I'm not a huge fan of the WWJD (What Would Jesus Do) bracelets. The concept is harmless enough. The idea is to always look at what you are about to do in life and think about how Jesus would have handled the situation. Only problem I see with it is that you are NOT Jesus. (You don't have his personality) You are not living in his time period. (Different cultural norms, etc) You are not perfect and don't have the faith or ability to do what he could do, and you don't have the same calling on your life that he does.
Is it a sin to lie? The answer is... it depends! Are you hiding Jews in your basement from the German soldiers during World War II? Would it be a sin to say there are no Jews in your house? This is an extreme example in order to prove a point, but let's break it down further. When your wife asks you if she looks pretty today and you look over and her acme makes you squirm a little, how should you respond? From one extreme to another, there are plenty of reasons lying I believe would actually be the righteous thing to do. What if a really attractive woman is having a conversation with you and she notices you are spacing out. "What were you thinking about?" "Uhhhhh, Ummmmm, nothing." I would think that's a perfectly acceptable LIE! This is one of those cases Jesus probably wouldn't have to lie. He probably wasn't thinking the same thing you were. Then again, maybe he would have. The Bible tells us that Jesus had all the same temptations we did.
I'll take it one step further. There are times you should take secrets to your grave!! My mom who has been divorced from my dad for almost a decade got a call from a woman she took in 30 years ago. My parents are divorced, my mom already knew plenty of stories about my dad's past, and this lady calls up out of nowhere to tell her that she had slept with my dad while she lived there and wanted to ask for forgiveness. In my opinion this was selfish and borderline sinful. The only person it helped was herself so she could get it off her chest. Why would she need to open up an old wound, when my mom wasn't even married to the guy any more? This act of "honesty" failed the love your neighbor smell test in my humble opinion.
So if it's not cut and dry, then what makes something a sin? As I have said in past blogs. All the laws and rules were made for us to better be able to do 2 things. Love God and love your neighbor. That's it. So what we need to do as look at those two things in more detail.
How do you love God? The biggest way to do it is by loving his creation, which also means his people. Many times we can kill 2 birds with one stone! God says specifically that whoever loves the least of his people loves him, and whoever doesn't, doesn't love him.
The Bible calls God your "Father" all the time. Sometimes it refers to him as your "Husband" What do we know about how God wants us to love our Husband and Fathers? Submission is one way. He tells us to submit to our parents and to our Husbands.
I happen to know a thing or two about submission. I dated a woman during my "dark ages" (You'll have to read previous posts to know what that means if you haven't) that was a VERY submissive woman. I'll get into more detail about that during my post about sex some time in the near future, but the important thing to note, is that through having someone who's every desire was to please me, I had never felt more loved. The word itself kind of gets a bad name, but to me it's a beautiful word and I believe every husband and wife should experience having their significant other submitting themselves completely to their desires.
God wants the same thing. He wants to feel you love him so much that you submit completely to HIS desires. And in turn his desire is for his creation to love each other, and love yourself, and be the best YOU that you can be. As I said in a previous post, God is most pleased with you when you find your pleasure in him. It's about a relationship. God has already done his part. He has made the ultimate sacrifice so we could spend eternity with him.
The more important question is how do we sin in this area? How do you NOT love God? Some examples of things that are unloving to God are very similar to how you would not love your husband or wife...
Are you neglecting to give him your undivided attention from time to time? Are you not talking to him enough? Are you ashamed of him when talking to others? Do you put other things in front of him in your life? Are you too prideful to admit that you need him in your life? Are you neglecting the needs of his children or passing judgement on them?
If you are not spending all your time and effort trying to find and invent new ways to show Him your love and appreciation, then you are sinning! God is so much greater, so much better than anything else going on in your life that to ever be spending time not focusing on loving admiration to him and his creation is sinning. Now do you see why we needed a saviour? I don't know about you, but I am terrible at this!
But in a more practical matter I think when deciding if something is a sin you just ask yourself, Is this showing love for God, and love for people? If it is then it's not a sin. If it isn't then it is a sin. I think that's a better barometer than WWJD.
I'll add another thing to the above list. If you are not being yourself, the person God created you to be, then you are sinning. I think MANY Christian people have an idea in their head about who God wants you to be and how he wants you to act, based on someone elses idea of what it means to love God based on his own personality and experiences. Quit trying to be that person. God didn't create you to be that person. God made you to be you! If God had wanted us all to act the same, then he would have made us all the same.
As a church it's time for us to stop judging individuality and start celebrating our differences. I think Christians would be a lot happier if they stopped trying to love God the way other people love God and started finding out what they Love, then loving God through those things. And often times we beat ourselves up when we don't meet up to someone else's standard of what it means to be a good Christian.
In particular in America it's a favorite pastime to compare yourself to other people. Compare your family to other families. This causes us to sin in many ways. We be someone we are not, which in the end leaves us feeling empty. We tell ourselves we are not good people because we don't measure up. And then we judge other people so we can feel better about ourselves. It's human nature. And I don't think it makes God happy, since it's not how he made us.
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