From Radically Normal, chapter 11, “Happy Holiness.” I want you to notice the power of stories (especially embarrassing ones) and humor to make strong, memorable points. This chapter is a good example of the writing skills I can bring to your project, either as a ghostwriter or developmental editor.
Chapter 11: Happy Holiness
Chapter 11: Happy Holiness
One fine summer afternoon, I was in the drive thru at Starbucks and had a customer order a venti, sugar-free, heavy cream, no whip, Caramel Frappuccino Light. Allow me to translate: that’s a 20 ounce Frappuccino, made with sugar-free caramel syrup, but instead of milk, she wanted unwhipped whipping cream, but (and she was very clear about this) she didn’t want any whipped cream on it.
As she pulled up to the window, I was curious to see what sort of person would order a venti, heavy cream Frappuccino. I don’t want to be insensitive, so I’ll just say she looked the part. I chatted with her as her drink was being made and asked (as casually as I could) why she didn’t want any whipped cream on her drink.
“It’s because of the sugar in the whipped cream. I’m on this diet that lets me have as much fat as I want, but no sugar.”
As I handed it to her, I said, “Just so you know, the base syrup we use has a little bit of sugar in it. Not much, but a little.”
“Oh,” she said, “That must be why I haven’t lost any weight.”
It’s not very often I’m left speechless, but words failed me. I just grunted some sort of “goodbye” as she drove off. Let me get this straight – there were almost 70 grams of fat in that drink, and she thought a couple of grams of sugar was the reason she wasn’t losing any weight?
Even now, I have to wonder: did she really believe that that sugar was the reason for her weight problem? Somewhere deep down, she must have known that losing all that weight might require a little more work than skipping the whipped cream on a 750 calorie drink. Now, it’s easy to point fingers because her problem was so visible, but all of us crave quick fixes to deep problems and quick fixes usually make the problem worse.
When I was young (but old enough to know better), I hated to stop playing when I had to go to the bathroom, so I’d just pee my pants. Ah, that brings back memories. Cold days were the worst. I vividly remember that feeling of having to pee so bad but not wanting to go inside. There were a few glorious moments when I enjoyed the relief and the newly acquired warmth. But the relief was short-lived. Very soon the warm turned to cold, then came the chaffing of my skin against the cold, wet denim, followed by that distinctive smell. I continued doing that up until third grade, my only year in public school. The remembered shame of peeing my pants on a field trip was motivation enough for me to start using the bathroom.
I believe all sin is the moral equivalent of peeing our pants. It always begins as a shortsighted solution to a genuine problem or a short-lived pleasure at the expense of long term happiness. I basically see God’s rules like him telling us to use the bathroom.
The Big Lie
Why do we choose to sin? Because part of us believes that we’ll be happier doing what’s wrong. That, of course, is a lie. It’s not just any lie; it’s a repackaging of the first recorded lie. It’s the same lie that keeps getting repeated down through the ages, telling us that sin is more fun than righteousness:
Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ ” “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. ”For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:1-5).
Do you see what Satan is doing? Do you see his tactic? He’s questioning God’s goodness. “Here is this great gift,” says Satan, “but God doesn’t want you to have it. He’s holding out on you.” This lie works so well that he continues to use it, again and again. Too often, Satan’s lie seems plausible. If you were to ask 100 random people, “Who do you think is more fun, the Devil or God?” who do you think would get more votes? (If no one was watching, how would you vote?)
I once heard about the dean of a Christian college that routinely denied reasonable requests simply because he thought it was good for the students to hear “no.” Is that how you picture God? I think he must be troubled by how many people see him that way, especially since Jesus was so clear about what the Father is like:
Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! (Matthew 7:9-11)
As a father, this is a picture of God that profoundly impacts me because I know how much I delight in giving good gifts to Grace and Sarah. It also helps me understand why God says “no” so often. How would I respond if my daughters asked to play with my sharpest kitchen knife? That being the case, how should God respond when we ask for a snake, instead of a fish? I’m convinced that we ask him for a lot of snakes, stones, thorns, and rabid squirrels because we’re too foolish to know how harmful they are. Do his refusals mean that he’s a killjoy or loving and protective father?
