Twenty Easy Ways to Raise a Pharisee — Number 5

Represent holiness and happiness as opposing (or even alternating) experiences.

"Let it be the principal part of your care and labour in all their education, to make holiness appear to them the most necessary, honourable, gainful, pleasant, delightful, amiable state of life; and to keep them from apprehending it either as needless, dishonourable, hurtful, or uncomfortable. Especially draw them to the love of it, by representing it as lovely."

Richard Baxter, 1615-1691, Baxter’s Practical Works,

The 2001 film, Chocolat, is a fable—almost a parable—of contrasting life perspectives. Set in an old-world, European village, the physical context is as much a participant in the story as the human characters.

A face-off unfolds across the cobblestones of the town square. The towering, grey-stone face of an ancient cathedral forebodingly occupies one side of the courtyard—guarded by the stern-faced, stone visage of a revered, deceased spiritual dignitary.

Opposite this edifice, the neglected shop space of a former pharmacy is pleasantly renovated, by a journey-woman and her young daughter, into a welcoming chocolaterie—a cafe of tantalizing, finely-crafted sweets.

On this stage, a heavy-handed, living spiritual dignitary and a kindly, beautiful, irreligious shopkeeper do battle for the heart of the village. Pleasure, friendship, and tender care—at the chocolaterie—compete with power, guilt, and Lenten-sacrifice—at the church—each seeking to claim the loyalties of and offer hope to needy souls.

The chocolaterie wins.

This tale effectively captures the common perception of countless people—often well-earned and reinforced by the church itself—that the conflict between religious life and "real" life is a contrast between accusation and acceptance, law and love, hypocrisy and honesty, hell and happiness.

To be clear, the gift of saving faith in Jesus is not an earthly path of unmixed spiritual, emotional and physical ease and pleasure. The deceitful prosperity gospel and hollow "happy, happy, happy, all the time" Sunday school ditties have done no service to the credibility of the Gospel and are not the life promised by grace.

Actually, life—after the fall and under the sun—according to Solomon, in the book of Ecclesiastes—can, from one angle, be summed up, in the words of Wesley (from Princess Bride, not the Methodist preacher): "Life is pain your Highness, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something."

But that is just half of the message of Ecclesiastes—the Ernest Hemingway, Albert Camus, "life is meaningless" half.

Even in the Old Covenant, waiting-for-the-promise world of Solomon, the often-neglected full message of Ecclesiastes (after his long experimentation and reflection) is: remember God, fear God, obey God, and enjoy life!

Since we are living in the hope of life over the sun, the forceful command of the wisest of the wise is to stop grasping and clinging to things that pass away like a vapor, so that you can finally feel free to enjoy them as gifts from our Lord.

Clinging to earthly pleasures, it turns out, is idolatry—offering as much satisfaction as "chasing the wind." On the flip-side, enjoying your labor, your food, your wine, your strength, and the intoxicating wife of your youth—is the natural fruit of God-centeredness and it is the uninhibited freedom of the one who starts worshipping the Giver instead of the gifts.

Joy—present and future—is the rightful and reasonable possession of the holy and the heaven-bound. Satisfying or sustained joy is not the reward of shortsighted hoarders or impatient hedonists.

The hope and holiness that come from grace provide two extraordinary freedoms:

1.) Freedom from slavery and addiction to the things God made to be gifts not gods, and...

2.) Freedom to enjoy those same things with Godly gratitude and hearty delight. According to the Scriptures and the Gospel, not only can true holiness and lasting happiness coexist—they cannot exist separately!

Pharisees manipulate and mangle God's gifts - either gorging on them in hypocritical self-indulgence or gagging on them in hypercritical self-righteousness. Those who love grace, enjoy good things, because they love their extravagantly-generous Lord more than anything else.

The eternal happiness of God and the stunning discovery that God's passion is to be known for boundless grace and generosity are a perfect recipe for our stalwart joy.

