Calvin’s (and Hobbes) Guide to Sin and Confession
The day Bill Watterson hung up his Calvin-drawing pencil was a sad one. I still get my daily Calvin and Hobbes on my Google homepage and he still makes me laugh as hard as he ever did.
Once upon a time I had another blog that about 2.37 of you knew about. I posted this piece on Calvin’s Guide to Sin and Confession there last year in honor of John Calvin’s 500th birthday. The air has been pretty heavy around these parts lately and I thought this might be a good way to lighten it up a little.
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10 Cool Things You Can Do with 300 Fox Tails
You’re right, the post title is intentionally misleading.
I only have one idea for what to do with a whole bunch of fox tails. It’s been done, and I’m not sure how cool it was.
But I’ve read that list-posts are popular with readers and I’m all about making you happy. So I figured, why not?
What could it hurt if I didn’t deliver the goods?
It’s not like anybody would get mad and take three hundred foxes, tie their tails together, start them on fire and set them loose in my back yard.
Nah, nobody would ever do something like that.
Except, I suppose, maybe Samson . . .
He might just be crazy enough to do something like that.
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Unredacted: A Page from the Journal
Thoroughly enjoyed my reading of 103 earlier this week and thought I’d give this to you straight out of the journal.
Unedited.
Unadulterated.
Unredacted. (Yeah, that’s not a word. But I like it.)
If this is the first time you’ve ventured this far, my humble apologies. I do write better on days when I’m not talking to myself.
Wait a sec . . . for all I know, that’s what I do here all the time. Hello . . . ?
This is a hair scattered. When it comes to the Psalms, I like it that way. And please forgive all the shouting CAPS. I got excited.
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Friends
At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure. (Matthew 11:25-26)
JP and I had a misunderstanding tonight. It started the way it often does. I didn’t say what I meant in a way that sounded at all like what I really meant.
It hurt and frustrated him enough that he couldn’t bring himself to listen to my worse efforts to explain what I wanted to say. We finally reached a truce, but I could tell he was still not happy with me.
The night went on, and he left for a basketball game. Just now, as we both headed to bed, I took one last shot at using the right words to tell him what I wanted to say in the first place.
He looked at me and smiled, then batted those knee-weakening eyes (just a few more years and we’re in for a world of hurt). He put out his hand and said in mock-sweet voice, “Friends.”
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After he and I have rammed heads in the past, I’ve often asked if we’re still friends. Once in a while he’s told me a flat “No.” But he’s most often proven himself to be a guy who has a hard time holding a grudge. Even when he’s been hurt or wronged, he doesn’t want to stop being friends.
He’s pretty good at what we used to call “keeping short accounts.”
He doesn’t like the rift.
Now, he has enough of his mother’s bullheadedness and his father’s, um, bullheadedness that it’s not as though he just caves because he can’t endure the conflict. He’s pretty bullheaded himself, and if he wanted to hang onto it, he would.
But he’s also very generous when it comes to forgiveness.
At the tender age of twelve, he’s already pretty good at giving grace.
Come morning, no matter what creepy thing he thinks I did to him the day before, and no matter how angry he was about it, we’re friends.
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Sometimes we wonder how we will teach some of these things to our kids.
Trust. Love. Truth telling. Grace. Forgiveness.
Funny thing is I think a lot of times they already know. Part of the passage to adulthood seems to be learning to doubt. Learning to skirt the truth. Learning to hold on to what should be let go.
It’s as though our job is not to teach these things to them, but help them not to unlearn them. To fan the flame of what is already.
I wonder if this is part of what Jesus meant when He said some things are hidden from the wise and learned, and revealed to children.
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If this is true, I hope JP doesn’t aspire to be too wise.
And perhaps I could do with being a little less learned.
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It’s Your Year
Exodus 12 opens with a declaration that on its face doesn’t seem highly dramatic.
It is two verses long.
One sentence.
Twenty-five words.
That’s it, and really, not much is said about it at all.
The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, “This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year.” (Exodus 12:1-2, NIV)
Doesn’t sound too earth-shattering.
But at the right time I read them, these two little verses knocked me right off my chair. As a university student, I was in the middle of a fierce battle, much like we often face. The enemy was attacking, accusing me with old, settled, forgiven and overcome sin. It should no longer have been an issue. Yet it was still coming up and taking my tired little brain for quite a spin.
I was sad. I was frustrated. I was exhausted. The last thing I wanted was another challenge or a rebuke.
As I sat down at my cluttered desk in my dorm room, I laid my head on my open Bible. With tears forming in my eyes, I pleaded with God to be gentle with me.