My daughters don’t always understand (or like) what I do as their father. When Grace was eight months old, she got a deep gash on her lip. The doctor said that she’d need stitches in order to avoid a scar. If she would’ve been a boy, a scar would’ve been fine, but not for my little princess. Do you know how they give stitches to a baby who is incapable of understanding the purpose behind the pain? By holding her down against her will and forcing her to lie perfectly still. There were enough nurses to hold her, but I insisted on helping. I wouldn’t let her go through that alone. I still get choked up when I remember pinning her arms down and trying to speak calming words as I struggled to hold back the tears. If I, though I’m evil in comparison to God, can love my daughter in ways incomprehensible to her, how much more can I believe that God is indeed good and compassionate in all he does as my Father? Maybe, just maybe, even his rules are good and perfect gifts.
In the movie “Inception,” Leonardo DiCaprio’s character engages in corporate espionage by sneaking into people’s dreams to steal sensitive information. One client, however, wants him to do something everyone thinks is impossible – implant an idea into a target. That got me thinking, if I could implant just one idea into everyone’s mind, what would it be? Just this: “God’s commands bring joy.” One idea to contradict that one lie. I want people to believe, at a gut-level, that God’s rules will bring joy, not misery. I don’t have that technology, so I wrote this book.
Rotten Fruit
One of the best things I’ve ever read about sin is C. S. Lewis’ “Screwtape Letters.” It’s written as a collection of letters from an experienced demon, Uncle Screwtape, to a new tempter. In the process, Lewis helps us think differently about the nature of sin and Satan. Gone are the comic images of horns and pitchfork (as well as the suave and urbane Satan). Instead we see Satan and his demons as they really are. I once listened to a set of lectures about Lewis and something the lecturer said struck me so hard that I went back and listened to it over and over again and wrote it out verbatim. That Sunday, my sermon was inspired by these words:
?Lewis understood, as many Christians even may not, that it’s Satan, not Christ, who hates the physical appetites and the proper joy linked to them. It’s Satan, not Christ, who is the great teetotaler, the joyless puritan, the cosmic killjoy.... 'The thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy; but I come that you might have life, and have it to the full' [John 10:10]."[1]
If Satan is more fun than God, it’s only in the same way that the drug dealer handing out “free” samples to junior high students is more fun than the police officer trying to chase him away. The fun is nothing more than the bait to lead us into misery. Screwtape writes:
"[God] is a hedonist at heart. All those fasts and vigils and stakes and crosses are only a façade. Or like the foam on the seashore. Out at sea, out in His sea, there is pleasure, and more pleasure. He makes no secret of it; at His right hand are ‘pleasures for evermore.’ [Ps. 18:11]...
He has filled his world full of pleasures. There are things for humans to do all day long without his minding in the least – sleeping, washing, eating, drinking, making love, playing, praying, working. Everything has to be twisted before it is any use to us."
Screwtape Letters, Letter XXII
For reasons both financial and philosophical, Marilyn and I are members of a local gleaners group. Basically, gleaners gather and share past date food donated by local grocery stores and restaurants. It’s like recycling, but for food. Members sort through the food, putting like foods together and picking out food that’s too rotten to be redeemed. All of the rotten food is thrown into a big trashcan and taken home by some members to feed to their chickens. Try to imagine that trashcan, filled with moldy strawberries, smashed tomatoes, and other things you can’t quite identify. Think of the smell after it has sat in the sun and stewed in its own juices. Think of the cloud of fruit flies. Now imagine pulling out a handful of that goop and shoving it in your mouth. My gag reflexes just kicked in.
To me, that is a picture of sin. Sin is not a random list of fun things that God doesn’t want us to do. Rather, our Creator, who loves us and knows how we tick, says, “Here is what will destroy you and those around you, what will destroy your relationships with other people, and will destroy your relationship with me. Let’s call it sin. Don’t do it, it’s rotten, it’s poison, it’s sickness – run away from it.”
