In worship we’ve been looking at
some of the most misunderstood and misapplied passages in the Bible. And when the sermon series is over I am
confident there will be dozens of passages we never got to. In my own devotional life I’ve been
going over the gospels again with an eye toward the things I can understand and
apply—the teachings of Jesus that he expects me to put into action in my daily
life. The fact that this is the
third time I’ve tried to go back and put together a comprehensive list of these
ethical, moral, and spiritual imperatives is probably an unfortunate sign that
I prefer my teachings hypothetical and intellectual. Alas, I soldier on ever hopeful.
This last week I came across a
warning Jesus gives in Matthew’s gospel against false teachers: men and women who claim to speak on
God’s behalf but end up leading their audience astray. How can you tell whether someone who
speaks of God is a true or false teacher?
Jesus says, “You’ll be able to
tell them by the fruit they bear: you don’t find grapes growing on thorn-bushes,
do you, or figs on thistles? Well,
in the same way, good trees produce good fruit, and bad trees produce bad fruit.” As a ‘God teacher’ myself this has
particular resonance for me. And
yet it’s bigger than that. Jesus
is pointing out an essential truth intended for all God’s children.
For a long time Christians have thought
of faith as an act of intellectual assent: a life-changing “I believe” after
which we fill in the blanks according to which branch of the Family Tree your
church springs from.
There have been reform movements
that said agreeing with some propositional truth wasn’t good enough. Many of those movements came to believe
that it wasn’t enough to believe with your head—you needed to include your
heart as well. They believed that
in order to be an authentic follower of Jesus you had to have a moving
emotional experience of God’s forgiveness and love. Your head can be filled with the most profound theology, but
if your heart wasn’t “strangely warmed” as well, then you needed to go back to
the drawing board.
Please don’t get me wrong. Faith most definitely involves the
heart and the head. I used to
teach a class in parenting teens and the curriculum always went back to what
they called “the think-feel-do cycle.”
How you see the world determines how you feel about that world, and how
you feel will shape and guide what you do as you live in that world.
I just find it very interesting
that Jesus doesn’t concern himself with the content of these false
teachers. He doesn’t worry about
whether their appeal makes us feel
one way or another. Instead Jesus
just says, look at what they do—look at what they get done. If you want to know what is in the
heart or head of a teacher, look at the results—the fruit—of what they do and
say.
Passages like this always give me
pause and lead me to evaluate my own life. It’s reminiscent of the old question: “If
loving God and loving people were against the law, would there be enough
observable evidence to convict you?” If you were a tree, and a group of botany students were
tasked with identifying what kind of tree you were—based solely on the results
of your actions (or fruit you bear)—what kind of tree would they choose?
I’m one of those people who wishes
that good intentions and generous impulses could count for more than they
do. I’m always being prompted with
an idea for a quick note, an act of support, a gift of appreciation, a random
act of kindness, but I never seem to complete the prompt by actually mailing
the note or delivering the gift.
In my mind I’m a thoughtful, considerate, generous person because I’ve felt
grateful, wanted to be generous, and have considered the desires of others all
the time.
The problem is that I have very
little tangible evidence of those kind thoughts and helpful impulses. My heart and head are light years ahead
of my visits, check stubs, and trips to the mailbox. And Jesus warns me that the disconnect between thinking,
feeling, and actually doing is a real problem and that I need to address that
problem very soon.
Maybe I’m not the only one. It’s possible that you are every bit as
well intended as I. Maybe you
struggle almost as much as I do with following through. If so, I suggest we pray for each
other. No, I mean you email me and
I email you and we encourage one another on a weekly basis. “Done anything fruity this week?”
Tim
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