Destroying Talking Lego Buildings

Suggested Reading: Romans 9:14-29

I've always loved watching the difference between the way little girls play with Legos and the way little boys play with them (please forgive the stereotyping I'm about to do based on my experience). Little girls like to build something and then play with it and admire it. While boys sometimes do that as well, little boys are just as likely to build something for the sole purpose of destroying it. They enjoy putting something together just so they can knock it down and I admit I did the same thing when I was a little boy. When girls and boys play together this can lead to conflict, and eventually to separate building endeavors. Often I hear the little girls ask the question, "Why do you build it if you're just going to knock it down?" and just as often I hear the boys respond with something like, "I built it. I can knock it down if I want to."  Imagine for just a moment, though, if one of those Lego construction projects suddenly spoke up and said, "You can't knock me down! I have rights!" While children might stop and wonder at the suddenly speaking legos, they might just as easily laugh and say, "Oh yeah, I built you and I can knock you down if I want."

As human beings created by God, the human race has grown increasingly arrogant through the centuries, believing we have the right to tell God what he can do and what he can't do. Even Christian theologians today have the audacity today to decide what God can and can't do based on their own ideas and human systems of moralities. Paul fought this same attitude from people who didn't want to face God's judgment for their sin and questioned God's right to act as judge. Paul responded by asking, But who are you, a mere man, to talk back to God? Will what is formed say to the one who formed it, “Why did you make me like this?” Or has the potter no right over the clay, to make from the same lump one piece of pottery for honor and another for dishonor? (Romans 9:20-21, HCSB).

We serve a God who is loving and kind, who extends mercy to us because of His great love for us. But we must never take God's kindness and patience for granted and start believing that God owes us kindness and patience. As his beloved children, we can trust that God will give us mercy because God has promised it to us, but we must never presume upon it. We must never begin to treat God with the attitude that he owes us anything. God has the right to do whatever God wants to do with us. The fact that God doesn't simply destroy us and has promised not to doesn't mean we should treat God like he can't.

Have you been presuming on God's grace? Doing things you know you shouldn't because God has to forgive you if you ask him? Have you been pushing the boundaries without worrying about the consequences because you know God will be patient with you? Normally, we call that taking advantage of someone. As kind and merciful as God is, trying to take advantage of God is a dangerous game to play.

Lord, Please Knock 'Em Down a Peg

Suggested Reading: Matthew 7:1-5

Not long ago, I found myself making comments about a particular person who was getting under my skin. This person didn't do anything wrong, per se, but tends to just keep talking. This person is fairly intelligent but sometimes just misses the obvious, and (in my opinion) tends to talk about anyone who disagrees as someone who just hasn't thought through their position as well as they should have. The fact that this person also tends to mischaracterize the position he disagrees with simply adds to my irritation. And so I found myself making comments about this person. I know better and, usually, I behave better. But this person always came across as feeling so superior, so much more intelligent than everyone else, that I felt justified in making my comments. I eventually turned my comments to God, praying something along the lines of, Lord, could you please knock that person down a peg and take away that smug air of superiority.

Literally a split second later, God responded, but it was to take me down a peg as Jesus's words echoed in my mind. “Do not judge, so that you won’t be judged. For with the judgment you use, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye but don’t notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and look, there’s a log in your eye? Hypocrite! First take the log out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye" (Matthew 7:1-5, HCSB). It felt like a punch to the gut that knocked the air out of me. I realized that the primary reason this person's superiority bothered me so much was that it interfered with my own superiority. I was judging this person for doing the very thing I myself was guilty of.

But we do that kind of thing all the time, don't we? We look down on that lazy person over there while ignoring our own laziness. We judge someone's selfishness without realizing that we only notice it because it interferes with our own selfishness. We pity the hypocrisy we see in our co-worker without stopping long enough to examine our own double lives.

When we see a problem in another person's life, before we start pointing it out to anyone or allowing it to change the way we view them, we need to take a hard, long look at our own lives. Jesus said we would be judged with the same standard we apply to others. So before we start measuring other people we need to measure ourselves. If we would fail to live up to our own standard, we should start adjusting our own lives. Let's take care of the logs in our own eyes, then we might actually be able to help others with their specks.