Used by Permission. Eternal Perspectives is a bimonthly publication of: Eternal Perspective Ministries; 2229 E. Burnside #23; Gresham, OR 97030; 503-663-6481; Fax: 503-664-2292; E-mail: ralcorn@epm.org; www.epm.org
Fame or Character? by Randy Alcorn
Excerpts from his speech at a Green Bay Packers pre-game chapel.
Have you ever seen a sink hole? Cars can be parked on a street day after day, and everything appears normal, then one day the asphalt caves in and cars disappear into a gigantic hole.
Everybody says “that hole came out of nowhere.” But they’re wrong. The hole appears suddenly, but the process that led to it has gone on for many years. The underground erosion was invisible, but it was there all along. When a man does something terrible, it appears to have come “out of the clear blue sky.” It hasn’t. It’s the cumulative product of moral erosion.
Sink holes remind us of two things: 1) something can look good on the outside, when underneath major problems have been going on for years, and disaster’s about to happen; 2) our lives are affected by little choices, which have cumulative effects that can result in either moral strength or moral disaster.
Deuteronomy 17:14-20 was written 3,500 years ago—it addresses the timeless dangers that come with power and fame. It’s true in government, church, workplace, and athletics. It’s true everywhere. Prominence brings with it privilege, but also responsibility and temptation. It’s full of spiritual pitfalls and moral landmines.
Fame puts us in the power position, a position of influence where people will listen to us and follow us. But fame also sets us up for failure. In Deuteronomy 17, God gives three specific warnings of what the king, the most famous and powerful person in the nation, should not do.
1. Don’t acquire many horses. Horses were a symbol of power and status. Kings collected them not just for military purposes but for bragging rights. For some the equivalent might be cars, or anything we possess that becomes our focus and feeds our pride. Of course, the danger wasn’t the horses themselves, it’s not the cars themselves, it’s that they can become your center of gravity.
2. Don’t take many wives (or your heart will be led astray). Kings were used to having what they wanted, and they had their pick of women. This led to moral compromise. [Every] person should be careful not to let his eyes stray, but to exercise self-denial and moral discipline. You’re all exposed to sexual temptation. Don’t give in to it or you’ll dishonor God and you’ll pay a huge price.
3. Don’t accumulate large amounts of silver and gold. Those things can become the object of your faith, the props that hold you up. Jesus said, “You cannot serve both God and money”—let money be your servant, but be careful not to let it become your master.
Deuteronomy 17:18-20 gives a prescription for what [we] can do to develop and maintain [our] integrity and character, and not to be seduced by fame. God [tells] us, take care to labor over every word of the Scriptures. Become a student of God’s Word. [Deal] with every word, not skipping over anything.
You and I are men under authority—we are not our own, we have been bought with a price. None of us has diplomatic immunity to the law of God. We’re all under it. No exceptions. The truth is not something we manipulate to further our own ends, it’s not something we twist and spin to serve us. We are not masters of the truth, we are servants of the truth.
There’s no day off from the Word of God. Every day we miss it is missed opportunity, missed character training. Think of the newspaper [and other secular magazines]. What do they do for your character? They’re junk food for the mind. A little bit, you can get by with, but if that’s your main diet it’ll catch up wtih you. The Word of God is bread and meat for your character. Don’t neglect it.
Deuteronomy 17:9 reads, “that he may learn to revere [or fear] the Lord his God.” Yes, He’s a God of love, but he’s also a God of holiness, and His standards are to be taken seriously. He watches us and one day we will stand before Him and give an account of our lives.
If we fear God, we need not be afraid of anyone or anything. But if we don’t fear God, we have reason to be afraid of other things. You fear God when you come to grips with the fact that He is in charge and you are not.
Small acts of daily faithfulness to God won’t make the news. But they will please God and they will build something great into your children. They’re wet cement and every day you’re inscribing something into them that one day will become permanent. God is watching and He cares how we live. You will leave your children a spiritual heritage. It doesn’t take much to leave our children an inheritance—it takes a lot to leave them a heritage, to pass on to them the values and priorities of virtue, humility, and the fear of God. The greatest thing you can do for your children is to love God with all your heart. The second greatest thing you can do for your children is to love your wife.
Gifting and skills aren’t the same as character and virtue. It’s a huge mistake to believe what people think about you. If you do, you’re going to get yanked around big time. One day you’re a hero, the next day you’re a jerk. That’s why we have to set aside people’s opinions of us. We have to know who we are—and who we aren’t—in God’s eyes. The court of public opinion isn’t what matters—what matters is what God thinks. He’s the Audience of One. I want to hear Him say, “Well done, My good and faithful servant.”
Instead of building character, some people just build image. A celebrity is known for what he does in one area of life, while God looks at who we are in all areas of our lives. God is never fooled. He sees me at my worst—and yet He still loves me. If everyone else thinks I’m a loser but my heart is right with Him, I’m a winner. If everyone else thinks I’m a winner but I’m not right with God, I’m a loser. On the judgement day I won’t stand before literary critics or book-lovers. We’ll all stand before the Audience of One. And in that day it will be His assessment of our lives, and no one else’s, that will matter.
God’s eyes are always open. Our lives are an open book. Jesus said what we do in secret will be shouted from the housetops. Our president has learned that—and there are plenty of people in both parties that have fallen into scandal. There’s no such thing as a private moment.
