Last Friday I played in a charity golf tournament that benefited Reach Out Honduras, a missions organization started by our dear friends Alex and Laura. I use the word “played” very loosely, as I’m terrible at golf. My playing partners will now strongly attest to that fact. I don’t spend a lot of time at the driving range, nor do I work on my short game or my putting. In fact, the only golf I’ve played in a year was Tiger Woods 11 on my XBox 360. Rarely did I drive that little white ball past the women’s tee, a fact which would have earned dire consequences had I been playing with my three cousins.
Every time that I would settle in over that ball, I would run through all the things that I needed to do in order to hit the ball straight. Well, hit it straight and actually hit it, which often proved a more complicated task. I need to keep my elbow straight, bring the club back down at the correct angle to not fade or draw it, swing with enough power to make it go farther, keep my head down, use my hips in the swing, and on, and on, and on. I would inevitably leave one of these steps out (namely keeping my head down) and the ball would trickle off the tee, or I’d drive a chunk of grass farther than the ball, or I’d miss completely. It was very frustrating, but as my golfing partner and friend Charlie said, “you’re not good enough to be mad about it.”
I started thinking while out on the course that this is a good parallel to our Christian lives. How often do we try and do everything right morally and spiritually, yet find ourselves flailing away at life? We do the right things here and there, but most of the time we end up swinging completely wrong and blast it into the trees.
This last week I’ve been listening to a sermon by Matt Chandler where he talks about how we can’t be good enough to achieve what Christ has already done for us. His text is from I Corinthians 6:9-11:
9Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals,10nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.
11Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.
Matt makes the great point that we look at this list and think, “Well, I’ve only done three of those, but Bob has done seven. Look how much more holy I am than Bob!” What we should be doing is comparing ourselves to Christ, for only then will we see how desperate we are for a Savior. It’s like me comparing my golf game to Tiger Woods. It’s futile because I can never measure up to Tiger’s ability. We will never measure up to Christ’s perfection.
The second great point that Matt makes is that in verse 11, Paul says, “you were washed”. He doesn’t say that you washed yourself, or you allowed yourself to be washed, or that you did anything to make yourself justified or sanctified. You were washed. All of the effort is on Jesus’ side, not on ours. Nothing we can do will ever allow us to reach justification by ourselves.
So, what do we do with this? First, we can stop comparing ourselves to each other, when our true guide is Jesus. Instead of allowing ourselves to feel superior morally to our brothers and sisters, we should realize that we are all inferior to Christ, put on the same level as thieves and murderers. Romans 3:23 says, “23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”. All, not some, not just the people who don’t go to church with us. All of us, including you and me.
Second, since we are all in the same boat, instead of bludgeoning each other with our failures we should hold each other up in prayer and community. None of us move through life alone, we all affect someone in some way. If we truly love each other and devote ourselves to praying and supporting those around us, we can change the world.
While golfing, I have to take the attitude that I am not the best golfer in the world. I am who God has designed me to be, and that apparently didn’t include “moderately skilled golfer”. I can’t compare myself to Tiger Woods because I will always be short of that. It’s made easier by having players with me that understand this and support me even though I’m a boat anchor on the team. The tournament was a four person best-ball scramble, so we took the best shots from each person to move down the course. I contributed once (yes, once) the whole day, but Charlie, Mark, and Kelly never got discouraged or angry that I stunk. I leaned on them to pick up the slack where I was deficient.
In life, we have to treat each other the same way. We’ll all have different skills, different levels of education, be at different points on our walk with God. If we support and pray for each other, we’ll make it through this tournament of life. I hear the 19th hole in Heaven is quite a party.
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