Sin is more than law-breaking: Lessons about honour and shame from a Blue Crayon

Being grandparents is one of those special joys in life I will always treasure. 

One of the opportunities it brings is being involved in the teaching and training of precious young lives and watching them learn and grow. 

Recently discovering artistic blue crayon 'swirls' drawn on one of our white walls provided another of those teaching and training opportunities.

But as I thought about the 'crayon' event afterwards, I realised it not only taught a little four year old something about telling the truth, and being found out for her wrong doing, and confession of sin, and forgiveness, and how her efforts of cleaning it off were useless (she offered to get a cloth and wash it off and tried for all her worth) and only Grand-pa's Sugar-soap was able to scrub the wall clean…

…..but…..she also brought me the blessing of teaching and growing my alertness once again to the honour-shame dynamics of the nature of sin.

 

Blue Crayon Lesson 1 

- There is a non-disobedience, 'shame' kind of wrongdoing

I have lost count of how many times I have read that sin is defined as 'breaking the law' or 'disobedience'.

However, my little grand-daughter's artwork on the wall was not disobedience. No adult had specifically issued her with a command or instruction not to draw on walls in our house. 

However, as soon as I called her and pointed at the wall and asked in a very particular serious tone of disapproval 'who did this?', she went instantly silent and turned her head away and wouldn't look at me. 

She instantly knew she had done something wrong and unacceptable, just from my tone.

But what kind of wrong was it?

If it wasn't disobedience, what was it?

It was primarily dishonour and disrespect.

Eventually after I assured her that although Grandma (me) was not happy with what she had done and it was a bad thing to do that I would not be cross at her for telling the truth, she did honestly confess and tell me that she did it and we had a conversation about drawing on paper only and not walls. She also had a lesson on confession and forgiveness, but that there were still consequences to deal with. Like many situations in parenting, what appeared to be first a 'bad' situation was actually a 'good' opportunity for God to use as a teaching moment in which we thought about what God would want us to learn from it, and be prompted to turn our hearts to him…and thus glorify him.

Blue Crayon Lesson 2 

- Looking for what we can easily miss about shame

But also, what seemed a 'mundane' and 'normal' parenting (or grand-parenting ) event was yet another occasion where I am learning to see and consider 'with new eyes', and be more alert to, the honour-shame dynamics which were 'shouting' out at me, but where I could have easily missed their reality.

As the 'crayon artist' was questioned about the situation, she acknowledged and agreed that it is paper that she should be drawing on (and later I further explained to her only her paper not just any paper she finds in the house!). But there had been no direct disobedience to a previously defined house 'rule'.

But I noticed some further dynamics play out….

• She came to the very real awareness that amidst her behaviour that was unacceptable, she felt unacceptable. 

• Her normal desire to face me and tell me some new discovery or run and hug me had suddenly changed. 

• She went totally silent and seemed to withdraw instantly into herself (even holding her arms close to her body as she stood in front of me as I crouched in front of her). 

• Her head was turned away and even when I moved her and told her to look at me, her face was toward me but her eyes were looking off to the side.

All honour of close relationship with her Grandma had suddenly been destroyed. And though she knew I wasn't happy, even with my arm around her, she still couldn't bring herself to face me.

Blue Crayon Lesson 3 

- Learn from what we observe and interpret it from more than just a guilt-law-disobedience lens

Some of what this event highlighted to me was:

• Wrongdoing is more than disobedience and law-breaking.

• Wrongdoing is rooted in an awareness of not measuring up, and thus not being acceptable to the one you meant to please. Because the word in Scripture translated as 'sin' means to miss the mark, the real meaning and reality of sin is more related to unacceptability than to specifically disobedience and lawbreaking.

• Behaviour exposed as unacceptable is felt as personal unacceptability and is instinctively felt and intrinsically linked to a sense of shame.

• Shame brings an automatic and untaught response. Guilt from disobedience only comes about as a result of transgressing a known itemised, explained and taught law. Shame comes about with no teaching, training or even with no transgression, but by simply 'feeling' a short-coming in the expectations and 'eyes' of the one we desire to please.

• Shame brings separation and a break in relationship. Joy in closeness and togetherness is gone, peace and relaxedness and freedom to converse is also destroyed.

• Shame brings an instinctive desire to withdraw and pull away, to hide, especially from the gaze of the one we have dishonoured.

• Shame brings a fear to even look upon the one who we should otherwise love, and should otherwise enjoy the eyes of joy and approval of.

Blue Crayon Lesson 4 

- Understanding the shame context of sin helps us bring the rightly explained biblical solutions to the problem

The good news was that when she confessed and was forgiven suddenly the reconciliation was instantaneous. Separation and hiding ceased, fear disappeared, the experience of love and closeness and joy returned. Honour of relationship as it was meant to be was restored. 

As we bring others the good news of how Jesus deals with our sin, we need to understand how sin works, not just in the context of guilt but in the context of shame. We need to be careful not to only see and understand wrongdoing in the context of law-breaking and disobedience. We need to recognise how sin is far more deeply and intrinsically tied to shame and how it causes a person to respond in relation to shame, right from a very small child.

