Search

The Hypocritical Christian

Open Search
Tag

mercy

La Morte Javert: the Peril of the Self Righteous

Read Romans 2:1-8

Recently I attended Les Miserables for the first time. It was amazing. I had not seen any of the film adaptations over the years nor had I read Victor Hugo’s masterpiece upon which the musical is based. Even beyond the immense talents of the performers, the mind reels at the skill necessary to make such a powerful, yet concise, performance out of 1000 pages of literature.

Spoilers ahead! Although, since the novel is over 160 years old it is really on you if you do not know the story at all.

Going into the performance, I was really only aware of the scene where the protagonist Jean Valjean experiences grace from a bishop who takes him into his home. Valjean repays the kindness by stealing some silverware. The bishop, when Valjean is presented to him by the authorities with the evidence of his crime, rather than ensuring his recidivism informs the police that he had given Valjean the silverware; and that he had left some of his gifts behind! This moment of mercy changes Valjean’s life forever even though he can never escape his past identity as a thief to some. His character arc is the most obvious example of what Hugo called the novel’s march from “evil to good… nothingness to God… The starting point: matter; destination: the soul…”.

As I experienced the performance, I came to realize that there are 3 viewpoints at tension in the musical. Valjean, who has experienced grace and mercy and having been transformed is trying to live a life marked by both going forward. Javert the indomitable lawman doggedly chasing after Valjean to bring him to justice. The crafty Thenardier who provides comic relief all the while exhibiting a belief in doing whatever it takes to survive and take what you can get whenever and wherever. Thenardier’s worldview is the only one that is atheistic. The musical asks the listener to choose between a path of enlightened grace, slavish adherence to law and order, or a strictly self-serving existence. Each of the three characters have identities that are shaped by the viewpoint they espouse.

What does any of this have to do with the second chapter of Romans? This will take a minute or two of your time but bear with me.

Above is a print from one of the many editions of Les Miserables. Depicted is the death of Javert. The intrepid lawman has chosen to end his own life in the rapids of the Seine. What drives him to this despair? Jean Valjean had the opportunity to kill him and chose instead to demonstrate the same grace that he had himself once experienced when his own life hung in the hands of the bishop so long before. Javert whose identity and self-worth are so wrapped up in his understandings of good vs evil and the keeping of the law cannot fathom a world build on such mercy.

As he stares into the churning waters below, he sings:

Who is this man?
What sort of devil is he?
To have me caught in a trap
And choose to let me go free?

Vengeance was his and he gave me back my life!
Damned if I’ll live in the debt of a thief
Damned if I’ll yield at the end of the chase
I am the Law and the Law is not mocked
I’ll spit his pity right back in his face

And must I now begin to doubt,
Who never doubted all those years?
My heart is stone and still it trembles.
The world I have known is lost in shadow.

Unable to conceive of a world that has space for mercy, Javert would rather die and escape a world of mercy if it does not comport to his understanding of justice. If the law is to be circumvented by grace, then the law is mocked. He prefers the darkness of death to his shattered worldview.

Paul, the apostle, not a character from Les Miserables, culminated his discussion of the impact of idolatry on the soul with a litany of evils (1:18-25) that demonstrate the coming wrath of God is justified. As, chapter 2 begins he turns his indictment on the least suspecting evil of idolatry: the self-righteous.

Therefore you have no excuse, everyone of you who passes judgment, for in that which you judge another, you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things.

Paul knows that his audience (mostly Hellenized Jews in Rome) would have heard his railings against idolatry as judgment on the gentiles and in their hearts would be providing a hearty amen! It was not uncommon in the sermons and writing of first century Jews (and earlier) to point out the many ways in which the gentiles fell short of God’s law. Paul knows that the “amens” in their hearts and thoughts of “yeah, you tell them Paul” belies a heart that is not aligned with God but rather one that takes the place of God and renders judgment on others. I suspect that the first time that the letter to the Romans was read to the gathered faithful there was silence in this moment.

…do you suppose… when you pass judgment on those who practice such things and do the same yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God?

Paul is never one to mince words. Look back at the litany of Romans 1:18-25. Everyone is on that list somewhere at some point in their lives. To bring it immediately back to Javert, Paul literally says that God’s wrath is coming because people are “insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.“

Javert would rather die than try to live in a world that makes room for mercy.

