Saturday, March 7, 2009

Life vs. Animation: Are You Living a Cartoon?

By David Ryser

I grew up watching cartoons on television.  My favorites were the Warner Brothers cartoons with Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, the Roadrunner, Wile E. Coyote, and all the others.  These cartoons provided me with hours of entertainment and lots of laughs.  They still do.  They also fed me some benign, and even amusing, misinformation along the way (I was an adult before I knew the Scarlet Pumpernickel was actually the Scarlet Pimpernel).  As engaged as I was in watching these cartoons, I never believed--even at a very young age--that cartoon characters were alive.

I never confused animation with life until I became a Christian.

I had just come out of what I thought was a great worship service.  The music was upbeat, and the congregation was energetic and demonstrative in worship.  These are good things, and I am in favor of them.  Sometime after the service, a young man in the church (who sees into the spirit more than he lets on) described the scene he saw during the worship time in words I will never forget.  He said, “As the people were worshiping, I saw empty shells jumping up and down.”

Hearing something like that will make a guy think, and I’ve thought about what he said for some time now.

Animation is not life.  Just because something (or someone) moves, talks, acts, and mimics the other attributes of living does not mean life is present.  In the Garden of Eden, God told Adam he would “surely die” if he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:17).  “Surely die” in the Hebrew text is a repetition of the word “die” (“die, die”) which intensifies what is being said.  God wanted Adam to know He wasn’t kidding about this, and told him he would die immediately upon eating the fruit, not die slowly over time.  Adam ate.  Adam died.  Adam continued to walk, talk, breathe, eat, sleep, work, build, procreate, etc.  But he was dead.

Adam went from being a “living soul” to being merely animated--a human cartoon character.

In numerous places in the New Testament, especially in the epistles of Paul, a person who is outside of Christ is described as dead (Ephesians 2:1, 5 and Colossians 2:13, among others).  This person may show all the signs of life, and be biologically alive, but he/she is nothing more than a spiritual cartoon.  And religion won’t make a person alive.  Jesus was talking to God’s people (not to the Romans or the other Gentiles) when He said He had come to give them life (John 10:10).

We need to understand there is no life outside of Christ’s life in us.  Paul was not using a figure of speech when he said he had died and that “it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the Son of God’s faith (literal translation) who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:19, 20; italics added).  All people, no matter what they may call themselves, are dead outside of Christ.  There are only two kinds of people on the earth:  those who are dead and those who are alive through the life of Christ that was planted in them expressing itself through them.  Does that sound weird?  What can I say?

Blame the Bible and take it up with the Author.  I didn’t write it.

Life in Christ involves more than coming to a knowledge of Jesus, getting our theology straight, and agreeing with a creed or a doctrinal statement.  The devil knows all of these things and it doesn’t do him any good (James 2:19).  We must encounter the Lord of Life and be “born again” into newness of life.  And when did “born again” become synonymous with “new and improved” anyhow?  If we are in Christ we are a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17), not a renovated form of the old creation.  If you give a pig a bath, it’s still a pig (and given half a chance, it will act like it).  We can clean up Adam (the flesh, our sin nature), but it’s still Adam.  And Adam is dead.  Dead people don’t need a bath (no matter how badly they stink); they need a resurrection.

Once we have been made alive, then we can allow His life and light to grow in us…and displace the death and darkness of our old nature.

I wish I had known this truth when I was a pastor.  I spent 14 years trying to help people to change.  They wanted very much to change and become more like Jesus.  So did I.  The problem is that people cannot change; we’re simply not hardwired to change.  If we are dead outside of Christ, we cannot change because dead people don’t change (ok, they rot/decay, but their behavior doesn’t improve).  If we are alive in Christ we still cannot change because the life of Christ is our source of life, and He doesn’t change (Hebrews 13:8).

Nowhere in the Bible are we commanded to change--because it’s impossible.  We are, however, told that we can be transformed by the renewing life of Christ in us working from the inside-out to produce a harvest of godliness in our attitudes and behavior (Romans 12:2).  The Greek word for “transform” is μεταμορφοω.  We get our word “metamorphosis” from this word.  It means to be transformed from one state (in this case, the state of death) to a new state (becoming alive) by another, more powerful, form of life forcing its way from the inside to the outside.  The life of Christ is in us if we are genuinely born again.  This life has the ability to transform us and manifest itself in our behavior...if we cooperate with it.

So how do we work with God to produce this transformation in our lives?  The simple, not to be confused with easy, answer to this question is that we come into intimate relationship with Jesus.  Let me be clear:  I am not talking about praying a canned prayer, becoming a churchgoer, and walking in a superficial affiliation with Jesus; I’m talking about a living, vibrant, personal, passionate, and intimate relationship with Jesus.  We need to allow Him, through the Holy Spirit, to speak to us (through the scriptures and directly) and shine His light into our lives.  This takes courage because, if you are like me, you won’t very much like a great deal of what you will hear and see.

Once we become God’s home (1 Corinthians 6:19), then we can talk about doing a housecleaning.  The light of God will shine into the dark places and reveal the condition of our hearts--and then it is decision time.  It’s like when you turn on a light in a room of your home and see that the room is a mess.  We can do one of two things at this point:  we can turn out the light and walk away while trying to forget what we just saw, or we can choose to invite God in to clean up the place.

We have the Holy Spirit, our Helper, to do all the heavy lifting and deep cleaning with us.

Do not be fooled by appearances.  We are not alive because we appear to be alive.  And we are not alive because we are more animated than our neighbor.  Such comparison is not a good idea (2 Corinthians 10:12b).  We are alive only because we are in relationship with God through Jesus Christ whose life indwells us in the Person of the Holy Spirit.

If we call ourselves Christians, but are living outside of Christ, we are no more alive than the Jews of Jesus’ day who refused to come to Him so He could give them life (John 5:39, 40).

Be brave.  Dare to ask yourself the tough question, “Am I alive in Christ, or am I a living cartoon?”  I will believe you no matter how you answer this question, but I’m not the one you have to convince.

Responses to this article are welcomed.  You may contact the author at drdave1545@yahoo.com

No comments:

Post a Comment