As you and I learn more of the dynamics of sin in relation to shame, there comes the opportunity and need to bring the message of the gospel into such situations. We don't need to wait till disobedience occurs to lead someone to recognise wrongdoing or sin…we should not only use the context of disobedience to teach about sin. Jesus didn't come just to deal with the guilt of our disobeying but with the shame of our dishonouring. We need to not overlook the context and opportunities that shame brings to teach us about sin and how Jesus conquers sin and brings reconciliation and restored honour to shame shattered hearts.

Blue Crayon Lesson 5 

- We need to parent and disciple more from a base first of instinctive and inherent honour-shame realities and not skip this only teaching sin in relation to guilt-law-disobedience.

Foundations are built from physical birth and from spiritual birth and habits and perspectives and understandings are formed. Life is full of observation, interpretation and application. We take in what we are exposed to, we then try to make sense of it (consciously or unconsciously) and then we try to fit it into how we see and what we believe about life and thus it emerges in how we then live.

I would like to suggest that we miss the most foundational parts of the human soul when we overlook shame or over-emphasise guilt to the neglect or mis-understanding about shame.

To conclude…

Let's be gospel-honour hope bringers 

to a world deep in the mire 

of sin-shame hopelessness.

Whether you are a parent or a friend or in ministry or looking at your own life, the shame-roots of how sin is and how it functions, is imperative to understand and understand well. In reality it is nothing new, and it doesn't become less important just because we fail to prioritise its importance in our thinking. Right from a very young age a child is responding to awareness of unrighteousness through a lens of honour or the loss of honour (shame). 

While the law was given to taught about what we should do, living in honour is how we were made to be. Before the law, there was honour. Under any law-breaking issue is a more foundational honour-loss issue. Before a person, including children learn about law-breaking they already know that honour-losing is a place of fear, anxiety, separation, ruined relationship, isolation, unacceptability and shame. Our world is filled with awareness and fear of honour-losing, so let us maximise that awareness and bring the good news of how Jesus made a way to overcome that very thing that we have feared from before we ever learnt about laws and law-breaking. Let's be gospel-honour hope bringers to a world deep in the mire of sin-shame hopelessness.

Does God want our obedience, or respect, or both?

Question 1.

Does God want your

a) Obedience

b) Respect

c) Both of the above

(circle the correct answer)

'God doesn't want your respect, he wants your obedience' - so said the preacher.

And...No I don't agree with that statement, but let me give you some background to the statement and maybe what could have been said instead and why I want to bring your attention to it.

The sermon was a great sermon, by a prominent and great preacher. He was speaking about Uzzah in the Old Testament - you remember?…the guy in 2 Samuel 6:6-7 who thought he was helping protect the Lord's 'Ark of the Covenant' when it looked like it was going to fall after the oxen who were carrying it, stumbled. He put out his hand to stop it falling, and in doing so he touched the Ark - which was forbidden.

The preacher, helpfully explained that all Uzzah was doing was wanting to show some respect to the Lord's Ark.

The preacher went on to say but 'God doesn't want your respect, he wants your obedience'. 

Let's think about this for a moment, in a few ways.

1. Lets think about whether honour and obedience should be contrasted as the antithisis of each other or the opponents/threats of each other. 

God definitely does want your obedience, BUT is obedience to God the only thing that God wants, in contrast to not wanting your respect?

Respect is another word for honour, so does God really not want you to give him honour?

Romans 1:21 tells us that God definitely wants us to honour him, and in fact the big problem in our world, says God through the Apostle Paul in this verse, is that God is not honoured. And not just that, but that God is not honoured as God. In other words, not only does God want honour, he wants a unique, highest, supreme honour in our lives. He requires the greatest honour of all.

So what is going on here, in the preacher's comment?

I wonder whether sectors of the Western church are so 'reacting' against those who wish to point out that more attention needs to be put towards the 'honour' aspects of Scripture, when so much is usually put to concepts of guilt, law and obedience, that they are 'over-reacting' and inclined to not only lessen the importance of the place of 'honour', but even without realising it, 'demonize' it. 

Honour is made out to be an inferior quality to obedience, and thus if you settle for honour, you settle for less. Here in the story of Uzzah, the preacher implied that Uzzah in being concerned about 'respect' [honour] was concerned about the wrong thing, and it was so dangerous a concern that God struck him dead immediately! Honour is seen as the thief of the priority, the best, and the proper focus on obedience, as well as a reason for life to be removed from us.

But honour and obedience are not a dichotomy, and furthermore, not opponents. They are not in a battle for validity in God's eyes.  In fact as Romans 1 points out, honour of God is imperative.

2. Let's think about whether a fallen mis-placed concept of honour is clouding our vision as to the place of true properly-placed honour.

Is it wrong to honour God?  Romans tells us not. Not only is it definitely right to honour God, it is an unequivocal and imperative requirement.

But it is wrong to honour God with our own idea of what honouring God should look like, with no regard/respect [honour] of how God defines and demands honour of himself to be.

This is where we go wrong.

We can 'think' we are honouring God, we can tell ourselves we are 'doing right by God', but if the honour is not according to God's definition of 'right', then we will think we do right when in fact in God's eyes we do wrong.