Paul asks all of us who pass judgment to reconsider our own need for a gracious response from God. Our failure to be self-reflective of our own weaknesses before a Holy God belies a subtle belief that others are more deserving of God’s wrath to come. Honest assessment of our own need for grace should makes us more loving and merciful. The failure to do so means we are at risk of following a God of our own making, one that judges those whom we judge and one that would never hold us accountable. Paul writes: Do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? 

Jesus told a parable about a King who forgave an exceptional debt to one of his servants. That servant subsequently refused to forgive the much smaller debt of someone else. When the King heard of this, he had the unforgiving servant imprisoned and tortured until he paid back what was owed. Jesus concluded the parable saying, “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart” (Mt 18:21-35).

Paul says that we have a choice. We can choose hardened hearts (Javert does so to the point of death), or we can recognize God’s mercy towards us as an opportunity to repent and choose grace and mercy as the guideposts of our faith. Paul assures us that there is a reckoning to come and those of us who choose to practice self-righteousness will be found wanting. In the end we will have mocked, not the law, but God himself.

So long as Christ has not returned then there is still time for us to repent (to change the way we think) and live lives marked by mercy and forgiveness. Those who persevere will experience eternal life, what Jesus called “the joy of the Master”. Best to not comment on the alternative.

What Javert (and far too many Christians) fail to understand is that mercy does not mock the law. Mercy does not negate the law. Mercy only exists because of the power of the law to condemn. Law has no means of forgiving; it can only assign guilt and punish. Mercy and its cousin grace only exist where there is first a law.

I can only appreciate the freedom mercy allows if I understand the penalty that is due. Mercy only has meaning where law is taken seriously. Jean Valjean understands the mercy of the bishop because he has already experienced the penalty for theft. In contrast, the rascal Thernardier has no respect for the law because he has always thwarted it. The self-righteous Javert having never broken the law feels justified in his interpretation of the law and its application.

Transformation in the Christian sense begins with the understanding of the need for grace. (I urge you because of the mercies of God to not be conformed to this world but rather to be transformed by the renewing of your mind…) A true understanding of the righteousness of God leads to an admission of guilt before the throne. The subsequent feelings of conviction and self-recrimination produced in us is a recognition of the righteousness and holiness of God and the wonder of his mercy and grace. We are forgiven and pronounced righteous instead of judged as guilty. Both Javert’s world of crime and punishment and Thernardier’s cavalier approach to life lead to death. Only Jean Valjean’s world provides the space for redemption.

Throughout the next several chapters of Romans, Paul is going to make us aware of the guilt of everyone before the law and of the exceptional character of God’s grace manifest in our reconciliation through Christ Jesus. That is for future posts. For now, heed the words of Jesus and “be merciful like your father in heaven is merciful”. Embrace a world where grace and mercy can abound. Start with those closest to you and work your way outward until your merciful heart can embrace even those whom you struggle to love.

Peace to you in your journey. Vaya con Dios!

Feel free to use this Bible Study for your own groups or discussion.  It is freely given. If you do I merely ask that you acknowledge where you got it and if you find it useful that you encourage others to seek it out. It is freely given and written with fear, foreboding, and prayer by a fellow hypocrite who is simply trying to figure out the road ahead.

0

Take Me to the Other Side

We have been travelling on a journey of transformation, trying to understand Paul’s letter to the church in Rome. In the previous post, we began unravelling the mystery of God’s mercy. If you read that post, then you now know that the mercy of God is his forgiveness and provision for those who love him. In this post, we will look at the other side of mercy.

As a reminder, Paul tells us in Romans 12, that it is because of the mercies of God that we are to be living sacrifices, transformed by the renewal of our minds and not conformed to the way of the world. Last time we looked at Jesus’ story of the Samaritan to illustrate the provision and compassion of God that mercy requires of us. Today, we start with another of the parables in Luke that illustrates mercy.

Tax Collectors and sinners gathered regularly around Jesus. We are told in Luke that one of the frequent complaints of the good people about Jesus is that he welcomed these people and ate with them. The world is always good at labelling sinners. The “un-desireables” vary from generation to generation and culture to culture, but there are always those whom the world labels and gives up on. Jesus gave up on nobody.

In Luke 15, the religious people are concerned about how Jesus welcomes any and all. So, he replies with parables like the lost sheep and the lost coin. He tells them that Heaven itself is filled with rejoicing when one of the lost returns to the Lord. Each of those parables starts as a rhetorical question, “who among you would fail to act the same?” Then Jesus brings it so very close to home.

