Putting the fun back in dysfunctional

Genesis 37

So, we've got a dad who plays favorites, a son who loves to tattle and is quick to bring up dreams demonstrating his superiority, and the other sons who despise the one son because of the father's obvious bias.

Recently, Frodo Jr (hehe) brought this passage home as a perfect example of the maxim: We are all both victims of and perpetrators of sin. As long as there have been families, there have been dysfunctional families (ahem, Cain and Abel). It is important to identify areas of victimization, not to bemoan them or use them as crutches, but to trace them into our own hearts and lives. Sins we commit today likely have roots in earlier life. Without careful consideration, prayer, and mortification, they will inevitably become the sins of the next generation as well.

Mark 7

The first half of the chapter deals with the basic question: Am I clean or dirty? The pharisees had concluded that they were basically clean so long as they kept the dirty world far enough away. Jesus is fairly direct in his rebuttal: "There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him." What a startling statement that must have been. You are not clean so long as you avoid dirty things - you are dirty until you are cleansed by something outside yourself. This is one of those conversations where I wonder how much the cross was on the mind of Jesus. He knew the hearts of those men and he knew ours. He knew the cost of cleansing us even as he said the words.

Job 3

Job finishes the first chapter (losing most of his family and possessions) with worship. He finishes the second chapter (losing his health) with silence. Now we see the first chink in the armor (losing his sense of purpose). No longer does he celebrate the creative and destructive power of God as he did in chapter 1. The hedge that God put around him was a blessing in chapter 1, now it is seen as God's way of blocking Job's path.

It is hard for any of us to judge Job harshly for his downward spiral. May God mercifully spare us from even a taste of his hardship. However, we can even now see how much bigger God's purposes are than we can imagine. It is not so much (in my opinion) that we are to be wary of complaints because Job's circumstances are so much words (that is certainly true). The question on my mind is: what does this say about purpose? Job's purpose did not change from chapter 1 to chapter 3 - only his circumstances.

Romans 7

"The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me." (v 10)

Sin perverts law until we die. John Owen warns us that if we are not daily engaged in the work of killing sin, it will kill us. Sin does not overtly contradict the law by saying something like "murder is good." No. Sin takes the law which we acknowledge is "holy and righteous and good" (v 12) and twists it into a weapon with which to kill us.

You can feel the frustration of Paul who sees his body held captive to a force his mind knows is evil.

"Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (v 24-25a)