This was Uzzah's problem. He had a noble intention, but it was according to his own understanding and not God's requirements. Proverbs 3:5-6 tells us to not rely on our own understanding but to acknowledge God (put his ideas and definitions above our own) in everything. Uzzah's noble motive was misplaced, not because it is wrong to honour, or wrong to honour God, or because God doesn't require honour, but because Uzzah didn't trust God. He didn't understand that to truly honour God is to obey God. We don't get to define what honouring God looks like, God does. And God tells us what honour looks like by giving us commands to obey. When we obey him, we honour him. When we disobey him, we dishonour him.

This story is not one about Uzzah opting for honour when he should have opted for obedience. This story is about Uzzah who did what was 'right' in his own eyes, in his own understanding, all the while thinking that his definition of honouring God would be automatically acceptable to God as honouring him. But it wasn't.  And still today, our own ideas about what honours God are not the standard God has for the definition of honouring him.

3. Emphasising honour is not the cause of the lack of obedience, rather a wrong and weak emphasis on honour for God, propels disobedience to God.

Our problem is not that we talk too much about honouring God, or that if we talk more about honouring God that people will think they can be less careful to obey God. No, our problem is that we talk too little about what right honour of God looks like and how God defines honour.  

We run into the problems when either as differing groups or differing individuals we define what we think exemplifies respect or honour or dignity, without reference to the One who not only created us but who also defined those concepts in the first place. Any residue of those concepts that we seek or think we attain are but weak, broken, unreliable and twisted images of the original intention of our Creator. When we seek after them, they will disappoint and when we use them as our standard of good and right, we  will find ourselves with empty hope in the present, and being condemned in judgement in the future eternity. 

 When we have a wrong view of what honour for God is, we will inevitably end up practicing a lifestyle of disobedience to God. We will make wrong choices, damaging choices, self-destructive choices, and others-harming choices.  When we don't have a high enough view of honouring God, we will not only be disinclined to obey God where he has laid down specific commands, but we will feel there is no particular application of holiness we are called to outside of those particular commands. Yet if God doesn't give a particular command or direction about something which we are meant to obey, there is always the overarching governing context of honouring God. 

We need to think beyond the Bible as being an instruction book which if it doesn't address something particular in a 'do this' or 'do not do this' manner we are free to do what we like. We need to also see God's word as showing us himself and his character--his honour—and what it therefore (descriptively and prescriptively) looks like to honour him, his way.

The Problem of Forgiving Yourself

Have you ever felt like you need to forgive yourself?  Have you had someone else suggest you just need to forgive yourself?  Even after confessing your sin to God and knowing he promises he forgives you (1 John 1:9), do you sometimes feel like its not enough?

Why do we sometimes feel this way?

Randy Alcorn recently wrote a really helpful article on this and challenged his readers to think through a few issues. Let me quickly summarise them as they are important. But then I want to look at something which I think may additionally be feeding this self-forgiveness desire.

Alcorn raises four main considerations:

• Talk Back to the Devil - he is a liar and accuser and he will want you to feel that God's forgiveness is not enough, but you can refuse to listen to his deceptions
• God is not a liar - His forgiveness is enough and to not accept his forgiveness as sufficient is to say that Christ's sacrifice wasn't enough, and that absolution from ourselves is of greater importance in our lives than forgiveness from God 
• Trust God's Word not your Feelings - we have to learn to trust God more than our feelings. When God's promises and our feelings don't match up, faith is about choosing to trust the one who is more trustworthy - God, not us.
• It's all about Christ - his work on the cross is sufficient and is enough. Forgiveness is about Christ's righteousness imputed to us, not our righteousness. We don't have the righteous position to be able to offer anyone full eternal forgiveness not even to ourselves. Only God in Christ provides that.

Alcorn also related a poignant quote on the topic, from Tim Keller in his Counterfeit Gods book, 

"When people say, 'I know God forgives me, but I can't forgive myself,' they mean that they have failed an idol, whose approval is more important to them than God's."

When we say we need to forgive ourselves, we are setting ourselves above God, as more vital than God and more capable and authoritative than God. When we do that, we then need forgiveness not only from God for whatever sin we have committed, but for the additional sin of thinking we have any capacity at all to truly forgive ourselves.

HOWEVER…..

having said all this, do we dismiss our feelings altogether in such situations?

Feelings are vital signposts

Maybe we need to think a bit more about the role and place of feelings in our lives…

Feelings are not irrelevant, and to just say 'ignore your feelings, they are lying to you' may not help much.

Feelings are signposts to beliefs, because they are the fruit of beliefs. Feelings to a great degree are a reaction to something. We fear because we think something is a threat or bigger than or contrary to our ability to cope. We get angry when something challenges our autonomy or we see injustice. We feel loved when we feel valuable and blessed by others. We feel happy when we are surrounded by good, by what is pleasing and refreshing and we believe to be beneficial. We hurt when we believe we are harmed in some way. 

