Chapter Two--More or Less?
Chapter Two
More or Less?
pre·tense: a false appearance or action intended to deceive
The bottom line: sin causes us to talk about more, but to settle for less.
It was one of those moments, small and unimportant in one way, but a sign of something very significant when looked at from another perspective. We were on our way somewhere. Because of my eye problems, Luella often drives in the evening. As she headed off toward our location, I said, “Don’t you want to turn there?”—just when we passed the street where I would’ve turned.
She replied, “That way will take too long.”
“The shortest distance between two points is a straight line,” I reminded her.
“That’s exactly why I didn’t turn!”
“But you’re taking us way out of the way,” I insisted.
“Why don’t you just relax and let me drive?”
“Because I don’t trust your sense of direction!”
Luella offered, “Let’s make a deal. When you’re driving, you get to decide the route, and when I’m driving I’ll decide the route.”
“But what if you’re going the wrong way?”
“It’s not a matter of right and wrong; it’s simply a matter of preference.”
And I thought (without saying it), But my preference is right! Instead I said, “I wish we were in a helicopter so I could show you the whole route. Then you would understand what I’m trying to tell you.”
Luella replied, “I don’t think a helicopter is what you need right now!”
It was a moment of minor irritation, never exploding into full-blown anger, yet a moment that is worth unpacking. What this conversation reveals is how hard it is for fallen human beings to keep focused on what is really important. In a heated moment all of us are quite capable of treating a minor detail of life as if it were a major thing. We are all capable of fighting for what has little value while forgetting things of transcendent value.
In a flash of irritation, a mom will treat the condition of her son’s bedroom as being more valuable than the community she is to have with her son, which is so essential to what God wants to do for this boy through her. After months of frustration, a believer will get into a heated argument over garden boundaries with his neighbor, forgetting how much more important it is to be salt and light in the man’s life than how many flowers were planted over the property line. For a moment, a man will get more of a sense of well-being from the look and smell of his brand-new car than he does from the condition of his heart. For a season, the affection and appreciation of another human being will become more functionally important to us than the gracious, forgiving, and adopting love of our heavenly Father. For a moment, a succulent steak becomes more important to us than a soul that has been satisfied by the Living Bread. In the flash of one look, the beauty and shape of a woman’s body can become more important than long-term marital community and a heart that is pure.
And in a car on a given night, being right in the eyes of your spouse can become more important than living right before your Lord.
It is so hard for us to get glory right. It is so hard for us to see through all the near “glories” of creation to see the transcendent glory of God. It is so difficult for us to remember and be motivated by what is truly important. It is so tempting to be committed to our little kingdoms that the transcendent kingdom of God is of little functional influence. We are in fact in a great war, the daily melodrama of the heart. This is exactly what was happening to me that night in the car. It happens to each of us every day. We again and again deny our humanity as we settle for something less than the transcendent glories for which we were created. It is so hard for us to make the truly important things functionally important to us. And it didn’t take long for Adam and Eve to fall into this trouble as well.
Trouble in the Garden
Have you ever thought about what exactly the Serpent offered Eve in that fateful conversation in the garden? What he offered Eve was “more.” What he offered Eve was transcendence, but it had a fatal flaw. It wasn’t connected to God! Here was an offer of an “above and beyond” glory, but it was a replacement for the transcendent glory that can only be found in God. Notice the thundering implication of these five simple words, “You will be like God.” The Serpent was saying, You know, Eve, there is a greater, more satisfying glory than anything you have yet experienced. Your life can be much, much more than it has already been. Why, Eve, you can have it all. If you would just be willing to step outside of God’s narrow boundaries, you wouldn’t need to be connected to him, because you would be like him.
These manipulative words of the enemy appear to offer greater transcendence but are really shrinking it dramatically. The glory that the Serpent holds out is no glory at all. Let me state it this way: When I opt for a me-centered “more,” what I actually get is always much, much less. Essentially Satan is saying, Eve, you can live for a greater and more satisfying kingdom than the kingdom of God. If you do this one thing, you can have a kingdom where you are central and where you rule unchallenged. It is the same evil sales pitch that Satan offered to Christ at the beginning of his ministry on earth. (See Matthew 4:8—11.) Here we have recorded the very first time in human history when a person was willing to restrict her living to the size of her life. We have been paying the price ever since.
Used Car Sales
I like to listen to used-car salesmen. Not all of them are like what I am about to describe, but I think the word craft they employ is instructive. Deceptive sales craft is all about embellishment of the positive, shrinking the negative, and a careful sprinkling of pretenses (plausible lies). You walk up to what is designed to be a mode of transportation, and the salesman immediately says to you, “This baby has the finest sound system you’ll ever find in a car. And sit in those seats. They’re capable of over fifty different positions.” Now that he has so overstated a couple of the car’s positives so that you are not thinking about the engine and transmission, he seeks to shrink the negatives in your thinking. He says, “It’s a great car for driving around the city.” This actually means it is very small and doesn’t have much pick-up. He adds, “It is a perfect car for a young family.” He actually means that the back seat is so small that no normal-sized human being could ever sit there comfortably. Then he ends with plausible lies. He says, “We will have no trouble making it affordable for you.” This probably means, “You cannot afford this car, but we can manipulate the finances in such a way as to make you think you can.”
