The sixteenth President of the United Stated remains one of the greatest leaders our world has known. Abraham Lincoln is not just studied and admired by Americans but by the world over. To this very day, 155 years later, scholars, politicians, educators and history buffs study his life, politics and writings. We even have some who are rightfully called “Lincoln Experts”. They can inform us of little-known occurrences and favorite facts about his life. We could ask them question after question about his words, history and letters. However, if we ask them all: Do you know Abraham Lincoln? The answer is always the same. No. For all their wealth of information the simple fact remains that they’ve never met him. President Lincoln died on April 15, 1865 from an assassin’s bullet. All the people who knew him have also passed on. In fact, all the people who knew the people, who knew the people, who knew him are gone. As inspiring and insightful as the information is, there is no one on earth who actually knows him.
This relational dynamic brings us to a critical distinction between the Scriptures as intended and their misuse by those claiming to follow Jesus. The Scriptures were not authored as a replacement for the person of Jesus. They were not given to us so that we would assemble a range of facts, stories and quotes to assimilate our own “composite” of him in our heads; an informed mental fantasy through which we would create our own version of what he must be like.
Religion is satisfied for people to believe its presentation of the facts about Jesus. It creates adherents, devotees and enthusiasts. It develops gatherings, rituals, programs and organizational structure based on the information it presents. It calls people to believe in Jesus the way 330 million Americans (and countless others) believe in Abraham Lincoln. Heaven has no such desire. The Scriptures were not given by God in the hope that people would commit to live according to the information presented. They were given, according to Jesus, to inspire an open-hearted response to a person not an ideology, religion or world view.
In Jesus’ teachings he consistently concludes his talks and stories regarding the final day with the same metric of assessment. It is not a theological, religious or performance metric. Those actually following him aren’t surprised by this since they have accepted the truth that the “bottom line” of God’s Kingdom is not theological but relational. Near the end of his famous “Sermon on the Mount” he says: “Not everyone who calls me their Lord will get into the kingdom of heaven. Only the ones who do what my Father in heaven wants them to do will get in. On the day of judgment many will call me their Lord. They will say, “We spoke in your name, and in your name we forced out demons and worked many miracles.” But I will tell them, “I never knew you! Get out of my sight, you workers of evil!”
God’s irrepressible love for the world sent in and through Jesus of Nazareth is not merely a concept to consider or a principle to model. His love is not a promise to claim but an ongoing experience to have. God is exposing people to the presence of a person and that person invites all to follow him; a person to be known not just known about.
*not the Urban Dictionary Term
No comments:
Post a Comment