Sometimes feelings can be an alert system. Since they respond almost intuitively and 'automatically' in response to when something does or does not sit well, or comfortably, sometimes we will say before making a decision: 'I just don't feel right about it although I can't yet explain it'. This should be what then triggers us to pause on making the decision, but also prompts us to find out more of maybe why we didn't feel comfortable. So we do some more research, or dig into God's word more, or pray about it further, or wait till we can know more contributing data etc.

Now these feelings can lie to us - they can deceive us. Not so much because the feelings themselves are bad, but because what we believe to be good, beneficial, just, pleasing or valuable, might be not based on God's truth about such things, but might be based on Satan's temptations to trust in a false 'good' - ie what appears to be good but is in fact against God's perfect design and thus is bad.  That is what happened to Eve in the Garden of Eden.  And since we are now sinners by nature, even as Christians, we still fight the presence of the old nature in these unresurrected bodies as we live on this sin-infected earth on which the great deceiver is still busy prowling about.

So we are very easily tempted to believe and be guided by false or mis-placed ideas about what is good for us and the world. When that false ideal of 'good' is not met we can feel sad or mad!

So instead of feeling sad and mad about sin, 

we can easily feel sad and mad about 

our own sinful desires not being met!

So yes, we can get 'feelings' all mixed up and upside-down to how God created us to have them.  

But those same feelings can be 'shout-outs' to us about what is going on in our hearts which we are often not so alert to. Remember the heart is deceitful (Jeremiah 17:9), and when we listen to our heart's desires and follow our heart's desires without submitting them to God through the standard of His Word, we can be misled by the desires of our hearts. We could say that feelings are like symptoms of a deeper cause. 

If we are seeking to follow God's directives through the truth of His Word, but we continue to struggle with feelings that his Word tell us are not honouring him, then its the signal to stop, think and examine our hearts to see where we have mis-placed and false beliefs, and thus expectations, that are feeding these mis-placed feelings.

Feelings for the need of self-forgiveness are therefore signposts to what?

And if there is a continued nagging of a need for self-forgiveness even after you have studied, accepted and embrace the 4 points Alcorn raises, what then?

Maybe we need to ask what is understood by forgiveness?

Forgiveness is linked to a need for cleansed guilt. It is a primarily guilt/innocence issue. It is a need for wiping the slate clean, to have no accusation standing against us. From such a forgiven state, we then hope for a re-opening of the relationship. In seeking forgiveness from God we acknowledge that he has the power to set the rules, declare guilt and thus give punishment, and he has an accusation against us for something that we did that was a violation of his desires (law/command) for us, and which has thus broken the joy of the relationship we are meant to have with him. 

Forgiveness from God is his promise/word to us that he will not count that violation against us. This thus allows the fullness of relationship with him to be enjoyed. When we wrong another person, and seek their forgiveness it is a similar situation - we have done something they don't approve of and so we believe they are accusing us of contravening their requirements/instructions/rules and their good, and thus we are cut off from the full harmony of relationship with them.

So when we say we seek forgiveness from ourselves, we are saying we have set a law for ourselves, and then broken it, and so now have accused ourselves and stand guilty according to our own law. We feel we have violated or broken our own rules and we want restored relationship with ourselves.

Now that last phrase might sound peculiar - how can we lose relationship with ourselves in the first place…after all, are we two people? No. But it is helpful to realise that this is the logic underlying what is hoped to be achieved by 'forgiving yourself'.

Muddied Waters

Interestingly I don't notice Africans worrying about self-forgiveness, they seem to be more worried about forgiveness from others because traditionally it is believed that harmony with others gives them right standing with God - albeit a distant God and via the ancestors who they believe to be God's representatives/intermediaries on earth.

I believe this idea of self-forgiveness has come about because our 'modern' world thought itself 'clever' enough to live apart from God. 

But in doing so, we not only set ourselves on the path of eternal destruction, but we find ourselves living the way we were never designed to live. 

We were not created to be 

autonomous individuals 

only accountable to ourselves. 

We were not designed to live only according to 'our own truth' and to only be true to ourselves. 

In Western culture we might have been told to not be directed by other people's wishes, but we failed to realise that this was originally rooted in a Judeo-Christian context that permeated much of Western thinking, of being directed by God's wishes above people. But if we cut God out, and cut people out, and live only according to our own law, we get ourselves in a fix. If we are only accountable to ourselves as makers of our own laws. Then we have, by default, appointed only ourselves to be in the position of authority to forgive.  We suddenly train ourselves to 'need' to forgive ourselves in order to find absolution.  

Sadly, if we still believe that when we have wronged others we need to seek their forgiveness, but find we then find that forgiveness insufficient, our world does not tell us that we more importantly need God's forgiveness (since it believes God is unecessary or doesn't exist). Instead our 21st Century Western world tells us that the 'gap' we feel in the forgiveness process is because we need to forgive ourselves…. since afterall 'self' is the only final authority we have committed allegiance to.

Added to this, is the fact that we often confuse guilt and shame in how we feel. We might say we feel guilty for transgressing our own law/rules, but we might also feel ashamed for failing to meet our own standard and failing 'in our own eyes' to 'make the grade' and be who we hoped or wanted to be. In seeking forgiveness for our transgression we might be trying to restore our sense of honour - our value, worth, and significance. 