Years ago I researched the founding of America. In several of the thirteen colonies it was a stated requirement that any government leader must believe in God, the afterlife, and a judgement in which he would be held accountable for his actions. The point is, if you don’t believe in those things, you will think you can sin and get away with it. Well, god says we can’t. No exceptions.
Image is how we look on the outside to people who don’t know us. Character is what we are in the dark when no one but God sees us. Character is what we really are.
How many people do we admire from a distance but when we see them close up they lose our respect? Others you don’t admire until you get to know them and then they gain your respect. A great goal is that as people know us better, they would respect us more, not less.
It takes a lot more sacrifice to be a hero than to be a celebrity—and that begins at home. Jesus, the Lord of the universe, said “I came not to be served, but to serve, and to give my life to redeem the many.”
Your career will come to an end, but God’s will for you to walk with him won’t. God has called us to a lifetime of servanthood. When we’re used to being served, and when we don’t go out of our way to serve others, we can’t be Christlike. He’s a servant. We should be servants.
Scripture says, “Whatever we do, we should do it for the Lord and not men. Whatever we do, we should do it all to the glory of God.” He’s the King—we’re the servants. Not everyone is called to be a star. But everyone is called to be a servant. God says, “It is required of a steward that he be found faithful.”
Sin, Blame & Forgiveness by Randy Alcorn
What others have done against us—which is what we always tend to focus on, a wrong focus often fostered by modern psychology and counseling methods—should be put in proportion and should not dominate our thinking and overshadow us, keeping us from forgiveness. There is little we can do about the sins others do to us, other than forgive them. There is much we can do about our sins against God and others—confess and repent and embrace the forgiveness of God and call on His power to live differently. Yet what we tend to do is be preoccupied with wrongs (including real wrongs) others have done against us, while minimizing, rationalizing and denying our sins against God and others. We become embittered at how God has allowed us to suffer at others’ hands, rarely considering how others have suffered at our hands.
I [am] not saying other’s sins against God are always less than ours, but simply that their sins against us are far less than ours against God. That’s a critical distinction. Yes, all sin is ultimately against God. David said, “Against You and You only have I sinned,” but that doesn’t mean he didn’t sin against Uriah. We must understand that because of Who God is and who we are, someone’s sins against me are never equal to my sins against God (nor his sins against God).
Take a look at [the parable in] Matthew 18. The king says, “Had my forgiveness really touched your heart you would have extended it to your brother.” The man had not embraced his grace. If we do not embrace the King’s grace, accept His forgiveness, we must pay for our own sins, and since our debt is infinite, the punishment is eternal.
I believe the story [in Matthew 18—look it up and read it!] teaches 1) Our debt to God is infinitely beyond our capacity to repay, and 2) Our debt to God is infinitely greater than any person’s debt to us. In other words, any offenses against us (real as they may be) are small change, small potatoes. Not in and of themselves, but in comparison to our offenses against God. This is what I’m talking about in terms of others’ sins against us “paling in comparison” to our sins against God. Isn’t that a clear teaching of this passage? (If not, what is?)
The final point of the story, I think, is that when we truly experience God’s forgiveness for our sins, it will transform us into forgiving people. To forgive someone, I call upon my faith in the grace of God in Christ’s atonement, by which I not only receive forgiveness, but give it. In fact, the real test of my forgiveness is my ability to forgive others. Those who think they have little to be forgiven for by God never find it easy to forgive others. Those who forgive freely are those who understand that since God has forgiven them much more, they cannot, must not withhold forgiveness from others.
The unforgiving person is obsessed with other’s offenses against him, demonstrating that he “doesn’t get it”—he doesn’t grasp the meaning of Matthew 18. If we “cannot” forgive others, we need to ask ourselves, “have I underestimated the extent of God’s holiness, and the extent of my own sins against God, and the extent of the forgiving grace of God for me?” And, “if God has forgiven me my infinite debt, am I not obliged to forgive others their finite debt, no matter how much it hurt me and how wrong they were?” Indeed, if we are unwilling to do this, we demonstrate clearly that we have not been transformed by the forgiveness of God.
Ultimately, the one thing that is costlier than forgiving is not forgiving. Bitterness is a horrible price to pay, and by minimizing our sins against God and others, and maximizing others’ sins against us, we set ourselves up for bitterness.
I have seen many people helped through Christian counseling, but it is a sad thing to see people who have gone through Christian counseling and come out “in touch” with not just their own pain, but a deep bitterness and suspicion toward others. Ironically, they seldom inflict punishment successfully on those they are embittered against (who sometimes have been terribly wrong, and sometimes haven’t been). It is their own soul that’s poisoned, and sometimes they end up hurting people whose offenses against them they’ve blown way out of proportion.
No wonder our churches have so many people always expecting to be wronged and never being surprised, always cataloguing the sins of others against them, whether forty years ago or yesterday or those anticipated tomorrow. The life without grace is a miserable life.
Perhaps you have not spent much time with people who see themselves as perpetual victims, people endlessly obsessed by wrongs others have done to them. I have, and I long for those people to understand and be liberated by what Jesus said in Matthew 18. The primary point is [a] perspective that leads to an understanding of sin and grace, and frees us from self-preoccupation to forgive as God has forgiven us.
“The longer a person is in error, the surer that person is that he/she is right.” -Farmer’s Almanac
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