Freed prisoners dance. Redeemed slaves sing. Pardoned felons clap and shout. Cured terminals laugh and cry and get downright giddy with the breathless recovery of a hope that had been staggered. We are all of these! And—next—a permanent, brilliantly perfect tomorrow awaits us.

Children of God, loved by Christ, we are the only ones with countless reasons to live and laugh and love and learn, to play and eat and tease and cheer, and to pour out our resources with abandon, so that others might be invited and welcomed to the celebration.

In the parable of the rich fool, in Luke 12, the man with extra large crops designs a plan to hide, hoard, and hold on to this unexpected windfall—to secure a hope of his own making. I doubt that his sin was, as many seem to think—his plan to eat, drink and be merry (that’s the actual command of Deuteronomy 14)—but, rather, that his plan was to carry out this celebration by himself, on his own terms, and on the basis of his self-sufficient security—without the nasty uncertainties of faith or the rich-heartedness of gratitude.

Redeemed fools, with extra large crops, don't build bigger barns. They build bigger banquet halls, so that they can eat, drink and be merry with thanksgiving, with announcements of God's goodness, and in fellowship with any friend, foe, fatherless or friendless fellow-fool they can get in the door.

Children who are raised by these kind of redeemed fools learn what it is like, passionately to love God, expectantly to trust His provision, constantly to long for more and more of His flowing generosity, and uninhibitedly to share the windfall with everyone in sight.

And they might just stop by the chocolaterie on the way home from church.

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We would love for you to listen to this week’s companion podcast episode: “The Holiness of Happy Lovers” at the link below! (Due to be posted early this week.)

This series of blogposts is being posted in conjunction with Season 2 of the “No Mere Mortals” podcast (this link is to the Apple podcast app, but NMM is also available at Spotify and in other podcast apps). Jump on over to the podcast to listen to Lisa and my conversations on grace-rooted, joy-shaped, self-righteousness-suffocating home life and relationships!

Track along with all that we are doing here at Enjoying Grace Story Co. at Don’s Instagram

Twenty Easy Ways to Raise a Pharisee — Number 2

Teach them that desires are their spiritual enemies.

“I know a planet where there is a certain red-faced gentleman. He has never smelled a flower. He has never looked at a star. He has never loved anyone. He has never done anything in his life but add up figures. And all day he says over and over, just like you: ‘I am busy with matters of consequence!’ And that makes him swell up with pride. But he is not a man -- he is a mushroom!”

“As for me,” said the little prince to himself, “if I had fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked, I should walk at my leisure toward a spring of fresh water.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

One day Jacob was cooking a stew.

Esau came in from the field starved and said to Jacob,

"Give me some of that red stew—I’m starved!"

Jacob said, "Make me a trade: my stew for your rights as the firstborn."

Esau said, "I'm starving! What good is a birthright if I'm dead?"

That's how Esau shrugged off his rights and privileges as the firstborn.

(Genesis 25:29-34)

A number of times in the Gospels, in various ways, the Savior simply asked:

"What do you want?"

And when folks told Him their desires, He never (never.) told them to want less.

"Do not lay up for yourselves treasure on earth,” any disciplined monk or Pharisee might have agreed, "where moth and rust corrupt and thieves break in and steal."

"But," Jesus added, "lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven, where neither moth nor rust corrupt and thieves don't break in and steal."

Hunger intensely for the best things and refuse to let the brief gratification of lesser things rob you of the great stuff.

And if breathtaking treasure is available, abandon your trash—with light-hearted and giddy ease—to get your hands on potent, permanent wealth.

Jesus said:

"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field." — Matthew 13:44

All Gospel changes in our lives are treasure transactions—glad, easy decisions that make us chuckle and say, "My Ford Focus for your Lamborghini—I don't know...I'll have to think long and hard about sacrificing my Focus!"

There are no exceptions—not one time—where our Lord says, "I want you do such and such, even though in the long run you will lose something good or be less happy.

