Things I Wish Christians Would Stop Saying: "The Lord Told Me!"

I really do wish Christians, especially preachers, would stop saying:

“The Lord told me!”

How many times have I heard T.V. preachers, for example, make this bold claim? I’ve heard one of my former pastors use it as a matter of fact. He probably said, “the Lord told me” at least twice in every sermon. I never gave it much thought back then but it did give me the impression that this man was certainly well connected!

But when Christians use this phrase, do they realize what they are saying? It raises some interesting questions for me:

Does God speak audibly to preachers or anyone else making such a claim? I’m not one to criticize another’s faith experience, but I must say that I have never heard God speak audibly to me! I also am delighted that I have never used this claim to give weight to anything I might say in a sermon.

Why would God speak to my pastor years ago and has said nothing to me all these years? Is it because I am not as well connected as my former pastor? Am I not as spiritual? Or, worse yet, am I not listening for God’s audible voice carefully enough? It would be so easy for me to feel a bit slighted or even depressed because I don’t have the inside track to God’s will. Guess I’m not in the inner circle it seems.

Why would a Christian make such a claim, to begin with? Well, I think saying something like this is intended to shut down any and all opposition. In other words, if my goal is to suppress opposition to or disagreement with my sermon thesis then I must evoke an authority larger than myself: “The Lord told me to say this today!” 

Saying “the Lord told me” shuts down further debate over controversial and difficult issues. How many preachers have told their congregation that the Lord told them to preach against some sin du jour or even worse who to vote for in an upcoming election? Claiming such direct authority is misleading in my opinion.

How can a layperson argue with a preacher who comes across as being so well connected to God? 

Sure God speaks to us through a variety of means, such as through the Scriptures or through another person. But make that clear the next time you claim “the Lord told me!” It would be more honest it seems to me.

Do you get my point?

Things I Wish Christians Would Stop Saying: "I want a celebration of life!"

Christians sometimes say things that put their pastors in a spot. For example, I cannot tell you how many times a family member of a deceased parent has said to me: “Pastor I want daddy’s funeral to be a celebration of life!” Or, “Pastor, please make momma’s funeral a happy occasion!”

Christian friend, you have no idea what kind of conundrum you have created for your pastor. Allow me to explain:

First, you are asking your pastor to turn your relative’s funeral or memorial service into a nothing more than a “feel good” happy event. Let’s have friends and family come to the podium and tell funny stories about your dad or mother. I mean, aren’t funerals supposed to be about a celebration of life! No, not altogether.

Second, you are asking your pastor to ignore the main reason why we have funerals or memorial services in the first place: Someone died! An untimely or unexpected death has occurred. Of course, we read in Hebrews 9:27 the following:

“And just as each person is destined to die once and after that comes judgment.” 

Death is a natural part of life. In fact, life and death are two sides of the same coin. You can’t have one without the other, so why do folks think a pastor should conduct a funeral without talking about death within the context of the Gospel?

But in the very next verse the author of Hebrews declares:

“So also Christ was offered once for all time as a sacrifice to take away the sins of many people. He will come again, not to deal with our sins, but to bring salvation to all who are eagerly waiting for him.”

It would be nigh impossible to talk about the Christian hope of resurrection without also talking about the reality of death. Does the topic of death frighten us? Perhaps! Does it cause us to be sad? For sure it does! 

But ask yourself: “Can I possibly talk about salvation and hope in Christ, who also died, without confronting the reality of death?” In other words, how do we get to Easter without going through Good Friday?

Your pastor should not only talk about death as being a fact of life, but he or she should also remind the congregation that resurrection awaits those whom God loves. 

This is the paradox of life and death. Death for sure makes us sad, it reminds us of our own mortality and encourages us to take our relationship with God seriously. But it also reminds us that death is the doorway into the life God has in store for us. It's the prelude to resurrection. 

So please dear Christian friend, please stop saying you want your relative’s funeral to be a celebration of life. Let’s celebrate both life and death as an opportunity to highlight our salvation in Jesus Christ and our hope of resurrection!

Things I Wish Christians Would Stop Saying: "Loving enemies is impossible!"

There are things Christians say that I wish they would stop saying! For example, I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard them say: “Pastor, loving my enemies is impossible!” Or they will say, “I believe Jesus when he told us to love our enemies, but I just can’t bring myself to do it.” 

