For this Reason 6

[HKHaugan]

Living near Greensboro, North Carolina during my pre-teen years was like living in a wonderfully free time of wonder and discovery. The woods, the red clay roads, the fields of tobacco and corn, the neighbors, our free roaming dogs, the pine scents drifting in the breeze, Model-A’s and rumble seats, tractors plowing and kerchief wiping farmers in blue ‘hover-alls’ waving as you passed, even measles and mumps could not deter you because you kind of knew you’d get better. There was only fun and learning at a school that was 12 miles away and you loved old school bus 77 that picked you up each day and honked and waited for you if you were late.

But all that came to a screeching halt when we moved to New York City. I knew immediately that things were different. My dog Peik, a chow, was gone, Billy Joe Dixon my next door buddy and I wouldn’t be riding our bikes on red clay roads anymore and that people talked, looked and acted in complete contrast in this unknown land. The sounds, the sights, the congestion, the smells, the haste, the buildings, no forests and there was no safe place to hide from it all. I was stuck in a box of six story brownstone walkups and asphalt strips called avenues and streets with underground rumblings called subways.

But more than those things was a new demand, a new inner experience, pressure, social pressure, social security. There was a world of kids who lived around me eyeing me, making judgments, assessing my every move. To them I sounded strange and I didn’t look or act like them. There was this immediate discomfort. It was ‘yeah’ instead of ‘yes ma’am’ and ‘yes,sir’, a rough hewn ‘youse’ instead of a soft ‘ya’all.’ I didn’t belong here and I actually wanted to hide but I sensed that survival was more important than hiding. It seemed that I had better fit in, that inner sense kicking at the door of my conscious need to survive.

After a few casual attempts to make friends I learned I had to speak the way they did, dress like they did, act like they did, all unwritten by the way. After taking a test I found myself in a school that demanded perfection in study and a group of ethnic people I had never encountered, Jews. To be in a school where they were the great majority made learning a must, an experience in itself, you had to make it intellectually.

Now all of this is just a fragment of the story but maybe you get the idea that I was introduced to a whole new way of life that was law to the core. Speech, dress and mannerisms were everything and being part of a group meant survival. It had to be done their way. Pegged pants, duck haircuts and long sleeve shirts with the cuffs rolled half way down the arms and the collar turned up in the back was the unwritten dress code. At school it was keep up with the smartest kids who were Jewish or fail. The only dress code was neatness. Also the rebels occasionally slipped out and walked across Manhattan to 43nd Street and Broadway to see 9am matinee shows at the Paramount that might have stars like Frank Sinatra, the Dorsey’s and a feature film, all for just fifty cents.

There were areas you learned not to traverse because of gangs there. You might walk five blocks out of the way to get to some place close by so as not to cross their turf. There was an unwritten understanding that streets were turfed and avenues were neutral. One would be Italian, another Puerto Rican, another black, another Roman Catholic, another just their turf. West Side Story put it all together. It was a monumentally accurate and artistic expression of a kid’s life in ‘turfdom.’ It didn’t have to be violent but often was when both visible and invisible boundaries were crossed.

What I further discovered was the vast separation between the Park Avenue people and the tenement dwellers. That is another story but they lived with a different legal system and to them we were the ‘out’s’ and they were the ‘in’s.’ They, in their penthoused twenty story buildings could literally ‘look down’ on us. Both meanings hold here. The closest you got to ‘them’ was if you were a delivery boy and had to enter ‘their’ building through the rear service entrance which even had a service elevator. There was an official called a doorman dressed like a general who stood guard at the front entrance. He was the stern paid enforcer to make sure we untouchables didn’t go in the wrong way. Then for ‘them’ he’d smile, bow and open the royal gate as ‘they’ came in and out, saying ‘madame’ and ‘sir’ to ‘them’ as they appeared. Funny thing, when he wasn’t working he was one of ‘us’ living in our neighborhood. I never figured out how he lived with himself. Yes Toto, this ain’t Greensboro anymore. The law there was fun, the law in the city was hard, cutting and final.

Now why am I telling you all this is because of Scripture, because of Paul’s insight, because of this gigantic spiritual gap that existed before Christ between Jew and Gentile. The Jew believed he lived on Park Avenue and belonged to exclusive clubs and the right people. The Gentiles were all the rest of us out there in the tenements, low class, immigrants and rough to the core. The two didn’t associate and the two didn’t belong together but each had their own law degrees.

I began to look back on my Carolina time and realized that my former paradise was not all that pleasant for my parents who, being basically foreigners therefore not native to the area, were referred to as ‘Yankees.’ They were tagged even though they had no part, tie or familiarity with the North/South conflict. Neither did I except for my teacher in the first three grades getting us to sing Dixie before class started each morning. When I went to New York I had a sweater with a Confederate flag on the back. In East Harlem, on the edge of which I lived, you wore it cautiously if at all.

