The Illusion of Moral Superiority

      I have many friends who are not Christians. I’ve been fortunate enough to know these friends who are loyal, dependable, selfless, and caring. I could call them if I needed anything and they would do whatever they could to help. We may not share the same worldview, but we share many of the same personal values. I see this in how they interact with their children, their spouse, conduct business, and navigate relationships. They are good neighbors and good parents. I can honestly say that I’ve seen my non-believing friends handle some situations with more grace and mercy than I’ve possessed in similar situations. So, what’s the difference then, between a Christian and a non-Christian if it’s not morality? I mean, aren’t those who trust in Jesus Christ supposed to be “better” than those who do not believe in Jesus?

     

     I feel like my non-Christian friends believe that Christians THINK they hold some sort of morally superior position over those who don’t believe, as if what makes us different is our good moral behavior. This is probably because I’ve actually seen Christians who treat other Christians as if they are morally superior to them. So, if this behavior exists between brothers and sisters in Christ, then how much more so must it exist between them and non-Christians? I believe this attitude is prevalent in the church because much of the preaching is so focused on behavior modification rather than the gospel, but that’s another subject for another time.

     What I want my non-believing friends to know, and my brothers and sisters in Christ, who may be confused to know, is that we Christians, can lay no claims to moral superiority. To be even more direct, we (Christians) are no better than our atheist and agnostic friends. ROMANS 3:10 says, None is righteous, no, not one. Even the most morally upright person, whether they are a Christian or not, fall short of God’s perfect standard. Knowing and believing this, the Christian should readily abandon any thought or attitude of outranking someone else in morality, and embrace the reality that they are a wretched sinner who is desperately dependent upon the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ, the only one who has any claim to moral superiority.

     In addition to Christians embracing the reality that we are wretched sinners, we should regularly and readily confess our sin, shortcomings, and failures. When we gather together collectively as the church for worship on Sundays, we have a time of collective / individual confession. We confess that we have fallen short of God’s perfect standard, and we confess our need for God’s grace, mercy, and forgiveness. We don’t do this because we believe we are better than everyone else, but because we know we are not, and we depend on the perfect life and sacrificial death of Jesus Christ. The idea that human beings are imperfect and just need a little improvement is not a Christian idea. Instead, scripture tells us that all humans are in rebellion to the One True God who created them and the only way to be restored is by surrender - trusting in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, not in our own ability to be “good enough”. 

     Horatius Bonar said, “Upon a Life I have not lived, Upon a death I did not die, Another’s Life, Another’s Death, I stake my whole eternity.” This reminds us that the gospel we proclaim and plead for others to believe is not a call to adhere to some subjective moral standard of improvement. It is a call to repent; to abandon any thought of being able to meet the objective moral standard of God. It is a call to believe all that was necessary for you to be forgiven and declared righteous has been accomplished in and through Jesus Christ. Put your trust in Him and rest in what he has done.

SELF: The Focus of American Christianity

While listening to an Audiobook titled, "Warrior: Equipping Men For Spiritual Victory", the author references Daniel 6:3, which says, "Now Daniel so distinguished himself among the administrators and the satraps by his exceptional qualities that the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom."

In light of this passage of scripture, the author goes on to say, "God wants to escalate us to greater places, positions, and purposes, but He's waiting on our complete alignment. In essence our excellence is the permission God needs before He will enlarge our territory and increase our impact. When we hold on to any thought, habit, or pleasure that is even slightest bit out of line with God's word, we relinquish the ability to be used to our greatest potential."

This point of view is widely accepted and widely proclaimed from pulpits all across America on any given Sunday.  To put it bluntly, this is complete and utter garbage. This is only encouraging to people who like to pretend - pretend that they got it all together, know all of the answers, or are capable of doing so.  If God wants to "escalate us to greater ...", whatever that means, nothing can stop Him from doing it - Nothing! He's not "waiting" on us for anything, and if He were waiting on us and our "complete alignment", then none of us would ever be used for His glory.  "Our complete alignment" would mean perfection and that describes exactly none of us.

"Our excellence is the permission God needs?"  He, the Creator of the universe, needs no one's permission for anything.  He does whatever He pleases (Psalm 115:3).  God's ability to use any of us is never limited by our potential or our position.  This is good news to those who feel the weight of unworthiness, grasp the darkness of their own depravity, and are painfully aware of their own limitations. This is bad news for those who believe their best efforts can control or influence our God to do something He had not intended to do; namely use them for His glory.

