Is Fake Goodness Better Than None?

Humorist Art Buchwald wrote a tongue-in-cheek article many years ago where a psychiatrist said to him, "If you don't vent some of your anger, your feelings of turmoil, you're going to have an ulcer. If you're mad, sound off. Don't be a nice guy all the time."

Well, in a way, that advice goes right onto the therapy couch where WE'VE been sitting all week. If we have bad desires and sinful tendencies, should we fight them or just live them out in reckless abandon? I mean, if looking on a woman lustfully IS the same as adultery . . . may as well go to a motel and commit the physical act too. Right?

Anyway, Buchwald went home ready to follow doctor's orders. His wife tried to give him a kiss at the front door, like she always did, and he snapped at her. "Stop kissing me all the time. We're adults. We've been married a long time. We don't always have to be kissing like a couple of kids." His wife turned red in the face, went in the house, and slammed the door. "I felt better already," he wrote.

That evening at supper, his son Joel said, very politely, "Please pass the potatoes, Dad." "What are you interrupting for?" "All I said was, 'Please pass the potatoes.'" "That can be considered an interruption."

"Don't start on HIM now," the wife said.

"I'm sick of being Mr. Nice Guy," Buchwald told them. "First it's potatoes, then he'll want to borrow the car, and go out with girls; pretty soon he'll be drinking and smoking. Somebody has to draw the line somewhere. He'll thank me someday for not passing the potatoes."

So all evening long, Buchwald vented his nasty temper on everybody, right down to the paper boy who came collecting for the newspapers. The next morning, he went to his doctor and said, "Your advice was terrible. My wife wants a divorce, my son has run away, I can't get newspapers delivered anymore, and the whole neighborhood hates me." And the doctor says, "Hmmm. I guess you're right. Maybe you should take up golf instead." And Buchwald responds: "Now you tell me!"

Well, it's a cute story, but it's actually more spiritually REAL than maybe we want to admit. Again, here's our series title: MILKSHAKES AND OBEDIENCE. If God commanded us to drink five milkshakes a day, we could easily obey Him in THAT. But He asks us HARD things instead. "Love Him with all our hearts." "Don't desire what our neighbors have." "Keep your mind pure in this R-rated world." "Honor heaven in what you eat and drink" – speaking of milkshakes. "Kiss your wife and be sweet to your kid even when your radiator is boiling over."

The hard-as-nails question is this: what should we do with this ongoing, lifetime-struggle- dichotomy between the commands of God and our base desires? "Be ye perfect," God says. Well, we're not. "Love the holy things of God." Well, we don't. "Love your neighbor and do good to those who spitefully use you." Well, we don't feel like doing that. We feel like turning the hose on him and stealing his pretty wife and his new HDTV television.

We mentioned the other day a concept called "true obedience." Or "NATURAL obedience." That's the kind of obedience where you WANT to do the good thing. You WANT to read the Bible . . . so it's easy to do that. You WANT to sing praises to God in church — so, no problem. You WANT to worship only God; you WANT to love others. There's no huge merit in doing the things that come naturally, but some folks seem to have that advantage. The rest of us, like poor Art Buchwald, want to "smack people upside the head," as the old saying used to go.

Well, friend, let's put one Bible principle on the table right now. There is NO salvation, and no victory to be found, in simply gritting our teeth and doing good things. If you don't hit your neighbor, and if you don't drink that forbidden milkshake by simple, raw willpower . . . there's no salvation merit in doing so.

"By observing the law no one will be justified."

That's Galatians 2:16.

Okay. So what's principle number two? Here it is. TRUE obedience — where good deeds come naturally, and where sinful temptations are UNappealing to us — can only happen by living in relationship with Jesus Christ, and allowing Him to transform our minds. Which – we studied this yesterday – might be the slow process of a LIFETIME. But Jesus promises to stay with us FOR that lifetime; He gives us assurance of salvation every mile of the road . . . IF we'll stay with Him the whole way.

If Mr. Buchwald — to keep picking on him for a moment here — will ABIDE in Jesus all the way to the heavenly finish line, he slowly but surely will WANT to kiss his wife, and be loving to his son, and pay the paper boy what he owes. It will come naturally to obey. I remember a Christian writer observing: "Sin will BECOME hateful to us."

All through the book of Romans, Paul writes about this. And remember, he confessed that HIS desires ran in the opposite direction from God's holy Law too. "I do what I DON'T want; I DON'T do what I DO want." Remember that one? "Woe is me"? But he also writes eloquently about "the obedience that comes FROM faith." Faith in who? Jesus, of course. And certainly, faith COMES by being in relationship, by learning to love and trust. Romans 1:17 puts it this way:

"A righteousness that is by faith FROM FIRST TO LAST."

A great old book people in my Adventist denomination dearly love is entitled Steps to Christ. Here's what the writer says on this topic. Art Buchwald, take note. Lonnie Melashenko, you take note too.

"Christ changes the heart." P.S. It might take a lifetime, but He changes the heart. "He abides in your heart BY FAITH. You are to MAINTAIN this connection with Christ by faith and the continual surrender of your will to Him; and so long as you do this, He will work IN you to will and to do according to His good pleasure. . . . Then with Christ working IN you, you will manifest the same spirit and do the same good works — works of righteousness, obedience."

And now — the good news — you will obey NATURALLY. Like a husband who is madly in love with his wife and finds it easy to shop for her, easy to dote on her, easy to want to please her. When's the last time someone gritted their teeth on their honeymoon?

But now . . . what about in the meantime? What if you're a brand new Christian, and you feel like hitting me over the head for something I've done to you? Or you feel like taking my wife? You're walking with Jesus, but the relationship hasn't yet "kicked in" to the point where those desires have faded away. To NOT hit me — by gritting your teeth and counting to ten — would be, in a sense, FALSE obedience. Should you just go ahead and do it then?

Well, friend, forgive me for hoping that you DON'T! If you're wanting to hit me, or take my car or my wife, I can't help but think that false obedience is better than none. And I would suggest to you that in this arduous Christian walk, our FIRST effort certainly should be to know Jesus as a Friend. But our SECOND effort should be to obey, to do what God asks us to do. Not to GET saved, but because we ARE saved. "Obeying in a new, less worried way," is how C. S. Lewis puts it. If you have to grit your teeth, then grit them. Because it's better to not hit our neighbors than to hit them, even if you FEEL like hitting them. And if the veins on your neck stand out in anger — better the veins than the flying fists of fury.

C. S. Lewis wrote a bit more on this issue of what to do when you don't FEEL like being good and holy. Notice:

"Do not waste time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbor; ACT as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him."

Maybe this is a kind of "holy hypocrisy"; I don't know. In business, they say: "Fake it 'til you make it." Lewis goes on:

"[People] are told they ought to love God. They cannot find any such feelings IN themselves. What are they to do? The answer is the same as before. ACT as if you did. Do not sit trying to manufacture feelings. Ask yourself, 'If I were sure that I loved God, what would I do?' When you have found the answer, go and do it."

Then he shares this wonderful news:

"Nobody can ALWAYS have devout feelings: and even if we could, feelings are not what God principally cares about. Christian Love, either towards God or towards man, if an affair of the WILL. If we are trying to do His will we are obeying the commandment, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.' He will give us feelings of love if He pleases. We cannot create them for ourselves, and we must not demand them as a right. But the great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, HIS love for US does not. It is not wearied by our sins, or our indifference; and, therefore, it is quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins, at whatever cost to us, at whatever cost to Himself."

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