idle and disruptive

Paul had one thing in common with Dutch Calvinists of a couple of generations ago: he didn’t like idleness. “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop!” was a saying I heard a lot as a boy.

Here’s Paul’s version, from 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13: “In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers and sisters, to keep away from every believer who is idle and disruptive and does not live according to the teaching you received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone’s food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you. We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to offer ourselves as a model for you to imitate. For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: ‘The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.’

“We hear that some among you are idle and disruptive. They are not busy; they are busybodies. Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the food they eat. And as for you, brothers and sisters, never tire of doing what is good.”

The way Paul seems to see it is if you tend to your own business you won’t have time to stick your nose into other people’s. Idle people not only have time to gossip and stir up controversy, but they rely on others to support them. They’re a burden, a drain on resources.

This isn’t a point about government programs. This is a word for people who could be busy but aren’t. And it doesn’t have anything to do with jobs; there are many busy Christians who serve all day long and never collect a dime. There are many who leave their day jobs and spend evenings doing good works.

There are also people who never seem to roll up their sleeves, but instead snipe at people from their comfortable seats at the coffee table after church. I think those are the ones Paul didn’t like.

At work we have an informal rule that you can’t complain about something you’re not willing to help work on. If you won’t contribute to the solution, then the problem evidently doesn’t bother you all that much. It’s a way that we keep idlers from turning into busybodies. And it might be a good rule for the church.

love the truth

I wonder if any of us really prefer the truth.

People avoid the doctor because they fear they may have high blood pressure, or high cholesterol. Until they know for sure, they can live as if they don’t. The problem is, their ignorance doesn’t change the truth, and their concern suggests they might have an inkling anyway.

We also seldom enjoy the truth about what people think of us. Occasionally we hear a comment or see something written for someone else about us, and we get a hint that we’re not as universally loved as we would wish to be. Even those closest to us have thoughts about us they don’t share. Do we really want to know?

I don’t think we have to know every unpleasant thing there is to know, but I do think we should try to be active seekers for the truth. That’s a defining characteristic of Christians, that we believe there is an absolute truth. In fact, Jesus said the truth will free us.

Paul repeated that truth in the opposite, in 2 Thessalonians 2:10: “They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.” In Paul’s view, salvation is closely linked with not just truth-finding, but truth loving. That’s because truth is what is real about God and his world. All untruth is an attempt to obscure God.

That’s hard these days. We’d rather let our tribe, defined by ethnicity and political affiliation, tell us what to believe, and which side to champion. We don’t want to hear and defend the truth that there are only two genders and only one way to do marriage right. We don’t want to acknowledge that Jesus told us to look after the marginalized, not brutalize or take advantage of them. We prefer to lock down our borders and carry our guns rather than believe Jesus when he tells us not to fear people who can only hurt our bodies. Jesus says fear the one who will jeopardize your soul, possibly by getting you to consider other people animals or at least expendable law-breakers. 

We all have hard truths to face. Our favorite sin is as bad as the sins we condemn in others. Our favorite candidate doesn’t love America any more than the other side. Our Lord would not choose for us most of the fights we spend our energy on.

This morning, Paul gives us a choice. We can continue to go along in order to get along, or we can learn to love the truth and thereby save ourselves. But how can we love something we won’t even acknowledge?

fruition

Paul was so good at praying. You may have read some of my thoughts on his other prayers; here’s another great one from 2 Thessalonians 1:11-12: “With this in mind, we constantly pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling, and that by his power he may bring to fruition your every desire for goodness and your every deed prompted by faith. We pray this so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

I love how Paul zeroes in on what’s important. No praying for a good day, a successful trip, excellent grades, recovery from a cold. Paul prays this prayer in three sets of twos: two requests, two fruits and two outcomes.

The two requests are at the core of Christian purpose. Paul prays that the Thessalonians will be worthy of God’s calling, and that God’s power would bring fruition. That fruition Paul prayed for in two ways; fruitfulness in their desires for goodness and in their faith-prompted deeds. Paul wanted these things for the Thessalonians because they would lead to two outcomes: that the name of Jesus would be glorified in them, and that they in turn would be glorified (read made holy) in him.

Paul’s elegant symmetry in composing this prayer makes it ring for me. It becomes a memorable little Gospel-in-a-nutshell, that by God’s power in making our desires and deeds fruitful, we can be glorified and glorify God. All of this is what it means to be worthy of our calling.

It’s another great model of how to pray earnestly and graciously for each other.

readiness

For 25 years I was an officer in the Army National Guard. During that time, regulations were updated, new MTOEs were issued (those are the organizational documents that authorize soldiers and equipment), uniforms changed. There was one constant, though. From Basic Training on, the mantra of the National Guard was readiness, which I came to understand as a high level of preparedness that would enable effective response to almost any contingency.