I had been studying Exodus for months. And so far, God had been challenging my socks off with each new passage, each new day.
Sin was constantly being exposed in my life.
I was continually being convicted.
And my thinking was endlessly being challenged to a level I wasn’t sure I could cope with. I found myself to be so like the Israelites.
I fought God. I accused Him of dragging me to the desert to die. I made life hard for those who were like Moses in my life. And God patiently, but pointedly, showed me this day after day after day.
So in my exhaustion that morning, I begged God to just encourage me.
“Don’t convict me. Don’t challenge me. Don’t teach me,” I whimpered. “Just encourage me.”
All I wanted was to feel good for five minutes. Couldn’t I just have that?
I lifted my weary head and braced myself for the day’s thrashing. I looked at the page and immediately let out a howl. I threw back my head, thrust my arms into the air and laughed out loud!
You see, as God was telling the Israelites that it was the first month of their year, He was also telling me that it was my new year! It was my new beginning! God had delivered me from sin, had forgiven me, and therefore it was my year.
I realized at that moment that I couldn’t go back, even if I wanted to.
You see, Satan was wrong. We cannot go back in time. I cannot go back to a time before I was forgiven. And at a time when I needed desperately to be reminded of the permanence of my new life in Him, God so gently reminded me of the new year, my year, which was mine because of Jesus’ finished work on the cross. In His precious timing, He gave me the encouragement I begged for and the assurance I ached for that I was already forgiven and freed from the sin that Satan had tried to bring back to harass me.
God will tell us what we need to hear, when we need to hear it. Twenty years later I still cling to the promise He gave me that unmatched morning of my new year.
The one that starts each new day.
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Everything Changes
Cain said to the LORD, “My punishment is more than I can bear. Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.” (Genesis 4:13-14)
As we saw, Cain refused to acknowledge his sin. God gave him the opportunity to come clean. He declined. He behaves not so unlike his parents did after they ate the fruit. They hid. They pretended nothing had changed. They acted like God would not notice.
Cain does the same. Polygraph hasn’t been invented yet. I think I’m good to go here, he seems to think. But now God’s demeanor takes a turn. No longer does He extend the opportunity for Cain to be responsible and be restored. Now He will make him responsible. Now he will face the consequences. Things have changed.
Cain, I hear the blood of your brother crying out from the ground. How could you think you could hide this from Me?
God pronounces judgment. Cain will be driven from the land. The land which opened to accept his brother’s blood will no longer produce for him. And he will be a restless wanderer on the earth.
It’s never going to be the same again. Just like everything changed when your parents ate the fruit, when they chose their own way. Everything changes for you, too, Cain. Everything changes.
Cain’s whole life is the ground. He loves the land. But now it won’t love him back. He’ll be driven from it, and it will no longer produce for him.
He recognizes the severity of the judgment, the abyss into which he’s being thrown. God, how can You do this? This is more than I can bear. This is not something I can handle.
He takes what God says, and he expands on it. When he laments that he’ll be driven from the land, that he’ll have no place of his own, that the land will not love him, he also painfully observes that he will be hidden from God’s very presence. God didn’t say that. Yet Cain seems to understand. And as his lament continues, he observes that he’ll be a restless wanderer. Without the land, and without God, he’ll never be at peace, he’ll never settle down. He’ll be restless, wandering aimlessly the rest of his days. And he adds, whoever finds me will kill me. Again, God didn’t say that. But Cain seems to understand the bigger picture implications, the full effect of what God has declared.
Ironically, his ultimate fear is that he will be killed. The punishment is too great for him, that he face certain death for having killed his brother. And now he fears he himself will be killed. But God doesn’t intend for Cain to be killed, and puts measures in place that will prevent that from happening. He will not be killed. He will instead live on and experience the fullness of the curse. And now Cain has no choice.
Everything changes.
When we sin, everything changes.
When we turn down the opportunity God provides to repent and turn back and be restored, everything changes.
The good news is that everything changes when we take the repentance and restoration route too.
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With a Brother Like This
Now Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let’s go out to the field.” And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. Then the LORD said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” “I don’t know,” he replied. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:8-9)
You saw Cain yesterday. He was hurt. He was angry. And rather than turn to do the right thing, he savored the moment. He nursed his anger. And then he allowed his anger to consume him. With barely a breath in the text after God’s warning to Cain about sin’s desire for him, Cain immediately invited his brother Abel on a fall afternoon drive to check the crops. Once out in the field, Cain moved quickly to murder his brother and presumably then buried him where he fell.