When I read the Bible and see things like: don’t cheat on your wife, don’t get drunk, don’t love this world or the things of this world, I see God standing there, in front of that trashcan saying, “Don’t eat this! You think you want it, but you really don’t.” And when I read things like: love your neighbors, forgive others and it’s better to give than receive, I see him handing me a perfect peach – ripe, sweet, juicy, without a single bruise – saying, “This is what you really want. This is what I want for you.”
The point of this chapter (and the undercurrent of the entire book) is that wholehearted devotion to God is the best path to joy. Real joy. Earthly and spiritual joy. Joy in this life and the next.[2] Not necessarily the shortest or easiest path to joy, but the best path to the deepest, most permanent joy. By the way, there wasn’t a sharp distinction between temporal and eternal joy in Biblical thought. That was a later, non-Biblical addition. In her book God and the Art of Happiness, professor and theologian Ellen Charry shows how Greek philosophy (especially Neo-Platonism) unduly influenced the early church to emphasize eternal joy at the expense of earthly. This unbiblical influence is with us still.
Duty or Delight?
It seems to me that complacent Christians don’t believe that all of God’s rules are meant to bring earthly joy, which means they don’t believe that God genuinely want us our best. Our actions usually prove that this is what we believe – if we really believed that obedience brought joy, we wouldn’t need to be told to do the right thing. Instead, obedience is seen as the spiritual equivalent of eating your lima beans (I detest lima beans).
Obsessive Christians don’t really believe that obedience brings earthly joy either, so they obey God out of joyless obligation. Obsessive Christians keep shoving the lima beans down their throat because they’re supposed to. Not because they like them but because they believe that they have to suffer now in order to be happy in heaven.
It’s Radically Normal to obey God because you know that obedience brings joy and disobedience brings misery. Does that sound too self–focused? Many Christians assume it must be better to obey God out of a sense of duty than in hopes of reward. Yet far more often than not, God calls us to obey for our own sake rather than duty. Just a few examples:
Keep his decrees and commands, which I am giving you today, so that it may go well with you and your children after you and that you may live long in the land the LORD your God gives you for all time (Deuteronomy 4:40).
The longest chapter in the Bible is dedicated to knowing and obeying God’s law. It begins by saying:
"Happy are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the LORD.
Happy are those who keep his decrees, who seek him with their whole heart,
who also do no wrong, but walk in his ways."
(Psalm 119:1-3 NRSV)
The Bible is filled with sacrifice and suffering for the sake of Jesus, yet he unashamedly calls us to die so that we may live and give up so that we may gain more.
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done (Matthew 16:24-27).
Never forget that he sacrificed himself “for the joy set before him” (Hebrews 12:2). Shouldn’t our obedience and sacrifice also be motivated by joy as well?
Yes, we also obey in order to glorify God. As Jesus said, “let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16) And, yes, God occasionally commands things with nothing more than “because I said so” (such as when God tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac (Genesis 22:1-19)). Yet we have been listening to Satan’s lie that “God is miserly” for so long that I believe I need to help us rediscover the Bible’s emphasis on obeying for the sake of joy.
Sin’s Slavery
In the same way that I want to instill in you the belief that God’s commands bring joy, I also want us to stop thinking of sin as something we get away with and start seeing it as things we’re saved from. We never get away with sin. We may be forgiven and restored, but sin always damages us and the ones we love.
The problem is that we frequently cannot understand how sin will bring misery. There’s a lot of great materials on how to be freed from sin and I’m not trying to duplicate those, but first you have to want to be free. I want to share with you a two-step process I’ve used when I can’t understand how obeying God will make me happier:
1. Think through the consequences
I’d like to invent a contraption I’d call “The Consequence Inverter.” This is how it would work: let’s say I buy myself an expensive gadget we can’t afford – without telling Marilyn. The Consequence Inverter would make me suffer through all the consequences before opening the box. I’d have to tell Marilyn about my dishonesty and spend months rebuilding trust. I’d have to pay off the credit card and explain to my daughters why we can’t afford to buy them new school clothes. After all that, I’d be allowed to play with my new toy. But the most important feature of the Consequence Inverter would be that I could return the gadget at any point and undo all of the consequences.