He says that a certain young man tells his father to give him his coming inheritance. In that culture it was the equivalent of a child telling their parent to “drop dead”. The young man then travels to what is described as a far country where he squanders his inheritance in loose living and find himself at what the alcoholics refer to as rock bottom.

The young man decides to swallow his pride and return to his father. He will throw himself at his father’s feet and become a servant rather than an heir because he has learned the errors of his ways. Anyone hearing this story would have connected with the parent who was wronged. Judgment of the son upon his return was the anticipated result.

Instead, Jesus tells us that when the son was still a long way off, the Father ran! Again, this was not a culture in which grown men ran for anything but fear and battle. Yet the father ran to meet the son! Before the son can even give his rehearsed speech, he is met with forgiveness and love. He is given a choice robe, the signet ring that marks him as an heir, and a celebration will be had with a fatted calf. He experiences mercy, unconditional love and provision.

Here at the end of the story Jesus reveals that there is an older brother; a sibling who has not done anything wrong. He has served the father in the proper ways and has not squandered any of the resources entrusted to him. He has been patient and dare we say righteous in his relationship to the Father. The older brother refuses to participate in the celebration because he cannot see past the behavior of his sibling.

The father comes out to urge the other son to join the party. The son reminds the father of all that the younger brother did no doubt certain that his judgment against the son is correct. Where is the justice in these actions you have taken to welcome him back in? That is the question on his mind.

The father replies “My son, you are always with me and all that I have is yours, but we had to celebrate your brother’s return because he was dead but now, he is alive; he was lost and now is found.”

Let’s be clear. The Father in the story is God. The inheritance is the loving provision, protection, and salvation that God provides. All of us are in some way the younger brother who rejects God and seeks to live life on our own terms, until we experience the revelation that we need God in our lives. The tragedy is that many of us after experiencing the salvation of God found in Jesus Christ become the older brother.

Content in the love of God and his forgiveness, too many Christians become judgmental. We no longer look at others with eyes of mercy. We are quick to count faults, remember past misdeeds, and think that God should lead with judgment instead of mercy towards those who wish to return. Somehow, the people of faith, who have experienced mercy, are quick to withhold the same grace from others. In their hearts they believe that they are maintaining the sanctity of the faith, but in reality, they have missed the truth of God’s grace from the beginning. If God has forgiven you of your sins, then he will forgive anyone of their sins.

“The mercies of the LORD are new every morning,” Jeremiah says. If that is true (and it is!) then those mercies are fresh and new each day for everyone. Those who have been transformed know this. Not only do they know this, but they join in the celebration when those who were lost are found. They do not sit outside and go “tsk, tsk”. They do not say “yeah, but what about…”. Instead, they say “Praise the LORD, for his mercy is from everlasting to everlasting!”

In Hebrews 9:11-28, we are told how the blood of Jesus on the cross is so much more effectual than the blood of the bulls and goats that were sacrificed on the altar in the temple. You can read the whole passage following the link above, but the point is driven home with these words: “how much more then will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our conscienses from the acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God! For this reason, Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised inheritance — now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.“

This is the mercy that Paul is referring to when he writes “I urge you therefore because of the mercies of God to present yourselves as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, this is your true and proper worship.“

True Christians have experienced the forgiveness effected by the cross of Christ. True Christians are committed to extending this same mercy to everyone. Not conformed (the world seeks to judge and lessen) but rather transformed (the spirit person is merciful and edifies) by the renewal of the mind. True Christians know that God has forgiven them, and they should then forgive others. Be merciful because your Father in Heaven is merciful.

Why do so many Christians get this wrong? I suspect that it is pride. Once forgiven it is easy enough for a person to think they somehow earned or deserved that forgiveness. Pride tells us God loves us because we deserved that love. Pride tells us that we are more deserving than others. These thoughts are not the mindset of those living as the transformed.

There is an Aerosmith song entitled Take Me to the Other Side. It is not a gospel tune. Small surprise there, right? It does however contain this lyric. “Forget about your foolish pride. Take me to the other side.” Perhaps that should be our prayer. “Lord help me to forget my foolish pride and take me to the other side.” The other side is where Christ is waiting.

Peace to you on your own journey. Vaya con Dios!

4

Mercy, Mercy Me

The previous post began our journey through Romans. You can read it here. If you are up to date, you know that we ended that post by saying that “it all begins with mercy.”

“Therefore, I urge all of you because of the mercies of God” Paul writes in Romans 12:1. The therefore at the start of 12 is the culmination of all that Paul has written to the church in Rome up to that point; so, if this is the culmination of his argument, then mercy is a key thing to understand.

