Chapter 20 : Unoffendable.

Chapter 20...Pages 152-161

IMBALANCED? YOU BETTER HOPE SO

This story is about me being an idiot. I hope you enjoy it as much as I don't. Here's what happened:

I bought a new car. First time ever. Still not sure it was a good idea, but we did it. It gets fifty miles per gallon because it's a diesel, which is unfortunate because…....

 I filled it with regular gas, and that's unfortunat because...

that kinda destroys all the fuel lines and stuff, and that means... 

it was going to cost seven grand to fix, which I didn't have, so...

I rode my bike, carrying extra stuff, to work, going uphill and...

 managed to injure my back, rendering me bedridden for several days, and in excruciating pain, so...I'm an idiot.

I felt dumb. And guilty. And stupid. And like a failure. And some other stuff.

As I rode my bike in difficult weather, I thought, I deserve this. As I lay on the couch, in pain from my bike injury, I thought, This is what I get for what I did. I'm paying the price for my screwing this up. I was doing penance, and I deserve it.

And then Volkswagen called, with the total cost, including towing, tax, everything: $0.

 Nothing. The service guy said the parent company was paying for it. It wasn't a warranty thing. We couldn't make them do it. They just did it, in hopes of winning long-term customers, I guess

Zero dollars.

I was happy about this, but here's where it gets weird: some- thing in me wasn't elated. There was a part of me-there's still a part of me-that wanted me to pay a price for it. Yes, on one level, this makes no sense. Maybe you've never felt that way. Simultaneously thankful and... strangely helpless..

I blew it, my wife knew it, and she didn't begrudge it. I blew it, and the repair guys didn't make me feel stupid. I blew it, and did something harmful, and didn't pay a dime. What I got, for my idiocy, was free towing and fixing. And I got a free of the car, and they changed the oil too. That's what I got.

I had to figure out why this didn't sit entirely well with me: it turns out, I hadn't been "paying the price" at all. I had no control over this. I'm not being held responsible. Even feeling guilty dn't help. There's nothing about me in this at all. And that's the problem. It's not about me, not about Brant Hansen.

At All

In sports, there's the guy on deck in the bottom of the ninth. He's struck out four times already, but he has-as they say all the time in sports- "a chance to redeem himself" if he gets to the plate. He can still be the hero and win the game for his team. 

A chance to "redeem himself."

But I'm the guy who out four times, waits deck for his chance... and doesn't get to the plate. The guy in front of me hits the game-winning homer. We win! We're the champions! He did it, not me. I didn't redeem myself. Now I'm sitting in the locker room, and I should be celebrating with everyone else.

Truth is, we find this very, very hard to accept, but we can't welcem ourselves. Oh, we like to think we can, deep down, so it's still about us. Carrying around guilt? Still about us. Feeling stu- pid? Still about us. Feeling like a failure? Still about us. Turning our guilt into seemingly productive energy so we're doing the Tight" things? Still about us. Seems so...so... "righteous," and yet, when we can't take our eyes off ourselves to celebrate the win, it's just plain about us. That's pride.

And pride always hurts, but it's positively deadly when masked by our attempts to pay our own way with our religious activity. The game is over. We're still on the religious playing field, still trying to redeem ourselves. And God is popping the cork.

Choosing to be an unoffendable person is not "common sense It is not normal to practice a lifestyle of letting go of one's "right" to anger-even at oneself. The whole thing sounds unfair, imbalanced, and out of step with how the world usually operates.

And so does grace. It's completely unfair. It's imbalanced in the highest degree. And thank God-it's utterly out of step with how the world usually operates.

 This is why grace itself offends the self-righteous. Remarkably, I found it hard to take, even when grace was shown to me, by the VW folks. I so wanted to be my own redeemer. This is the normal way of things. This is how the world works.

And how the world "works" is often what we perceive to be the "balanced" position, the one that leaves the status quo intact. As I've listened to objections to the subject of this book, I've heard much about "balance," such as, "Sure, we need to for- give, but we need to balance that with knowing when it's often healthy to stay angry," and so forth.

