Friday, August 18, 2017

Clean Hands or Clean Hearts (Friday Devotional)


“But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.”

- Matthew 15:18-20

Do you remember the “I’m a Mac. And I’m a PC” ads from a few years ago? In every commercial, two men would talk to the viewer (and sometimes each other) about the differences between Apple’s computers and Microsoft’s. One of the men, the personification of the PC, was a rumpled, dorky-looking middle manager type with the glasses and khakis to prove it. The other, the Mac, was a younger, cool-but-unthreatening creative guy, complete with nice jeans and a stylish haircut. Apple aired dozens of ads featuring these two characters, but the dialogue was always superfluous—the moment the characters introduced themselves, the point was made: there were two kinds of people in this world, and your computer of choice showed whether you were in the right group or not.

Those ads spoke to a simple, universal desire to be recognized as the right kind of person. We want to be included, we want to be validated—and yes, we want to be a little bit exclusive. When you proudly say, “I’m a Longhorn” or “I’m a Republican” or “I’m a Baptist,” you’re stating factual associations, but more than that, you’re setting yourself apart, declaring to the world that you belong to a superior tribe. You want the world to know that, while the world might be full of ne’er-do-wells, you’re one of the good people.

There was a group in Jesus’s time, the Pharisees, who exemplified that sort of attitude. They had devoted themselves to the study of God’s Law and to strictly adhering to it—and they weren’t shy about pointing out those who didn’t measure up to their standard. So when they saw Jesus’s disciples failing to make themselves ritually clean before every meal, they didn’t hesitate to bring it to the Lord’s attention. Their primary goal here wasn’t to ensure that God’s Law was followed to the letter, but to embarrass Jesus and gratify themselves—to show that, unlike this popular new rabbi, they were the right kind of people. But Jesus saw through their legalism and cut to the truth of the matter: if you’re worried about being unclean before God, he said, look to your heart, not to what’s on the surface.

The kind of tribalism epitomized by the Pharisees is rampant today. On television and radio and especially social media, there are hordes of self-appointed inspectors checking people’s hands so that they can declare them unclean. Just like the Pharisees, their goal is simple: to make sure everyone knows that the only acceptable kind of person is their kind of person.

Left untreated by grace, a germ of exclusivity can quickly metastasize into a fever of intolerance. Christ made clear how God judges people—not by tribal standards, but by the measure of what you believe and confess. Your heart is what matters to the Lord, not your social, educational, economic, political, or racial affiliation; your righteousness is determined by God’s grace alone. Tribalism says that the world can be divided into good people and bad people, but the Bible declares the truth: there’s only ever been one truly good person, and he died to save, redeem, and welcome home the bad people. So in a week marred by factionalism, intolerance, and hatred, may you be a light in the darkness—for your calling is not to segregate people by tribe, but to invite them to God’s kingdom.

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