When is the last time you tore your clothing?

When is the last time you tore your clothing?

By Rob Roath

  My son is doing a paper on the rebellious king of Israel. It has come to mind to me as we have been discussing what is learning on this journey that we just are missing something valuable that former followers of God once knew. So I ask you as the title did as well. When is the last time you tore your clothing?

  Was it yesterday friend that you last plucked the hairs from your beard? Or possibly last week is it when you placed ashes on your head and wore a burlap sack? I know it has been a long time for me too, unfortunately. This in fact is when I realized there was something seriously broken in myself. When was the last time I truly lamented to God for the wrongs I have done to him?

  Today I sit here writing with a heavy heart. I believe in transparency so here it is my friends. I have sinned. After a total let down in my faith this spring I strayed yet again from my Lord. The sad thing is this. We spent an entire week the end of last year repenting, crying out to Jesus for help, and the like. The result, well we cleaned our act up for a couple of months. Alas it only took one major event to test my faith for me to wonder off in shame and get temped into the wilderness once more.

  This unfortunately is a constant occurrence for me. I step out on a radical branch trusting God only for things to go seriously wrong and I am left with the cleanup mission that follows. To tell you the truth I am just never sure where I went wrong. I as far as I know truly desired to follow God and do what he wanted me to do. Why this blows up in my face over and over again is seriously beyond my comprehension.

  Now my friends I do not write for your sympathy, I merely am giving you background information so you can understand what has occurred until this point. So I sit here now with this heavy heart because I understand yet again I have strayed from the love that I return to over and over again just to sleep with the enemy in the end. Sounds a good deal like Hosea’s plight huh? Well I would say there is a good deal of similarities between the storylines.

  Why do we do this? Why is it that we stray off and betray the one we have told ourselves we care for? Why do we find ourselves yet again disheveled and at the door step begging to be let into the house we stormed out of? I say that we must return to who we truly are. We are sheep, nothing more than that. We will go our own way every time because as I have stated over and over again we love to be bad. There is a part in us redeemed sheep that loves the one that saved us yes, however the song of the siren just seems to be something we just cannot resist.  Readers of this blog will know I call this “our mountain.” The one or maybe two things that we just can’t seem to resist when the enemy swings them in front of our snout. We go running after it every time.

  This reminds me of a friend I had a good deal ago. I do feel that he truly did Love the Lord. The problem you ask? Well alcohol just screamed louder than Jesus did in his life. I would get calls in the middle of the night from this man letting me know how much he loved Jesus. Was he lying? I think not. What is merely was is that he had a mountain that he just was not able to climb over. As sad as this fact is many of us struggle over this same thing. Maybe it is not alcohol, but like my mom always said “Christians just exchange big sins for small ones.” So maybe our siren swoons you with lying, gossip, or stealing instead of what we consider “big sins.”

  So what is the answer for those of us out there that go round and round on this cycle of destruction?  Can hope be found in these souls? Well as one that just seems to love the wilderness and all it can offer I would hope so. One would truly think I have learned my lesson by now. I think that the key is the whole reason why I make this article. We have lost our sorrow. We have lost our ability to truly feel pain for what we have done. We have become dulled to the mass of sin that surrounds us in everyday life. I call this the “law of normality.”

  In this little know law we find that humans have in them to judge themselves based on the society they live in. What this means is that we look around and see how we “grade ourselves” compared to those we see in our vicinity. Now any thinking person could tell you that this is a formula for disaster. Why is this? Well it is simple we seek out the extremes to set ourselves beside prior to such a calculation. We look at the news and say “wow that guy is really jacked up” or “can you believe that mother did that.” These people are then use as the x in your calculation. No wonder we come up looking so good.

  In the beginning of the article I mentioned the Jews. They truly were some actors right? Going around screaming, throwing wood ashes on themselves, what showmen! Well I think I have found another way to look at this point of view. As opposed to us modern followers they had a set of laws that they would do their calculations against. Have you ever read these things? Good grief! How could you possibly measure up to such things? Well the fact is that Paul explains that the commandants were only given to the Jews to show that they could in fact never measure up to such standards. What they point to is one thing and one thing only….sinlessness.