Sin crouched. Cain blinked. Sin pounced.
And suddenly, or perhaps not so suddenly, sin’s desire was fulfilled. It had him.
Far more than seeing the playful crouching and pouncing of a young cat, I see the sharp claws and the dripping teeth of the bats in Ted Dekker’s black forest. Sin dug its claws deep into Cain’s flesh and did not let go.
How much later, we do not know. But soon God came to Cain, looking for his brother.
“Where is your brother Able?” Cain, I’m looking for Abel but I haven’t found him anywhere. Have you seen him? Can you tell me where he is?
God didn’t ask Cain where Abel was because He did not know. God knew what had happened. His heart had already broken with what Cain had done. God knew precisely where Abel was, and as He noted later in the text, Abel’s blood was already crying out to Him from the ground. As always, God knew. He had no need to be informed. He did not ask because He was unaware. God asked Cain where his brother was because He knew that Cain knew where his brother was. Did we say before how committed God is to restoration? How He desires to give second chances? He asked because He wanted to give Cain a shot at restoration. He wanted to give him a chance to repent. He wanted to give him a chance to come clean.
Cain didn’t.
“I do not know.” Haven’t seen him all day. No idea what he’s up to.
He killed. Sin had its way with him.
He lied. Sin tightened its stranglehold on him.
Then he deflected. Sin fulfilled its desire.
“Am I my brother’s keeper?” First he sinned, then he lied to cover it, and finally he deflected to take the focus off. What are You asking me for? He’s not my responsibility. Why would You even ask?
Instead of jumping at the chance to own up to his sin and repent, he points the finger back at God for even making it an issue. He shifts the focus from his own sin, from murder and deception, and makes the issue all about God asking. All about God suggesting he might have something to do with his brother’s whereabouts.
God knew what Cain did. He didn’t come to Cain with guns blazing. He didn’t come and accuse, “Why did you kill your brother?” He came asking Cain to tell Him what he did. “Cain, won’t you tell Me? Where’s your brother?”
He came offering Cain the opportunity to be restored and forgiven.
The issue was never that God asked where Abel was. The issue wasn’t that God put some extraordinary expectation on Abel’s brother that he keep track of him. The issue wasn’t that God pointed out Cain’s sin.
The issue was that Cain first failed to heed the warning to master sin that was crouching and waiting for him. And that he second failed to take responsibility for his failure.
Sin crouches. And waits to attack.
God seeks us out. And waits to forgive.
We can let sin master us. Or we can let the Master forgive us.
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Pancakes and Sinners
When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.” (Luke 7:29)
I have a tattered piece of yellow legal paper with a lot of notes scribbled on it. It’s my “List of Stuff to Write About.” You’d think a geek like me would have a way to keep these notes that is a little more, well, digital. But I still use the old fashioned lined yellow paper. One of those cryptic notes I have written there says “Last Lecture pp. 70-71, ‘Pancake.’” This paper is pretty much with me all the time now, so that I have it around when something comes along I want to remember. It worked out then that I had it along when I was on a long road trip recently and finally had the chance to finish reading Randy Pausch’s The Last Lecture. Definitely worth the read, by the way.
The pancake notation comes from an account Pausch shares in the book of spending time with his niece and nephew and how they would make pancakes together. Rather than round pancakes, he recalls, “we were always making weirdly shaped animal pancakes. There’s a sloppiness to that medium that I like, because every animal pancake you make is an unintentional Rorschach test.” His niece and nephew would often say, “‘This isn’t the shape of the animal I wanted.’ But that allowed us to look at the pancake as it was, ” he would continue, and “imagine what animal it might be.”*
You might remember the time when Jesus was invited to a Pharisee’s home for dinner. As He reclined at the table, a woman with a famously sinful history stopped in, and as she wept behind Him, she used her own tears and her hair to wash His feet and then poured perfume on them. Simon, the Pharisee host, was appalled. He’d never seen anything so outrageous.
He stands and watches in disgust, thinking to himself that if Jesus only knew who she was, He wouldn’t allow it. If He were really a prophet, he thinks, He’d know who she is. He’d be able to see. Jesus would be as mortified as he was.
What Simon doesn’t get, of course, is that Jesus is far more than a mere prophet. And so He not only knows what kind of woman this is, but He also knows what Simon is thinking. And He calls him on it. Simon, He says, is there something you’d like to share with the whole class? Simon, there’s something I want you to know. There’s something I’d like to share with you.
He goes on to tell the story of two men with debts of varied amounts. And He points out that when the debts are forgiven, the one with the greater debt would love his master more for having been forgiven more.