To believe that "our excellence" gives God "permission" produces an, I earned this / I deserve this mentality.  Like, I did it and deserve some of the credit, because after all it was my "complete alignment" that resulted in God "escalating me to greater places, positions, and purposes.  God HAD to because of my "complete alignment". No human, except Jesus has or ever will obtain complete alignment to God's Word.  Whenever or if ever we think that we've achieved complete alignment is when we've lowered the standard for perfection that God has put in place, which is what complete alignment means.  

This also produces an unhealthy focus on self.  Why hasn't God "escalated me?"  That becomes the goal and the focus becomes "alignment" for your purposes and goals rather than God's glory.  We then try to get God to bend to our will rather than resting and trusting in His.  This belittles God and makes him into a powerless being who is just waiting on our cooperation to accomplish what He needs to get done and if we don't cooperate or completely align, then He cannot do what He wanted to do and we were the reason for it not coming to pass.  This is nonsense.

God is bigger, better, and more powerful than our frail, feeble, human efforts, and God has been moving in and through the efforts of frail and feeble humans since the beginning of time to accomplish all that He wills.  And He will accomplish all that He wills with or without our best efforts.  This is good news for the self-admitted sinner, the weak, the poor, the man who just lost his job, and the woman who just lost a child.  This is good news for those who've always felt like they don't quite measure up; those who've felt like all hope is lost; those who've let others down and have been let down.  Our God never, EVER fails to accomplish His will - namely our redemption, which should be our focus, rather than being "escalated to greater places, positions, and purposes". 

Organic

Natural.  Whole. Unrefined. Unprocessed. Pure.  Raw.  All of these are adjectives similar to “organic.”

When we use the word “organic” most of us think about foods.  There are so many unnatural, processed, man-made chemicals that are added to the foods we ingest on a daily basis.  My wife even claims she can taste the chemicals in some foods.  Given the choice between chemically enhanced, processed, refined foods that our bodies were never meant to digest and all-natural, unprocessed, pure foods; out of concern for our health and well-being I would like to believe that we would choose the latter and not the former.

What happens though is the organic foods are sometimes difficult to find, often cost us more, and require time and effort on our part to prepare.  Whereas the processed foods are readily available, quickly and easily prepared (often prepared for us) and are very, very convenient.  So we tend to sacrifice what is better for our health to save time and money.  We sacrifice what we are meant to have for what is most convenient.

I believe this is true for us when it comes to our relationship with God and His church.  We were created to have an intimate relationship with our Creator and fellowship with other believers.  This can take on various forms and may not look the same everywhere you go, but I believe that it should be natural, pure, unrefined and raw.  This means it can get messy.  It can be difficult.  Our hands – and our knees – should get dirty.  Repentance, forgiveness, reconciliation, prayer – alone and with one another – giving to each other as we have need, getting rid of what we don’t need – both physically and spiritually – denying ourselves, gathering in each other’s homes;  I believe all of this is what God intended for our relationship with Him and fellowship with one another to look like.  Keep in mind that Jesus allowed himself to be murdered to make this relationship and fellowship possible and for those who have been saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, this is what is supposed to happen naturally when we gather together.  But, like organic foods, this organic church fellowship and relationship with Christ is sometimes difficult to find, often costs us more, and requires time and effort on our part to prepare.

So, what’s the opposite of “organic” look like?  Neat, easy, comfortable, and convenient.  Our faith and relationship with Jesus should cause growth to take place and growth is never, ever comfortable, convenient, or easy.  Our relationship with other believers requires forgiveness to take place; to work through problems together; to help encourage growth and to call each other out when one of us are wrong.  Our faith walk is not limited to an hour and a half service on Sunday.  I just don’t believe that Jesus suffered and died so we could gather one day a week, hear four songs, some announcements, and a 30-minute pep talk, then leave. That cannot be all there is to Christian fellowship and following Jesus. That’s something we’ve made.  That’s something we’ve created. That’s something we want because it’s cozy, comfortable, and convenient; and we can still call ourselves Christians and still believe we’re going to heaven with little to no regard for the life we live now. Don’t mistake convenience and comfort for being what is best for us.

Nothing worth having has come from convenience, but rather sacrifice. The sacrifice our Savior made was not comfortable, convenient, or easy.  But, He did it anyway.  He did it because he was being obedient to what His father knew was best.  He knew the sacrifice would be worth the pain.  We have to believe He is worth it.  We must be obedient to The Father and sometimes obedience means the sacrifice of convenience and our own desires for our life now, so we can have the life HE wants for us; not just for our life today, but for eternity.