Never. Not once. No exceptions to this extravagant rule.

We've really messed this one up. I'm tempted to use stronger language.

For centuries the world has assumed that following our faith is a fool's errand designed for masochists and self-abasing hermit-monks. Why wouldn't they, given the wonderful mix of martyrdom and moral superiority that marks so much of the "Christian" message and method before a watching world?

C.S. Lewis offers a strong antidote to this wretched thinking (he made a habit of this):

"Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because we cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."

We are far too easily pleased?

This violently shakes the etch-a-sketch of what nearly everybody assumes is the Christian message and requirement. 

Not having strong enough desires is thwarting faithfulness and diminishing spiritual progress in our lives.

Stifle desire or tolerate small, easily-satisfied desires and you will find yourself (and your son or daughter) easy targets for wasted lives of sinful indulgence or indifference.

Enlarge your desires and demand that your joys be both sustained and satisfying and you will find no alternative but to run hard after the King of grace and His gifts.

If you want to groom your heart or your children into self-satisfied, tragically-impoverished Pharisees:

1. Warn them of the danger of wanting too much pleasure.

2. Teach them to sacrifice for God

These are fertile soil for both self-destructive rebellion and self-sufficient religion - both of which are deadly.

Pharisees, legalists, and religious people of all sorts are preoccupied with what God requires and expects of us instead of what God longs to give us. They assume that God needs something from us, rather than that we desperately and hungrily need everything from Him. They think that God is more honored by our hard work than by our hunger for Him. They function on the assumption that God is a kill-joy and that He wants us to avoid punishment by learning to abandon pleasure.

Rebels smell these same slanders against God's extravagant grace and simply say, "Not interested."

And why should they be?

Even our everyday parental instructions toward wisdom and righteousness will crush and crumble if they are rooted more in sin-management and behavior modification than they are in vision-casting and pleasure-preservation.

Does your daughter crave popularity and get easily drawn into vanity (or self-pity)? Don't tell her that acceptance and beauty don't matter. Share with her the treasure of being loved and embraced by God and point her to the beauty that the Savior is crafting in her for a future unveiling. Stir in her a desire for deep-connection-marriage and home, with those who treasure her every look and thought. Compare cheap gawking to eternal admiration and life-long love.

Is your son struggling with lust? Don't tell him to stop longing. Give him something worth longing for! Magnify the wonders of sexual intimacy and the delights of God's gift of marriage. Envision in him a future worth wanting and guarding and investing in—then enjoy your wife or husband deeply in his view (or your words won't ring true).

If we portray faith and faithfulness more like monastic vows of self-flagellation than magnificently rewarding investment, our children will choose alternatives. 

Which of these propels the soul toward grace? And which of these magnify the gladness and generosity and the glory of God?

Teach your sons and daughters the insanity of Esau.

Don't start by getting all spiritual-sounding and telling them how sinful and ungodly he was. (Though true.) Get right to the point and tell them that he was an idiot, a moron, a joy-crushing fool. He gave up the wealth, honor, privileges, and future of an ancient first-born son, so that he wouldn't have to be briefly hungry and wait a few minutes for dinner. His short-sightedness destroyed him quicker than his appetite.

Eager, hearty desires drive us to the grace and good promises of God. Plead for the Lord to plant enormous, irrepressible desires in you and your children that can't easily be satisfied!

A hunger for joy and vigorous desires propel growth—healthy and holy change—in our lives. (More on this in these coming Twenty Ways posts.)

This is why Moses could follow God and fulfill his calling, “choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than all the treasures in Egypt; for he looked to the reward.”

Jesus Himself “endured the cross, disregarding the shame, for the joy that was set before Him.”

With this paradigm-shift out on the table, how do we experience a thriving life?.

Please tag along for the coming posts and No Mere Mortals podcasts, as we unpack grace-rooted, treasure-motivated life-training and transformation for our lives and the lives of our children.