There was a time when I would respond to such statements by saying something like: “I know, it’s really hard.” Actually, I was letting us both off the hook. 

Sure it’s hard, but is it doable? 

The short answer is “yes!”

Learning to love one’s enemies depends on how one understands the meaning of love when used in this context. Allow me to explain:

If you are using “love” as a noun then love becomes a “feeling” you have towards another person. So when Jesus told us to love our enemies was he implying that we have warm fuzzy feelings towards them? 

Now if this represents your only understanding of what love means (a loving feeling towards another person) then I would agree that loving your enemies would be nearly impossible. We are not naturally inclined to love those who harm us or treat us with contempt. We are not made to feel warmhearted towards our enemies.

But understanding “love” as a verb changes the whole dynamic. In his book, Love Your Enemies, Arthur C. Brooks tells the story of a renowned therapist meeting with a distraught husband. The husband tells the therapist that he no longer loves his wife. He doesn’t have the same feelings towards her as he did during the early years of their marriage (how many times have I heard this).

The wise therapist told the young man that he could learn to love (noun) his wife again by practicing love (verb) towards her. The therapist told the young man to start waiting on her more, performing acts of love toward her, treating her like he really did love her. The young man agreed to give it a try and as far as I know, the couple remain married today because the young man loved as a verb (loving acts) rather than as a noun (loving feelings). He actually fell in love with his wife all over again.

I do believe Jesus was using the word “love” as a verb when he told us to love our enemies. Performing loving acts towards our perceived enemies changes the way we naturally feel about them. 

In other words, our feelings are controlled by our actions.

 It works! Try it! Treat that person who disagrees with you politically for example with an act of love. Then see what happens to your own attitude. You will be surprised. Jesus was not blowing smoke at us. He was serious as a heart attack.

So please stop saying you can’t love your enemies because truthfully you can!

Things I Wish Christians Would Stop Saying: "Everything happens for a reason!"

I am convinced that Christians sometimes say things without much forethought. We all do this. For example, I often hear Christians say:

“Everything happens for a reason.”

Now, I understand this kind of reasoning for I have said the same thing myself. But the question is whether it is true or not. I realize that folks facing hardships in life want to believe that there is a hidden reason for the tragedy. They want desperately to find some meaning in their suffering. 

As a pastor, I have often relied on this oft-repeated cliché to comfort grieving parishioners whose hearts had been ripped out by the loss of a loved one or had been victimized by a sudden and unexplained tragedy. I would then quote Paul’s famous statement from Romans 8:28 just to be sure I was in alignment with the Bible. 

Truthfully, the cliché is helpful, but again is it always true?

But here’s the deal: Is there really some benevolent reason behind every single event or experience in our lives? If I get a really bad cold that knocks me down for a week, what’s the reason for that? More importantly, what divine reason might there be?

If my spouse cheats on me, where is the benevolent reason in that infidelity? Is her infidelity God’s way of making me stronger, or ironically, a better husband? Would that be the reason for her infidelity? Well, tell this to a wife or husband who is devastated by betrayal.

If a man unmercifully beats his wife in a drunken rage what would be the reason for such violence? Telling the battered wife that there is a divine reason for her black eyes and broken jaw doesn’t quite seem quite right, does it?

Try telling a woman whose child dies that there is a good reason for the child’s death. My suspicion is you won’t gain any points with her (or the child’s father). In fact, it is often the case that such a well-meaning platitude only confuses and deepens the person’s grief.

Truth is, not everything that happens to us in life is for a reason; or if it is we may never know it. Not every human tragedy needs explaining. Sometimes we are left with no rationale for the events that occur in our lives.

Sometimes life throws us some pretty hard punches and ours is not the reason to know. This is why faith or trust in God is so important. When the reason for the hard punch evades us faith should become our default position. That should be good enough for now. 

Don’t you think?

A Sermon: "Things I Thought Were True"

Luke 13:1-9

One of the most important discoveries I’ve made in my life is that not all of my assumptions in life are true. These assumptions are called “presuppositions.”

Please forgive me, I know this is not a word that we use in normal everyday conversation, but this is precisely what Jesus is addressing in this text. These presuppositions are often the engine that drives much of how we look at our world. 

 So what is a presupposition?

The short answer is simple: 

A presupposition is basically an unsubstantiated assumption. 

Now as we grow in our Christian faith and into adult maturity we should consider examining and exposing some of our long-held assumptions. 

