I thought that after starting school with so many lectures and reading assignments that I’d be loathe to hear one more lecture in the form of a sermon.
I was so wrong.
I still love hearing a good sermon and the intelligence of my professors has only made me desire more intelligence in preachers. I was listening to Bill Johnson of Bethel Church yesterday and was so totally struck by something he said. In Christianity, the way we should study is by looking at perfection and what’s right. We learn a standard by seeing the way that Jesus operates. Then, when we encounter something in the world that goes against what Jesus says or does, we can immediately identify it as wrong. We might not know exactly why it’s wrong, but our instincts realize even before reasoning can kick in.
In class today, I learned that in many of the cases that we’ll run over in our casebooks are put there because they’re wrong, not because they’re right. In almost all of them, the court system did something totally stupid or made up the law and someone else came along and called them out on it. My professor likened it to med students studying sick people, not people that are well.
I get what she’s saying. But really, we have to have a standard of what’s right to even know what’s wrong. In medicine, students already know from personal experience how the body is supposed to operate. In law, it’s often common sense (or you could argue that it’s not, because there are a ton of stupid lawyers and judges out there…and I was the one worried about making it through school!). We are pretty conditioned or made to know what those standards of operation are.
Yet in life, just trying to discern right from wrong, we’re automatically coded to do what’s wrong. We’re imperfect and soiled. We make bad decisions, hurt other people, and generally screw up. Most of the people that I know even do it in the name of religion or holiness, and it’s still wrong.
Christians aren’t perfect. Far from it, and most of us know it. The ones that act like they don’t are the ones most terrified by it. It goes against our other systems because humans naturally feel like we should know the standard of correctness and perfection. We totally don’t. Christians have accepted it, inherited it as a gift from Jesus – but it takes us more than a lifetime to actually learn that standard. We’ll never get it right, but that’s not an excuse to stop trying.
If I learn, little by little, what’s perfect and right and meant for me, I’ll recognize what’s not and stay away from it. Who better to learn from than Jesus?