I Need A Doctor

So, here goes my first blog since my family and I have planted Remedy Church, a missional community focused on gathering together, growing together, and serving together in Collinsville, IL. in an effort to see peoples’ lives changed by the power of the gospel message of Jesus Christ.  

There's plenty I could write about because we have had a lot going on: new jobs, new house, new school, and activities. Instead, I want to share something with you though that EVERYONE can relate to … PAIN.

I am a bi-vocational pastor.  What this means is that I have a regular job in addition to my pastoral duties.  I am a laborer in construction, which means I do labor-intensive work at construction sites.  Well, I recently had an accident while on the job that landed me on light-duty and in physical therapy three times a week.  I won’t go into the details of the injury because that’s not what’s important.  What I am going to talk about though, is what I’ve learned through this rehabilitation process.

For the past four weeks I’ve been going to physical therapy to do stretches, exercises, and ice and heat treatments.  So far, my experience has taught me that physical therapy is not easy.  For me and the other patients in the office, healing requires us to do things that are uncomfortable, things that may cause us even more pain, and things that we don’t necessarily want to do.  All of the actions that are required of us seem to go against everything we think we should be doing; but I know I’ve heard the doctor say to more than one person that if we don’t do these treatments, we will stay in the same condition we are currently in, or end up even worse.

This leads me to something else I’ve noticed since doing physical therapy – the other patients.  I tend to keep the same schedule each week, so I’ve been there each time, with some of the same people.  We’ve gotten to know each other by asking questions about our injuries, how they happened, and how each of us has been doing.  You get to know one another in a way, and there is this encouragement and camaraderie that begins to take shape among the patients.  We celebrate each other’s victories, and encourage each other when we’re not doing very well.

Here’s the point.  There isn’t a single soul on this earth who isn’t broken.  The darkest parts of human beings’ hearts need to be healed from the wrong we’ve done and the wrong that has been done to us.  Often, those things we need to do so we can be healed are uncomfortable things - things that will probably cause more pain in the process.  I’m talking about things like admitting our wrong and asking for forgiveness, forgiving others for what they have done, and setting aside our wants for others’ needs. 

The truth is, we cannot fix ourselves.  Like all of the patients that have gone to see Doctor Ben for physical therapy, without him guiding us in the right direction we would end up staying in the same condition or even worse.  We all need a Dr. Ben. Instead of trying to heal ourselves by doing good deeds or finding our identity in people, possessions, talents, our jobs and such, that are nothing more than crutches,  we need to realize that we cannot heal ourselves.  We cannot save ourselves.  We all need a savior.  We all need Jesus.

In this physical therapy office, nobody is pretending to be okay.  What a picture of what the church should be!  We all know that we are there because we are injured and not one person is trying to hide it.  Instead we talk to each other about what we have done or what has happened to us.  We are all taking steps toward healing and encouraging one another along the way.  We are all trusting that what the Doctor is telling us to do is for our good.  This is how I envision the church.  A group of broken people, being put back together by the great physician, Jesus Christ, and encouraging each other through the uncomfortable, sometimes painful journey of becoming more and more like Jesus, and inviting other broken people to put their trust in Him too.

If you recognize your own brokenness, if you know you’re not being who you were created to be and doing what you were created to do, if you’re tired of trying to “make it” in your own power, there is hope.  Jesus said, “Come to me all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest”.  He’s inviting us to lay down the burdens we were never meant to carry and rely on Him.  Jesus still calls people out of darkness and into the light for our good and His glory.  Put your trust in Him. 

Words

Image Source

It's been almost exactly 4 weeks since I gave my last message during our last service at the church my wife and I served for the past 5 and a half years.  Since then I've had several people ask for the lyrics to the spoken word piece I shared at the end of it.  I'm providing it here for anyone who's interested.

There is also a link at the bottom of this post that includes the spoken word piece with the music I made that inspired it.  Enjoy!

So many of us here are not present

Presently appearing, but incapable of hearing because we spend so much time trapped in our own heads … in our own thoughts … in our own little worlds and realities that it’s difficult to retain the truth and receive the Holy Spirit who breathes life into our spiritually dead bodies and is the power that sustains … Let me explain. 

Sin’s stain had us marked for death, but our eyes are so blind that we don’t realize it.  We search for happiness in, people, places, and things, but never seem to find it.

We live our lives following our own path, passionately pursuing death

trying to make a name for ourselves all the while denying the God who knew our name before we even took our first breath.