If you had a Consequence Inverter, how often do you think you’d push through all the consequences until you “got” to experience sin’s fun? That is the purpose of this step – asking God (and perhaps a couple of wise friends or your pastor) to help you see the consequences of that sin you’re hanging on to. More often than not, you’ll be able to see how obedience will indeed make you happier.
The more clearly I understand the consequences of sin and how easily we slide from little sins to big sins, the less “worth it” even minor sins seem. I know that any sin, left unchecked, can lead me into hell on earth. For instance, when I’m tempted to gaze at an attractive woman (other than my wife), I know that it won’t be enough. Eventually I’ll start looking at questionable images on my computer. That will lead to unquestionably bad images. If I continue on that path, it would cost me everything that means anything to me: my relationship with God, my marriage, my family, and my church. Knowing all that, whenever I’m tempted to look, I remind myself, “That is the doorway to hell on earth.” I’m not being dramatic – I’ve seen it happen far too many times.
2. Trust God more than yourself
What about when we can’t see the negative consequences? Just as my 8 month-old daughter couldn’t understand why I let the doctor poke her with a needle, I fully expect that God’s ways won’t always make sense to me (him being God and me not). That is where trusting God comes in:
"Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight."
(Proverbs 3:5-6)
This passage doesn’t mean “don’t think”; the entire book of Proverbs praises wisdom and clear thinking. Not leaning on your understanding means that whenever your understanding doesn’t line up with what God says, you trust him more than yourself. It’s assuming he knows better than you.
Only slightly off topic: I know many Christians who do not believe that the entire Bible is “God breathed” and feel free to dismiss various parts as manmade. For the sake of argument, let’s say that was true (though I most assuredly don’t believe it): isn’t it a tad bit convenient that the supposedly uninspired parts just happen to be the parts they don’t agree with? What are the odds?!? I mean, why shouldn’t the “God is love” part be manmade and hell be the only true part? I really don’t understand the entire Bible and there are parts of it that I honestly like, but I start with the assumption that God’s ways are above mine and seek to learn what he has to teach me even in those parts. When I approach Scripture with that humility, I frequently discover that the parts I like the least are the ones I need the most.[3]
At its core, all sin is a type of unbelief, not trusting God and his character – we believe we’ll be happier and healthier ignoring him and doing it our way. Trusting God more than yourself begins with one of the best, most honest, and most powerful prayers in the Bible: “I believe, help my unbelief!”[4] You may not yet be ready to get rid of the sin and you may not even believe that obedience will bring joy, but you’re choosing to submit to God’s will instead of your own.
Once you start wanting to obey (on any level), you’re switching teams and working with (not against) God to remove your sin. And God, who is rich in mercy, grace, and forgiveness, is also very patient. He knows how weak you are, he isn’t surprised by your failures; he wants to free you from the sin that entangles you. This is never about being good enough for God or earning his approval. If it were, we’d all be sunk – without the cross this chapter would be as theoretical as driving to the moon. Without grace, we could no more be righteous than my ‘92 Buick could take me to the Apollo 11 landing site.
The purpose of this chapter isn’t convincing you to try harder to be good. Rather, I want to help you recognize that righteousness is one of the best gifts God can give. Holiness isn’t an obligation as much as a benefit of following Jesus.
I’ve been building up to this next chapter, not because it’s the most important but because it strikes very close to home. It’s time to talk about money and the stuff it buys. What’s the Radically Normal approach to money? Is having less stuff more holy than having more? Did Jesus really tell us to sell our possessions? This next chapter might get interesting, not to mention personal.
[1] “Smuggled Theology – Chronicles of Narnia, I.” Life and Writings of C. S. Lewis. The Teaching Company, 2000. As a side note, it is historically inaccurate to paint the Puritans as “joyless,” a fact that both Lewis and Markos were well aware of. Markos was simply using the term as popularly understood.
[2] Ellen Charry, God and the Art of Happiness (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing, 2010), 3-153.
[3] For instance, I struggle with how often the psalmists attack their enemies so vindictively. But C. S. Lewis points out, “If the Jews cursed more bitterly than the Pagans this was, I think, in part because they took right and wrong more seriously.” (Reflection on the Psalms). Those Psalms help me realize how casual I am about sin’s scourge in the world.
