Lions and Noses and God, Oh My!

Romans 12:2

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Remember Siegfried and Roy? Even as a punch line, you know the name. They had Tigers they trained as part of their act and then one day the Tiger attacked and people where aghast. How could this happen? Why, because it was a TIGER. We humans seem to become overly shocked when things act within their nature that we "wish" would happen otherwise and this includes ourselves. We generally are surprised at our own nature when we act against how we perceive ourselves. I think this is why we are always so shocked at politics. We think we have trained the tiger and we are demoralized when it eats our face off.

We pick sides; left, right, center, Democrat, Republican, etc. We pick sides and then we imprint ourselves into a certain morality on how we perceive that political party to be. Therefore, when the ideals of that party are attacked, we feel personally attacked and we lose the ability to self-critique. When we lose the ability to self-critique we have created an idol out of our political party, candidate, and self. When we lose the ability to self-critique we forget that our call is to follow Jesus first and not our gut reactions and our self-interests.   

The late songwriter Rich Mullins wrote in his song The Maker of Noses, "They said boy you just follow your heart, but my heart just led me into my chest. They said follow your nose, But the direction changed every time I went and turned my head. And they said boy you just follow your dreams, But my dreams were only misty notions. But the Father of hearts and the Maker of noses And the Giver of dreams He's the one I have chosen, and I will follow Him".

We are a conflicted and confused people walking around speaking with confidence about things we are conflicted and confused about because we believe that to do anything less is a sign of weakness. Our politics are messed up, our leaders are messed up, and we are messed up. If we want to navigate this life well, if we desire to be more than our whims, more than our ideologies, more than our gut reactions, then we must follow someone more rooted and with a broader scope of vision. I can think of no one better than the one who created vision, Jesus Christ.

Following Jesus will not lead you away from politics and matters of social justice. Following Jesus will not lead you away from matters of principal, and change, and life. Truthfully, you might find yourself more immersed in things that make you a bit uncomfortable. Following Jesus, however, will change how you think about life, how you engage the uncomfortable, how you disagree, how you see the world. If you find that following Jesus does not challenge your ideologies, your self-image, your view of others, then I challenge you to question if you are truly following him at all. 

Remember that God is described as a lion and a lion has teeth. A lion is powerful and lions are not tame. Our God is not one that we conform to our own sensibilities. To do so is like expecting a lion to act like a puppy dog. No, we have a God who desires to have us conform to his glory. Maybe in this world of political ideologies and anger and shame, we step away from our self-righteousness, our lack of self-critique, and begin following Jesus Christ and his image for us.  

Peace and Blessings,

Pastor Cory Britt