But whether we assess ourselves on the basis of guilt or shame, if we have set ourselves up as our own lawmaker (what laws and boundaries we set ourselves) and our own honour-bestower (what credit we gain for meeting the standards/expectations we set ourselves), we also set ourselves up to be the ones we look to for guilt-forgiveness and shame-covering when we over-step our self-made boundaries and when we under-meet our self-made expectations.

God has made us to find honour and forgiveness from the one who sets the laws and standards in the first place. So, when we replace God with ourselves as the authority/law-maker, we may find a slight sense of 'feeling ok' once we 'forgive ourselves'. But it will leave us still 'lacking' something. It's won't satisfy the deepest realities of our lives and it will keep us from the One who can fully satisfy and the One who promises to fully forgive, cleanse,  justify and sanctify.

The Big Lie

The big lie in the 'forgive yourself' mantra, is that we think we can be in the place of God and all will be well.  All will not be well on earth, and all will definitely not be well in eternity. 

Maybe you are busy forgiving yourself and not seeking God's forgiveness at all and have never accepted his forgiveness for all your sin for eternity.  If so, I encourage you to come to God to find his ultimate forgiveness for your sins through the death of his Son Jesus on the cross.

But its more likely if you are reading this you have accepted his eternal forgiveness and have no doubt that only God can provide such forgiveness and you certainly cannot…but maybe you are still living with the legacy of the world's modern but mis-informed understanding and influence that has trained you to believe you need self-forgiveness and that without it you can't live well on this earth. 

But the God who can forgive you for all eternity is the same God who forgives you now. 

It is a lie and bondage of the devil that you need to forgive yourself. It is subtle idolatry that entraps you and blasphemes God.  

We are not our own law, 

or our own truth, 

or the bestowers of our own honour. 

We have been made not to find fulfilment and peace through relationship with ourself, but through relationship with God. We are not bound by laws/rules or standards of our own making, but by God's laws and standards which are not only different from ours but higher than ours. God the ultimate law maker is also the ultimate forgiver. If you have ultimate forgiveness from him, forgiveness from human beings (others or yourself) is not the measure of whether you are forgiven or not.

So….Let the truth of who God is, and that he is the ultimate law maker, and honour bestower, transform you and release you from mis-placed feelings that make you think you need to forgive yourself. Let God transform your feelings by soaking in his truth about forgiveness, so that your feelings can be changed from ones that Satan uses to condemn you and paralyse you, to ones of praise and joy to your Maker and Saviour which release you to serve him with fervour and delight!  

TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF - LOVE YOURSELF ???

A couple of days back a short email devotional was forwarded to me.

It was about the need to follow Jesus' example and take care of ourselves and love ourselves - using the story of the woman pouring out her Alabaster jar of oil onto Jesus shortly before his crucifixion. (Matthew 2)  It was said the story was showing that Jesus accepted others' care for him and thus we should be eager to accept others' care for us as we need others to 'top up' our love jars. It then went on to say that others will treat us the way we treat ourselves and so if we want others to love us we have to love ourselves first.  Essentially it was raising the whole issue of 'self-love'.  

I was saddened to read it due to various issues, not least the poor exegesis, lack of reading in context, and the permeation of secular psychological thinking purporting to be biblical instruction. 

But....

......as I thought more about it, the more I realised the extent to which mis-placed honour has soaked into our Western mind-set and influenced even many Christians.  

It reminded me just how important it is to have a right understanding of what it means to honour God and be honoured in Christ.  Without that, our lives so easily get into a tangled web of distorted teaching that can lead us off into such confusion and delusion and eventually frustration, exhaustion and disillusionment.

I want to draw out several excerpts and some of the issues that emerge from it related to the idea of self-love, and how they relate to the importance of having a right perspective on honour. 

A right biblical perspective of honour will help in understanding God's word, whereas a secular perspective of honour can cheat us of a proper understanding of God's word, and thus cheat us of knowing and experiencing the truth of it joyfully living out through our lives.

I realise again, how vital it is that the 'pillars of honour' spoken about in the recent blog  - approval, acceptance and significance, are included in biblical context in the process of discipleship.

1.  Jesus did not accept the gift of the poured out oil from a need to take care of himself due to self-love 

Jesus did take care of himself, in that He took time to rest for example.  He also did allow others to minister to him, but we must not forget that part of that was worship - something we are definitely not called to give others or accept from others.  Jesus was not indulging in self-love, and He did not come as an example of the need for self-love.  He was the perfect example of how to give love - to His Father and to people around Him in the way the Father wanted Him to.  Any love and worship He accepted from people was deflected to the Father. (John 14)

The very act of the woman (Mary - see also Luke 7) pouring out the contents of the Alabaster box was about Jesus allowing her to give Him honour, adoration, love and worship - to show that she valued Him more than anything, even her most valued possessions. 

This was about much more than 'caring' - it was about 'honouring'. 

If this passage was meant to teach us to self-love, then Jesus should have wanted the woman to love herself first and not pour out her oil but to keep it for her own pleasure and use first so she had done some 'self-loving' first... and then when she felt she had done enough of that to then consider sharing it.  But He didn't. He allowed her to give it, not because he was primarily accepting the 'care' of someone else, but because he was pleased with her giving of herself to Him by the giving of a possession that was most precious to her. He then used it  to contrast that what might be seen as a shameful waste by the eyes of those around her, was an honourable gift to her Lord.  

