THE PRICE OF AUTHENTICITY

“For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders.  And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end.”  Isaiah 9:6-7

I

magine yourself as a Jew whose family has for generations awaited the Messiah promised by God through the voices of Abraham and the prophets.  Your people, having been under the rule of such pagan nations as Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Media Persia, Greece, and now Rome, know little of true peace.  But you and your family have been hanging on—sometimes only by a thread —to this promise from Isaiah, so you faithfully observe all the festivals, pray, watch, and wait…and wait, and wait for this Prince of Peace to arrive in His glory and take upon His shoulders this government, shattering the yoke of Rome.

            And then one day it happens.  The messengers are angels, and the first audience is a clump of lowly shepherds:  “And suddenly, there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace…’ ” (Luke 2:13-14).  Now it can begin.  At last this elusive peace that has seemed like only a fairy tale for so long will be yours.

            But we who live more than two thousand years removed from that first angelic carol of hope know that the peace that the Jews waited for so long took on a much different form from their expectations.  The baby in the manger was indeed the Messiah, the Prince of Peace that the prophets foretold, but the kind of peace He ushered in left many Jews scratching their heads and squinting their eyes.

And if truth be told, the Jews of two thousand years ago were not the only ones confused—even disappointed and disillusioned—by lives burdened down with frustrated dreams, thwarted plans, and irreconcilable conflicts. In our twenty-first century free nation of America, the city sidewalks and country lanes are filled to overflowing with lives every bit as devoid of peace as those Jews beset by alien nations.  If Jesus came to deliver peace, why aren’t we enjoying it?

            Matthew 10:34 records these words from Jesus:  “Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.  For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother…and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household.”

 Upon first glance, this seems contradictory to Isaiah 9, but a closer look at the angel’s message brings clarification. Maybe we were so carried away with the wonderful news of our long-awaited Messiah that we quit paying attention before we got to the end of the message:  “…and on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased” (Luke 2:14).

            Yes, true peace is conditional, but anything easier would be counterfeit.

DUCKS’ BACKS OR SPONGES

 “Do not hate your brother in your heart.  Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in his guilt.”  Leviticus 19:17

 “Whoever of you loves life and desires to see many good days, keep your tongue from evil…seek peace, and pursue it.”  Psalm 34:12-14

Choosing the right path to true peace—discerning between peacemaking and peacefaking— is not always easy.  Just knowing that sometimes we must confront, even though it is uncomfortable, doesn’t solve all the problems that go along with trying to be wise. 

 If we move too quickly in one direction— speak our minds as a sort of knee-jerk reaction— we might be plagued with regret for the rest of our days for spouting off things we didn’t really mean after a while. 

If we convince ourselves to wait it out and see if our resentment or hurt indeed will roll away like water off a duck’s back, sometimes, even if it doesn’t roll away, we listen to the Evil One as he uses one or more of several tactics to convince us not to go back and revisit this Thing with our sister or brother.  (Many of us err in the first way because we are the type who know from past experience that if we convince ourselves to wait it out and see if our resentment or hurt indeed will roll away like water off a duck’s back, we might once again end up despising ourselves for our fearful or slothful paralysis.) 

How do we grow a heart of wisdom in this matter so that we will neither react “knee-jerkfully” nor allow the devil to falsely placate us into a deadly malaise that will surface in some bizarre way down the road?  My friend Candy calls this bizarre kind of surfacing “coming out sideways.” That paints a pretty graphic picture, doesn’t it?

Something that has worked for me is the Jericho solution.  When some hurt lingers until the next day and I am tempted to “speak my piece” as a means of finding my peace, I begin praying specifically and purposefully about it for seven days.  After this weeklong prayer vigil, I will notice that I am either greatly prompted to have the discussion or else the thing has faded from bright red to pale pink, and the sharp edges have been whittled down to a smoothness that no longer has pricking power.  

 

Whether we can be a duck’s back about an offense or for some reason can’t help being a sponge about it is important for us to learn and admit to ourselves. Somewhere in our anger and hurt, we might have missed the possibility that we have likewise been part of the offense. 

If we don’t deal honestly with ourselves and our brothers and sisters, we might miss the possibility that we, too, have offended, and according to the spirit of Matthew 5:23-24, our gifts to our Father will not be accepted.  What a terrible plight!  We must be diligent to pray to be delivered from such costly deception.

PEACEMAKERS OR PEACEFAKERS?

“If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over.” Matthew 18:15

There is more of a reason to want peace than just to horde the comfortable feelings it brings. We want not just to be peace-horders but peace-givers, peacemakers.