I believed wholeheartedly in the concept of readiness. I still do. It seems both pragmatic and responsible to look at life, estimate what it might require of me, and work to prepare myself in advance. The problem is, in civilian life what readiness means is less easily understood.

Paul helped me a little bit this morning with this from 1 Thessalonians 5:8: “But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet.”

My takeaway from this verse is to guard my heart and my mind. A breastplate goes over your chest to protect your heart, and a helmet goes on your head to protect your brain. Paul seems to be saying that life is going attack me in those two places, heart and mind, so part of readiness is learning to defend them.

What’s interesting is his idea of protection. For the heart, it’s faith and love; faith in God and love for him and for others. Those things, Paul says, will give me a robust heart that can withstand disappointment, poor treatment and neglect.

For the mind, Paul suggests hope. Hope will give me mental resilience because I’ll be able to understand why I shouldn’t be overwhelmed in the current moment. I’ll stay focused on heaven, so earth won’t seem so important or so intimidating.

Again, Paul returns to faith, hope and love, the three spiritual gifts he describes in the Love Chapter. These three, he notes there, will always persist, so what better tools for readiness?

control

I think the American church has a problem with gender bias, but it’s not the one everyone is talking about. Oh, we’ve elevated men too high and women not enough, that’s true. But I’m talking about the idea that somehow men are incapable of controlling themselves, and women are irresistible sirens. It’s this idea that when something inappropriate happens men are given the benefit of the doubt, and women are given an extra measure of blame.

Women are in a tough spot in the church. We want them to be as pretty as they can make themselves, with clean, styled hair, and fashionable clothes and make-up. But when they are pretty we men say we just can’t help ourselves, that those temptresses planted evil thoughts in our brains.

That’s a pretty low view of men.

Paul would have said that Christian men are quite a bit better than that. Here’s what he expected, from 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8: “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister. The Lord will punish all those who commit such sins, as we told you and warned you before. For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. Therefore, anyone who rejects this instruction does not reject a human being but God, the very God who gives you his Holy Spirit.”

Paul is pretty clear: men can control their bodies and their lusts. They can be holy and honorable. They by nature of the strengths designed into their character and the further strengthening of their spirits by the Spirit are fully able not to take advantage of people they’re attracted to.

And the way they can do that is one of those things that’s understood in a minute but takes a life-time to do: we become sanctified. By living every day as close to God as we can, by looking every minute to the leadership of our Lord Jesus, by listening in everything to the wise counsel of the Holy Spirit, we become more and more godly, more and more like the men we were created to be. We do in fact become more holy.

But here’s the thing, guys: we’re holy enough now to control our thoughts and actions. God has a way out of every temptation. When you give in, it’s because you want to.

So here’s an idea: let’s just knock it off. Our reactions to other people are controlled by us, not them. We’re not a bunch of frat boys, we’re sons of the king and brothers to Jesus. And to all the sisters created in his image. So let’s man up and stop with the excuses.  

increasing love and strong hearts

Again today, I’m struck by the specificity with which Paul prays. Look at this, from 1 Thessalonians 3:12-13: “May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you. May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones.”

Two very specific requests: that their love would increase and that their hearts would be strengthened. And both with a specific purpose.

Increasing love, Paul felt, would overflow onto other people. Strong hearts would enable them to be blameless and holy. What he really wanted was for them to please Jesus and love other people. In order to get that for them, he prayed for increasing love and strong hearts.

I’m reminded that, the closer I get to praying in God’s will, the more specific I can be and still have confidence I’m seeing things the way God does.

shared lives

There’s a danger we have in the established church when it comes to outreach. The danger is that we like the “out” in outreach too much – we want it to stay out there and not sully our pristine buildings and highly-controlled worship services.

That’s not the way Paul saw it. This is typical of him, from 1 Thessalonians 2:8: “Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well.”

Do you see it? Paul was just as happy to share his life with these people as he was to share the Gospel. Paul didn’t care if they were pagans, former idolaters, former sinners or Jews. He was pleased to live right among them, share meals with them, talk and laugh in the cool evenings, sitting on the rooftops or in the square or in a lamp-lit room as the sun went down. 

It’s so easy for us to send money to missionaries, or to mentor a new church plant. We like our occasional visits to the soup kitchen or the prison ministry. But isn’t it often different when people come into our church and don’t know how to dress, or behave, or keep control of their kids? And even if we’re willing to welcome them to church, are we willing to include them in our lives? Will we invite them to game night or to walk with us in the morning? Do we want to have dinner with them?

I suspect that the reason Paul shared the gospel and his life simultaneously is because the gospel doesn’t mean much otherwise. How can we bring a message of forgiveness, acceptance and inclusion if we won’t then demonstrate those precious gifts by our own behavior?

People need both things, the gospel and to be part of community. Doesn’t our mission, then, involve bringing both?