Next week: 

If you want to raise a Pharisee: 

Number 3 — Discipline them before you delight in them

With a NMM podcast episode exploring the Celebration, Connection, Correction, Conversation Sequence.

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This series of blogposts are being posted in conjunction with Season 2 of the “No Mere Mortals” podcast (this link is to the Apple podcast app, but NMM is also available at Spotify and in other podcast apps). Jump on over to the podcast to listen to Lisa and my conversations on grace-rooted, joy-shaped, self-righteousness-suffocating home life and relationships!

Track along with all that we are doing here at Enjoying Grace Story Co. at Don’s Instagram.

Twenty Easy Ways to Raise a Pharisee — A Clarifying Interlude

Graceless religion and fearless rebellion are two fruits of the same Pharisaical root.

Let me back up for a minute.

I would completely understand if our introduction to our No Mere Mortals, Season 2 and this Twenty Easy Ways to Raise a Pharisee blog series seems irrelevant to your personal situation—in a couple of possible ways:

1. At a glance, it could appear to be primarily for parents. This is not so. We are using the topic of “raising” or nurturing young people because it is an ideal illustration of how all of us will best see and experience the grace, goodness, and hope of God. These podcast and blog series are visions of grace-for-all-of-life, not just for grace-based parenting.

2. I also imagine some of you, on first impression, concluding that these resources are not relevant to you, because you, your children, or others you know are in no danger of becoming Pharisees at all. High-performance self-righteousness, you may be saying, is nowhere in sight—but talk to me about indifference, rebellion, abandonment of faith! 

I get it.

I am plainly on the record here that Pharisaism and self-sufficient (spiritual or secular) religion are lethal poisons to be feared with a life-or-death desperation and (if they are in our system already) immediately lanced and sucked out of our flesh, like a classic-movie rattlesnake bite. 

This unmixed-grace proposition will continue—relentlessly and emphatically—to be our accent.

But…

I fully see how both my ironic 20 Ways title and individual points could lead folks to believe that this message of radical, unmixed grace is primarily useful for guarding against self-righteousness and Pharisaical over-confidence.

We highlight this application of the truth because there is a far greater need to offer true grace to Christianized young people than most seem to realize.

But (I don’t deny)…

Simple, self-centered unbelief and rebellion remains as great a threat (even if a more helpfully obvious threat) to lives and souls.

Here's the thing.

I am passionately accenting the danger of “religion” because it is both deadly and frequently not talked about; but the antidote to both lifeless religion and faithless rebellion is identical!

The warm opportunities of these Twenty Ways are what will help unmask a Pharisee.

But…  

They are also exactly what will guard our children’s hearts (and our own) against rebellion. Only the free gift of grace and a magnified view of true treasure will prevent minds and hearts from rejecting permanent goodness for temporary trash. 

Pharisaism, legalism, false expectations, hypocrisy, performance-based affection or acceptance—if they mark our lives (or parenting) will irresistibly (but for the Lord’s kind intervention) nurture either Pharisaical religion or fleshly rebellion. 

The one child (or inquiring soul) under our care will respond to Pharisaical expectations with fearful compliance, while another responds to the same with frustrated abandonment.

When the pure, radical generosity and affection of the Gospel of grace is lost (or even mixed with fleshly duty and human expectations) it will actively populate two crowds: 

1.) Honorably intended and/or nervous and fearful performers, and 

2.) Bold and/or brow-beaten indulgers. 

The exasperating (and unachievable) demands of performance, appearances, law-keeping, and sacrifice—as a way of salvation—leave no other rational options:

Try desperately to earn your way and impresss or “give up” and fall back on the temporary and far easier “enjoyment” of the world and its ways.   

So here is my personal request.

Please track along with the grace-loving passion of the “Twenty Easy Ways to Raise a Pharisee” posts, no matter which natural danger appears to tempt your soul or the souls of those around you. 

