Joseph tells a true story that DOESN'T make him look very good

THIS WAS ORIGINALLY PART OF AN ESSAY
SERIES WHICH I CALLED "FAILURES TO THINK"


Word-picture time:

Suppose you have a four-year-old daughter, and
you are playing hide-and-seek with her, someplace
outdoors. It's your turn to hide, so you choose a
spot from which you can keep the child continuously
under observation, for her safety. You watch and
watch, never losing sight of her while she wanders
here and there searching for you. After three or four
minutes, she finally blunders on your hiding place,
and squeals, "I found you!" And since becoming
aware of someone's exact location, even if not as
a result of Sherlock Holmes brilliance, constitutes
finding that person, her statement is true.

At this point, you angrily snap at her, "No, you
didn't find me! You could only say that you found me
if you took me completely by surprise! Since I saw
you approaching and allowed you to find me, you
can't say that you found me!"

What's that? You say that you wouldn't say this to
the little girl? Actually, I knew you wouldn't. But
Christians often say similar things when discussing
the experience of conversion.

A brand-new believer, speaking of his encounter with
Jesus, describes the questioning and searching he
went through. Then he reports, quite truthfully,
that there was a particular moment when he first
realized for sure that Jesus was Lord. He expresses
this in the perfectly applicable words, "I found Jesus."
And then the self-appointed humility police get on his
case: "You didn't find Jesus--JESUS found YOU!" The
new Christian's face takes on the look of a boy being
informed only retroactively that some ordinary action
was a violation of rules he had never been told. He
hadn't been told that his new spiritual family would
be full of one-upmanshippers, looking to score holier-
than-thou points over a mere choice of words.

If only everyone in church would think about the
simple fact that it is possible to become aware of
a person whose attention was already on you, this
particular point-scoring ploy would be retired.

What I have just described is one manifestation of a
larger, vaguer problem. It involves a failure by many
believers to do a good job of categorizing or defining
things. Thus, in my "Jesus found you!" illustration, the
reprovers wrongly (and subconsciously) defined the
verb "to find" as only indicating a sovereign initiative
in which the one doing the finding knows all and the
one found knows nothing. This led them to believe
erroneously that the young Christian was claiming
something like divine sovereignty when he said "I
found Jesus."

A broader example of this problem--and one with some
connection to the trouble the Apostle Paul had with
legalists--is a failure to understand that some things
are OPTIONAL. Millions of Christians, out of their
desire for the security of predictability, subconsciously
want to believe that everything in life is either clearly
required or clearly forbidden.

I remember a conversation I had about thirty years
ago with a crotchety old woman running a Christian
bookstore. She was saying with a straight face that it
was a sin to play any electrically-amplified musical
instrument, simply because the Bible did not explicitly
command us TO play such instruments. There was no
point in asking her how many references the Bible
contained to any electrically-powered invention, or
why she was committing the sin of reading Bibles that
were printed by electrically-powered printing presses.
She was deriving too much satisfaction from deceiving
herself that her personal preference was the same
thing as a commandment from God.

But I would be letting my readers off too easily if
I stopped here and we all just agreed with each other
what a fool the old woman was. Unfortunately, in the
very act of denouncing legalism like hers--in the very
act of trying to exalt grace above all--we can fall into
still another intellectual and spiritual snare.

I now have in mind the snare of not thinking about
the relationship between general things and their
particular forms. More specifically: the relationship
between SIN as a general phenomenon, and sin-ZUH
as particular misdeeds.

When we dissect the bitter old woman who hates rock
music, we find that her self-righteousness is based on
rejection of particular things (like Bose amplifiers)
that she perceives as bad. Persons who are unambiguously
heathen also draw moral categories by particulars--
missing the point about the sin nature Jesus came to
save us from. No one can be Biblically orthodox who
won't face the reality of sin as the total phenomenon.

Everybody's with me so far; we all subconsciously (at
least, I hope only subconsciously) will congratulate
ourselves for understanding our holistic need of grace
to cleanse our whole being, not only isolated parts. But
we're not out of the experiential woods ourselves.

It's obvious that we can fail to see the forest for the
trees--i.e. we could recognize individual faults and try
to correct them, but never address the sin-nature issue.
We preach and preach on this theme. What we often fail
to think of, however, is the fact that one can make a
mistake in the opposite direction as well: having an
aerial view of the forest, but seeing no single tree.

