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THE PATIENT SHOWS NO IMPROVEMENT #2

MAXWELL EDISON'S LIFE OF CRIME

In the category of the "Very Trivial," I'm here to report that the famous and final album by the Beatles, entitled Abbey Road, made its debut 33 years ago, on September 26, 1969. Some of us from that generation remember the old album picture of the four guys in a crosswalk: John in a white suit, Ringo in a coat with tails, Paul in a blue suit, barefoot, and George in a denim shirt and bell-bottomed jeans. And then the songs: "Come Together," "Something in the Way She Moves," and on and on, down to "The End" and "Her Majesty." Well, that was a long time ago.

But today — in a rather tiny way — a song from that 33-year-old album reminds us of our topic this week, entitled THE PATIENT SHOWS NO IMPROVEMENT. Sometimes, even in the Christian walk, it doesn't appear that the followers of Jesus Christ ARE following Him . . . because they don't get any better. They're bad on Day One, and they're still bad on Day Ten Thousand. The life-transforming gospel isn't transforming them. Why is this?

Well, the Beatles ditty I'm referring to is entitled "Maxwell's Silver Hammer." If you don't know the song, don't bother; it isn't worth looking up. But Abbey Road devotees will remember that Joan was quizzical, studying metaphysical science in the home. When Maxwell Edison, majoring in medicine, called her on the phone. "Can I take you out to the pictures, Joan?" Well, before the night's over, he ends up banging her on the head with Maxwell's silver hammer. A little bit later, when he gets in trouble with a teacher at school, because Maxwell Edison is playing the fool, he bangs HER on the head. Kills her too. So he's arrested. "P.C. 31 says, ‘We've got a dirty one.'" And Maxwell IS dirty, because despite the protests from Rose and Valerie, screaming from the gallery, the judge sentences Maxwell to prison. And the final chorus by Lennon and McCartney comes at us again: "Bang, bang, Maxwell's silver hammer came down upon HIS head. Bang, bang, Maxwell's silver hammer made sure that he was dead."

And 33 years later, in London's P.C. 31 and around the world, habitual criminals keep doing the same bad things. And . . . you and me as well. Our jealousies linger for 33 years, or maybe for SIXTY-three. Petty arguments knock us off our devotional life, our Bible reading, and we find that same tendency in our sunset years that we noticed in high school.
I mentioned yesterday how the Apostle Paul described this human dilemma almost as a LAW.

"I find this LAW at work," he laments in Romans chapter seven.

"I keep doing bad things. The last verse of that chapter describes it this way: "In the sinful nature a slave to the LAW of sin."
One of our favorite writers, the evangelical leader John Stott, shares this from his wonderful book, The Contemporary Christian:

"Jesus taught the INWARD origin of human evil." John's fellow countryman, Maxwell Edison, surely proved that, didn't he? "Its source" — human evil — "has to be traced neither to a bad environment nor to a faulty education (although both these can have a powerful conditioning influence on impressionable young people), but rather to our ‘heart,' our inherited and twisted nature." Then he adds this: "One might almost say that Jesus introduced us to Freudianism before Freud."

Well, friend, I said yesterday that the Bible is filled with good news for people like you and me when we struggle ALL OUR LIVES — 33 years or 93 years — with bad habits that vex us. It's absolutely true that if a person has the bad habit of clonking people on the head with silver hammers, they need to be locked up in Wakefield Prison . . . and we can share God's good news with them THERE. But I want to address myself right here to that poor Christian, that struggling soul out there, who, all their LIFE, has battled a bad temper. Or lust. Or severe, crushing, debilitating feelings of inferiority. C. S. Lewis, in his book, Mere Christianity, writes with tender sympathy about people who WANT to be Christians, WANT to be like Jesus . . . but are simply tormented by inner demons. Sometimes it's as simple a thing as bad digestion; they feel CRUDDY all day, every day. So they snap at people; they get impatient easily. They skip church because they're just so TIRED and worn out. But in their sunset years, they look back with sorrow at how little they've progressed up the road to the kingdom. Again to our title: THE PATIENT SHOWS NO IMPROVEMENT.

