Feb 13 2009
Keeping It Real
I am often times amazed at the way God chooses to provide me with topics for this space. Today the inspiration came from a SpongeBob Squarepants T-shirt with the caption, “Keep it Real.” I thought that it was odd that we should receive the admonition to keep something real from a fictional cartoon character, but nonetheless; the message is a good one for Christians today. How often do we find the faith of the elect waning and starting to be taken for granted? It seems to me that though we come to the cross for forgiveness, we too easily neglect to keep it real in our lives.
It may sound harsh, but I almost wish that those who were sentenced to death as a result of some heinous crime today would be executed in the public square. In the old days executions were carried out before crowds of onlookers and though a morbid and ghoulish prospect on the one hand, it served to keep the seriousness of the event real, on the other. The movies and television programs are so full of graphic violence that I fear we are seeing a generation of un-feeling, desensitized people. The scenes on the films that are shown to millions are generally considered to be little more than Hollywood magic so is it any wonder that when people watch things like, “The Passion of the Christ,” they come away unmoved?
When we talk about the blood of Christ that washes us of our sins, we are rarely fully in tune with the depth of the meaning of the sacrifice, the torture and humiliation, the shame and insult that Jesus endured so that we sinful beings might have a chance to reconcile with God. We fail to, “Keep it Real.” But this is not only in the crucifixion of our Saviour, it grows like a cancer throughout our entire faith and before we know it we stop thinking about the cost of salvation, the certainty of God’s Word and the guarantees of the promises made in the Bible. Even the phrasing in some of today’s Bibles is softened from the more powerful texts that were used only a few short years ago.
The NIV speaks of the beating that Jesus received as being, “a flogging,” or, “a punishment,” while older texts spare nothing in calling it what it was, “a scourging.” We can watch an old swashbuckling movie and see someone brought to the mast for a flogging and while we may think, “Yeow! That’s gotta hurt.”, it pales next to the barbaric practice of scourging. Whips with pieces of glass, pottery, and iron woven into the strands, cords that clung and bit, ripping flesh away with each lash; the pain of the strike and the blood and cries of the victims, these are things that we rarely consider in their unadulterated form when we hear the words flogged, or punished. We fail to , “Keep it Real.”
Please do not misunderstand, I know that the NIV is a wonderful Bible. I use it often myself and it is actually my preferred choice when trying to explain Biblical points. I know that the Holy Spirit is able to use the NIV to bring people to the knowledge of the truth just as well as any other Bible. All I am getting at is that there seems to be a tendency to make the newer translations a bit less, “Hell-fire and Damnation,” for the sake of reaching a more pragmatic sector. The doctrines and truths are there, just not quite as alarmingly vivid.
Man’s corrupt nature is another area that many factions would like to minimize for the sake of not offending the weak of heart. Romans paints the picture for us well. “For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death.” 7:5 Or we have 3:23 - “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” We are carnal beasts that act in civilized ways only by the grace of God. Let Him who created us remove His constraint of grace and see how quickly we become the most depraved and loathsome animals in all the earth. We don’t want to damage anyone’s self esteem but in the process of not wanting to do it damage, we fail to ,”Keep it Real.”
There are many areas of the Christian faith that are being allowed to become less than what they should be. God’s faithfulness, the deity of Christ, Christ’s mission here on earth, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,” John 1:29, the promises in God’s Word, the realities of Heaven and Hell as real tangible places that occupy locality. These are real things and real doctrines that demand accuracy in their keeping. If we allow the fundamental doctrines that found our Christian faith to become mere words on a page, mental images concocted by Hollywood trickery, mere generalizations that bend with each new blowing wind, what have we to hold fast to?
I am convinced that if we were to stand at executions and see the quivering, twitching bodies as they hang upon the gallows, or the writhing and resistance of the victims of gas chambers, to stand as witnesses to firing squads; that these would be images that would remain graven in our minds and etched upon our hearts for as long as we live. To see such things, knowing that the people going through them were taking our own place before the executioner, to spare us, would burn the meaning even deeper. That is what is missing. Brothers and sisters; we MUST bring the repentant to the cross to see the blood and gore of an innocent Saviour being spilled for them, we MUST drag ourselves there to see that it is for us that the Son of God gave up his life. Only when we see the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ hanging on the cross as it was more than 2000 years ago, only when we see it as the brutal reality it was, can we ever hope to, “Keep it Real.”
The price that Jesus paid to set our souls free from the bonds of Satan’s deceit and enslavement is real, the promises of God are real, the lake of fire and the bounty of Heaven are real, the blessedness of the saints is real and the damnation of the unbeliever is real. The Word of God is not always pretty though it is always beautiful in truth. The depravity of man is not lovely to consider, though it is undeniable. The Holiness of God is beyond our wildest dreams, though He is altogether Holy. The wrath to come is terrible to anticipate, though it will surely fall upon the unregenerate. The God we serve is a God of absolutes. He says what He means and He will do it.
Many look to Biblical prophesies and exclaim, “Surely we’re living in the end times!” Perhaps we are. If so, this is merely the beginning and it is going to get much worse before the final chapters are concluded. Now is absolutely NOT the time to soften the message, (as though there ever were such a time). Satan would love for us to disregard the things in this life which are real so that he might succeed with his schemes. We MUST, “Keep it Real.” If we allow our children to grow up in a blasé faith that hints at some vague promises, a faith that suggests some foggy consequences for disobedience, then what hope are we providing them? To allow a child to grow up and then choose for themselves the faith they are going to follow is to say that it doesn’t matter if it’s real, as long as they’re comfortable with it. Hogwash! If your child is going to explore that great faiths of the world, do them a favor and teach them Christianity first so that they will at least have the plumb-line of truth by which to measure all the others.
God tells us that if we will raise up a child in the way he should go, then when he is old, he will not turn from it. This is a real promise, and one that I depend on daily; believe me. Unless we stand at the foot of the cross and feel the warm sticky spray of our Saviour’s blood as His side is pierced, unless we feel the nails in our hands and feet as the mallet drives them home, unless we feel the agony of a back laid open and thrown upon the rough hewn wood of the upright beam of Calvary’s cross; how can we maintain the faith that Christ died to give us? Christians, I hate to say that it came from there, but SpongeBob is right! We have to, “Keep it real.” The moment that we allow our faith to fade into just a story that is 2000 years ago vague, we lose the power, the depth of grace, the beauty of the gift of justification and the walk of sanctification that we are intended to have in Christ Jesus.
The brutal death of anyone is hard to live with. The brutal death of an innocent man, of God incarnate who stood in our stead, is a debt that can not be repaid, nor can we allow it to ever be belittled or forgotten. If we let the foundation of our Christian faith be softened how can we ever hope to live a life which is…
All for the Glory of Christ