In large Bible-teaching churches, it's easy to find
one or more persons who never tire of saying, "I know
I'm a sinner, I know I deserve to go to Hell, I know
that I'm only saved by grace"....but who NEVER get around
to APPLYING this theoretical humility to any concrete
area of conduct. They're so contrite about vicariously
eating the apple with Adam--but they never admit to
being wrong in any argument, never apologize when
they hurt others, and never acknowledge any reason
why they should sacrifice their self-interest in any
of the specific situations of daily life.

I myself have never been slow to criticize legalism
like that of the old woman in the bookstore. She may
have been responsible for needlessly creating a bad
impression of Christianity itself in the minds of many
unbelieving youngsters who met her. Frankly, though,
I believe that those who go wrong in this other way--
using claimed grace as a shield for their selfishness
in particular dealings--will do more damage to the
appeal of the gospel.

When writing a message like this one, it's always
good to accuse yourself if you truthfully can. And I
sure can. I am about to confess one of my most painful
memories of wrongdoing on my own part--a specific
wrong action, which I wrongly cloaked with grace. I
never even told my Mary about this one. She'll know
now, up in Heaven, but there she'll understand better.

Back in college days, long before God brought me
together with Mary, I became friendly with a woman
maybe a year or two older than I, whom I had vague
notions of leading to Jesus, and toward whom I felt a
not-so-vague erotic attraction. (I did not necessarily
flatter myself that she would ever be interested in me,
but I felt attracted to her.) Just in case she ever might
become aware of this article, I will identify her--since
all the shame of this episode falls on me, and none of
it on her. I forget her first name, but her last name
was Lapp. She had dark brown hair, and a terrific figure.

Perhaps I should have saved up this illustration for
an essay on the ways men behave toward desirable women;
but I feel as if God wants me to use it here. In either
context, it is worth noting that the action of mine
which I am about to describe is the sort of thing that
one sector of popular culture advocates. Most of the
morally worst things I have ever done have been
instances of obeying the popular culture.

Up until this one single event, all was pleasant and
friendly between Miss Lapp and me. But all it took to
ruin this was one act of rudeness--which may work for
the leading men in certain movies, but look where the
film industry has gotten to.

It was in the campus cafeteria. Seeing Miss Lapp
standing with her tray on the serving line, I sneaked
up on her from behind, and swatted her behind with
my open hand, causing her to stagger forward. It also
caused her to change her mind very rapidly about her
former opinion of me as a nice guy.

Who knows, it's possible that Miss Lapp would have
accepted my apology...if I had bothered to apologize.
But at this point in my Christian life, I was full of
grace this, unmerited favor that, substitution here,
imputed righteousness there...and no place in all of
that for true humility. Well, of course, given true
humility, and the consideration for the rights of
others that accompanies it, I would have kept my hand
off her hindquarters in the first place; but you get
my drift. In fairness to me, in the years prior to
first meeting Miss Lapp, I had tried being chivalrous
with girls, only to see girls preferring guys who
treated them like dirt.

Still, in view of Miss Lapp clearly not preferring to
have me treat her with disrespect, it was tragic that I
failed miserably to think my way back from theoretical
recognition of sin and grace to relevant repentance
for a specific offense. I dishonored Jesus by using His
mercy as an excuse NOT to beg Miss Lapp's forgiveness.

And guess what?

"You have not, because you ask not."

Once it was clear to her that I wasn't apologizing,
she never spoke to me again; and it is one hundred
percent MY fault that she never spoke to me again.

I probably would not have had a shot romantically
with Miss Lapp even if I hadn't swatted her. Obviously,
God had another woman designated for me, one with
red rather than brown hair. The pain of this memory is
far worse than regrets for a supposed loss of romantic
opportunity. My sin did incalculable damage to Miss
Lapp's chances of getting to know Jesus, because I
gave her every reason in the world to regard Christian
talk about grace as a phony excuse for bad behavior.

I've prayed belated prayers for her salvation since
college days. If she should end up eternally lost, her
blood is right on my hands.

And what unifies this anecdote with my current series
theme is the fact that a minute of clear thinking
could have prevented me from spanking Miss Lapp.
Even after spanking her, it might have been possible
to undo the harm--if I had kept my head on straight
enough to repent of my individual sins as well as
trusting Jesus to cure the overall sin-nature. But I
didn't think properly beforehand, I didn't apologize
afterward...and I didn't honor God at all.

Our emotions, when unguided by good sense, have
a really lousy batting average when it comes
to honoring God.

That bears thinking about.