WARNING: The following blog is posted from a slightly sarcastic snarky soap box also known as the S.S.S.S.B. (Get your S.S.S.S.B. coffee mug at our website. *) This post is intending to deal with the way that we as a church have sacrificed the powerful Bible for weak cliches. Please be aware that if you don’t put the lid on tightly enough you may spill this blog all over your lap as you try to sneak it in to the movies and then you will burn yourself, because this blog is hot! (please don’t sue me, i have no money) It is also important that you are careful around the edges of this blog as parts of it are very sharp. Don’t stick this blog in your eye. If you see this blog walking along in a prison area and it is trying to get a ride please keep on driving. Know that no dolphins were harmed in the writing of this blog.

*we have no websites or mugs.

Our world is full of Christian clichés that we throw around. Most of them are based some sort of cultural view of God but are actually quite ridiculous when considered from a biblical perspective.

Consider, “When God closes a door he opens a window.” The basic idea being that if God shuts one opportunity down for you then he is going to open up another. I think as Stephen was being stoned to death (the result of which was that the Gospel was spread through the nations) he may have said, “Sometimes God let’s you get stoned to death so his name will be proclaimed.”

I guess that just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Or Paul may have said, “Sometimes God lets you get beaten and arrested so a jailer and his family can meet Jesus.” OR “When you have been beaten times without number and shipwrecked and in constant danger and flogged, just remember in the end God will let you spend years in jail so you can write lots of letters and ultimately be beheaded.”

I know… it just doesn’t flow well.

How about this one, “God helps those who help themselves.” It would be more biblically true if we said, “God is inclined to help those who die to themselves.” But that isn’t as empowering i suppose.

We try with good intentions to spur people on to walk after Christ by saying, “You may be the only Jesus anyone ever sees.” But we forget that God’s “invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made, so they are without excuse.” Romans 1:20. God has already made himself known to all peoples.

I’m not Jesus! I’m not God! They have seen God! They are seeing him every day! Some deny him and some embrace him, but God is the only God, Jesus is the only Jesus that people will ever see!

Don’t forget the very popular church sign, “Do your best and let God take care of the rest.”

Do we really think this is biblical? “God, i’ll get this part and whatever i can’t handle i’d appreciate you taking care of.” It makes me think of the old poem “footprints in the sand”. You remember it. It is in your grandparent’s bathroom next to the pink hand towel with daisies on it. Inside the frame are glued a few small shells. It has been there since for 47 years. The poem talks of a woman walking on the beach with the Lord. Scenes from her life flash across the sky. She notices that sometimes there are two sets of footprints (hers and the Lord’s) and sometimes there are only one set (she believes them to be hers). She realizes that there are only one set of footprints when she is going through her hardest times of trials and suffering. She asks the Lord why he would abandon her when she needs him most. He answers that the reason there are only one set of footprints is because it was in those times that he carried her.

(head tilt and “aww”)

It sounds good, but it is not true biblically. We don’t need God THE MOST when we go through hard times. We NEED him every day. We can’t deal with life on our own when it is easy for us. We can do NOTHING apart from him. (John 15:5) He upholds the universe (and us) by the word of his power. (Hebrews 1:3) In his hand are my life and breath. (Daniel 5:23) And if he were to withdraw his breath from us we would just turn into piles of dust. (Job 34:14,15)

I love what God says to Israel, “Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been borne by me from before your birth, carried from the womb; even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs i will carry you. I have made, and i will bear; i will carry and i will save.” Isaiah 46:3,4

I exist today, endure today, not because i took care of the things i could and let God take care of the rest but because God was pleased to uphold me and hold me together today. Because God was pleased to allow my breath to persist and generously left his breath in me. He is the one who was with me from before birth and should i see gray hairs it will be because he carried me safely.

We have become Christians who are Bible illiterate and in love with faith that fits well on a bumper sticker and sounds pretty.

It’s just that most of it isn’t true.

I read a post yesterday that said, “God’s love is great because he knows how great you are.” Wow! That is so wrong! God’s love is great because Love is in his nature and goes out before him. (Exodus 34:6-7, Psalm 89:14)

Deuteronomy 7:6-9 tells us that “It was not because [Israel] was more in number than any other people who the LORD set his love on [them] and chose [them], for [they] were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the LORD loves [them] and is keeping his oath that he swore.”

Before we would then speak too highly of this nation and speak of them as having been faithful to God and their great potential we must turn two pages over and see that the Lord reminds the people that they aren’t righteous but rather stubborn and disobedient, constantly provoking the Lord to wrath. He tells them that he is taking them into the Promised Land not because of their righteousness (not because of their potential) but because he is righteous. (Deuteronomy 9)

The point being that God didn’t have great love for me because i was great but rather because in his great goodness he decided to love me even though i was as far from great as i could be. (Genesis 6:5, Genesis 8:21, Isaiah 64:6, Romans 5:6,8,10; Ephesians 2:3, Romans 2:10-12)

We love Christian clichés because they typically put us in control or put us in the central position or make us out to be stronger than we actually are. It’s too bad that we don’t have anything else to offer people other than clichés that don’t change our lives or guard us from sin or teach us how to be holy or grow us in our salvation or make us more like Jesus.

…

Oh, wait! we do…

The Bible…(1 Ptr 2:2; 2 Tim 3:16,17; Psalm 119:9,11, Deuteronomy 32:47; Psalm 1:1-3; Psalm 19:7-11)

God, make us biblical people!

ryan…