Christian Living

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Larry Lilly's Letter Tuesday March 21, 2006

A cartoon shows a man and woman driving along a ghetto street, a car is setting along the road with smoke streaming from the engine area, a tire is flat and a man who appears to be the embodiment of 'poverty stricken' is sitting on a box of some kind with his head in his hands, while three toddlers happily play in the road. The woman riding in the Rolls says to her husband,

"I know how he feels, remember the time we went to the party at Gates boy's place and our Lexus ran out of gas."

No person in their right mind, rich or poor believes the moneyed lady has a clue as to how utterly hopeless the poor ghetto family feels.

Often the Incarnation of Christ is portrayed as God taking on the skin of man so that He could identify with the spiritually poverty stricken condition of Adam's race. It makes for nice sounding preaching, but the reason given is not true.

God knew and knows the depths of despair our sin has brought to each human being. But God also knew and knows that no man would ever believe that God knows and cares where it not for his time in the skin of we men and women. He took His place among the poorest of the poor and walked with the outcasts, actually touching the lepers. At the last moment of His Incarnation he hung between two criminals and forgave and accepted the repentant one. When the old spiritual is offered in song, 'Jesus knows all about our struggles,' the instructed heart responds, 'Yes, yes He does.'

Christ did not come to this realm of suffering to learn about our plight. He is God in flesh, so He already knew. He came and walked among us, so that we would know in our heart of hearts that He does know and He does care.

Too many of us are like the man and woman in the opening lines in the Rolls. We do not and cannot know the pain of others as long as we remain aloof to their plight. Even when we 'go down to the ghetto' we know it's only for a few days or even a few hours and we do it in a protected environment, thus missing the worst part of poverty, the not knowing if it will ever end, if you will ever in your entire life have a secure place to lay your head and regular meals as the norm.

For the most part our churches have given up on even trying, and target a more responsive, more profitable segment of society. I often wonder if this is why we have done away with Bible definitions of some of our lacking as humans. Drunks are alcoholics and we no longer hear much about dramatic salvation for these struggling souls. And what of the sexual sins, that are now just the way people are born. God can and does save sinners such as adulterers, Sodomites, drunkards, effeminate men etc, but I find no record of any person receiving deliverance who clings to the cop out, "God made me like this." Give it up and get in line with Christ's word.

Some will see the humor in the following from Harper Lee's 'To Kill A Mockingbird' when she has Atticus Finch say to Scout:

"First of all if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."

Hanging around with Jesus will teach you that He saves from the guttermost to the uttermost.

Larry Lilly Copyright © 2006 Use with credit.

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