This is a lesson in understanding that even though the world may ridicule and despise us for giving Jesus our best and putting our own welfare, pleasure and financial security aside, in Jesus' eyes we are approved and honoured for giving Him honour.

2. Taking care of ourselves does not require 'self-love' 

The devotion made a statement that some people don't know how to take care of themselves. And as I have found in counselling, this is often because people don't understand what principles God has in His word for directing and motivating that care. Often our reasons - our motives - are misplaced.

The reality of life is that apart from Christ, we naturally don't do anything else except love ourselves.  Even those of us who are busy 'helping' others, can be doing it for the wrong reasons, such as: 

• We gain a sense of importance and value from the praise and appreciation of others and so we are driven to do what others will praise us for in order to gain a sense of value. But we are actually mis-placed in our thinking -- we are looking to people instead of God for our sense of value and worth.  
• We can also be 'busy' because we idolise hard work and have given ourselves to live under a bondage that drives us to overwork in an effort to feel satisfied with ourselves - again we are looking for worth in our achievements and in reaching our own set goals instead of in Christ - we are looking to be 'successful' in our own eyes according our self-appointed expectations, rather than seeking what God wants us to do and to be satisfied and rejoicing in that.  
• Or we can be so busy that we are not properly taking care of ourselves because we feel culturally obligated to honour others, especially elders. We are so busy fulfilling the expectations of people all over the place, so that we will remain accepted by them and the group we want to be a part of, that we are not allowing the time that God would want to take care of what He has given us - including our bodies. 

• We all, at various times, fall into the trap of the view of: 'What will people think of me if I don't do this or that?'

Each motivation is actually a 'loving self' motivation - it is seeking a sense of emotional well-being, of acceptance, of approval, and of significance....apart from God's approval, God's acceptance and our significance in God's creation and God's family.  We overstrain ourselves and increase our stress and thus our health suffers and we haven't actually taken care of ourselves on God's terms and in God's eyes.

3. Neither self-love nor love from others should be the ultimate source of our significance

The devotion said that 'in order for your cup of service to stay full it must continually be refilled' [by people], and it referenced Psalm 23 'you anoint my head with oil, my cup runs over'.  

BUT WHO 

is the Psalmist saying anoints his head with oil and enables his cup to run over?  God.  Not people.  

This is a Psalm about God being our Shepherd.  Yes, He may choose to 'fill our cup' at times through the encouragement of others or through the gifts of others but ultimately it is GOD, not people, who are sustaining us.

It is not people we have to look to for 'filling our cup', but God Himself, however He wants to do it.  To say we must have people, is to say that God isn't enough, and is not sufficient and able.  We have a great, amazing almighty God, but we often live as if He is not that at all.  We often live as if people are our sustainer and saviour - we elevate people into the position that is God's alone.  We get pre-occupied with seeking approval, acceptance and significance from people instead of from God.

We must be sure to trust in God Himself as our Creator and King, and not in His creation and creatures, no matter how significant a means they may be.  Idolatry is a subtle temptation and we must beware!

4. We can have a mis-placed understanding of what it means to 'deny ourselves' and thus find the idea of 'self-love' to be attractive  

Instead of Scripture telling us to love ourselves, it tells us to deny ourselves (Luke 9:23).  In fact Jesus said that if we are not prepared to deny ourselves we CANNOT be His disciple.  Those are pretty strong words. 

But we can think that denying ourselves is ignoring ourselves according to our own wisdom and understanding. In the process we can ignore the responsibilities God has given us.  

If I am a father or mother and I neglect taking care of my body as I should as much as I am able,  it could cause medical problems or disease and result in an inability to fulfill the role of parent as God calls me to.  Of if I don't drink enough water or eat enough to strengthen my body and brain, I cannot give my best at work and are thus cheating my boss from what he is paying me to do...and subsequently not honouring God as an employee.

I can also fail to recognise that God has given us His world to enjoy.  We are meant to enjoy what God wants us to enjoy, and praise and glorify Him in it.  We are meant to go out for a refreshing walk on a starry night and look up and enjoy what we see and have our hearts lift in praise and thankfulness and adoration for God's greatness, eternal presence, and beauty of His creation. We are meant to enjoy the sounds of the birds and the taste of good food and the hug of a friend and the smell of roses. We are not meant to deny ourselves all access to what is 'good' and think such practices are automataically holy.  

So what are we meant to 'deny'?

• Rather we are to deny ourselves self-centredness and selfishness

• We are to deny ourselves self-pity. 

• We are to deny ourselves the position of 'No.1', of determiner of our days and decisions, or the right to rule our lives and decide for ourselves what is right and wrong.  

• We are to deny anything evil to have influence in our lives no matter how attractive its short term pleasures might be .  

• We are to deny our own wisdom, our own agendas, even our own plans as to how to 'achieve God's will'.  

• We are to deny even good things that morph from being places of thankfulness and praise to places/objects of rights and demands and highest priority, addiction and obsession. 