[4] Mark 9:24
One fine summer afternoon, I was in the drive thru at Starbucks and had a customer order a venti, sugar-free, heavy cream, no whip, Caramel Frappuccino Light. Allow me to translate: that’s a 20 ounce Frappuccino, made with sugar-free caramel syrup, but instead of milk, she wanted unwhipped whipping cream, but (and she was very clear about this) she didn’t want any whipped cream on it.
As she pulled up to the window, I was curious to see what sort of person would order a venti, heavy cream Frappuccino. I don’t want to be insensitive, so I’ll just say she looked the part. I chatted with her as her drink was being made and asked (as casually as I could) why she didn’t want any whipped cream on her drink.
“It’s because of the sugar in the whipped cream. I’m on this diet that lets me have as much fat as I want, but no sugar.”
As I handed it to her, I said, “Just so you know, the base syrup we use has a little bit of sugar in it. Not much, but a little.”
“Oh,” she said, “That must be why I haven’t lost any weight.”
It’s not very often I’m left speechless, but words failed me. I just grunted some sort of “goodbye” as she drove off. Let me get this straight – there were almost 70 grams of fat in that drink, and she thought a couple of grams of sugar was the reason she wasn’t losing any weight?
Even now, I have to wonder: did she really believe that that sugar was the reason for her weight problem? Somewhere deep down, she must have known that losing all that weight might require a little more work than skipping the whipped cream on a 750 calorie drink. Now, it’s easy to point fingers because her problem was so visible, but all of us crave quick fixes to deep problems and quick fixes usually make the problem worse.
When I was young (but old enough to know better), I hated to stop playing when I had to go to the bathroom, so I’d just pee my pants. Ah, that brings back memories. Cold days were the worst. I vividly remember that feeling of having to pee so bad but not wanting to go inside. There were a few glorious moments when I enjoyed the relief and the newly acquired warmth. But the relief was short-lived. Very soon the warm turned to cold, then came the chaffing of my skin against the cold, wet denim, followed by that distinctive smell. I continued doing that up until third grade, my only year in public school. The remembered shame of peeing my pants on a field trip was motivation enough for me to start using the bathroom.
I believe all sin is the moral equivalent of peeing our pants. It always begins as a shortsighted solution to a genuine problem or a short-lived pleasure at the expense of long term happiness. I basically see God’s rules like him telling us to use the bathroom.
The Big Lie
Why do we choose to sin? Because part of us believes that we’ll be happier doing what’s wrong. That, of course, is a lie. It’s not just any lie; it’s a repackaging of the first recorded lie. It’s the same lie that keeps getting repeated down through the ages, telling us that sin is more fun than righteousness:
Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ ” “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. ”For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:1-5).
Do you see what Satan is doing? Do you see his tactic? He’s questioning God’s goodness. “Here is this great gift,” says Satan, “but God doesn’t want you to have it. He’s holding out on you.” This lie works so well that he continues to use it, again and again. Too often, Satan’s lie seems plausible. If you were to ask 100 random people, “Who do you think is more fun, the Devil or God?” who do you think would get more votes? (If no one was watching, how would you vote?)
I once heard about the dean of a Christian college that routinely denied reasonable requests simply because he thought it was good for the students to hear “no.” Is that how you picture God? I think he must be troubled by how many people see him that way, especially since Jesus was so clear about what the Father is like:
Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! (Matthew 7:9-11)
As a father, this is a picture of God that profoundly impacts me because I know how much I delight in giving good gifts to Grace and Sarah. It also helps me understand why God says “no” so often. How would I respond if my daughters asked to play with my sharpest kitchen knife? That being the case, how should God respond when we ask for a snake, instead of a fish? I’m convinced that we ask him for a lot of snakes, stones, thorns, and rabid squirrels because we’re too foolish to know how harmful they are. Do his refusals mean that he’s a killjoy or loving and protective father?