  What I do want to point out in all of this preloading is that we just have no good way to measure ourselves as modern believers. The Jews at least where able to look at the laws and see how awful of a job they were doing. When they saw the inevitable sum of their math work they would lament unto God, and in a fit of total despair do these outlandish acts to express their dismay. Well in fact we do have such a “plumbline” that we can measure up to for us modern followers of God. As you may have guessed this is Jesus. Actually a completion of the laws we had mentioned earlier. This was a man that was actually able to follow all the law without ever breaking them.

  As I have stated to my kids many times “if Jesus sinned just once we would not be talking about him.” The fact is that he was able to survive the gauntlet of this fallen world unscathed. So we do have someone to base our life upon. Now that is good news! Everyone in this world likes to follow a winner anyhow don’t they? So let us then compare ourselves to the one we are supposed to be following shall we?

  Well as you may have guessed our score card would look pretty bad if we set out lives against the holy one of God. This fact is sort of my point though with all of this. We have a savior that was a much nicer chap than the one that the Jews had to deal with. Now please do understand I am not saying Jesus isn’t part of the trinity or some other religious belief. However you must agree that Jesus is a better pill to swallow than God that was presented to the Jews. Grace, kindness and love were just things you really had to struggle to see in that being killing everyone for not exactly following his rules.

  Thank God he had mercy on us gentiles huh? Well sort of I would say. I grew up catholic and one thing that gets drilled into you is a healthy fear of God. Honestly the God that is presented to the Catholic is pretty much the same one the Jews were. One of the reasons I left that faith looking for a better God. As far as I was concerned there had to be a better one out there that that one. However we did get Jesus as born again believers and how my friends do we treat this “buddy Jesus” of ours? Well I would look at your life and ask you to answer the question yourself.

  I was talking to a friend on the subject of this article and she had a good insight into us Christians.
She said “we have no shame.” A good way to put it I think. What can God do to really get any reaction from us. What even can make the modern American blush? Again we are to berated by violence, sex, and corruption from every direction that we have become numb. We plain out just can’t feel anything anymore. This is the core point I am out to make on this. What sin could you commit that you would actually get to the point that you wanted to tear your clothes?

  What would it take us to shed a tear for how we hurt the one we say we love? Paul says we were bought with a price and we just do not care about righteousness. Bonheoffer called this “cheap grace” how else can we put it? We no longer depend on a God to save us from anything. We much to busy making sure we have all the contingency plans set ahead of any action we make. What faith do we need to live the live we have? The fact is that the average American has little going wrong with their lives. The natural result of this cushy lifestyle is that we just never need to break the emergency glass and call for help. Isn’t that really the issue here?

  Our hearts are hardened to the point that we just have no need to have a savior to give us a hand. We have it all taken care of don’t we? We need a change my brothers and sisters. We need to call upon our God and ask him to soften our hearts before we have no ability to hear him any longer! Does it need to come to the point that he just gives us over to this sin that we demand to remain in our lives. Paul clearly states that we shouldn’t continue to sin that grace should more abound. The problem is that we do not see how far off to sea we are.

  Join me this day in crying out to our ever living Lord and savior to help us! We need you Jesus! Forgive us and lead our sorry butts to repentance. We need to be cleansed, refined and disciplined. We are wayward children that refuse your instruction. Sheep that demand to take our own way straight into our own demise. May your you have mercy on the believers that cry out our name for help king! Oh help us Lord we have no hope without you. We confess our desire to so another way. We are the whore that always returns after a wild night on the town. Forgive us! Mighty father hear the prayers of your followers and set us on the right path. Give us a desire to want you! Help us to feel again so that we can be sensitive to the sins that hurt both of us so very much. Come Lord Jesus come!