Tweakness

Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5), which we have been walking through, reminds us over and over that the way man has interpreted life and the law is not the same as our unchanging God.  In 5:17, Jesus states that He did not come to destroy, but to fulfill the law and the prophets. Then we have a series of examples where man has altered, changed and dumbed down the actions the law and prophets teach.  Over and over, we read, “You have heard it said . . . but I say to you . . .”  Man struggles with a flawed agenda because “the heart is deceitfully wicked above all things.”  Yet Jesus is about the full manifestation of the glory and holiness of heart and actions before God, and He calls those who will be part of the kingdom of heaven to do the same.

I read an article earlier today entitled, “How ‘Tiny Shortcuts’ Are Poisoning Science.”  As I grew up we trusted science because it seemed that the objectives and purpose was to understand and explain nature and the working of things.  Yet today, science is met with a skeptical attitude.  The article says at one point, “The credibility crisis of science is not about scientific progress invalidating previously held scientific beliefs, which is intrinsic to the very nature of scientific revolutions. Rather, the crisis has been caused by scientists who deliberately publish overconfident, misleading, and often simply false empirical results based on research designs or model specifications they have intentionally specified to give the desired results. We call this practice “tweaking.” In extreme cases, published results rely on manipulated or outright fabricated data. Whether tweaked, manipulated, or fabricated, the results often cannot be replicated — not even if replication analysts use identical research designs.” And just a few sentences later the article continues with, “Scientists are increasingly seen as partial, ideological agents, activists in an armchair, or, worse still, simply fraudsters.”

As I read this article I couldn’t help but immediately think of our study through the Sermon on the Mount and the light Jesus is showing on the “fraud and tweaking” of the law and the prophets by the scribes and Pharisees.  And then I quickly thought of today’s church and the ways we do the same types of things.  We make holy living something studied but not practiced.  We clap (and I am glad we do) for baptisms, but we expect others to share the gospel boldly.  I could go on, but I want you to think of the ways we short circuit the commands of Jesus and His call of discipleship (Mark 10:21 — Then Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “One thing you lack: Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow Me.”  Luke 9:23 – Then He said to them all, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.)  

Every time we add “but” to the end of one of the commands of Jesus, we have just tweaked the command, and we are making our discipleship fraudulent. Anytime we think that a command of Jesus is only for others, but not for ourselves, we have again tweaked another.  And anytime we live as if the commands of Jesus are only for certain times rather than a lifestyle of a child of God, there we go tweaking another one.  The call so often today is for us to “trust the science,” but when it is driven by agendas or ideology, it leads us to begin to tune out the so-called scientists.  Unfortunately, we need to realize that when we tweak the commands of Jesus, the watching world sees and knows.  And maybe, just maybe this is the reason they tune us out, too.  Will we ever be perfect on this side of heaven? No, but that is absolutely no reason for us not to follow and obey as closely as we can to what Jesus calls us to as citizens of heaven.  

Pressing on…

Ron Tipton, Senior Pastor