Jesus tells us in Matthew 5:9 that peacemakers are such a blessing to Him that they will be called “Sons of God.” Paul presented the same high calling to the Roman Christians: “If possible, so far as it depends upon you, be at peace with all men” (Romans 12:18). Peter agrees as he echoes Psalm 34: “Let him who means to love life and see good days…seek peace and pursue it” (1 Peter 3:10-11). And these are just a smattering of all the Bible says about the virtues of peace.

Because of the abundance of scriptures pointing us toward living peacefully, we might have picked up a dangerous stereotype worth examining. There is more to this “peace” than meets the eye, and this command from Leviticus 19:17 can help us uncover some of its less obvious aspects: “Do not hate your brother in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in his guilt.”

Hey, what's going on here? The second part of this scripture doesn’t seem to fit with the first half. This could simply mean that if we know a brother’s (or sister’s) sin and don’t help him/her see it, we could be held partially responsible. But if this is true, why is it in the context of not hating him? Rebuking doesn’t sound like peacemaking, so perhaps we could just chalk up the seeming contradiction of both commands to the often misunderstood Old Testament way of thinking akin to “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” After all, we know that Jesus nixed that way of thinking in His Sermon on the Mount when, with His “You have heard it said, but I say,” He set out to teach us about the higher law of love.

But this argument just won't hold up. For right there in the same book with Jesus’ Beatitudes, He further instructs His disciples: “And if your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault…” Obviously, then, Jesus, whose every word was in harmony with all His other words, meant that sometimes to achieve real peace, something active must happen.

Yes, certainly sometimes peace can be achieved quietly and passively; we can and should just flat purposely overlook some sins against us. Other times, however, true peace that will keep us from hating our brother or sister in our heart must be something that we more actively “seek” and “pursue.” At these times we must confront our brother or sister whom we need to forgive. In this light, the warning in Leviticus not only lines up with the teachings of Jesus but makes a lot of sense its own context: Whatever our brother or sister has done to us cannot possibly be worse than our hating him or her for it.

In His Beatitudes, Jesus referred to peace in the deepest, most heartfelt sense, even if it means going to some trouble to achieve it. Otherwise, we are not peacemakers but peacefakers.

Sometimes making the peace and keeping the peace requires action, even risky action. After all, you might wonder, what if confrontation makes things even worse? (This, by the way, is the same excuse often used when parents don't want to ruffle their kids' feathers, even though their feathers are obviously dangerously infested with mites, fleas, lice, ________ [fill in the blank with whatever vermin is disgusting enough to cause you to say, "Whoa! Enough of this vile stuff!" and start ripping feathers out with a vengeance in order to save the child.] )

If your heart can't finally drop it, prayerfully, carefully take action to stop the infection. Stop the faking. Make the peace.

TUNING UP FOR THE SYMPHONY

“The Sovereign Lord has given me an instructed tongue to know the word that sustains the weary. He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being taught. The Sovereign Lord has opened my ears, and I have not been rebellious, I have not turned back.” Isaiah 50:4-5

We can trust the hands of this Surgeon, this Potter. Though He will not wrangle us down and tie us to His Wheel—or His operating table (whichever metaphor works better for you), He invites us through His Spirit, His Word, to trust Him to make the pain it will require be worth it to us in the end.

There are some of you reading this who are still not entirely certain that a daily ritual of Bible study and prayer is something worth adopting. You are not fully convinced that this sort of thing will give a good enough return for the time sacrificed. May I please give you a little personal testimony: I began writing devotionals as a means toward the end of helping others become involved in and hopefully fall in love with that living and active Word of God that is our lifeline and anchor. I had to do it because, you see, before I began my regular early morning quiet times in the presence of God about twenty years ago, my life looked all right, my vessel appeared on the outside to be useful and functional, and maybe even a little impressive in some respects, but there was some festering unrest inside that needed to be cleaned out before I would have enough room inside to hold the Treasure. In spite of my appearance to others, in spite of my ability to look the part on the outside, this cauldron within burned uncomfortably at times, and I was never very certain how long my inner peace would last. Regardless of my outward appearance, peace was a fragile thing. This fragility and insecurity based upon my self-confidence held the Treasure at bay.

Setting aside time alone with God in prayer and His Word changed my life more than any one thing or person. Many of you well know what I speak of; you know the value of tuning up your instrument before the symphony begins. Every new day we are given is a symphony.

If you have been tuning up, pay attention to your symphony, and see if the melody is growing sweeter and the harmony truer than it was when you conducted it alone. See if the Treasure is taking over the territory of the terror.