The breathtaking, scandalous, extravagantly-generous good news of Jesus Christ is the single, unstoppable cure to every type of spiritual sickness!

The principles and pleasures celebrated in this series can inject hope and happy expectation into your life and the lives of those around you—whether you are just setting out on the journey or are far down the path, walking with weary and wounded feet.

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Now back to our regularly scheduled programming. :) 

We invite you to listen to Episode 1 of Season 2 of our No Mere Mortals podcast (available now). Lisa and I talk about the goodness of God and the comforts of His love and grace for our lives and our homes..

Our first, monthly 2021 Maker’s Hollow Conversation with Kristen Morris at “Good Things Run Wild” will land in your podcast app or Spotify early this coming week. We will be talking about Rest in Restless Times, when so many circumstances, expectations, and misunderstandings can rob us of our peace and make it hard to breathe.

Twenty Easy Ways to Raise a Pharisee — Number 1

Tell them that God wants them to be good instead of that God wants to be good to them.

"Inconceivable!”

[pause]

"You keep using that word. 

I do not think it means what you think it means."

Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride 

The young man ran to Jesus, knelt before Him, and pleaded, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

A better beginning would be hard to conceive.

Jesus replied, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.” (Mark 10:17+18)

Whoa.

The man runs to Jesus, bows before Him, and declares the “goodness” of the Master—and the Savior rebuffs him—challenging him for saying the truest thing he could ever have said.

That this exchange exists in the Gospels explains why we stumble over, bumble through, and—if God is extra-kind—are humbled by our use of the vague, vital word: good.

We tell our children, “Be good.” We tell them that they can be good if they try hard enough. We then tell them that Jesus died because we cannot be good, and His plan worked because He is the only one who is good. Then they hear us cheering “Good boy!” when the puppy goes potty on the Sunday Classifieds instead of the study carpet. There are “good guys” and “bad guys,” even though it is obvious that the good guys are sometimes bad and the bad guys can come through in a pinch and do something unexpectedly “good.” 

Good grief!

Could we blame our daughters or sons (should we not, in fact, admire them) if one day they look up in perplexity and—like Inigo Montoya—say, “You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.”

That this encounter between Jesus and the rich, young ruler is recorded in the Gospels also demands that we get a relentless grip on the eternal peril of muddying the nature of true goodness—if we wish not to be adversaries of the Gospel and of God.

Widespread, familiar Christian teaching and practice (It has often been true…times change less than we think) is frequently an amalgamation of ideas, perceptions, and influences—a virtual gumbo of notions. 

We are products—many of us—more of western civilization, gnostic mysticism, and loosely gathered traditional habits than we are of well-thought, historic Christianity. 

The highly unsettling good news of the grace of God through Jesus was a radical disruption to all of the familiar threads of social, philosophical, and religious thought—a scandal, Paul says, to the Jews and cockamamie nonsense to the orderly-thinking Greeks.

And, in general, it is an insult to us all. Horrible for our self-esteem and disrespectful to the upwardly-mobile, go-getter type.

The flesh craves karma: 

Do better, gain reward.

The desperate, observant soul (and anyone with a smidgen of self-knowledge) pleads for grace: 

Be given everything, do better.

The Pharisee, outside the temple in Luke 18, flamboyantly complimented God that he was blessed to be better than other people.

The ne’er-do-well scoundrel beside him cried out, “God be merciful to me!”

Jesus is not ambiguous about which one went away redeemed.

In our age of moral relativism and logical chaos, it is understandable that even Christians speak with a renewed admiration of civility, natural law, ethics, virtues, etc.. These are concepts well-grounded in western civilization—rooted significantly in Plato, Aristotle, and their buddies. 

That whole crowd could have happily hung out at the pub with folks from every works- or merit-based religion, whether sacred or secular (and believe me, the secular is as religious, performance-based, and self-righteous as any fundamentalist). 