So allow me to share with you a few of my early assumptions that seriously needed examination and exposure in order to help me grow as a Christian and a human being:

I once believed—based on an assumption of course—that people of color were somehow inferior to white folks. I entered adulthood just assuming that this was a biological fact even though I had no verifiable evidence to support such an assumption. I never questioned its veracity. It took years of examining that presupposition and naming it for what it was: White privilege.

I wasn’t able to let go of that presupposition until I was brave enough to name it in order to expose it for what it is.

One of the most ludicrous assumptions I held for years was that poor people are poor simply because they are lazy! I heard this growing up and grew into adulthood believing this was the case for all poor people. But my seeing real backbreaking poverty in developing countries, such as Mexico, Central, and South America, exposed that presupposition to be utterly false, not to mention my awareness that poverty may be traced in many cases to human greed.

Welfare fraud aside, and that’s an issue to be sure, poverty is not the result of people being lazy. People simply don’t choose to be poor. They don’t want to be poor any more than you or I do. There are complex reasons for poverty in our world (greed being one). We need to expose this presupposition for what it is, a lie intended to absolve us from taking some responsibility to care for the poor, as Jesus instructed us to do.

For most of my Christian ministry, I believed (and taught) that Capitalism was a Biblically based economic system. I have later come to see the fallacy of this presupposition since the Bible itself does not support it as a Divinely sanctioned system. In fact, the term Capitalism is nowhere to be found in the Bible or in early Christian writings. Additionally, the book of Acts suggests an economy of an entirely different stripe (Acts 4:32ff).

Now, this doesn’t mean that Capitalism is bad. It isn’t! Most of us here this morning have benefitted from living in a Capitalistic country. It has its downside for sure, just like any other economic system, but overall we are fortunate to live under such a system. 

But just be aware that God did not create Capitalism—humans did!

So in our text this morning we find Jesus addressing an age-old presupposition or assumption about Sin and Suffering. It was commonly assumed back then “that folks get what they deserve, that bad things happen to bad people.” 

Look, we aren’t much different, are we? I know I’m not. When something awful or tragic happens in my life I immediately go to my default position:

“Well, God must be angry with me” or “I must have done something terrible to deserve this.”

Come on, admit it, you’ve made similar assumptions too, right? Haven’t we all? But, are they legitimate assumptions about how God reacts to our sin? If something happens to me is it because I sinned? Do bad things happen to bad people? Is this a valid assumption?

No! It is not!

I tell you, this is a horrible way to live, what with the fear of Divine retribution hanging over one’s head 24/7. It causes one to look for an angry God lurking behind every bush waiting to catch us in some misdeed and then zing us with a punishing lightning bolt.

Well, Jesus responds to this kind of thinking in our text this morning:

“Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans . . . Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem?” 

Folks were responding to these two tragic incidents by asking a familiar question: 

“Was this the result of sinning against God?”

Actually, they already knew the answer to their question. They were looking for Jesus to confirm their assumptions about the relationship between their Sin and Suffering. Well, Jesus exposes that dreadful presupposition with one word:

 “No!”

Then Jesus tells a really strange story about a withering fig tree. Jesus loved telling stories in situations like this, when folks were struggling with mysteries that are nearly impossible to understand, like the relationship between Sin and Suffering. 

He preferred stories to clichés.

An owner of a vineyard sees that a fig tree in his garden is withering away, offering no good fruit to eat for the past three years. So he decides to chop down the tree since it is barren. But the gardener asks the owner to give the fig tree one more year so he could spread manure around it to help it regain its vitality. If the tree still fails to produce after one year then the owner can chop down the tree.

Such a strange story, right?

Well, what I hear Jesus saying in this story represents two versions of God when it comes to the issue of Sin and Suffering. The vineyard owner represents one version of God who wants to chop down the tree without a second chance. This version is the one the people assumed best explains the two incidences Jesus addresses in our text: Punishment by death (or suffering).

The gardener in the story represents the version of God that Jesus would promote: A loving God who is willing to give second chances (and third, and fourth if necessary) to those who fall into the grip of Sin. This is the version of God who is willing to get his hands dirty with manure (Incarnation)) to help us grow beyond our sinful lapses. 

Yes, this version reflects God as willing to get his hands dirty redeeming us from our sin, not punishing us.