My daughters don’t always understand (or like) what I do as their father. When Grace was eight months old, she got a deep gash on her lip. The doctor said that she’d need stitches in order to avoid a scar. If she would’ve been a boy, a scar would’ve been fine, but not for my little princess. Do you know how they give stitches to a baby who is incapable of understanding the purpose behind the pain? By holding her down against her will and forcing her to lie perfectly still. There were enough nurses to hold her, but I insisted on helping. I wouldn’t let her go through that alone. I still get choked up when I remember pinning her arms down and trying to speak calming words as I struggled to hold back the tears. If I, though I’m evil in comparison to God, can love my daughter in ways incomprehensible to her, how much more can I believe that God is indeed good and compassionate in all he does as my Father? Maybe, just maybe, even his rules are good and perfect gifts.
In the movie “Inception,” Leonardo DiCaprio’s character engages in corporate espionage by sneaking into people’s dreams to steal sensitive information. One client, however, wants him to do something everyone thinks is impossible – implant an idea into a target. That got me thinking, if I could implant just one idea into everyone’s mind, what would it be? Just this: “God’s commands bring joy.” One idea to contradict that one lie. I want people to believe, at a gut-level, that God’s rules will bring joy, not misery. I don’t have that technology, so I wrote this book.
Rotten Fruit
One of the best things I’ve ever read about sin is C. S. Lewis’ “Screwtape Letters.” It’s written as a collection of letters from an experienced demon, Uncle Screwtape, to a new tempter. In the process, Lewis helps us think differently about the nature of sin and Satan. Gone are the comic images of horns and pitchfork (as well as the suave and urbane Satan). Instead we see Satan and his demons as they really are. I once listened to a set of lectures about Lewis and something the lecturer said struck me so hard that I went back and listened to it over and over again and wrote it out verbatim. That Sunday, my sermon was inspired by these words:
?Lewis understood, as many Christians even may not, that it’s Satan, not Christ, who hates the physical appetites and the proper joy linked to them. It’s Satan, not Christ, who is the great teetotaler, the joyless puritan, the cosmic killjoy.... 'The thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy; but I come that you might have life, and have it to the full' [John 10:10]."[1]
If Satan is more fun than God, it’s only in the same way that the drug dealer handing out “free” samples to junior high students is more fun than the police officer trying to chase him away. The fun is nothing more than the bait to lead us into misery. Screwtape writes:
"[God] is a hedonist at heart. All those fasts and vigils and stakes and crosses are only a façade. Or like the foam on the seashore. Out at sea, out in His sea, there is pleasure, and more pleasure. He makes no secret of it; at His right hand are ‘pleasures for evermore.’ [Ps. 18:11]...
He has filled his world full of pleasures. There are things for humans to do all day long without his minding in the least – sleeping, washing, eating, drinking, making love, playing, praying, working. Everything has to be twisted before it is any use to us."
Screwtape Letters, Letter XXII
For reasons both financial and philosophical, Marilyn and I are members of a local gleaners group. Basically, gleaners gather and share past date food donated by local grocery stores and restaurants. It’s like recycling, but for food. Members sort through the food, putting like foods together and picking out food that’s too rotten to be redeemed. All of the rotten food is thrown into a big trashcan and taken home by some members to feed to their chickens. Try to imagine that trashcan, filled with moldy strawberries, smashed tomatoes, and other things you can’t quite identify. Think of the smell after it has sat in the sun and stewed in its own juices. Think of the cloud of fruit flies. Now imagine pulling out a handful of that goop and shoving it in your mouth. My gag reflexes just kicked in.
To me, that is a picture of sin. Sin is not a random list of fun things that God doesn’t want us to do. Rather, our Creator, who loves us and knows how we tick, says, “Here is what will destroy you and those around you, what will destroy your relationships with other people, and will destroy your relationship with me. Let’s call it sin. Don’t do it, it’s rotten, it’s poison, it’s sickness – run away from it.”
When I read the Bible and see things like: don’t cheat on your wife, don’t get drunk, don’t love this world or the things of this world, I see God standing there, in front of that trashcan saying, “Don’t eat this! You think you want it, but you really don’t.” And when I read things like: love your neighbors, forgive others and it’s better to give than receive, I see him handing me a perfect peach – ripe, sweet, juicy, without a single bruise – saying, “This is what you really want. This is what I want for you.”