Let's stay "balanced." Of course. Yes.

Now, please know, I'm not Mr. Extreme by nature. I'm Mr. So-Not-Extreme, actually. Happy to meet you. I'd love to be that guy who writes those awesome books about being incredibly cool and jumping off cliffs on a mountain bike or running with the bulls while on fire or whatever. I admire that rock climber guy who got trapped and cut off his own arm. That extreme. I don't even have any tats. That's how lame I am.

 I have a mountain bike... with a basket on the front. That way I can carry my bag of peas to work each day in the basket. I'm not kidding about this. I repeat: I carry a bag of peas to work ach day in my bike basket.

I'm not a big risk-taker. I don't care for spicy food. I eat sacks of toast, with nothing on it. Just stacks of plain toast. Put a picture of that on a motivational poster. That car I was talking about earlier? It's a station wagon. My brother lettered in practi- cally every high school sport; I lettered in-again, not kidding, I seriously got letters for this-keeping statistics. When they took a team picture, I was the guy in street clothes, kneeling with a clipboard. 

You love the Fast and Furious films? I seriously watch documentaries about sloths.

Anyway, the point is this: I like being reasonable. I like telling people not to get too crazy with their ideas. I like reeling people back in. I like balance! But there's a problem: None of this "balance" talk  is scriptural language. None. In Because the way the world works and the kingdom that Jesus describes are squarely at odds.

The kingdom of God knows noth- ing of "balance." It's as balanced as, say, a teeter-totter with a gat on one side and a hippo with, say, a grand piano on the other. No, wait; that's misleading. The gnat has to move. It's a teeter-totter with nothing on one end, and a hippo, grand piano, and also a gnat, because I just moved the gnat over there.

In the economy of the kingdom of God, we can't even afford the goat. The kingdom is not "balanced," it doesn't opviar common sense," and you can't possibly, try as you might, "take it too far."

Being a citizen of that kingdom, then, means operating in that whole new economy, and grace-unfair, imbalanced grace is the currency

By the way, I've learned it's worth reminding that extending grace does not mean, and has never meant, that there is "no such thing as sin," or that there's no such thing as right or wrong, or that God smiles on all of our actions. There is sin, there is right and wrong, and God, like any loving father, of course cares about what we do and who we are.

But that's why grace is "grace." It amazes us because we really don't deserve it, because we really have failed, because there really is so much reason for God to walk away from us, instead of running toward us.

God doesn't love all the things we do. He loves us in spite of the things we do.

       So let's do something crazy and imbalanced here: let's embrace the unfairness.

       Why? Because not only is it in our best interest, but also, frankly, Jesus gives us no other option. 

    In Matthew, Jesus tells a story about a business that hires workers, and it's a wonderful business. It's so wonderful that it makes people just plain mad:

"The kingdom of heaven is like a person who owned some land. One morning, he went out very early to hire some people to work in his vineyard. The man agreed to pay the workers one coin for working that day. Then he sent them in the vineyard to work. About nine o'clock the man went doing nothing. So he said to them, 'If you go and work in my vineyard, I will pay you what your work is worth.' So they went to work in the vineyard. The man went out again about twelve o'clock and three o'clock and did the same thing. About five o'clock the man went to the marketplace again and saw others standing there. He asked them, "Why did you sund here all day doing nothing?" They answered, 'No one gave us a job.' The man said to them, "Then you can go a work in my vineyard.' and "At the end of the day, the owner of the vineyard said the boss of all the workers, 'Call the workers and pay them. St the last people I hired and end with those I hired first.'

      "When the workers who were hired at five o'clock came to get their pay, each received one coin. When the workers who were hired first came to get their pay, they thought they would be paid more than the others. But each one of them also received one coin. When they got their coin, they complained to the man who the land. They said, "Those people were hired last and worked only one hour. But you paid them the same as you paid us who worked hard all day in the hot sun. But the man who owned the vineyard said to one of those workers, 'Friend, I am being fair to you. You agreed to work for one coin. So take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same pay that I gave you. I can do what I want with my own money. Are you jealous because I am good to those people?'

