Selling Out

If we are attentive, we watch how much we are being charged for our purchases, to make sure we're not over-charged. Even with bar-code scanners, mistakes sometimes happen, and no one wants to be overcharged. But everybody's probably also had the experience of being undercharged by a distracted or harried clerk. Those are the times we show more than our money: we show who we are.

Do we point out a mistake in our favor if the clerk gives us back a dime too much ? Surely most of us are that honest. What if it's a dollar ? A convenience-store clerk recently undercharged me $10.

We often read news stories about someone: a homeless man, a cab-driver, a welfare-mother: who finds a large sum of cash somewhere...and returns it to its owner, or turns it over to the police. It's a "feel good" story, especially if the owner amply rewards the finder. It feels good because it proves there are people whose honesty is not for sale, regardless of their circumstances, at any price.

Because that's what happens if you take that money that doesn't belong to you. Before, you had your honesty: afterwards, it's gone. You sold it. How much did you get for it, a dime ? a dollar ? Or maybe it's for sale, but you're holding out for a higher price ?

Scripture says we have the mind of Christ. For every Christian, that's the core of who we are. But we can sell that too, as surely as we can sell our honesty.

You could make a lot of money in business, for example, if you'll operate by the prevailing spirit of the world: that business is governed by amoral "market forces" such as the law of supply and demand, or "what the market will bear." But you'll have to swap out Jesus' teachings that business too is under His moral authority, through your moral decisions about fair prices and fair pay.

But the real sale you make there is not for money. The "mind of Christ" which we have is a complex of spiritual attitudes and operative ideas. So is the currency with which Christ's mind is bought and sold. To buy the idea that Christ is King, you must pay with your idea that you are master of your own life. To sell out Christ's idea that your purpose here is doing what pleases the Father, you must exchange for it the idea that your purpose is to please yourself, or someone else, or some organization of men.

Why do so few American Christians not have the mind of Christ ? They've sold it. Most of them have sold it for the political ideas of the earthly faction they choose to follow: love of the Truth has been sold for love of lies, rebelliousness accepted in exchange for submissiveness, Jesus' mercy to the poor and sick traded for their faction's disdain for the poor and sick.

Most of them have never considered the price they've been paid. Or even considered that they are selling: so little are most Christians aware of what life in Christ is.

Father, awaken those who are sleeping. Father, deal with as You will those who sell out Jesus with their eyes fully opened.

No Need for Repentance

Another men's Bible study. One of those side-tracks of doubtful relevance to the Bible, which I'm not sure how we get off onto. One of the men was telling of his brother's friend, a Vietnam vet, who told him, "I've been extremely fortunate. Forty-one times, I saw an enemy soldier before he saw me, and I was able to shoot first."

Someone said, "It makes you think God must have some great work for that guy to do." A couple offered opinions about what great work God might have so signally saved that man for.

I spoke the thought that came into my mind. "I've heard combat veterans say the experience of shooting someone only really hits you later, when you get older. Someone who killed 41 men, maybe God will send him a spirit of repentance, " Not said to be controversial: it just seemed that God would want anyone who killed so many people to repent.

The silence must have lasted two full minutes. It caught me by surprise. It was extremely uncomfortable, all the more so since I couldn't quite figure out whar it was about. I wanted to say something, just to break the silence, but felt like God said, "Don't speak." Eventually someone else spoke again, about something else, and conversation resumed.

It seemed then, and still seems to me now, a common-Sprirtual-sense view. It's inconceivable to me that someone who killed 41 people would not need to repent. It's inconceivable to me that anyone would think otherwise: least of all Christians.

I've written about it here before: when you really set out to think as God thinks, it sets you apart from the world...and also from other Christians.