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WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!

In his biography, The Education of a Golfer, “Slammin’” Sam Snead reveals some of the inside scoop regarding human pressure and the typical weekend athlete’s inability to deal with it. He has a chapter — which I hope you’ll ignore — on the psychology of golf-course gambling. A lot of players, I guess, have $50 riding on the game . . . or even a whole lot more sometimes, if you’re going one-on-one with Michael Jordan. Sometimes there can be money in play on each hole, each drive, who’s closest to the pin, everything.

And most players, Snead writes, just can’t handle the pressure of making a hard shot if there’s a pile of money riding on it. This book was written a good 40 or so years ago, and there were “sharks” and hustlers out there even in that era, who would play a round of golf with you — and then, right when you had the toughest putt of the day to make, would say: “I’ll bet you a C-note you take three to get down.”

The irony would be this. With the money on the line, most players would actually do worse . . . because of the extra pressure. One player boasted to a local gambler: “Man, I’m playing hot right now. I haven’t had a double bogey in something like three weeks.” A double bogey being a hole where you blow it and get two over par. And the gambler said to him: “I’ll bet you fifty you have one today.” What happened? The player had two of them — because of the power of suggestion, and also because money was riding on the outcome. He folded under the pressure.

Have you ever noticed that it’s hardest to be perfect when you have to be? When there’s no pressure, it’s easy to sink a putt or make a free throw. But when it really counts, when the chips are on the line, we mess up.

And friend, this is a biblical reality. The Bible tells us: “Be ye perfect.” But we can’t BE perfect. And the very fact of the Bible telling us, “Be ye perfect,” almost is a predictor that we WON’T be, that we’ll do worse. We end up missing even more.

Philip Yancey has a book out entitled What’s So Amazing About Grace? And he comments about this very phenomenon. Writing about perfection and legalism, he observes:

“Legalism fails miserably at the one thing it is supposed to do: encourage obedience. In a strange twist, a system of strict laws actually puts new ideas of lawbreaking in a person’s mind.” Then he adds this disturbing P.S.: “Some surveys show that people raised in teetotaling denominations are three times more likely to become alcoholics.”

Isn’t that interesting? Do yourself a favor sometime this week, and simply sit down and read all of Romans chapter 7. Paul writes about this very phenomenon: how legalism, or our attempts to try to be perfect through our OWN law-keeping, end up causing us to sin even more. Here’s just one verse, as freshened up for today in Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase, The Message:

“The very command that was supposed to guide me into life,” Paul confesses, “was cleverly used to trip me up, throwing me headlong.”

I suppose for most of us, this goes back from the sand trap on the golf course to the sand box in nursery school. As soon as Teacher says “DON’T,” we DO. When the sign says STOP, we GO. Don’t smoke — we smoke. If rules are in place, we want to break them. And if a lot is riding on our being good, we just naturally, under that pressure, do bad. We mess up. It’s true in golf, and it’s true in life.

Yancey gives us a second illustration, and maybe you can relate more to this object lesson:

“The church, says Robert Farrar Capon, ‘has spent so much time inculcating in us the fear of making mistakes that she has made us like ill-taught piano students: we play our songs, but we never really hear them because our main concern is not to make music but to avoid some flub that will get us in dutch.’”

Do you recall the infamous ruler poised over your knuckles? And if you hit a D instead of middle C, whack! If you came in on beat four instead of three, whack! If your arpeggio was awkward or your pianissimo was paltry, whack! And before too long, you were so jumpy that your classical recital sounded like bad ragtime: whack! whackwhackwhack! whack! Perfectionism was making you the most imperfect piano pupil in Peoria.

And you know, friend, this is not how it should be in the Christian life. Yes, the Bible says, “Be ye perfect.” But it also talks about peace and joy and calm. “My yoke is EASY,” the gentle Jesus tells us, “and My burden is light.” The Christian faith isn’t supposed to be a system of fear, of rules and rulers and whackwhackwhack!

Here’s Philip Yancey again:

“As Paul wrote to the legalists of his day, ‘For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.’”

Well, it comes down to this question: how can we follow all that the Bible says about “be ye perfect” and still have joy? How can we give piano recitals without worrying about the ruler?

We’ve been emphasizing three great Bible truths in this radio series — and here they are again. First of all, obedience and commandment-keeping and, yes, even perfection are all GOOD things. The Bible speaks highly of them. We’re invited to seek those goals. We should aim for perfection, not IMperfection . . . just as when you play the piano. You try to hit the right notes, don’t you? So that’s point one.

But secondly, perfection is not the BASIS of our salvation. We don’t receive the kingdom based on how good WE do. The blood of Jesus shed on the cross, friend — that is ALWAYS the foundation of our salvation, the source of our hope. His recital performance counts, not ours.

The third reality, then, is this: goodness and perfection — however they are defined in the Word of God — are things that God Himself gives. HE leads us to perfection. HE takes us to perfection. In I John 1:9, a verse every Christian should know by heart, we find, not one, but two unforgettable promises. “First of all,” God says, “if you confess your sins, I will forgive you. And secondly, I will cleanse you. I will purify you. I will make you good. I will make you perfect — and by a heavenly definition of perfection far beyond what you could ever dream.”

So in a very exciting way, we simply hand this whole question of perfection over to Jesus. “Lord, make of me what You will,” we say. And then the amount of perfection, the progress, the pace, the everything . . . becomes HIS responsibility, not ours. We are now playing in His orchestra.

This takes me to a final C. S. Lewis quote on this matter, which I think is the most wonderful truth a Christian can consider. It’s in a chapter entitled “Faith,” from his book, Mere Christianity. And he talks about this very issue of trying to be good. If we have faith in God, and believe in Calvary, do we then abandon our own efforts to follow the rules and play the piano well? Here’s the quote:

“Handing everything over to Christ does not, of course, mean that you stop trying. To trust Him means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him.” Now please — listen to this. “But trying in a NEW way, a less worried way.”

And you know, I am so grateful for this concept. Trying in a new way, a less worried way. Obeying with a new attitude, an attitude of joy, not jittery-ness. Playing great symphonies for Him with hope and confident enthusiasm, not white-knuckled fear. And C. S. Lewis finishes with this:

“Not doing these things” — obedience, perfection — “in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.”

I have a pastor friend, Martin Weber, and we’ve enjoyed some dialogue over the years. And he uses this illustration. You’re trying to get to sleep — and if you’re not asleep by 11:00 p.m., there’s a $20,000 fine hanging over your head. Twenty thousand bucks! Naturally, you’re so scared about that, you can’t sleep a wink. Forget it. But then a kind person comes along and says, “You know, the $20,000 — don’t worry about it. That part’s off. I’ve taken care of it. Go ahead and get some rest.” Aaaaah . . . what peace! And before you know it, what are you doing? Friend, you’re sleeping like a baby. You’re obeying.