Still I look back on both my idyllic Carolina and the oblique city dungeon as something God gifted me with so that I would later begin to understand the Gospel. Its deeper personal intention is breaking the world’s legalistic systems by faith in Jesus no matter where I am or with whom. They are every contrived man-invented method used for social, ethnic, professional and personal survival. No matter where you go there is a legalism awaiting.

The world is a clutter of groups and their legal systems determining identity, rank, and mobility. Neighborhoods, schools, prisons, jobs, churches; all of them have laws you better learn quickly and not break if acceptance is what you want. Isn’t that what the Jew/Gentile controversy is symbolic of? Biblically it is the foundation revealing the emptiness of man’s attempts to be in control. It makes us aware of all the broken legal systems the devil has inspired in the world. If we can see Jesus as the Deliverer, Redeemer, Savior and Lord, we have found the source of breaking every stronghold that has gripped us since Adam. Man’s systems always look back on the best way to survive physically, emotionally and economically. The Gospel is always looking forward giving us a common, personal, spiritual and eternal identity with purpose and destiny. With Jesus you don’t live by looking at life through the rear view mirror. You are always looking ahead through Him and His windshield wipers of faith, hope, grace, truth and love.

Now maybe you can see why Paul’s message in Ephesians really strikes home with me. He saw that something special had happened to him. He had been given the administration of God’s grace; that is the gift Paul was given to reveal what had been revealed to him. It was the basic human mystery held until Jesus came. Reading what he has written is intended to assure the reader that he has the insight into this mystery. Insight is actually an outsight that becomes a light that is turned on, given to illuminate an area that once was dark. Why? We don’t live outside ourselves. Everything we do is lived from within in the mind, the heart and the spirit. “The Kingdom of God is within (Lk.17:21).” We are an inside people living outside. That’s why “Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path (Ps.119:105).” We process everything within and live it out through our bodies in a physical setting.

Before Christ everything in that process was directed by sin and the fear of not being right, being self-protective, trying to fit in the best we could depending on whatever we sensed would get us through from one moment to the next.

That’s the way Paul lived under the Law, trying every day to be perfect all by himself which is the drive and proof of sin. That struggle is consuming, tiresome and success elusive. Imagine what it must have been like for him. Living under a constant system of legal self-scrutiny ends up in depression and anger that needs release. Paul’s release was to be a persecutor.

It is no different with us. We are in the same boat. Life is all about me. The atmospheric condition of the secular world demands performance whether you know the rules or not. The spirit of all the world’s law systems is “prove yourself.” ‘Whoever dies with the most toys wins.’ It is a mire of judgment and condemnation that alienates and isolates and ends up in total aloneness. Where are we in this mess?

Imagine again what it must have been like when Paul met Jesus who came into his world of inner aloneness and frustration freeing him from the chains that had only bound him to some world authority and its imprisonment. For him his chains were signs of true freedom. He was in chains for Christ. Nothing in this world could bind him any longer. He had been given the key through revelation and insight to know the historical mystery, the wisdom of God, that in Jesus was the knowledge to understand and act perfectly at any given moment. Wisdom for us is the gift of the Holy Spirit letting Jesus discern and act through us at any given moment. The Bible, which is His Word, is the Wisdom Chronicle. It’s not just words, it’s words with power. When we read and study it the Holy Spirit touches our mind and heart to respond in His wisdom. Wisdom is given us as we yield to receive it as a personal gift. Do we do that perfectly? No! But that is what being a disciple is all about, learning how to be wise for every next moment.

What Paul was blessed to discover was wisdom required in every next moment with all its unknown ingredients was available through Christ in the power of the Spirit. He was given the ability to discern a situation and respond right. He was right through faith not by works. Spiritual spontaneity, mystery solved. Spontaneous generation not possible in biology was now spiritually accomplished by the Spirit in us. It was not just to be right in one’s mind and heart and feel good about ourselves. Absolutely not, that is the goal of law. It’s to be right for the sake of others, to love God right, to make friends right, to offer Christ right, to be confident in the process of living for others before we live for ourselves. That’s why faith is about trusting Christ in every next moment and let Him be right through us. We are justified by being faithful not legal.

So we read and study the Bible to look forward, to dream dreams and have visions where fear of rejection and failure disappears and His spontaneity leaps in. To be able to respond based on faith in Jesus, that spontaneity was and is the living wisdom of God, the mystery unveiled. Having faith in Jesus to act through His Word is the working wisdom of God freely given to us. That’s how ministry is begun, how people are healed, souls saved, the lonely find hope in their personal moments, how prayer opens doors and the unexpected becomes the expected and the world reconciled to God. Now that is Good News in Christ.