My Big Picture

I just have to share something I've been mulling over a lot lately. It has to do with becoming delivered from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. When Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they gained the ability to make distinctions between good and evil apart from God. Before that, they didn't even know about good and evil. They were naked and unashamed. And God wasn't worried about letting them know that yet. Perhaps He would have taught them how to see with Him next to them. But when they gained the ability to do it on their own, they had a foundational shift that made all their perceptions sinful.

This thing is the essence of what separates us from God. We look at people, and situations, and ourselves, and we decide what is good and evil. We can do this all by ourselves. And perhaps we are right some of the time. But the big problem is that we are doing it apart from God. I was really good at looking at things and deciding what was good, and then doing it. But that just led to me being proud and self-righteous, and being good at "being good." I had to repent for my radical disconnection from God. I was horrified when I realized the edifice of self-righteousness that I had built over the course of my life. But then I got to turn around, and walk away from it. Whew!!!

When I read the Bible, I see that God is righteous, and He makes statements about right and wrong, like the 10 Commandments. But there are so many places where He doesn't offer the same commentary that we do. For instance....Tamar dressing up as a prostitute and getting pregnant by Judah, her father-in-law. In that story, Judah was the problem. How about Rebecca, manipulating like some kind of nightmare to get the blessing put on Jacob instead of Esau. God doesn't offer any commentary on that either; instead, His plan and prophecy are advanced. How about Rahab....what were those spies doing in her house in the first place? It is so tempting to offer our own commentary on these stories so that we feel better about our (and God's) morals. And yet, we have David being convicted by Nathan for killing Uriah and committing adultry with Bathsheba. And Ananias and Saphira getting killed for lying about their tithe. Obviously God is not a relativist. But He's also not as judgemental as we often think.

So, my point is that God doesn't think like me, and my job is not to be the one labeling everything so that I feel righteous. My job is to stay in relationship with Him, and do what He tells me to do. Obviously, I might end up with a morally similar looking lifestyle, but when I'm listening to Him, I'm not getting puffed up with pride over my own greatness at doing the right thing. It's a whole different focus. And, I no longer have the pressure on myself to always know the right answer, or have an opinion about everything I encounter. I get to go with God, and relax in Him.