Yes, it’s young adult fiction. Yes, it has a love triangle. No, it’s not about vampires and werewolves. Just wanted to clear that up.

The book was good. Really good, I thought. We are dropped into a post-apocalyptic world with one government and everyone divided up into 12 districts according to what they produce. There’s the mining district, the farming district, the machinery district, and on and on. And every year, two “tributes,” ages 12-18, are chosen from each district to compete in The Hunger Games, a contest in televised throughout PanAmerica in which the tributes kill each other off until there is only one left.

Think The Running Man meets Lord of the Flies.

The heroine is Katniss Everdeen, a young woman who is a skilled hunter with a bow and arrow. She lives in District 12 with her mother and younger sister, Primrose. And, as fate would have it, her little sister, the embodiment of purity and innocence, is chosen to represent the district. Without thinking, Katniss volunteers to take her place with the full expectation that there is no way she would actually win the games, but would instead die a brutal, public death.

So at the core, we have heroic self-sacrifice where one gives her life for another. I’m sure, given the popularity of the book series and the upcoming movie, more than one student pastor has thought about how to work Kat and Prim into a sermon illustration. But before we start making the Christian comparison between Jesus and Kat, how both willingly and lovingly gave their lives for another, can I encourage you to remember this?

Jesus is better than Katniss Everdeen.

It’s not just the fact that in His sacrifice, Jesus emptied Himself of far more than any other person ever would. It’s not just that Jesus had more than enough power to vanquish all His enemies at any given moment. And it’s not just that there’s no question as to whether or not Jesus has actually won the victory over sin and death. It’s that the comparison really breaks down when you consider who the heroine was sacrificing herself for, and who Jesus was.

Primrose loved animals. She wore dresses. She liked to sing and had not a violent bone in her body. She was absolutely innocent. We are deceiving ourselves if we look at this character and see ourselves anywhere in her. Rather, we are the embodiment of Romans 5:6-7:

“While we were still helpless, at the appointed moment, Christ died for the ungodly. For rarely will someone die for a just person—though for a good person perhaps someone might even dare to die. But God proves His own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us!”

We’re not the innocent little girl; we’re the arrogant tributes who don’t see the contest for its barbarism but instead a chance for fame, wealth, and glory. We are the lemmings who fist bump all the way to death and hell and have to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to safety, and only then do we realize the kind of danger we were in. And Jesus isn’t sacrificing Himself for someone pure and true; His sacrifice is for the rebels who would willingly pick up spears and stones and send Him on His way.

Jesus is better than Katniss. Thank God He is.

I’m not meaning to speculate about how the forthcoming trial will unfold in this post. Nor do I mean to comment on the way the believing community should react to either Paterno’s memory or Sandusky. But there is an idea that has been said and articulated in different ways time and time again in the national media in reference to Paterno that points to something deeper in us at a couple of different levels.

The idea in question is this: legal obligation versus moral obligation.

Essentially, the argument as I understand it goes like this: Paterno did all he was legally required to do when he found out about the potential abuse being perpetrated by Sandusky. He reported the incident / s to the campus police. That was all he was required to do from a legal standpoint.

But from a moral standpoint, he was required to do more. Much more. What’s curious about this idea is that it has come from the Christian and the non-Christian alike. Because these charges are of such a heinous nature, the believer and the non-believer seem to be standing together on the basis of morality, and together they seem to be saying that the legal minimum was not enough.

It’s almost as if there is in all of us some base level of morality – a law of conscience if you will. Something that’s ingrained deeply within us that requires something of us. And that “something” is not just to do the minimum required, but to do and be more than we are. We feel it, and it has suddenly risen to the level of the national consciousness.

What we are seeing playing out before our very eyes is in a sense why the law doesn’t work. The law, apart from Christ, is about the minimum. It’s about what is required of you. But even when we keep the minimum, there is still something inside of us that knows the truth. It’s the nagging feeling that there is something else. Something more.