So when we look at this barren fig tree what do we see? 

I would suggest that we see ourselves: Barren, fruitless, prone to lapses into Sin, and fumbling through life making missteps and mistakes. We’ve all been in such places in life, haven’t we? Sometimes those barren places last for years and God seems to have vanished from our lives. We don’t even pray anymore. We may even interpret his apparent absence of God as judgment for our sin. 

But Jesus assures us that God is the God of second chances throughout life. He assures us that even in our most barren periods in life God is planting good soil (manure) all around us, prodding us to grow beyond our barrenness. God is with us, in us helping move us to more fertile ground.

So this strange story exposes any assumptions we might have that God is an unrelenting punishing God who offers us no second chances in life. Rather, God is the Gardener in our lives toiling the soil within us in order to move us out of our barren places into a fruit-bearing life. 

More importantly, we learn from this interpretation that bad things don’t just happen to bad people but good people as well—but God remains forever faithful.

Yes, some of our presuppositions are totally worth exposing. The sooner we recognize the folly of living by all our unexamined assumptions the better life becomes for us. The happier we will be and I believe healthier too.

Stephen A. Hulsey
March 24, 2019
Lake Shore Presbyterian Church

Things I Wish Christians Would Stop Saying: "God Needed Another Angel Today!"

One of the craziest cliches I often hear Christians say in response to the death of a friend or loved one is:

“God needed another angel today!”

Does God really need more angels? I know this is mere sentiment talking but where does this idea come from? It sounds more like pagan mythology to me than good Christian theology. 

Look, I am fully aware of how devastating and painful death is for most of us. The death of a loved one or a good friend can be a tragic and traumatic experience. It is only natural for us to look for the meaning of death as a means to help our grief. I would never intentionally disrespect anyone’s grief experience.

I’ve personally experienced grief in my own life so I personally know how difficult it can be. 

But please, stop saying that dead people become angels in heaven because God needs them. It’s simply not true even if one wishes it were. There is absolutely no Biblical support for such a claim.

Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say: “My mother just passed into eternity!” Or, “My father just entered the resurrection life!” Or, "My best friend died.” Or simply: “My grandmother is now with God!” Doesn’t this make more sense than saying someone became an angle because God needs that to happen? 

Perhaps it would be wise to rethink our view of death as being a part of life. That’s right, life and death are two sides of the same coin. One cannot occur without the other. 

So we don’t die because God needs to populate heaven with more angels. No, we die because we are human; it’s a part of life, in spite of it making us uncomfortable or uneasy.

Resurrection in the manner of Christ is our real hope, not to become disembodied angels with golden wings because this is what God needs.

Things I Wish Christians Would Stop Saying: "Love the sinner, hate the sin!"

It never ceases to amaze me what comes out of the mouths of some Christians. Some of the clichés I hear them say makes me want to pull my hair out (well, if I had any hair). Whenever I hear folks spouting off one of these dreadful cliches I want to scream: 

“Please stop saying that!”

For example, how many times have you heard a Christian friend say: 

"Love the Sinner, hate the sin."

I've never quite understood what I am supposed to do with such a comment. What exactly is being said by this well-worn cliché? What’s the meaning behind this oft-repeated saying? Where did it come from, certainly not the Scriptures?

Well, here are my thoughts on why Christians need to stop saying such things:

My big problem with this cliché is the comma (,). That's right, the comma. Now if there was a period after the first clause then I would be okay with it:

"Love the sinner."

That's it! That all that needs to be said, right? No qualifier, just love the sinner. Period (.) Finis. Full stop.

You see when a comma (,) is used the subject (sinner) remains suspect. The love you claim to have for the sinner remains guarded. For example, this cliché was often used in my own denomination when we were debating the place of LGBT folks in our churches; when we were debating whether to practice full inclusion of partial inclusion of LGBT folks. 

The use of the comma I might add implies partial inclusion.

Partial exclusion means that we may love homosexuals, even welcome them to worship with us, but not participate in the full life of the congregation. They couldn't even be married by our clergy within our churches.  The comma implies that there is a qualifier in the way we accept them as members of our congregation. 

In reality, the comma suggests to them: Stay below the horizon so as not to be noticed.

Please stop using this hypocritical cliché. It's not Biblical and certainly, it’s not used in good taste. 

Get rid of the comma. Just say:

"Love the sinner!" 

That's all Jesus ever did!