Such is the craft of the enemy. It is all about embellishment, negation, and plausible lies. It is the craft of temptation. It is the craft of pseudo-glory and false transcendence. It is a wicked craft, but it gets us again and again.
You see, the enemy of our souls knows that we were created for transcendence. He knows that we were created to be constantly connected to something more glorious than the small glories of our own survival and pleasure. He knows that we all hunger for more, so his craft is to present us with less in a way that makes it appear to be more. The “you can be like God” offer in the garden was not an honest invitation to more; it was a deceitful trick that would only lead to less. It was not an invitation to be more gloriously human, but a pitch to get Adam and Eve to deny the fundamental basis of their true humanity. Yet their humanity was connected to the glory of God, and to disobey him would never ever lead to greater glory.
It’s Always the Same Old Set of Tricks
Every day, in many ways, we give in to the same old set of tricks. We forget the transcendence for which we were made and we look at much lesser things as if they were more. The cost to us is just as huge as it was to Adam and Eve. Naked, guilty, and embarrassed, they hid from their God in the bushes of the garden.
A man will forget that, as a father, he has been welcomed to the transcendent glory of being part of God’s work of forming human souls. Instead he will buy into the replacement glory of career success. More and more, his life will be eaten up and defined by his work. Less and less will his sense of purpose have to do with the formative community that only he can offer his children. Sadly, his children cease to be one of the joyful focuses of his living and become an obligation in an already-too-busy schedule. Less and less do his children know him, respect him, trust him, or feel his love.
A young person will forget the transcendent glory of an identity that is rooted in the presence, power, and grace of the Redeemer. Instead she will live for the pseudo-glory of the approval of peers. She’ll pick up on and parrot her friends’ vocabulary, she’ll take on their sense of style, she’ll laugh obviously at their jokes, and she’ll even participate in activities that prick her conscience—all because she has convinced herself that she “needs” their approval. There will be moments when she will feel transcendent. She will feel as if her life has real meaning and purpose because she is connected to something bigger than herself. The sad fact is that she has opted for less. The community of her peers has actually become a replacement community for the transcendent glory of loving, worshipful, daily community with the Lord. And the things that she hopes she will find in the acceptance of her peers, no human being is ever able to give to her. She will only ever find it in the accepting grace of God.
It may be that we settle for less in moments that are much less consequential than these. Being right can replace being kind, being served can replace the joy of serving, power can trump character, possessions can become more attractive than spiritual blessings, and a moment of independence can become more compelling than long-term interdependent community. Even getting the last cookie can become more important than the love we are meant to mutually share.
Here it is. When the enemy somehow tricks you into squeezing the size of your life to the size of your personal dreams, wants, and needs, he has got you right where he wants you. He has won a victory every time he successfully tempts you to exchange the God-centered more for which you were created, replacing it with one of the endless catalog of me-centered “mores” that dangle before us in this fallen world. His lie is this: “Transcendence is really found when you live at the center of your world.” Or, “Ultimate joy and satisfaction is found when you live for you.”
Now you may be saying, “Come on, Paul, I’m biblically smart enough to know that that isn’t true!” You probably do, but the struggle I am describing very often takes place inside the borders of good theology and regular participation in the scheduled programs of the church. It is possible, and maybe even quite regular, to participate in these things and still be settling, in the little moments of our daily existence, for much, much less than the transcendence for which we were created. Things as mundane as wardrobe, menu, schedule, workload, location, traffic, weather, being right, getting affirmed, money, housing, employment, gardens, family rooms, sex, leisure, who’s in the bathroom first, who did what with my newspaper, who ate the last of the cereal, etc.—all of which are important in some way—rise to a spiritually dangerous level of importance in the heat of the moment. These are the moments we live in every day. The normal day is a 24-hour collection of little moments. Day after day, week after week, and year after year, these little moments set the character of a person’s life.
When little things become the big thing for which I consistently fight, I have forsaken transcendence for the temporary shadow glories of creation. The temporary satisfaction and pleasure that I get will not last. These things are like spiritual crack; they will give me a quick emotional or spiritual rush, while leaving me unfilled and hungering for the next rush.
This has always been the struggle of God’s people. Think of Israel in the wilderness. What causes them to actually consider going back to Egypt? Menu! (See Numbers 11.) They were tired of this quasi-tasteless substance called manna. Think about it for a moment. The flavor of a God-provided food rose to such a level of importance that they were actually able to look at Egypt as a place with a better menu, rather than the place of slavery and death that it actually was.