The point of this chapter (and the undercurrent of the entire book) is that wholehearted devotion to God is the best path to joy. Real joy. Earthly and spiritual joy. Joy in this life and the next.[2] Not necessarily the shortest or easiest path to joy, but the best path to the deepest, most permanent joy. By the way, there wasn’t a sharp distinction between temporal and eternal joy in Biblical thought. That was a later, non-Biblical addition. In her book God and the Art of Happiness, professor and theologian Ellen Charry shows how Greek philosophy (especially Neo-Platonism) unduly influenced the early church to emphasize eternal joy at the expense of earthly. This unbiblical influence is with us still.
Duty or Delight?
It seems to me that complacent Christians don’t believe that all of God’s rules are meant to bring earthly joy, which means they don’t believe that God genuinely want us our best. Our actions usually prove that this is what we believe – if we really believed that obedience brought joy, we wouldn’t need to be told to do the right thing. Instead, obedience is seen as the spiritual equivalent of eating your lima beans (I detest lima beans).
Obsessive Christians don’t really believe that obedience brings earthly joy either, so they obey God out of joyless obligation. Obsessive Christians keep shoving the lima beans down their throat because they’re supposed to. Not because they like them but because they believe that they have to suffer now in order to be happy in heaven.
It’s Radically Normal to obey God because you know that obedience brings joy and disobedience brings misery. Does that sound too self–focused? Many Christians assume it must be better to obey God out of a sense of duty than in hopes of reward. Yet far more often than not, God calls us to obey for our own sake rather than duty. Just a few examples:
Keep his decrees and commands, which I am giving you today, so that it may go well with you and your children after you and that you may live long in the land the LORD your God gives you for all time (Deuteronomy 4:40).
The longest chapter in the Bible is dedicated to knowing and obeying God’s law. It begins by saying:
"Happy are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the LORD.
Happy are those who keep his decrees, who seek him with their whole heart,
who also do no wrong, but walk in his ways."
(Psalm 119:1-3 NRSV)
The Bible is filled with sacrifice and suffering for the sake of Jesus, yet he unashamedly calls us to die so that we may live and give up so that we may gain more.
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done (Matthew 16:24-27).
Never forget that he sacrificed himself “for the joy set before him” (Hebrews 12:2). Shouldn’t our obedience and sacrifice also be motivated by joy as well?
Yes, we also obey in order to glorify God. As Jesus said, “let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16) And, yes, God occasionally commands things with nothing more than “because I said so” (such as when God tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac (Genesis 22:1-19)). Yet we have been listening to Satan’s lie that “God is miserly” for so long that I believe I need to help us rediscover the Bible’s emphasis on obeying for the sake of joy.
Sin’s Slavery
In the same way that I want to instill in you the belief that God’s commands bring joy, I also want us to stop thinking of sin as something we get away with and start seeing it as things we’re saved from. We never get away with sin. We may be forgiven and restored, but sin always damages us and the ones we love.
The problem is that we frequently cannot understand how sin will bring misery. There’s a lot of great materials on how to be freed from sin and I’m not trying to duplicate those, but first you have to want to be free. I want to share with you a two-step process I’ve used when I can’t understand how obeying God will make me happier:
1. Think through the consequences
I’d like to invent a contraption I’d call “The Consequence Inverter.” This is how it would work: let’s say I buy myself an expensive gadget we can’t afford – without telling Marilyn. The Consequence Inverter would make me suffer through all the consequences before opening the box. I’d have to tell Marilyn about my dishonesty and spend months rebuilding trust. I’d have to pay off the credit card and explain to my daughters why we can’t afford to buy them new school clothes. After all that, I’d be allowed to play with my new toy. But the most important feature of the Consequence Inverter would be that I could return the gadget at any point and undo all of the consequences.
If you had a Consequence Inverter, how often do you think you’d push through all the consequences until you “got” to experience sin’s fun? That is the purpose of this step – asking God (and perhaps a couple of wise friends or your pastor) to help you see the consequences of that sin you’re hanging on to. More often than not, you’ll be able to see how obedience will indeed make you happier.
