The Sunday Notion

I CANNOT STAND a liar!! 😡 I just can’t. I don’t see the point in offering lies that no one has asked for. I don’t get “little white lies”. I don’t understand lying when the truth will do just fine.

I have been referred to as exhibiting “bottomless grace” and understanding for people. I don’t drink. I don’t fornicate. No one has died by my hands; I don’t steal; never committed adultery, or a million other sins that I could or couldn’t name. But I know what I can name. I have absolutely looked upon a man lustfully, and believe it or not, just like you, secretly.... I judge...mostly Donald Trump. 🤷🏽‍ Either way, in the same fashion that a lie is a lie, sin is sin.

I was once accused of being a bad Christian by a friend for missing an evening choir engagement on the same day as attending Sunday worship service - she was judging me. I once had a friend tell me that she refused not to fornicate because “her body needs sex”.  I beat her over the head with science and scripture - I was judging her.

I, like the rest of the world, have often quoted Matthew 7:1, “Judge not, that ye be not judged … but that passage is more than just a line, it’s a challenge, and ultimately, a call to righteousness.  The part that we don’t quote is, “why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? ... Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.”

A few years ago when everyone was toiling over the Mayan Calendar, end of the world fiasco, the same fornicating friend mentioned above, a professed Christian, made mention to me that she would not be willing to engage in fornication on the last day of that Mayan Calendar because where she did not believe that the world would truly end, she didn’t want to ‘be caught sinning’ if it did. 

I was mystified by the notion of “being caught sinning”.  Had the Lord come back as “expected” … and totally against scripture, she would have absolutely been “caught sinning”. Fornicating or not, sin sits right next to unavoidable.  It is a smorgasbord of the eyes, and no matter what you pick from that salad bar, it’s weighed the same way.

Where sins may be judged separately on whatever level the Lord see fit, they WILL ALL BE JUDGED, and we will all be held accountable for that which we know.   We know that as Christians, our job is to be Christ-like. I Thessalonians 4:7 states, “for God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life”.  Our instructions are to live holy as Christ was holy.  That doesn’t mean that we get to pick and choose our sins. It means that we have to actively fight the sins that surface within us in constant pursuit of holiness. 

Missing the choir engagement was wrong not because it was something expected of me as a singer, but because it was something expected of me in the building of God’s Kingdom. Lying is wrong. Stealing, Fornicating, and a million other things are wrong.  Just as a million other things are sins. No, missing a choir engagement is not a sin, but Christianity goes beyond sin to focus on purpose and alignment.  We don’t get to just pick the Christian elements that we enjoy and tend to those items alone. As believers we have to stop practicing a la carte Christianity – I don’t eat pork, but I get drunk on the weekends.  I’m not fornicating, but I can cuss like a sailor. It’s all sin!

There is no Christianity a la Carte menu.  If we’re going to regard ourselves as followers of Christ then we must work to live as Christ lived, facing the same temptations that he faced, despite our inherently sinful nature.  If we’re going to call ourselves Christian, then we have to eat what’s on our plates, because whether we could foresee the presentation or not…it’s what we asked for.