Method Is The Madness
Work begins each day with me standing at the coffee urn, thankful for the nice lady in the office who always puts it on. She doesn’t drink the stuff herself, but knows we do. The rest of us sure do. It goes fast. My brother wanted a cup one day, and finding the pot empty, came to me. He wanted me to make him some. I started to give him the old “give a man a fish, you feed him for a day…” speech. Nope. He still insisted that I make it for him and being not only my older brother, but also technically my boss, I complied. The soil from the fern pot in the foyer did the trick.
But making coffee takes a little skill, I guess. You don’t really want it too strong or too weak. We learn to do things and eventually have it down to a science, so to speak. Whether it’s the water to coffee ratio, when to apply the solder on a pipe, or when to stop sucking on the hose as your siphoning gas from your older brother’s van… We learn the method. “That’s not how you do it…” we find ourselves saying. “Let me show you how it’s done.” We seem to apply this thinking to everything. My brother had a method too. It was simply to get someone else to do it for him. Delegation is a funny thing. It needs to be learned by those who don’t know it, but it needs to be restrained by those who do. Anyway, we are methodical, generally speaking. We are Methodeers. Spellchecker didn’t like that one (it liked the name for itself though).
So, where does Christ come into this? I love Paul’s determination with the Corinthians, “to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified”. Jesus always factors into the equation, doesn’t he? He brings “all things… together under one head”. Well, he didn’t rely on methods much. Take his healings for instance. He gave sight to many. Sometimes he simply touched their eyes. On one occasion he used his own saliva to apply to a man’s eyes, and on another he mixed his spit with clay for the same purpose. The outcome was the same (slightly altered with the man who saw “tree-people” at first), but the method was different. I think that was intentional. When was he not intentional? He did this to show us that God’s ways are not our ways. We think we can get it down to 3 easy steps, 5 simple guidelines or 7 days to victory. There is no method when it comes to the Lord. You cannot confine him. He lives by truth and righteousness and cannot lie or sin at all, but that’s hardly confinement. Like Lewis says, “He’s not a tame lion.”
This makes us rely much more on him. We lean harder on him when we realize that Jesus did not just come to “show” the way, but to “be” the way. He said, “I am the way…”. Change is what we all want, but it always eludes us. We chase self-improvement like the junk food that it is. It abates the hunger for a little while, but you end up worse-off. Think about it for a second; when did you experience the most change in your life? For most people, the answer to that question is at conversion. You meet Jesus and find him to be the cure, the ransom, the wings, the key, and the life that he is, and it drastically alters you. There are many amazing stories of broken addictions, transformed tempers, and infused unshakable joy accompanying that first confrontation with the cross. But from there, the common continuance of the story finds people looking out for the next book or the next speaker, or even the next doctrine to get them through the dry spots. A return to the cross and to Christ himself has no comparison. That was his rebuke to that great church in Ephesus, “You have left your first love.”
Madness may have method sometimes, but do not be dictated by a form or a pattern. Don’t give in to the temptation of doing something because people say “it works.” Jesus isn’t a means to an end. He’s both the means and the end. Let him be both. People may call you impractical or even mad, but they called Jesus that too. Do something out of the ordinary today. Make somebody some coffee.
BJ
But making coffee takes a little skill, I guess. You don’t really want it too strong or too weak. We learn to do things and eventually have it down to a science, so to speak. Whether it’s the water to coffee ratio, when to apply the solder on a pipe, or when to stop sucking on the hose as your siphoning gas from your older brother’s van… We learn the method. “That’s not how you do it…” we find ourselves saying. “Let me show you how it’s done.” We seem to apply this thinking to everything. My brother had a method too. It was simply to get someone else to do it for him. Delegation is a funny thing. It needs to be learned by those who don’t know it, but it needs to be restrained by those who do. Anyway, we are methodical, generally speaking. We are Methodeers. Spellchecker didn’t like that one (it liked the name for itself though).
So, where does Christ come into this? I love Paul’s determination with the Corinthians, “to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified”. Jesus always factors into the equation, doesn’t he? He brings “all things… together under one head”. Well, he didn’t rely on methods much. Take his healings for instance. He gave sight to many. Sometimes he simply touched their eyes. On one occasion he used his own saliva to apply to a man’s eyes, and on another he mixed his spit with clay for the same purpose. The outcome was the same (slightly altered with the man who saw “tree-people” at first), but the method was different. I think that was intentional. When was he not intentional? He did this to show us that God’s ways are not our ways. We think we can get it down to 3 easy steps, 5 simple guidelines or 7 days to victory. There is no method when it comes to the Lord. You cannot confine him. He lives by truth and righteousness and cannot lie or sin at all, but that’s hardly confinement. Like Lewis says, “He’s not a tame lion.”
This makes us rely much more on him. We lean harder on him when we realize that Jesus did not just come to “show” the way, but to “be” the way. He said, “I am the way…”. Change is what we all want, but it always eludes us. We chase self-improvement like the junk food that it is. It abates the hunger for a little while, but you end up worse-off. Think about it for a second; when did you experience the most change in your life? For most people, the answer to that question is at conversion. You meet Jesus and find him to be the cure, the ransom, the wings, the key, and the life that he is, and it drastically alters you. There are many amazing stories of broken addictions, transformed tempers, and infused unshakable joy accompanying that first confrontation with the cross. But from there, the common continuance of the story finds people looking out for the next book or the next speaker, or even the next doctrine to get them through the dry spots. A return to the cross and to Christ himself has no comparison. That was his rebuke to that great church in Ephesus, “You have left your first love.”
Madness may have method sometimes, but do not be dictated by a form or a pattern. Don’t give in to the temptation of doing something because people say “it works.” Jesus isn’t a means to an end. He’s both the means and the end. Let him be both. People may call you impractical or even mad, but they called Jesus that too. Do something out of the ordinary today. Make somebody some coffee.
BJ
posted by BJ at 8:38 a.m.
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