And then here comes Jesus, and He takes it to another level:

“Murder you say? Well, there’s something more. Murder isn’t just about the physical act of killing. It’s about thinking ill of someone in your heart, too.”

Jesus won’t let us settle for the minimum. He fulfills the law, body and heart. And thankfully, He fulfills it on our behalf. But in so doing, He gives us a new heart, one that doesn’t only feel the need for something more, but actually desires to do it. To love, and to not just murder.

His brothers said to him, “Are you indeed to reign over us? Or are you indeed to rule over us?” So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words.
– Genesis 37:8

Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James
- Jude 1a

There is a lot wrapped up in this simple greeting, the opening line of Jude’s epistle. Jude is the brother of James, by which he means the James, James the apostle, the brother of Jesus. So this Jude is the Jude who is the brother of Jesus. But he doesn’t identify himself as such. He calls himself James’s brother but Jesus’ “servant.”

Jesus’ kid brother doesn’t say, “I’m Jesus’ kid brother,” but “I’m Jesus’ servant.” Again, so much is there…

Keep reading.

One commenter took exception with the post and pointed out that answering a question with a question is an annoying practice.

I get where he’s coming from, especially if you’re in a trigonometry or history class, because in those classes, all you really want is the answer. You’re dealing in the realm of facts and you’re an objective party to those facts.

But theology is different. Or at least it should be.

Theology isn’t just for libraries and classrooms; this is real life stuff. It is, in fact, the realest of the real. Every theological truth has a personal implication. What you believe impacts the way you live, otherwise you don’t really believe it. Conversely, we often pose theological questions either because some circumstance has jarred our real life, or from a negative standpoint, we are doing something we know we shouldn’t be doing and are looking for a theological loophole to continue that behavior. In the second instance, we use theological questions as a cover to hide behind rather than addressing the specific behavior and the faulty belief that is motivating that behavior.

In either case, there is no such thing as ivory tower theology. Theology is about life. Always. Because God is about life. Always.

But don’t just take my word for it. Think about the example of Jesus. Think about how frustrating it must have been at times to have a question, ask it to the Son of God, and in return, get a story. Or another question. Or a teaching that only seems to vaguely relate to what you were asking about. Why did Jesus do this? Why didn’t He just answer questions directly?

Perhaps it’s because of the above truth, that Jesus understood more than any of us ever will that theology is about life.

Perhaps one case study will help. In John 4, Jesus met a Samaritan woman at a well. They began to talk, and she wanted to take the conversation into the realm of theological hypotheticals, asking Jesus about where the true place of worship whould be. But the Son of God would have none of this theoretical bologna.

Jesus told her to get her husband. In so doing, He exposed the behavior in her life that she was most ashamed of, her point of greatest vulnerability. Jesus took theory to real life in the blink of an eye. He’s still doing the same thing. We mustn’t think that we can play silly thinking games with Jesus. He knows our hearts. He knows what’s really behind the question. So ask the question – but be ready, because Jesus might just ask one back.

Intimidating? Not really. More like wet-your-pants scared. But, as Jana would later tell me, Joe went to her later that evening after I had gone home and told her he thought I was a good boy. So I must have hung the lights okay after all.

My love and respect for Joe grew as time went on. I found a gentle man who loved the Lord and loved his family. And as I heard more and more of his story, it only served to make me appreciate this quiet man more. Here was a guy who faithfully served his church as a Sunday school teacher for decades. He was a man who worked days as a coach and teacher and nights as a clerk at a gas station to provide for his family. He chucked it all when his three daughters were young to move to Kansas and go to law school. Then he moved back to New Mexico and eventually opened up his own law practice, one in which he worked side by side with his wife where they both regularly helped people who couldn’t pay them, working for hams and chickens if they needed to. When Joe was appointed by the governor to be a district judge, no one was really surprised given his reputation of strength and honor in the community.

That was right around the time when Joe was diagnosed with a particularly fast-moving and devastating breed of Parkinson’s disease. The bike rides stopped. The shaking and shuffling started. And with them came the occasional hallucination and confusion.

