Leaving the Lazyboy Behind

Lazyboys are comfortable. I can think of nothing more relaxing than sitting in one with a warm blanket as one reads a good book. But we understand if that is where we stay, we cannot pursue life outside of the Lazyboy. In order to live, we must leave the comfort of the cozy. 

I forget who said it, and I'll probably botch the quote, but someone once said something to the effect that the task of the Christian was not really to discern between what is good and what is evil, but between what is good and what is best.

This seems to be a constant problem among the adherents of biblical religion. The Pharisees are rebuked by Christ because they practice what is good, what the Bible explicitly says and technically binds them to do. If they are obeying the good of the explicit commands, why is Christ rebuking them so harshly?

And why is He not satisfied with the religion of most of the churches in the Apocalypse? They seem to be doing quite well, at least as well as one could expect in their situations. Why threaten them with removing their lampstands, blotting our their names from the book of life, throwing them into the lake of fire?

I think the problem is essentially this. If one obeys only the good, but does not pursue the best, it displays that he is pursuing religion for some other reason besides pursuing the loving reign of God over his life. In other words, he is still pursuing self, but a self that is now wrapped in the warm blanket of a religious life.

Let me explain. Christ rebukes the Pharisees for something that most evangelicals would find curious, and even legalistic. He tells them that they actually have disregarded the Word of God for the sake of their tradition by not honoring their fathers and mothers by giving them financial support now that they are adults.

This seems odd, since the original command in the Old Testament made no such explanation of the word "honor." Christ almost seems to be adding this application to it, an application that in no way is apparent to the Pharisees.

In fact, they could have just argued as many modern evangelicals do, and told Christ that He is adding to Scripture, that's just his idiosyncratic interpretation, Scripture nowhere argues that, it's just an inference, etc.

Now, it is an inference. It isn't explicitly laid out in the Old Testament. It is just Christ's interpretation (none of the other rabbis applied it this way, nor did the people necessarily view it this way), and therefore, it just seems to be a legalistic rule Christ is holding them to when He shouldn't be.

The same can be said for His applications of Scripture in the Old Testament throughout the Gospels. Adultery isn't lusting after a woman or divorcing your wife in the original, explicit command. Murder isn't being angry with your brother and calling him a name. That is, unless your pursuing the best rather than the merely good. That is to say, unless you are pursuing God and His rule over the whole of your life, giving every inkling of the Scripture's instructions authority to speak into your situation.

You see, the real problem with the Pharisees and the churches in John's Apocalypse is not that they merely had bad hermeneutics, but that they were engaged in settling for the good due to their lack of love for God/Christ and desire for Him to rule over them in every aspect of their lives.

If they had, they would have extended the teaching of God as far as they could take it because they wanted God to rule over them to farthest reaches of their lives. But because the Pharisees did not know God, and because the churches had lost their first love for Christ, they ended up seeking and settling for the good of religion, i.e., what they thought was the norm and could get by with, instead of seeking the radical commitment to apply these texts to their fullest measure in all things.

They did this because religion provides a comfort that a radical following of God does not. Religion lets you settle in the comfort of the good, but radical discipleship always questions, always lurches forward out of the lazyboy of culture in order to love God and seek His kingdom first.

This is why I find the evangelical response to the presentation of the wisest and best things to do to follow God alarming. If one needs explicit texts rather than the inclination/disposition/trajectory of Scripture as a guide to the normative Christian life, then one is lost in the righteousness of the Pharisees that will not enter the kingdom of God or the removed lampstand of an unfaithful church that looks faithful in its settling into the good.

True religion seeks above all the rule of God and His righteousness, which seems to be, according to Jesus, not found in the good, but in the best. It is not found in what is holy, but what is in the holiest. It is not found in the wise, but in the wisest.

What the pursuit of the good in disregard of the best evidences is that we are seeking to hold onto the self, and all that has gone into making the self comfortable and feel safe. It evidences the lack of desire to change, to bend to God's will because God's will is bound up in the best and not in the mere good.

If the Pharisees had been pursuing God, they would have landed on the idea that to honor father and mother means to do so in every way, including financially. But they weren't pursuing God. The good brought them just enough comfort to ease back into that lazyboy, and that's all they ever really wanted out of it.