What 'ism' Drives Your Boat?

[HKHaugan]

When you contemplate the struggle in the human heart the solitary issue of life for every individual as they walk through the world is being right. It’s always there. We want to be right, feel right, think right, talk right, do right and the striving is a daily moment by moment experience. In fact most of us have ‘being right’ so woven into our lives that we don’t even think about that being a problem. This is what generates our work ethic, our work at saving ourselves socially, economically, personally and spiritually. Whatever we’re involved in we’ve just got to get it right. ‘Getting it (whatever ‘it’ is) right’ depends on me, completely. It’s all around us.

Have you ever tried to get a straight answer from a government agency? Their workers are all afraid they might say something that will be used against them so they refer you to someone else who refers you to someone else and so on. That fear is why so many play the ‘cover-my-posterior’ game hoping you’ll get worn out and give up. There is a real fear of taking responsibility, fear being the operative word.

Ever call a cable company or try and return a product or have to argue about a warranty? Management puts the burden on people like you and me who have to take the brunt of our concerns. They are paid to take our frustration and hostility while the behind-the-scenes-management could care less because they play the same game on up the ladder into the corporate boardroom where the focus is profit. The farther up the ladder you go the less people matter. You go from the frontline person-to-person exchange to the next level. At each level the personal dimension slowly disappears until it’s all about profit and the policies necessary to maintain profit flow and being right at that level is even more fearful. Being right is the real burden in life for every person in every culture in every corner of the world. And fear is the motivating force behind trying to be right without God.

So as disciples of Jesus what do we do about being right?

First of all we need to be honest and say we find ourselves with the same burden but our answer, our solution rests in the person of Jesus. But before we give the bottom line view we need to face the dynamics with which the world has conditioned us. Let’s look at some of the attitudes that have emerged from the need to be right.
How can I be perfect without being a perfectionist?
How can I be optimistic without being an optimist?
How can I be real without being a realist?
How can I be active without being an activist?
How can I have ideals without being an idealist?
How can I be serious without taking everything seriously?
How can I be spiritual without being religious?
How can I be right, feel right, without having to feel the need I have to be right all the time especially if it depends on me?
Remember these questions? There’s a subtle twist in each one.

Each one demands an answer that puts the weight totally on me. Each one emphasizes our individual aloneness, our imperfect nature, our lack of knowledge, our insecurities, our fears of the opinions of others and the tentative nature of personal survival. One thing is for sure, I don’t like to think about these questions without the comfort of others who may also think on this level. The least we can say is that we have each other to fall back on.

How many people do you know, indeed, if not yourself, who exude one or more of these attitudinal moods? OK, let’s deal with them each. First, they are ideas describing qualities whose end is being right and more than right, perfect. Now here’s the subtlety in each one, when you add ‘ist’ and ‘ism’ to them their perfection depends on how involved we are willing to become in working to achieve them. Take perfection’ism’ for example. ‘Ism’ is an idea or a concept that is attainable on your very own. It’s an attitude you work at. The same is true of when you talk about being optimistic, real, active, ideal, spiritual, religious. If you work hard enough you can make it on your own. And if you are a perfectionist you expect everyone around to you be one as well. My question to you is, “Does it work for you?”

The classic biblical perfectionist was Paul who, before he met the Lord Jesus, thought of himself as having achieved perfection. His self-measuring standards included being a circumcised Hebrew in the bloodline of Benjamin, a Pharisee, persecuting Christians and obeying the Law. He had done it all by himself, or so he thought (Php.3:4-6). Then came that jarring reality of meeting perfection face to face, Jesus. That confrontation on the Damascus road shook him to the core of his being. Not only did he discover he was not perfect but imperfect in every area of his life. As he fell to the ground in the flashing light his self-legendary assumption came to a crashing halt. He had come to see, through physical blindness, felt through emotional disruption of his internal anger, sensed through spiritual awareness and reasoned through personal experience, a living perfection, a living truth, the living God (Acts 9).

What Paul discovered was that perfection’ism’ is impossible by human achievement. It has to come through Jesus, the only One who is perfect. It has to be understood as a gift, a received gift, a gift to be accepted and developed. Coming from Jesus we allow the Scripture to inform the mind to think, the heart to feel and the spirit to have faith to act.

So, what about the other ‘isms’ and the people who are the ‘-ists’? The same is true. What people have done with the qualities that are God’s is to separate them from Him. Whenever you see an ‘ism’ it is an idea of God’s that has been redefined by man and separated from Him thinking he can achieve them without God.
Optimism is a distortion of hope.
Realism is the stoic denial of spiritual reality which is blended with pessimism.
Activism is choosing my will as opposed to God’s will. It’s what I think is best and demonstrating until I get my way since everything must change while I’m alive.
Idealism is taking an idea of God, worshiping the idea apart from Him thus making it an idol; from idea to ideal to idol.
Being serious means to take control of an idea or a situation and looking like I am embalmed by it thus taking and making myself impervious to correction.
Religion redefines spirituality by choosing an institutional form to follow instead of a dependent leading by the Holy Spirit; just another legalism which by the way is taking God’s Law and using it to look good and control others.
Politically, systems like communism and socialism are the ideas of community and social welfare taken out of the hand of God and redefined by dictators. Liberalism, conservatism and utopianism are examples of philosophical ideas usurped by self-impressed ‘gods’ of intellect.

Now the final question--- how can I know and feel I’m right without having to feel the need to be right and trying so hard to do it without the source of right? If we confess verbally that Jesus is Lord and believe that He is risen from the dead we have perfection in our mind, a trusting heart through our belief and a right spirit to act in faith. It’s in that living action we have His perfection within our grasp (Rom.1:6-13). It is through belief, trust and faith that Jesus acts out His perfection in our responses to Him. Paul assures us that the block to perfection is not that we don’t work hard enough to be good but that sin is the real problem. The problem which Jesus gave His life on the Cross to overcome. In those moments we believe in Jesus, when we trust in Him, He replaces sin with His Holy Spirit Who in turn enables us to follow Him. It is our obedience that gives us the experience of His perfection. It is as we yield our every next moment to Him that we grow into His perfection. That growth is from the transforming power of the Holy Spirit. So take all the ‘isms’ you can think of, apply the principle of choosing to be faithful in place of redefining, separating and trying to take control of God’s qualities. Then and there His perfection is your experience of being perfect in Him.

Paul helps us here when he says in Rom.4:23 “…everything that does not come from faith is sin.” While sin is the birth of all the ‘isms’ and the ‘ists’ who follow them, it is the perfect person of Jesus whose Cross cleared the path to perfection Who is the living reality of belief, trust and faith and whose presence is with us in every next moment. The Cross was God’s plan in Jesus to bring imperfect images of God back into the perfection for which He created them. On the Cross He gave His perfect life to suffer death, the imperfection that haunts every person in every area of their existence. His call to us to take up our cross of faith and follow Him in every next moment, is part of that plan which Jesus died to reveal.
In His Resurrection He gave us the what, when, where and why of transformation. He returned to us what it means to be an image of God, to be perfect, to be right from the brain to the heart to the spirit. That’s when it happens. That’s what transformation builds. That’s why we start with the Word. That’s where each day begins and ends. That’s why, when it’s all said and done, it’s all, all of it, about Jesus.
“Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory (Col.3:1-4).”