Think about what initiated the heinous idolatry of Israel at the base of Mt. Sinai. Was it not a matter of schedule? (See Exodus 32:1.) Moses had been too long on the mountain. The children of Israel were impatient, so they said, “Moses has been gone so long we don’t know what’s happened to him, so let’s make gods who will go before us.” Is schedule important? Is there legitimacy to wondering what has happened to your leader if he has been absent for awhile? Of course there is! But this legitimate concern becomes fundamentally more important than it ever should be, and when it does, it completely distorts the perspective of the people and sets them up for spiritual danger.
Or consider the disciples in the upper room in the final hours before Christ’s capture. He sits with them as Messiah, Priest, and Lamb. He, in this moment and in the sacrificial moments to come, is instituting the New Covenant. There could be no more significant moment of redemptive importance. Yet, Luke tells us that in the middle of this moment of high and holy drama, the disciples are arguing about who of them is greatest! (See Luke 22:24—30.) Are position, power, and affirmation of no consequence whatsoever? Of course not! But when they rise to the level of overwhelming the crashing significance of being welcomed into the kingdom of God, of eating at the table with the Lord of the universe, and of sitting on thrones built by him, then something has gone drastically wrong. In this moment the disciples are forsaking the transcendent glories of the kingdom of God for the pseudo-glory of personal power and position.
Take a moment to consider Peter in Galatia, who has let his fear of a certain set of Jews rise to a level of greater importance than the transcendent freedom glories of the gospel for which he had been chosen to be a spokesman. (See Galatians 2:11—14.) Something as normal as a concern over what others think of me, or what will happen to me if others oppose me, rises to a level of such immediate importance that my actions are more shaped by that concern than they are about the huge and transcendent glories of the life-altering grace of the gospel.
So, how are you doing with transcendence? What is the “more” for which you are questing? Examine the last few weeks. What is rising to a level of decision-making, behavior-shaping importance in your life? Inside your correct theology and your faithful participation in the gatherings and ministries of the body of Christ, is your life a picture of the transcendence atrophy? Have you exchanged “more” for “less”? While affirming what is right, have you functionally settled for what is really a subtle, but significant, rejection of the true humanity for which you were created? True humanity is always connected to glory, and true glory can only be found in the One who is glory, the Lord.
In how many mundane ways each week are you tempted to compress the size of your living to the concerns of your life? You can even shrink the glory-call and the glory-promises of the gospel down to excitement with a little bit better marriage, slightly more responsive children, and some principles that will help you be more successful at your job. Does God offer me these things? Sure he does! But he calls me to so much more. He calls me to find personal glory in his glory, and in so doing, to be committed to community, stewardship, and truth glory as well.
If Genesis 1 is a welcome to transcendence, then Genesis 3 is about the tragedy of the shrinking of transcendence. Adam and Eve were created so that their lives would reach as wide as the kingdom and glory of God. In that one disastrous moment they did not expand their boundaries; they dramatically narrowed them. The vertical “more” for which transcendent human beings were created was replaced by a horizontal “more” that was never to be a human being’s life motivation. In that one tragic moment, Adam and Eve migrated to the center of their world, the one place where glory-wired human beings must never live. They did not just opt for independence; they opted for God’s position, and in doing so they forsook any chance of a personal participation in the transcendent glory of a relationship with God.
This is why God sent his Redeemer Son to earth. He came to rescue us from ourselves and return to us participation in his transcendence. In his adoption we are restored to the God glory which is to be central to everything we do. In his church we are restored to the community glory in which we were built to participate. In freeing us from idolatry, rather than being ruled by the creation, we are restored to the stewardship glory over creation to which we were called. In the ministry of his indwelling Spirit, through Scripture, we are restored to the truth glory that was meant to be the interpretive lens of every human being since Adam took his first breath. His is a gorgeous work of rescue!
Yet, learning to live with the transcendent glories of the created and re-created children of God is a process, not an event. You and I are still in the middle of the process. Sometimes we get it, but often we forget. Sometimes we do act with faith, hope, and courage. Sometimes we really do hold out for “more” and refuse to be manipulated into settling for “less.” Sometimes we will not settle for any condition less than being truly human. But sometimes we take the bait and go after less as if it were more. Sometimes, even though grace has expanded our borders until they touch glory, we still reduce the borders of our living to the boundaries of our lives.
If you will stop for a moment and look at yourself, you will recognize evidences of the struggle. The evidences are in your family and friendships. They are there at work and in times of leisure. They are visible in your relationship to your position, possessions, and power. Yes, they are even there in your participation in the body of Christ. So, this book is offered as help in the struggle. It is meant to help you more clearly grasp what it means to live for more. It is meant as a welcome to a life that really makes a difference. You and I were wired for transcendent glory. The big question of life is: What glory will you live for each and every day?
The final question: what is the “less” that tends to capture your attention?