This Christmas, like the past four, when we went to visit our families, we did the thing that has become the ritual for so many people in our aging society – we spent some time at the nursing home that now houses Joe. He is weak and frail, a shell of the man he once was. He has occasional lucid moments, but those moments are rapidly diminishing. Surrounded by the other residents, we looked again in the face of a terrible disease and we were forced again to confront head on the truly broken nature of the world.

And we were left thinking that it should not be like this. Not to this good man. Not to a 60-year-old father and grandfather. I looked in the faces of my 3 children and realized that this is the only Papa Joe they will ever know. They’ll never know what it’s like to see him standing. They’ll never feel him lift them over his head up into the sky. They will only have the stories Jana and I will be able to relate to them in the years to come.

And as we left to drive back to Tennessee, the only thing I could think to say quietly to Joe might be the same thing you thought if you spent any time this Christmas in the nursing home:

“Jesus is going to fix this.”

And He is. When He comes back, He’s going to make war on His enemies. He is going to rout sin and disease. He will bring them to ruin and put things as they should be. Then – and only then – will we see the real Joe again.

Amen. Come Lord Jesus.

So while there obviously isn’t any encouragement in sinning, there is something encouraging about the language intentionally used by Paul in this passage. To get to that encouragement, think about this question:

Why are we told not to “grieve the Holy Spirit, rather than “anger” the Spirit or something like that?

Here is where we find the encouragement, because “grief” by its very nature is a much more personal emotion than anger.

If someone cuts you off in traffic, you don’t grieve. You get mad. But if one of your children makes a destructive choice, you might indeed be angry, but there is another depth to that anger. There is grief because of what was lost as a result of that choice. Because of your great love for your child, you grieve what might have been but for these choices. You grieve the sense of brokenness in your relationship. It’s anger, sure – but it’s anger motivated by a very deep love and concern.

That’s the part of grieving the Holy Spirit that’s encouraging.

The language here reveals the depth of love God has for us. We don’t just make the Spirit mad when we’re disobedient; we grieve Him because of similar reasons an earthly parent might be grieved.

Here again we are reminded of the tremendous love God has demonstrated for us. He had brought us into His family, refusing to hold us at an arm’s distance. We can rest assured, then, because of the grieving of the Holy Spirit, that God has convincingly and overwhelmingly committed Himself to us in Christ.

Thank God the Spirit grieves and doesn’t just get mad.

That’s what my 7-year-old said at dinner the other night when he was confronted (again) with the answer of “no” for something he wanted to do (I think it involved eating peas). He’s living under the mindset right now that the rules are there to cramp his style. They deny him freedom to do what he really wants to do and if all these restraints were lifted, his life would be much happier.

This is a lie ingrained into our hearts.

“I love the rules.”

That’s what the 4-year-old sitting across from him said with a glint of pride in her eye. She lives to please authority right now, and does not think of herself as sinful in any way, shape or form. Obeying fills her with pride, and she can’t imagine that anything in her heart might need to be changed because she is very proficient at following the rules. If, in fact, there were more and more rules she would be much happier because she would know exactly what the minimum was expected of her and she could perform accordingly.

This is a lie ingrained into our hearts.

Licentiousness and legalism sitting there together at the kitchen table, one believing that the rules deny him happiness and one believing that the rules justify her.

And the gospel is for both.

Thank God the gospel frees us from the lie that sin is freedom and happiness and moves us toward the joy of obedience and intimacy. And thank God the gospel frees us from the lie that we are “okay” and makes us into the humble people that are “okay” because of Christ alone.

And thank God that the gospel is still for a dad who from one day to another needs grace to love both of these kids in good – and hard – ways.

It hurts a lot especially when I’m trying to throw around three kids who, by this time, have a near nightly expectation of a fairly rambunctious wrestling match in the living room.