He notes that this woman clearly understood her need for forgiveness far more than did Simon, the self-righteous Pharisee. She would love Jesus more because she would experience forgiveness in such a much more profound way.
It’s a story of love and forgiveness, and a story of self-importance and self-righteousness.
But it’s also a story of a pancake.
Yes, a pancake.
A weirdly shaped pancake. Not a round pancake. Not a pancake that turned out in the animal shape that was intended. A misshapen pancake that didn’t turn out how it was supposed to. A freak pancake that seems to be nothing but disappointing.
Anybody can see that the pancake is all wrong. Anybody can see that the pancake didn’t belong there. Anybody can see.
But remember what Randy Pausch said about the pancake. The fact that it did not look like the animal it was intended to be allowed them to look at it as it was. They could put aside their expectations and just see the pancake in its true form. And determine from there what it really was.
Jesus could do that with this woman. Just like all of us, she was not all she was created to be. She had a massively sinful history. So to anyone looking on, she was nothing but a walking mass of sin. She wasn’t one of the perfectly formed pancakes. All Simon and anyone else looking on could see was her sin. Not her, just her sin. Jesus could see beyond her sin and see who she was. See who He made her to be. And appreciate her broken and humble worship when she spent her very self to wash His feet.
The pancake that is noticeably the wrong shape can be seen for what it really is, can experience what its creator made it for. The perfectly round pancake gets to just be a round pancake.
Simon was wrong. Jesus knew who she was. He knew what kind of woman was touching Him. He knew she was a sinner.
He saw the pancake as it was. And He imagined what it could be.
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*The Last Lecture, Randy Pausch, Copyright 2008, Hyperion, 77 West 66th Street, New York, New York
The Big Knife
Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. (Colossians 3:13, The Message)
Nicholas Cage and Cher once did this great little movie together called Moonstruck. As the story goes, Cher’s character, one Loretta Castorini, is a widow in her late 30s who is about to remarry, to Johnny Camarreri. Unlucky in love, her first husband was killed by a bus. At Johnny’s request, she goes to meet his estranged brother, Ronny, to try to persuade him to put the past behind him and come to the wedding. Ronny is a bitter and angry man working in the ovens in the family bakery. Years earlier, Ronny had lost his hand while cutting bread for Johnny, and subsequently lost his girl as well. He always blamed Johnny for the mishap and the miserable life that he had lived since. So now they have “bad blood” between them and Ronny just can’t get past it.
In the heated exchange between Ronny and Loretta, Ronny finally slams his prosthetic hand down on the cutting table and shouts, “I ain’t no [bad word] monument to justice! I lost my hand! I lost my bride! Johnny has his hand! Johnny has his bride! You want me to take my heartache, put it away and forget?”
Then he turns to a mousy young woman who works in the bakery, and privately loves Ronny, and yells, “Chrissy, over on the wall. Bring me the big knife. I want to cut my throat.”
You want me to take my heartache, put it away and forget?
Well, um, yeah Ronny, we kind of do. We want you to do something with it. Something different than what you’re doing.
I’d never tell you to pretend your heart doesn’t hurt. But there’s a difference between grieving and experiencing our pain and diving headlong into dwelling on it to the point of ruining ourselves. Ronny’s been dwelling on his heartache for a long, long time. He’s been bathing in his bitterness and rage. He’s given himself a miserable life in the ovens hating his brother, blaming him for his terrible losses.
Paul had seen it hundreds of times. The people of God, the Body of Christ, bitter and unforgiving. Refusing to let go of their heartache. Refusing to forgive their grievances. Content to go on saying that there’s just “bad blood between us.” Each day, growing more hateful and bitter. And destroying everything around them.
We are grieved and offended, and we call for the knife. “Chrissy, over on the wall. Bring me the big knife.” My throat, someone else’s heart. Doesn’t really matter. I ain’t no monument to justice.
Once again, Paul says there is another way. A better way. He says to leave the big knife on the wall. Yes, you were grieved. Yes, you were offended. Yes, you were deeply wounded. But forgive. And quickly, like God did for you.
We think there are just two choices. Dive in and dwell in it, or put it away and pretend it never happened. Either one eats us alive. Either one makes us want the big knife.
The other choice, the one we overlook, is to forgive, quickly, as God forgave us. We recognize and acknowledge our pain, we don’t pretend it isn’t there. But neither do we hold it like a treasured possession while it quietly drains all the life right out of us.
Leave the big knife on the wall. You don’t have to be a monument to justice to just learn to forgive, and quickly.
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The Conversation