• Food is good, alcohol is permissible, but the enjoyment of either one, or anything else, must be denied for ourselves when it is no longer our servant but becomes our master, or is affecting our bodies in such a way that we compromise the care of our bodies for God's honour.

• We are to deny anything that gets in the way of God having highest honour - 1st place  and priority - in our lives, anything that is elevating ourselves, our wants, our desires into a position that only God should occupy.

That is what it means to 'deny ourselves'.  

5. Love according to my own definition of 'love' or the world's definition of 'love' will set me up for bigger problems 

One of the biggest problems in our world is our false definition of love. When we fail to define the meaning of love from God who is love, and subconsciously imbibe the world's idea, we walk a path of self-destruction, not anywhere near what true 'love' is all about.

If I insist on 'loving myself' by enjoying the pleasure of eating lots of sweet things, so much that I end up with diabetes which results in blindness and amputation of limbs so that I cannot work or care for my family, then I haven't honoured God by taking care of what God gives me. 

Loving myself is not praised, commanded or encouraged in Scripture - it is a reality that is assumed we all naturally do in our old nature.  The basis of our sin is that we love ourselves instead of loving God. We usurp the place of God in our affections. Idolatry is inherent in our sinful nature, a nature that according to Romans 7 that we will battle with till we leave this earth.

If there is one thing we know how to do well in our humanness, it is to love ourselves.  But we have made two big mistakes if we think God wants us to 'love ourselves' as our world encourages us to do so.

The first is there is no such command - we have actually added/replaced God's command to love Him, with our own first command to love ourselves. 

The second is that we have also replaced the meaning of love with the world's meaning.   The direction and the definition of our love is mis-placed.

Rather, we are called to take care of ourselves not because we are to love ourselves but because we are to give honour to what God gives honour.  God created us and thus as His creation, we have inherent value. 

We dishonour God when we don't value what He values.  

We dishonour God when we don't take care of what He has entrusted us to take care of, and take care of it His way.  

The very first commandment God gave humanity (Adam) was to rule over the whole earth and govern it as God wanted according to God's will. (Gen 1:28)  When we take care of the world, including our own bodies so that they will function according to God's design, we honour Him. When we don't, we dishonour Him.  When we fail to rest or have proper nutrition or practice proper cleanliness or do proper exercise, we are neglecting to give adequate care to the bodies God has given us.

Yes, our increasingly 'modernised' world is being engulfed by the idea that 'busy' is somehow Godly.  We think 'busy' is the righteous opposite to 'lazy'.  But it is not.  

God doesn't require us to be busy, He requires us to be obedient.  

And if that obedience involves taking time to rest so that we can serve Him adequately, so we must rest.   If it involves us working hard to get a job done to a standard of excellence to God's glory, so we must work hard.  If it involves us taking the time to have conversation with people to disciple, encourage and build them up instead of rushing to our own personal agendas so we must do so.  

6. Jesus told those who asked, that the greatest commandment was to love God, and then the second was to love others 

There are not three commands, with an additional first one to love ourselves.  

As we have already said, loving ourselves is our sinful 'given'.  

Rather what we need to do is to love God by doing what he asks us to do, and in doing so and always ensuring that we are doing His will, we will by default be the recipients of His care and love.  

We are not to strive to develop 'self-love' but strive to be in the place where we can know and experience the abundant care and love of God Himself.  

When we strive for self-love we sell ourselves way short, and in the process we are essentially despising God's love toward us.  We are saying our love for ourselves and our understanding of what love should be is of higher value and greater importance than God's love for us.  We are saying that what we can give to ourselves is greater than what God can give to us!  That is the opitome of pride and blasphemy! 

To say 'Who'll give back to you, if not you?' (as the devotion says), is saying that God's love toward us in insufficient.  It's saying that God is lying when He promises that 'my grace is sufficient for you'.   We are saying God is unfaithful, untruthful and not enough - we are saying (intentionally or unintentionally) our wisdom is better than God's and our ideas about life are better than God's. We are saying that our happiness and fulfilment in life is all up to us! We are just like Eve believing the lies of Satan in the Garden of Eden.  

Our hope and future is not something that rests on our own efforts of self-love, it rests in the power and provision of our almighty, loving Father.

7. Accepting help, and assistance and kindness from others is not about fulfilling a non-existent command to 'self-love'  

Instead its about being humble and accepting that we can't 'do it all' and we need others. 

It's about accepting that we are not lone individuals on our own agenda, but we are created to be part of community and need one another.  

In the body of Christ, its about allowing others to minister according to their gifts, which are all about benefitting the whole body.  

It's about humility.  

It's about not thinking we are the ones who are the only ones who can do the job well.  

It's about learning to be thankful.  

It's about allowing others to allow the Holy Spirit's fruit to 'feed' others and bless others.  

It's about accepting our own finiteness, and weakness. 

It's about experiencing God's grace that is given to the humble since God says He 'opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble'. (check out the previous blog about grace for more about what that wonderful word means!)

8. 'Lovers of self' is not in scripture as an example of holiness but as an example of sinful behaviour  

2 Timothy 3:4-6    says :

"For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconsilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God."

