The Big Picture Podcast: Faulty Programming?

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Welcome to the Big Picture Podcast. This podcast seeks to begin and hopefully sustain a conversation about current trends, ideas and issues in the Church and greater society.

Today we hear again from the Back Row Baptist, you know, the guy in the back pew who’s just takin’ in the view. He’s done checking the ESPN app on his iPhone that he hides in his Bible, and we now have his attention.

He’s been getting some push-back lately about some things he’s said on this podcast, and it’s time to make some things clear. Mostly the push-back is from our dear brothers and sisters of the artistic and emotive bent, who’ve taken offense with The Big Picture’s call to obedience, especially in contrast with passion and emotion.

In case you’ve missed our earlier discussion, we’ve talked about how God asks us, as an expression of our love and commitment to Him, to obey His commandments.

This goes against today’s emphasis on emotional connection and experiencing a “passionate relationship” with God. Those who are more of this persuasion will argue that our response to God should overflow from our hearts as an emotional response to what we’ve experienced from our worship.

Obedience to them sounds like a kind of forced imposition from a domineering, authoritative God who doesn’t want us to have any joy. But I think they’re missing an important aspect of what obedience is, and what it produces.

This is what I’ve learned about obedience: Right from the start, with Adam and Eve in the Garden, God expected obedience from His creation. Adam and Eve listened to the serpent because he appealed to a desire for a different experience, another way of doing life other than obeying God. And this was before the fall.

Later on when Cain killed his brother Abel, it was because Abel obeyed and Cain didn’t. Cain had the same problem his parents did. He offered to God what he thought and felt was best, not what God asked him. That’s why after God rejected his offering, he said to Cain “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; its desire is to have you, but you must rule over it.”

So right from the start we see that there’s something built in to us that wants more than God is asking of us, or promising us.

It’s a built-in flaw in our character. We want to experience and relate to God on our terms, not his. But sin is always crouching at the door, waiting for that.

We can’t win against it on our own. Our sin nature makes it impossible, and it seems it was impossible even before the fall. Which I don’t get. Doesn’t make sense to me.

But God can win. That’s why doing what he says is the key to our faith. So if we obey God’s commands, wether or not it produces the feeling or experience we want, we’ll be accepted by Him.

But if our programming is somehow broken, how do we ‘rule over it’ and obey God?

Well, He’s promised us help, and it comes from the Holy Spirit. The thing that I’ve learned about the Holy Spirit that completes the concept of obedience and doing what God commands is what Paul says in Galatians 5:

“You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. ¹⁴ For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself…¹⁶ So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.”

And then he describes our programming.

“¹⁷ For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. “

Okay, so we see the conflict here. This is how we want to have it, even as Christians. That’s who Paul’s writing to, don’t forget. He goes on to describe the awful things our flesh wants to do and says that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

So there it is. Because in our flesh, because of our deeds and our bad character, we can’t inherit His Kingdom. But luckily for us, he goes on and gives us hope;

“²² But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. ²⁴ Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. ²⁵ Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”

So it’s the Holy Spirit who changes us. No experience or emotional high can last against our sin nature, our flesh. Only obeying His commands and ‘keeping in step with the Spirit’ can produce fruit in our character, making us different people than we were before, changing our character.

That’s the only way we inherit His Kingdom. Gifts of the Spirit, experiences and emotional highs, they come and go, but the fruit of the Spirit is the key to walking with and knowing God, and it starts with obeying His commands, practicing what He wants us to practice, with the help and power of His Spirit, which develops the fruit of the Spirit in our character, making us more like him.

Because God has always known what is right, and only He can overcome our faulty programming through His Spirit.

And that’s this week’s view from the back pew, compliments of the Backrow Baptist.

In closing, it’s time for the Great Cloud Of Witnesses, the segment of our podcast where we meet and hear the stories of those who have given, and some who are still giving, their lives by faith in the promises of God, and of whom the world was and is not worthy (if you don’t know that reference, please check out Hebrews chapter 11-12 in your Bible).

Today’s witnesses are Tahir Iqbal and Raymond Lully from Pakistan:

“I will kiss the rope, but never deny my faith!” Tahir exclaimed.

The soldiers lifted the paralytic pastor out of his wheelchair and slipped the noose around his neck. Today he walks freely in heaven with Christ.

In Pakistan, another seasoned pastor heard a gunshot right outside his house. The bullet narrowly missed him and lodged itself into the wall behind his chair. He then thanked God for another day that he could share Christ in the Muslim dominated nation.

Raymond Lully left a comfortable position as an Oxford professor and spent most of his life suffering for the gospel. He wrote, “Once I was fairly rich and tasted freely the pleasures of this life. But all these things I gladly resigned that I might spread the knowledge of truth. I have been in prisons; I have been scourged . . . now, though old and poor, I do not despair; I am ready, if it be God’s will, to persevere unto death.”

Believers like these have a unique understanding of the term “shield of faith.” They realized it would not necessarily prevent their suffering, but it gave them courage to face it if necessary. The shield of faith gave them the resolve to continue doing spiritual battle for the cause of Christ no matter what it cost them here on earth.