One of my favorite songs of all time is Simon & Garfunkel’s The Boxer. The final verse always stands out especially.

In the clearing stands a boxer
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of ev’ry glove that layed him down
Or cut him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame
"I am leaving, I am leaving"
But the fighter still remains

I’ve always heard this lyric with Christian ears. In a sense, we are all fighters. Before Christ, our very life relies on it. The false gods we submit ourselves to are not gracious and they do not forgive. We fight for what we want, and desire. Yet after Christ, there is no need to fight. But before all of our service is given to Christ, we continue to do so. I continue to do so.

We carry the scars and wounds from our battles with us until one day we see how much they have marred our appearance and we cry out them, “I am leaving, I am leaving!”

But so many of us, so much of the time, are too afraid to truly leave them behind. And so, “the fighter[s] still remain”.

So, this week my video blog comes with an brief explanation as to why I’ve decided to recant my commitment to get in shape which I laid out last week. Embarrassing as it might be, it’s for the best, I think.

(Can’t see the video? Watch it on YouTube!)

Tim Keller in Counterfeit Gods:

“There is legitimate guilt that is removed through repentance and restitution, and then there is irremediable guilt. When people say, “I know God forgives me, but I can’t forgive myself,” they mean that they have failed an idol whose approval is more important to them than God’s.”

It comes across somewhat harsh. But I believe Keller is right. Many people, including myself at times, have no intellectual problem accepting God’s grace and forgiveness. But on an emotional level, we remain weighed down with guilt.

If we honestly believe that God’s approval is what matters and that, although we have failed him, he has truly and fully forgiven us, then part of accepting that forgiveness must be forgiving ourselves. If we refuse to forgive ourselves, we must not fully believe that God has forgiven us.

If we continue to wallow in guilt and despair, it must be that there is some other deity in our heart that we believe we need forgiveness from—an idol. But an idol can never forgive.

I see this illustration to be true in my own life. Ridding ourselves of idols doesn’t only mean that God gets all the glory he deserves from us, but it also means we get to live in the joy that comes from fully understanding and accepting what it means to be forgiven and accepted by God.

Tim Keller, in Counterfeit Gods says:

An idol is something we look to for things that only God can give. Idolatry functions widely inside religious communities when doctrinal truth is elevated to positions of a false god. This occurs when people rely on the rightness of their doctrines for their standing with God rather than on God himself and his grace. It is a subtle but deadly mistake. The sign that you have slipped into this form of self-justification is that you become what the book of Proverbs calls a “scoffer”. Scoffers always show contempt and disdain for the opponents rather than graciousness, This is a sign that they do no see themselves as sinners saved by grace. Instead, their trust in the rightness of their views makes them feel superior.

Does that sound personally familiar to you? It has to me. Perhaps not as severely right now, but in the past, definitely. Sometimes we may not even realize that we have placed some of our hope in something other than the Gospel.

Many churches look at the churches around them as competitors, rather than partners. Or theological diversity as a threat to their ministry. I doubt this is anything short of a sense of religious idolatry.

Even if our theology is right, and our church is healthy, our attitudes toward other people’s theological ideas and churches reveal a good deal about what our own thought and theology means to us. “Scoffing” and “disdain” for anyone is not a good thing. But it’s especially revealing when those things are directed at people who share the same salvation we do.

Psalm 81:11-13:

"But my people did not listen to my voice;
   Israel would not submit to me.
So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts,
   to follow their own counsels.
Oh, that my people would listen to me,
   that Israel would walk in my ways!”

In this passage, Asaph illustrates an important principle which runs throughout all of scripture. And, it’s one I’ve written on before.

There are times when a believer succumbs to destructive habits in his or her life and rides them out for a time. The severity varies, but most of the time the root is the same. God, at times, gives a believer up to his or her own sinful inclinations as a means of discipline. Discipline is good. Something like a parent allowing a child to get burned so they learn that it hurts.

While at times indulging our flesh feels rewarding, the underlying fact is that it is destructive and bad for us. When a believer enters a time like this, it isn’t long before they realize that they are suffering and return stronger than before.

This is why, I believe, a consistently good relationship with God won’t always look like obvious sanctification. Rather, sanctification will sometimes actually include times of serious struggle or even repetitive failure. For the believer, I believe, this is part of the sanctifying process we have to go through.

Of course, that doesn’t mean we go out in search of ways to gratify our flesh. No, we continue to seek God and seek to be like him. But when, we face times like these, we should feel encouraged. God is patient, molding and teaching us to be more like him, employing even the unexpected things we do and experience in order to meet his intentions for us.

In the book of Deuteronomy, Moses warns the people not to make an image of any god. But he prefaces it by reminding them that they heard a voice, but they didn’t see anything.

“…watch yourselves very carefully. Since you saw no form on the day that the LORD spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, beware lest you act corruptly by making a carved image for yourselves, in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air, the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth.”

The fact that the people saw nothing was the ground Moses used, in this instance, to condemn the making of ‘carved’ images. After all, they did not actually see God, how could they possibly make a carved image of him, unless they filled in a lot of blanks with their own flimsy speculation.

Over the course of generations, that could be tragic. People might begin to neglect the the words they heard from God, and pay more attention to the form they’d created for him from their own minds.

As I read this this morning, it dawned on me that, in a way, we break this commandment quite regularly. Although, not quite in the way that Moses laid it out.

Today, while we have the complete Word of God, much of the church has a habit of going beyond what the scriptures actually say in an attempt to fill in gaps that God intends would remain open.

We have to be careful to remember that—like the Israelites who were permitted to make ‘carved images’ in one sense, they were not allowed to place them in the position of any kind of deity (especially God)—we also are allowed to speculate on spiritual things. We are even allowed to use our best judgments to make decisions and find the right path. But, we’re never allowed to elevate these speculations to the level of authority that the Word of God exclusively holds.

For the Washington, DC area, the national weather service is advising us to be prepared for a major snow storm this Saturday. About two feet of snow is what they’re predicting. That’s pretty significant. And as I was reading the scriptures today, it reminded me of the Noah and flood.

Only a few verses before the story of Noah and the Ark in Genesis 6, God is noting that the people are multiplying and becoming progressively more and more wicked. Then, he declares that the number of man’s years will be 120.

After reading it through several times, doing some word-research on my own and then hearing from the puritans (John Calvin, in particular), I feel pretty confident in saying that God was giving humanity 120 years before wiping almost everyone out with the flood. If that is a reasonable interpretation of the text, then that’s pretty amazing.

Though things were in sad shape and getting worse, God left them with over a century to turn. Of course, they didn’t, and that sucks. But, God’s grace and mercy in that are beautiful.

It keeps us in the tension between eagerly waiting and praying for Christ’s return, yet at the same time praying that God would have patience and mercy and bring in many, many more who don’t yet believe. And that’s just where we are. Waiting for the ‘flood’, knowing it will come, yet hoping that God will wait and more will be saved.

That’s pretty cool, I think.