone else to have grace toward me, I was considering myself to be entitled to their grace. In doing so, I failed to give grace to them.

Realizing this made me consider a prominent theme throughout Scripture, and while it doesn't hold true for every situation (false teaching comes to mind), it applies in far more situations than you'd think in relationships with people:

I am not entitled to your grace, but you are entitled to mine.

I believe that this is the attitude that every Christ follower should embrace. It falls in line with what Paul wrote about in 1 Corinthians 8, regarding meat sacrificed to idols. "...while knowledge makes us feel important, it is love that strengthens the church." (1 Corinthians 8:1b, NLT) Knowledge can be a killer when we apply it to everyone else. Our perspective in applying knowledge frequently makes everything seem lopsided in our favor, snuffing out our new nature that should be filled with grace for others. I say this for my own benefit, because I seem to be one of the worst violaters of this principle.

"I am not entitled to your grace, but you are entitled to mine." Accurate or not?

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our contribution to grace

In looking at a few different perspectives on grace (I was actually seeking perspectives on the grace we're to have for other people, but found it impossible to fail to look at God's grace toward us), I found this excellent illustration of grace as described in Ephesians 2:8-9:

To make even the slightest contribution to our salvation is to rule out the possibility of grace. For one thing, any contribution on our part would be exaggerated in our own minds. Someone has told the story of a man who was condemned to death for embezzlement. The royal family took pity on the man, however, and determined to help him. The king contributed $2000 from the royal treasury, while the queen gave $1000 and the crown prince $980. The people in the gallery passed the plate and collected another contribution of $19.90. The total amount of $3999.90 was only a dime short of that which was required, but it was not enough. The king reluctantly said that the man had to die. The crowd in the gallery sighed. Suddenly the condemned man reached into his pocket and found a dime, just what he needed. He was free!

The point of this story is that no matter how small the contribution of the condemned man, it would become, in his mind, of too great importance. God is demonstrating His grace to the world and the angelic hosts (Ephesians 1:3-12), and He will not share His glory with sinful man. It is either all of grace or it is not grace at all.

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finding grace

Today marks the third Sunday of a five-week sabbatical that I'm taking from planning and leading music, and from general pastoral duties at Wall Highway. Tons of thanks to those on my team who have stepped in to fill the role!

Over the past few weeks, God has begun to hammer into my head that "grace" is actually something He wants me to show to others. Sure, I already knew that, but what I'm learning is that it's easy -- even automatic -- to show grace to some people. I guess I'd call that "easy grace." (You wouldn't have guessed that, eh?) That's the kind of grace that almost every believer has and therefore assumes that they've pretty much got it nailed down.

Example: if your grandmother is 92 years old and does something that winds up harming you (I don't know... maybe like using your 1963 Fleer baseball cards to start a fire one chilly evening), chances are pretty good that you're not going to assume she was out to get you, and even though you're initially upset about what happened, you'll probably forgive her and love her just the same. You may not leave your '52 Topps set (the one with the Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays rookie cards) at her house anymore, but you'd be able to give some grace.

But what about someone who ought to know better but still does something that hurts you? I'll bet that I don't have to come up with an illustration for your mind to immediately race to someone like this. Are you able to give grace? to love them, pray for them, and turn the other cheek?

There will, indeed, be times at which we'll need to confront sin or make someone aware that what they're doing as a believer is what we call "wrong." However, if we break things down and look at them carefully, I believe we'll find that more often than not, we see things from a skewed perspective of self-centeredness, which easily overrules the grace that we should have.

Dear brothers and sisters, if another believer is overcome by some sin, you who are godly should gently and humbly help that person back onto the right path. And be careful not to fall into the same temptation yourself. Share each other’s burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ. If you think you are too important to help someone, you are only fooling yourself. You are not that important.

(Galatians 6:1-3, NLT)

Where non-believers are concerned, our allowance for grace should be absolutely huge. Jesus lived this way. The New Testament letters speak to this -- those who claim to be believers are the ones who should be held to a holy standard, not the people who don't know Christ. However, most of what I see in the Church is complete disdain for those who don't know Jesus, and rather than loving those people -- sharing Christ, giving help, and giving encouragement to them -- our goal seems to be to show them that they're ignorant and that they'd be smart to listen to us.

I'll stop writing for now and leave this as a less-than-focused post. No good wrap-up thought or statement. As always, your feedback is solicited!

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