See, there’s life for us to be livin’

But won’t know it ‘til we know the Love that has been given

And when we give up our life and receive Christ inside of us

We can stand before our Heavenly Father forgiven.

We’re so busy fighting the failures and fighting to forget the failures that keep finding us.

And they continually creep in reminding us of where we’ve gone wrong.

And while the past shows its face to remind us

We can punch that face with the truth that the past no longer defines us.

‘Cause we’ve been purchased and the price was the spilled blood of the sinless and spotless lamb

So at the end of the only life we’ve known we can stand eternally justified in the presence of the Great I AM

See, we fight not FOR victory, but FROM the victory that Christ conquered death to obtain

And those who remain in Christ are victorious

'Cause He gave His life for those who know their past is notorious

Jesus did not come to condemn the world, but to set us free …

Free from the past that would like to tie us to a tree and beat us til we bleed.

But that blood - was already shed - That body - already tied to a tree

That body - belonged to Jesus and He willingly laid it down so we could see

How great is His Love … Grace … and Mercy

So those who love God and are called according to His purpose

should never feel worthless.

Instead be confident that in all things He is working for our good.  Do you believe it?

If you answered, yes, then stop trying to so hard to achieve it and live like you believe it because Jesus Christ suffered so His children could receive it. 

Jesus said on the cross that it’s finished

Live in the victory provided to us by the blood of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who is sinless.

He died and took up His life again and then ascended to the right hand of the father

His rightful place of praise, glory, and honor

Where every accusation of the enemy is defeated once and forever

So that no past failure will ever define our future ‘cause we know the author of creation

And He knows our name

And any of us who are called His children will never be put to shame

We once stood guilty, but Jesus Christ took the blame

So we can stand forgiven and our lives never the same

LINK: Words Sermon Jam by Kory Kimbrell

Heading Home

In just a couple of weeks I will be moving with my family back to my hometown.  I never believed I would be moving back to where I’m from; especially for the reason we are moving there.  I have been examining my life in an effort to better understand just how we have ended up where we are.

One thing I’ve discovered is that I had failed to appreciate where I grew up.  Many moments, places, people, and experiences that have shaped who I am have roots firmly planted in Collinsville, Illinois.  But, while I lived there, I carried a lot of feelings of bitterness toward the place.  I realize there are a lot of people who have similar feelings toward the town they grew up in; people who blame their misery on where they live, and desire to leave because they feel like they could be better and do better somewhere else.  Time has taught me, though, that my feelings were wrong.

I always treated Collinsville as a place to escape from, as if I had been sentenced to live within its boundaries for a certain number of years, and to leave would be like being paroled - finally having the chance to do something with myself.  It was always about the next step, and the next step was always "outta there".  I always looked at what I could gain while I was there, without even a hint of consideration for what I could give back.  Maybe I didn’t think I had anything to offer; but the reality is I was just too selfish to consider it. The familiarity with every street, and knowing how to get everywhere from anywhere in town, made me feel like I was suffocating.  I blamed my town for the way I partied every weekend in high school because I thought  “There is nothing else to do in this stinkin’ town.”  It’s ironic how I continued to live that way even after I was gone.  Clearly, I was the problem.

I never appreciated the people either.  Somehow I lived there among them, but didn’t consider myself one of them.  It was like, “I’m only here for a little while so there is no reason to invest in anyone besides myself.”  I never consciously had those thoughts, but the way I lived showed that is what I believed.  The differences that exist in the people that call Collinsville home went unnoticed and unappreciated while I lived there.

I believe that we all do the best we can, based on what we know; but when we know better, we have a responsibility to do better.  That’s what I want to do.  I serve a God of second chances and I believe He is giving me a second chance to do better; to be a better son, brother, grandson, nephew, uncle, and friend than I was when I lived there before.  He’s put in me a desire to love those streets I grew up on and the people who live on those streets.  I have a desire to see people, families, and neighborhoods transformed by the love of Jesus.

 

These desires are evidence that I have been made new.  They weren’t there before and I sure wouldn’t have come up with them on my own.  My motivation has changed from living to make my name great to living to make great the name of Jesus.  It may sound crazy to those who don’t understand, but that’s okay.  Once upon a time, I thought it was crazy too.  I am not coming back home as someone who knows it all and has life figured out.  I am coming back home as someone who believes “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” | Galatians 2:20.  This is a truth that has shifted my motivation and desires and I cannot wait for my wife and children to get to Collinsville and fall in love with it the way I have.

Blessings y’all…

Kory