From a Distance Things Look Right but They are Not

The Challenges of New Wine in Old Bottles

No man also seweth a piece of new cloth on an old garment: else the new piece that filled it up taketh away from the old, and the rent is made worse.

And no man putteth new wine into old bottles: else the new wine doth burst the bottles, and the wine is spilled, and the bottles will be marred: but new wine must be put into new bottles. Mar 2:21-22.

 

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.  Mat 10:34-36 

A long time ago people knew who their neighbors were, and their brothers and sisters. But Christ appeared and overturned that, by not showing special treatment to his own mother and brethren. Instead He said anyone who did His Father’s will was his mother and sister and brother.

Suddenly divisions erupted everywhere among the Christ’s disciples and their unbelieving families. Fathers put down their foot and declared no child of theirs would become a Christian. But sons and daughters rebelled against their parents and joined the Christian religion, as they still do. Their parents were left with no option but to curse them or kill them. We have come a long way.

Sometimes people listened to Christ’s teachings and they shook their heads. Many even turned away from following Him. To Paul they said he had read too many books. To Christ they said he was mad. But some were not so kind and labeled him the chief of devils.

Christianity, like all higher ideals, will seem like it is for the hopelessly maladjusted in nature.

Then Paul taught that one acknowledges to be a fool first, that they might become wise. Christ taught that unless one becomes like a little child one cannot be converted. Then Paul really rubbed it in by teaching such foreign things as “It is good for a man not to touch a woman.” At that point men who are called men decided this religion should be made extinct.

The apostle also taught that fathers should not provoke their children. But fathers thought not to provoke their children were to deny them the privilege of being called men. And for Paul to ask mature men to become foolish first so they may become wise is to provoke them. It is insulting and treating them like children.

Didn’t these Christians know what qualities constituted a whole man? Real men don’t forgive. They fight. And when they are caught in a lie they will swear it is the truth. To apologize is to be weak and it is not manly at all. It is better to die than to say sorry.

Again you don’t give praise to your children or their mother in their presence. To do so is to make their heads grow bigger. The next thing they will do is to measure their own heads against yours. That is the sure way of losing respect in society and in own family. Finally don’t talk softly. Shout and shake the earth. That way everyone will recognize where the thunder is coming from, and people will avoid your path like the plague. 

But Christ came and poked holes into these beliefs. He taught that real men are meek and humble. Taught to forgive your enemy “seventy times seven” and not to revenge. To consider others better than oneself. And to give to every man “that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again.”

To “bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.” And that if she slaps you on the left cheek it is blessed to offer her the right cheek as well. He also intimated that it is rather convenient to “lend, hoping for nothing again.” Some people thought, as they still do, that this is a perfect recipe for murder.

These are Christ’s teachings on the Sermon on the Mount. You will not hear them being preached in your church at any time soon though.

Touching on marriage and divorce this really vexed the multitude. Even his own disciples loudly wondered what profit there was of all a man’s labour under this sun. The prospect that a man could, in a stroke of a pen, sign his own life sentence left many people shivering.

Then Christ antagonized the rich when he told them bluntly that a camel could easily pass through the eye of a needle than it would be for them to hit heaven. He antagonized men when he taught that husbands should love their wives as themselves. Some mistook this to mean that they become like their wives. So men who knew what it means to be a man felt slighted. On loving your neighbor as yourself Christ antagonized the selfish and the insufferably narcissistic in nature. These became atheists in revenge.

Wherever you look at, then and now, you are sure to find someone who is sourly antagonized by Christ’s teachings. And many hearing Him asked, “From whence hath this man these things?” And men “were astonished with a great astonishment.”

Many got chafed. Many had their hearts calloused.    

These were traditions which men had weighed carefully, had revised in themselves, had formulated them, and that they had writ in large letters in the books of their minds. Their roots extended from their heads to their toes. Now they listened to Christ’s teachings and they felt like He was pulling off their hair one thread after another.

Christ’s religion continues to spark fireworks all over the world. And hatred. And murder.

It is that which men still resist seeing or believing. That a man should leave his house to go and live in another man’s house? Or what did Christ mean by “In my Father’s house are many mansions”?

The New Heights

We crave hard things, and abhor the simple. We crave a really hard salvation, a hard to get heaven and even a harder hell. Christ’s things are too easy. Christ’s salvation is too easy and cheap. It is wrought with “myths and superstitions.” How can a clever man believe these things?

Life is hard. Therefore for one to find its meaning requires that one becomes like a flint. We crave hard things because we believe these hold the real meaning to life. But Christ brings us the simple and we detest Him for insulting our intelligence.

Christ’s love was a love the world did not know, and does not know even now. But He still brings out “the thoughts of many hearts [that the truth] may be revealed.” Then it is in seeing such truth with our own bare eyes, and acknowledging that indeed it is ours, that the door to true freedom is thrown wide open. Apart from that we will continue to harden the doors of our minds.

Christ is the truth. He is the end of all wisdom and knowledge. That constitutes as truth what He has said concerning our hearts, our souls, our minds and our bodies.

Christ lifted the standards of Christian living to new heights. Few Christians living would measure to them. The majorities espouse this new wine but their bottles are in a sorry state. Some have burst and the wine is spilled to the ground. The rent on their cloth grows larger, and their nakedness is exposed. Truth is fallen and it is set out there. In the street.

The challenge is on all true believers, to, as Jude says, “earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.” For “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” This is what we can do according to Paul. “Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle” (2Th 2:15).

  

“Stand fast” has the sense of standing steadfast and unmovable. To “remain standing” in what has been taught.  Not to divert or move away. “Hold” means to “seize or retain” according Strong’s Hebrew and Greek Dictionaries. Traditions are those words which have been transmitted to us. This is the Word of God, which is infallible and unerring, and is without contradiction.

The Christian life is termed by Paul as a “high calling.”  We have been called to “great and noble efforts,” according to Barnes. “It is a calling which is “high,” or “upward, that is, which tends to the skies. The calling of the Christian is from heaven, and to heaven. He has been summoned by God through the gospel of the Lord Jesus to secure the crown. It is placed before and above him in heaven. It may be his, if he will not faint or tire or look backward. It demands his highest efforts, and it is worth all the exertions which a mortal can make even in the longest life.”

Christ called people to abandon their dark days, and to come to the light. Their dark days were and still are their human traditions. Trouble came, as it still does, in trying to break through these fortifications.  But there is nothing impossible with God. You offer yourself to Him and He will do the rest. Or what do you see in yourself, when you view yourself from a distance? Is that the truth or lies contained in there? And are you “man” enough to confess it, to acknowledge and repent? May God grant you the grace of courage to see and to do the right thing – in His eyes.