   "So those who are last now will someday be first, and those who are first now will someday be last." (20:1-16 NCV)

"Do you begrudge my generosity?" the landowner is saying The answer, of course, is yes, they do. They begrudge it quite a bit. Even though it has no impact on them whatsoever, it offends them. We hate it when we are trying so hard to earn something, and then someone else gets the same thing without trying as hard.

Think about this for a moment, in real, "today" terms. Someone gives you a backbreaking job, and you're happy for it, but at the end of the day, when you're getting paid, the guys who came in with five minutes left get the same amount you just got. Seriously?

It's imbalanced, unfair, maddening... and it's also exactly what Jesus just said the kingdom of God is like.

Not only is it maddening; it's maddening to the "good" people! Common sense says you don't do this. You don't pay latecomers who came in a few minutes ago the same amount that you paid the hardworking folks you hired first. Jesus tells this story, knowing full well that the conscientious ones listen ing would find this hardest to take.

And, as a matter of fact, as a conscientious one, I find this hard to take. I'm just being honest. This story does not fit my style. I'm all about people getting what they deserve.

Oh, it's offensive, too, when Jesus turns to a guy who's being executed next to Him, and tells him, "Today, you will be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:43). What did the guy do to deserve that? He did nothing.

If you call yourself a Christian, and you want things to be fair, and you want God's rewards given out only to the deserving and the upstanding and the religious, well, honestly, Jesus has got to be a complete embarrassment to you.

In fact, to so many upstanding Christians, He is. He has always been offensive, and remains offensive, to those who w to achieve "righteousness" through what they do. Always

       

People who've grown up in church (like me) are well acquainted with the idea that Jesus is our "cornerstone. He's the solid rock of our faith. Got it. Not controversial. It's well known. But  not so talked about: That stone, Jesus, causes religious people to stumble. And that rock is offensive to "good" people:

So what does all this mean? Those who are not Jews were not trying to make themselves right with God, but they were made right with God because of their faith. The people of Israel tried to follow a law to make themselves right with God. But they did not succeed, because they tried to make themselves right by the things they did instead of trusting in God to make them right. They stumbled over the stone that causes people to stumble. (Rom. 9:30-32 wcv)

And then Paul says something a couple verses later that angers "good Christians" to this day:

Because they did not know the way that God makes people right with him, they tried to make themselves right in their own way. So they did not accept God's way of making people right. Christ ended the law so that everyone who believes in him may be right with God. (Rom. 10:3-4 NCV)

It's not subtle, what Paul's writing here. For anyone who believes in Him. Jesus ended the law as a means to righteousness, Yet so many think they can achieve-even have achieved some kind of "good Christian" status on the basis of the role keeping work they've done. They suspect they'll do good things and God will owe them for it, like payment for a job well done. Paul says, in effect, if you think you earn, you will... and you don't want that. 

When people work, their pay is not given as a gift, but as some- thing earned. But people cannot do any work that will make them right with God. So they must trust in him, who makes even evil people right in his sight. Then God accepts their faith, and that makes them right with him. (Rom. 4:4-5 NCV)

Think about this: This is extremely offensive to anyone with typical religious sensibilities. In this scripture, the one who does not work is in better shape with God than the worker, if that one simply believes in the God who justifies ungodly people. This is why I put "good Christians" in quotes: there are none.

Yes, upstanding, moral people trip over this rock. People are trying so hard, and so much, that by being good they can be considered righteous before God. Everything about Jesus says to abandon this project, humble yourself, and believe in the God who "justifies the ungodly" (Rom. 4:5).

This is not how religions are supposed to work. Heck, it's not how anything is supposed to work. As we talked about in earlier chapter, even irreligious people come up with rules for being "good" and judge others according to the It's how we operate, how the world works

You're supposed to get what's coming to you based on how you keep the rules. It's the common-sense thing. It's, you know "balanced."

Jesus is imbalanced. You'd better be glad.