Not-God

It’s neat to see how God can bring good out of the worst circumstances. Take Bill, for instance. He was a New York Stockbroker with a bright future ahead of him, at least until the stock market crash of 1929, when he lost everything. A few years later he found himself an out-of-control drunk living with his in-laws because his addiction made him incapable of holding a job.

Nothing seemed to help Bill get off the bottle—not his willpower, not his wife’s concern, not hospital stays, and not even a barbiturate-and-belladonna treatment at a sanitarium. One day Bill had an epiphany: the best way to help himself overcome his addiction was to help someone else who was struggling with the same problem. It worked!

He eventually began to meet with other people struggling with addiction and even wrote down his principles of sobriety in a book. The organization Bill W. founded in 1935, Alcoholics Anonymous, has helped millions of people all over the world reach sobriety. The simple philosophy behind A.A. has been adapted with great success to people struggling with other addictions, helping even millions more.

The first of the twelve steps states, “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.” It’s such an obvious idea, but such a hard step to take. What is it about people that we blench so against admitting—even to ourselves, let alone other people—that we may not have everything in our lives under control?

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.' (Luke 18: 9 – 12)

If you were a Jew in Jesus’ day, you would have looked up to the Pharisee. After all, he was one of the devoted few who kept the flame of religion and Israeli nationalism alive during the Roman occupation. Jewish law required people to go without food and water for religious purposes one day a year; the Pharisee did it twice a week. Jewish law required people to donate ten percent of the produce of his fields; the Pharisee gave ten percent of everything he had.

The Pharisee wasn’t the only person praying in the temple that day. There was a tax–collector there, too. And the two of them being there at the same time would have been striking to an observer. The Pharisee was one of those religious folk that you almost can’t imagine having a life outside of church—they become part of the building. The tax-collector, on the other hand, was the type of visitor that makes you keep your eye on the offering plate. He collected taxes for the occupying enemy forces, and if that didn’t make him the unpopular-guy-of-the-year, I don’t know what would! But the tax collector had a purpose in being there, and it wasn’t something nefarious.

"But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.' (Luke 18: 13)

Leave it to a traitor and thieve to make a scene… The Pharisee could make a prayer sound like the sweetest music, and you could have listened to him all day and a good part of the night, too. But this breast-beating tax collector caused a scene with his anguish, even if he was standing as far towards the back of the room as he could manage.

If you were listening to Jesus telling this story for the first time in A.D. 30 or whatever, I guarantee that you would have never seen the twist-ending coming. You would have expected Jesus to pronounce judgment on the traitor for his life of crime or tell him that it wasn’t any use praying until he got his act together like the Pharisee, but never in a million years would you have guessed what he said about the tax-collector:

"I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." (Luke 18: 14)

To use Alcoholics Anonymous terminology, the Pharisee was living in a state of denial. To assure himself of his standing with God, he compared himself to others. On the other hand, the tax–collector was the guy who had hit rock bottom and had nowhere else to look but up. He compared himself to a Holy God and cried out for mercy.

And that’s the only sane thing for any of us to do. The Psalmist wrote there is no one righteous, no, not even one and I’ve never read a truer word. I do, however, have to remind myself that the not even one bit includes me.

Sometimes the church has gotten off-track in regard to the message it sends to people. For instance, I can turn on Christian broadcasting and hear all about the abortionists, the pornographers, atheists, and the homos who are messing the country up. What I rarely, if ever, hear about how people will know we are Christians by our love or even a hint that perhaps we Christians, by our inactivity with the culture-at-large have our share of blame for the world’s woes. It’s almost as if we’ve set up radio stations, TV channels, bookstores and rock bands to continually send out the message I’m so glad I’m not like the tax collector!

It’s not surprising that this attitude doesn’t help people find God. It doesn’t even help Christians, either, because it works against the community of believers. So many times we assume that everyone else sitting in the congregation has their act together, so we never really feel comfortable or safe opening up to anyone. Could you imagine how different the church would be if we all stopped pretending and just came clean that we are all recovering sinners? Bill W. wrote, "Because of our kinship in suffering our channels of contact have always been charged with the language of the heart." He was writing in the context of alcoholic group support, but I think that it should just as easily apply to a group of Christians.