Mercy is everywhere in the scriptures. These posts on Romans are an effort to synthesize a three-year bible study that I led. The first year we walked through the Gospel of Luke. We encountered mercy over and over again. For Example: when Mary begins to prophesize after the angel Gabriel has come, she recites Psalm 103: “His mercy is upon generation after generation toward those who fear Him.” Likewise, Zacharias says “because of the tender mercy of our God with which the Sunrise from on high will visit us” referring to the promised messiah. Perhaps most importantly though Jesus himself highlights mercy to his followers.

Jesus in the midst of the beatitudes and preaching in Luke says “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” This is not just a suggestion; it is something that is to be true of those who follow God. We are to be merciful. The parallel passage in Matthew expresses the same point differently. There the word is perfect. “Study to be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect.” Now that can cause a lot of grief for a person, because I don’t know about you, but I fail at perfection usually in the first hour of my day. Perfection is an ideal. But Luke helps us to understand that being perfect like God means being merciful!

We will come back to that thought in a minute but first we need to consider another place where Jesus highlights mercy. One day, a lawyer challenges Jesus to explain what it means to love your neighbor by asking “who is my neighbor?”. Jesus replies with a parable (the story of the good Samaritan) that culminates in this question, “Whom do you suppose was the neighbor to the man who was left for dead?”; the answer given “the one who showed mercy to him” is met with the response “go and do the same.”

The underlying Greek word for mercy is eleos. It is a word with a rich and deep meaning. In the New Testament the word means more than forgiveness, although it does mean forgiving a debt or providing pardon. Eleos also means compassion, generosity, and provision. The Samaritan did all of this in the story. In that manner he acted like his Father, God.

In Exodus 34, God offers a self-description to Moses: “The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness (hesed) and truth…“. Mercy is so important to the character of YHWH that it is the first adjective used in his self-description!

Hebrew scholars note that the word for mercy and the word for womb have the same trilateral root. In Biblical Hebrew, all words are built outward from three core consonants. These “roots” provide insight into the meaning behind the word. We do something similar in English. You can understand the English word enlightenment if you know the meaning of light as to illumine or make something easier to see. The womb is a place of love, safety, and provision for the baby. It is in the womb that the strong bonds of love are first formed between mother and child. The womb is a place where the growing child is kept safe and where all that is needed is provided.

Saying God is merciful is to say that he loves unconditionally, that God forms us, and we grow when connected to him. Saying God is merciful means that he provides everything that we need. We see aspects of this mercy throughout Luke, not only with the Samaritan, but also when Jesus feeds the 5000, heals the demoniacs, and when he promises the thief on the cross that that very day, he would join him in Paradise. Mercy all around!

The writer of Hebrews shares “we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God… therefore lets us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.“

What does this have to do with Paul and his Letter to the Romans?

Paul grew up learning all that we know as the Old Testament. Early in his life, he felt that he understood all of who God was, what it meant that he was merciful and gracious; righteous and just. Paul was so certain of his understanding he persecuted the Christians in Jerusalem and other places because he was certain that they were heretics sharing falsehoods about God. Then it all changed. After encountering Jesus in a vision, he rededicated his understanding of those scriptures to comprehend what it meant for someone to have risen from the dead. By the time Paul is writing to Rome, and by the grace of God to us as well, he is able to say because of the mercies of God (his provision, his protection, his transforming spirit, and his salvation) we are to provide ourselves as living sacrifices.

Our forgiveness and justification in Christ Jesus are just the starting point. Now we are to live out mercy-filled lives in response to what God has done for us. This is our “rightful worship”. The path of your transformation follows opportunities of mercy, and it means so much more than just being more forgiving.

Some will recognize a Marvin Gaye song from the title of this post. Not particularly theological, but the song begins “oh mercy, mercy me, things aren’t what they seem to be, no.” In our next post we will start at the beginning of Romans and start seeing that the world isn’t what it seems. Until then the title of this post is a prayer you can live this week.

In Exodus when God describes himself it is written that he descended from the cloud and proclaimed the Name of the Lord. “YHWH, YHWH ELOHIM, a god of Mercy…” mercy is not just what God does but it is who God is! So, the title is a prayer best read this way: “MERCY, mercy me.”

Thank you for reading. If this post blessed you, please share it with someone else. As always it is freely given. You are welcome to use it although it would be nice if you credited where it came from.

Peace to you on your own journey, Vaya con Dios!

2

Website Powered by WordPress.com.

Up ↑