In God’s creational order and by His common grace, these virtue-principles offer a measure of truth and wisdom; but as a path to hope and freedom, they are not your friends.

Aristotle and the rich, young ruler would have been soul-mates. The elder prodigal son, Pharisees of every age, and adherents to the entire pantheon of world religions could all join comfortably in their good-deeds club, as well.

Aristotle explained, “virtues we acquire by first exercising them, as in the case of other arts. . . .men come to be builders, for instance, by building, and harp players, by playing the harp. In the same way, by doing just acts we come to be just; by doing self-controlled acts, we come to be self controlled.”

The anti-gospel of Jesus.

Virtue and pragmatic ethics outwardly manage life better than lawlessness and self-indulgence. It’s true. They don’t get us any closer to new life and hope.

I understand why the attempted revival in recent decades of “Judeo-Christian” values is cheered by Christians and championed by well-meaning men like Bill Bennett; but note his description of the governing principle of his Book of Virtues:

“As Aristotle pointed out. . . We learn to order our souls the same way we learn to do math problems or play baseball well – through practice.”

Pharisees would concur.

Exertive human effort to discipline stronger virtues into our children or to under-gird our families with time-tested, “traditional values”—much like gospel-neutral prayers in the public schools or Ten Commandments carved on public buildings—are (swallow hard) no friend of the grace.

On the contrary, if we learn any thing from the Great Physician, the Pharisees, and eager seekers like the young man of Mark 10:17-18, it is this: the more virtuous a person or a people appear to be, apart from Christ, the more virtuously and violently resistant they will be to the Gospel of Christ.

The young ruler struck the right physical pose, asked for the right thing, and spoke rightly about the Lord—but the Savior perceived that his main goal was to certify his own goodness, not to cry out for the goodness and mercy of the King of Grace.

God doesn’t want us to be good for Him. He wants to be good to us. He wants us to do anything we want and to want beautiful and lovely things. The one who tastes, embraces, and then incurably craves more of the goodness and generosity of God will grow to flourish in every good thing. It is treasure that trains us, not restriction or fear or noble thoughts. We run after—without needing to be told—what we most believe to be of greatest value and delight.

So, the virtue, the wisdom, the behavior will come; but never safely if we begin with them.

Begin with the One Who never stops doing good to His people with all of His heart and with all of His soul (Jeremiah 32:38-41) and does not dwell in temples made with hands, as though He needs anything from us. (Acts 7:48).

God does not need us. He wants us.

He does not need us to do anything. We need Him to do everything…and then He does even more.

Jesus wants to be good to our children. He wants, in a flood of generosity, to give them an alien goodness, to which they contribute nothing, but by which they obtain spectacular, unfading life and the kind of treasure on God’s eternal New Earth, that never rots or rusts and no thief can steal.

If we are kind to our kids and our neighbors, we will help them learn that they are not good—and that catching on to this is very good.

We will point them—like Christ did—to God’s matchless goodness; and we will topple—like Christ did—their dangerous charades of personal virtue. 

Yes, the Lord also wants our children (and us) to be and do good; but—like the new birth—the new behavior of a Christian is a gift. . . from God to us—not us to God! 

Just as no good works, no self-worth—no cash, check or money-order—even contributes to our salvation; so also nothing but His extravagant generosity—drawing us into a Father’s embrace and flourishing us in His grace—will gradually (and then gloriously) reveal us to be the splendid and—yes—good sons and daughters of the King, that He has happily redeemed us all to be!

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This series of blogposts are being posted in conjunction with Season 2 of the “No Mere Mortals” podcast (this link is to the Apple podcast app, but NMM is also available at Spotify and in other podcast apps). Jump on over to the podcast to listen to Lisa and my conversations on grace-rooted, joy-shaped, self-righteousness-suffocating home life and relationships!

Track along with all that we are doing here at Enjoying Grace Story Co. at Don Shorey’s Instagram.