The more clearly I understand the consequences of sin and how easily we slide from little sins to big sins, the less “worth it” even minor sins seem. I know that any sin, left unchecked, can lead me into hell on earth. For instance, when I’m tempted to gaze at an attractive woman (other than my wife), I know that it won’t be enough. Eventually I’ll start looking at questionable images on my computer. That will lead to unquestionably bad images. If I continue on that path, it would cost me everything that means anything to me: my relationship with God, my marriage, my family, and my church. Knowing all that, whenever I’m tempted to look, I remind myself, “That is the doorway to hell on earth.” I’m not being dramatic – I’ve seen it happen far too many times.
2. Trust God more than yourself
What about when we can’t see the negative consequences? Just as my 8 month-old daughter couldn’t understand why I let the doctor poke her with a needle, I fully expect that God’s ways won’t always make sense to me (him being God and me not). That is where trusting God comes in:
"Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight."
(Proverbs 3:5-6)
This passage doesn’t mean “don’t think”; the entire book of Proverbs praises wisdom and clear thinking. Not leaning on your understanding means that whenever your understanding doesn’t line up with what God says, you trust him more than yourself. It’s assuming he knows better than you.
Only slightly off topic: I know many Christians who do not believe that the entire Bible is “God breathed” and feel free to dismiss various parts as manmade. For the sake of argument, let’s say that was true (though I most assuredly don’t believe it): isn’t it a tad bit convenient that the supposedly uninspired parts just happen to be the parts they don’t agree with? What are the odds?!? I mean, why shouldn’t the “God is love” part be manmade and hell be the only true part? I really don’t understand the entire Bible and there are parts of it that I honestly like, but I start with the assumption that God’s ways are above mine and seek to learn what he has to teach me even in those parts. When I approach Scripture with that humility, I frequently discover that the parts I like the least are the ones I need the most.[3]
At its core, all sin is a type of unbelief, not trusting God and his character – we believe we’ll be happier and healthier ignoring him and doing it our way. Trusting God more than yourself begins with one of the best, most honest, and most powerful prayers in the Bible: “I believe, help my unbelief!”[4] You may not yet be ready to get rid of the sin and you may not even believe that obedience will bring joy, but you’re choosing to submit to God’s will instead of your own.
Once you start wanting to obey (on any level), you’re switching teams and working with (not against) God to remove your sin. And God, who is rich in mercy, grace, and forgiveness, is also very patient. He knows how weak you are, he isn’t surprised by your failures; he wants to free you from the sin that entangles you. This is never about being good enough for God or earning his approval. If it were, we’d all be sunk – without the cross this chapter would be as theoretical as driving to the moon. Without grace, we could no more be righteous than my ‘92 Buick could take me to the Apollo 11 landing site.
The purpose of this chapter isn’t convincing you to try harder to be good. Rather, I want to help you recognize that righteousness is one of the best gifts God can give. Holiness isn’t an obligation as much as a benefit of following Jesus.
I’ve been building up to this next chapter, not because it’s the most important but because it strikes very close to home. It’s time to talk about money and the stuff it buys. What’s the Radically Normal approach to money? Is having less stuff more holy than having more? Did Jesus really tell us to sell our possessions? This next chapter might get interesting, not to mention personal.
[1] “Smuggled Theology – Chronicles of Narnia, I.” Life and Writings of C. S. Lewis. The Teaching Company, 2000. As a side note, it is historically inaccurate to paint the Puritans as “joyless,” a fact that both Lewis and Markos were well aware of. Markos was simply using the term as popularly understood.
[2] Ellen Charry, God and the Art of Happiness (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing, 2010), 3-153.
[3] For instance, I struggle with how often the psalmists attack their enemies so vindictively. But C. S. Lewis points out, “If the Jews cursed more bitterly than the Pagans this was, I think, in part because they took right and wrong more seriously.” (Reflection on the Psalms). Those Psalms help me realize how casual I am about sin’s scourge in the world.
[4] Mark 9:24