This is not a list of traits to aspire to or strive to produce in a community.  This is a list of sinful behaviours that destroy people, families and societies and will characterise the rampant sinfulness of the last days before Christ's return.  And what is first on the list?.....'loving yourself'.  If we are meant to resist temptation to sin, to flee from sin and to put sin to death, then we definitely should not be embracing 'self-love'.  We should be doing the exact opposite.
  

9. God's honour code is the opposite to ours 

He says to let go of seeking our own worth and proving our value and yearning for approval from those around us, because if we are willing to lose our life for God's sake and the gospel, it is then that we will find it.  

If we get busy trying to make our lives 'fulfilling' in loving ourselves, we will actually find ourselves losing our life, because we will have separated ourselves from God's route to true fulfillment, and the fulness of His love in our lives.  

We are called to deny ourselves  (Luke 9:23,24) - forsake our own desires and ideas for how to gain success, honour and approval - and follow Jesus and take the road of the cross.  

It is at the cross where we will find the most supreme honour and love - that from God Himself.  Why settle for less?

I would love to encourage you to download and read the free pdf version of an excellent, short, little, and easy to read book by South Africa Pastor Joel James on 'The Bible and Self-love".  Click HERE to view and download.

Also if you are able, I'd encourage you to read the following books:

'Embracing Obscurity' by Anonymous Anonymous

'The Freedom of Self-forgetfulness' by Tim Keller

Changing behaviour requires a change to the Honour Code

A great post was added a short while back to the honorshame.com blog titled

'Do you want to change the world?'

It includes a link to the following video by author of the book 'The Honor Code', Princeton Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah

Take a look at the 3minute video.

Interestingly at the time of the honorshame.com post I was pondering over some notes I had been making about almost the same subject as that little video.....

If we are to impact issues in our world that stem from honour, we have to address them in the context of honour.  

We have to redefine what is honourable.

A Missions Mistake

Legal language and concepts will not impact hearts and minds that are honour focused.

Actions of people - in other words, their behaviour - do not emminate primarily from laws but from values. 

As I think about missions, and missions in Africa in particular, I see an error that 'we' as missionaries and other 'change agents' (such as HIV prevention educators for example)  from the West have made.

We have observed behaviours and seen problems with those behaviours - that they were mis-placed, mistaken or mis-directed or mis-informed.  We wanted to change those behaviours.  That was a noble ideal....but...

We measured and assessed those behaviours (what was acceptable and what was not) based on a plumbline, which instead of being biblical was more about 'cultural christianity' or 'cultural morality'.

We tried to 'correct' behaviours based on new 'rules' or educational 'facts' of what is 'right' and 'wrong' - ie new laws.

We failed to see the extent to which the behaviours stemmed from a value system and the honour shame dynamics of those values.

We were hindered by our Western guilt focus which emphasised behaviours (law) rather than honour/shame which is about values (honour - and more specifically honour of the lawgiver)

Behaviour will never be changed by changing the 'rules' or 'laws' alone.

Values are what determine behaviour.

Who we honour determines who we obey.  Relationships determine rules.

and

Honour encompasses obedience.  

Or to say it another way: our obedience code lies within  - and is subject to - our honour code.

Law is not however, disconnected from honour, for honour and values will inevitably result in laws. We were created to receive and give both love and command.  Right from the Garden of Eden God walked with Adam in a relationship of honour, but He also gave commands (to multiply and have dominion over the earth, and to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil).

We all make laws and thus give commands based on who/what we love, value and honour.

This was of course seen in the recent US Supreme Court decision - they made a legal declaration (law) based on the fact that they valued a 'right to dignity' that included in their thinking a 'dignity' of same-sex marriage.  (see previous blog about this)

Values determine laws.  

Laws only reflects values, they don't determine or control them.  Laws have no power to change values.

Of course Scripture is all about this - God gives laws to His people but no-one is saved by the law, partly because the law is powerless to change our hearts and its our hearts that determine who/what we honour. (Romans 3:20,7, 8:3)

The law can define right and wrong behaviour - and we need laws to do this, but it cannot produce right and wrong behaviour.  

Our conscience makes us uncomfortable with doing what we believe to be wrong and comfortable with doing what we believe to be right. But all we have to do is change the definition of what we believe to be right or wrong according to a change in values, and our conscience is alleviated.

This can be negative - a culture can change its honour values so as to say 'same-sex marriage is ok', but this possibility can also be positive.  As the video above points out - if you change what is understood and believed to be honourable, you will automatically change the 'rules' of right and wrong and behaviour will change.

The power in the gospel comes with changing the honour code.  

Ultimately all godly change comes because we choose to honour God over whatever we honoured before.  In the West we may not have used that language - we may have talked about Christ's 'Lordship' but the truth is the same. Our biggest problem in the Western church is that we neglected teaching what it meant to live honouring Christ as Lord and King, and instead either emphasised His love without Lordship or His laws without love. We went to two extremes of 'easy believism' or 'legalism' instead of teaching about a loving Lord who gave laws.

If we focus on what is valued and honoured and bring truth to these issues so as to change the honour code - to honour God in Christ above all.... then change will come.