It also hurts my pride a bit because this, along with other things, remind me that my body isn’t what it once was. Not that I’ve ever been on the cover of any magazines, but I am feeling a bit more rickety these days than I once was. My body, like everyone else’s isn’t getting better. It’s getting worse. It’s in a state of decay, and the tendonitis in my shoulder which flares every time I lift a little boy over my head is a constant reminder of that decay.

Now there’s a couple of things I can do here. One, I can mourn the loss of my youth which is rapidly fading away (or potentially already out the door). Such mourning might indeed push me into efforts to regain my youth which might encompass any number of things. Extra marital affairs, eating disorders, obsessive exercise – these all might come from such a spirit.

Or I can embrace what the Spirit seems to be saying. He seems to be telling me to rejoice in my tendonitis. Rejoice in the decay of the body. Praise God for this tangible reminder that what we have on this earth is temporary.

According to Paul, in 2 Corinthians 5, our bodies are like tents. And no one wants to live in a tent. They want a house.

So when the flaps start blowing in the breeze, when the rain drips through the ceiling, and when the temperature gets too cold for the canvas to keep out, we can look to the better home being prepared for us in Christ.

Thank God for tendinitis:

 ¹ For we know that if our earthly house, a tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. ² And, in fact, we groan in this one, longing to put on our house from heaven, ³ since, when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. ⁴ Indeed, we who are in this tent groan, burdened as we are, because we do not want to be unclothed but clothed, so that mortality may be swallowed up by life. ⁵ And the One who prepared us for this very thing is God, who gave us the Spirit as a down payment.

That’s a big call, but one you find to be true as you grow in Christ. Repentance isn’t a one time thing; it’s a lifestyle. When you’re a child, repenting often meant saying you’re sorry and really meaning it. But as you grow in Christ (and in age), you become more self-aware. And as you do, you start to find some disturbing things in play within you.

You find just how duplicitous your motives can be.

You discover how great is your capacity to deceive yourself.

And, in the case of repentance, you find that often when you repent, you don’t really mean it. You’re sorry for the consequences of the sin, but maybe not the sin itself. Or you make internal excuses for your actions, saying you’re sorry, but all the time justifying what you’ve done.

As our capacity for repentance increases, we find that we might need to repent of the very manner in which we are repenting.

Now a couple of things can happen here. One is that you become spiritually paralyzed. You can become so downtrodden at your sin, that even when you are trying to do the right thing there is often some manner of sinful desire behind it, that you simply throw up your hands and live in a constant state of guilt.

Or…

Or you can preach the gospel to yourself, even while you’re repenting. You can see that the blood of Christ not only covers your sin, but covers your imperfect ability to confess that sin. You can glory, not in the pride of your humility, but that even in your imperfect confession, the cross rules over all.

I’ll choose the latter today as my capacity to repent grows.

God helps those who help themselves.

God won’t give you more than you can handle.

Cleanliness is next to godliness.

We might as well be saying that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Not only are these things not in the Bible, but most of them are actually contrary to the gospel. I mean, do we honestly think we can handle the stuff of life?

Cancer?

Financial trouble?

Sexual temptation?

Who do we think we are?

The truth is, as anyone who has genuinely suffered will tell you, that God will often give you more than you can handle.

And He will do it precisely because you can’t help yourself.

Paul had more than he could handle. He had what he described as a “thorn in the flesh” (2 Corinthians 12). Scholars debate what that thorn might be, but it seems to be some kind of painful, physical condition. Perhaps a recurring form of malaria he picked up on one of his island adventures. And it hurt. A lot.

So much that Paul begged the Lord three times to take it away. But God did not. Instead, he reminded Paul that the thorn was there in order to display the strength of God.

God will give you more than you can handle. And when He does, our choice is relatively simple: we can despair, or we can turn our eyes on the truth of the gospel, that God makes up for what we lack. That His strength is perfected in weakness. That God helps those who cannot help themselves.

We can’t handle the thorns. But gloriously, we follow a King whose strength is made perfect in our weakness.