Well, C. S. Lewis encourages us with the news, first of all, that God is forever and ENDLESSLY in the "picking-up" business. Even though God invites us in the Bible to SEEK perfection. Notice:

"On the one hand, God demand for perfection," he writes, "need not discourage you in the least in your present attempts to be good, or even in your present failures. Each time you fall He will pick you up again."

That's good news, isn't it, and here at the Voice of Prophecy we've gotten mail, many times, from veritable Maxwell Edisons who were locked up in prison because they had fallen and fallen and fallen again. But EACH TIME, Lewis writes, God will pick us up. He never gets impatient. Never. But here's the rest of the good news:

"And He [God] knows perfectly well that your OWN efforts are never going to bring you anywhere NEAR perfection. On the other hand, you must realize from the outset that the goal towards which He is beginning to guide you is ABSOLUTE perfection; and no power in the universe, except you yourself, can prevent Him from taking you to that goal."

I guess this is, on the one hand, wonderful news, and on the other hand . . . rather perplexing. God invites us to be carried along by Him on the road to perfection, but He is infinitely gracious and forgiving when we keep stumbling on that road. But if He is TAKING us toward perfection, why do we see so little progress? Why do our golf scores, going back to yesterday's motif . . . why do our golf scores never improve?

Mostly, I guess, because we try to navigate the road ourselves. Or we refuse to cooperate — or cooperate FULLY — with where He wants to take us. Notice that key line by C. S. Lewis:

"No power in the universe, EXCEPT YOU YOURSELF, can prevent Him from taking you to that goal."

But now I want to take you to the place where some of us find ourselves. We've tried to cooperate, but it's hard. We tried to be good, but THAT'S seemingly impossible. Whether it's that bad digestion, or inbred selfishness, or powerfully ingrained bad habits, we've simply not traveled up the road. Other Christians glide by, growing in grace, bearing fruit, rejoicing in their progress, but we're stuck in the starting gate, still in first gear. In fact, we don't know if the engine's even running.

But friend, here is a paragraph that I've read to myself many times. It's in this same passage by C. S. Lewis, and it's addressed to anyone who has faced the lifelong struggle, and is now discouraged. Listen to these words of promise:

"If you are a poor creature — poisoned by a wretched upbringing in some house full of vulgar jealousies and senseless quarrels — saddled, by no choice of your own, with some loathsome sexual perversion — nagged day in and day out by an inferiority complex that makes you snap at your best friends — DO NOT DESPAIR. He knows all about it." Friend, that's Jesus, of course. Don't we sing that song: "Jesus knows our every weakness"? "You are one of the poor whom He blessed. He knows what a wretched machine you are trying to drive. Keep on. Do what you can. One day (perhaps in another world, but perhaps far sooner than that) He will fling it on the scrapheap and give you a new one. And then you may astonish us all — not least yourself: for you have learned your driving in a hard school." Then he quietly adds: "(Some of the last will be first and some of the first will be last.)"

Friend, I just want to weep for joy as I read those lines . . . because they mean something to me. Think about it. Whatever hurts us, whatever drives us into evil and sorrow, Jesus knows. He knows every time, and in every detail. And though our pain brings HIM pain, though our sins bring Him grief, they never exhaust His forgiving heart. He knows. He cares. "He knows what a wretched machine you are trying to drive," Lewis wrote, and who knows what personal hurts he too might have been harboring.

But isn't this beautiful encouragement AND COUNSEL? "Keep on. Keep on driving. If the car is sputtering, keep on. If there are bumps in the road, keep on. If you're discouraged, keep on. If you're sad that God has seemingly forgiven you 400 times for something, aren't you glad He told US to forgive 490 times . . . and then ANOTHER 490 and on and on? Keep on. Because God hangs in there with us through the potholes, the collisions, the mistakes — and in the end, flings our wrecked-up old machine on the junk heap and gives us a brand new Rolls Royce to drive.

I understand He has a whole fleet of them, and He's just waiting to give them away.