TO WHOM ARE WE LISTENING?

Jean Kerr tells the story. Her young child came home from school all teary-eyed and sad. When she asked what was the matter, he told her about the play he was in in grade school. The play was about Adam and Eve and he was Adam. Jean had a quizzical look on her face and asked, "Why so sad?  That's wonderful. You have the best part. You are the leading man." "Maybe so," her son replied, "but the snake has all the lines."

That is a funny story. And it's a good reminder to you and me. The problem that I have – and I suspect, the problem you have – is not so much that the snake has all the lines. It is rather that we believe all the lines that the snake feeds us. Remember the snake's first line in the Bible, in Genesis? "If you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will become like God." Now that is a classic line. Who wouldn't like to be like God? Imagine the power to eliminate disease and famine and poverty. The power to make everything right. The power, the power, the power. Even if we use all that power correctly, it's a wonderful thought, a wonderful temptation.

Like Adam and his wife, we, too, bought the snake's line, all of it: hook, line and sinker. We grabbed the bait. And we got hooked. Boy did we get hooked. And we've been swallowing the bait ever since, choking on it. You see, back in the very beginning man and woman did not need to become like God. They already were. That is how God created them. But by doing whatever they did, by buying the snake's line, they became unlike God. Now, ever since then, we have been trying to become like God again.

Becoming like God, however, is not, no matter how it seems, having illusions of grandeur. Nothing of the sort. Becoming like God, becoming perfect as God is perfect, is what being human is all about. Once mankind bought the snake's line, once we became imperfect, we could no longer be and no longer were perfect.

The Old Testament is a record of the beginning of that journey on the road back to perfection, that trek down the path to becoming like God once again. The journey, of course, ends in Jesus, who through his death and resurrection gives us the means to perfection. The only hindrance is that whereas in the beginning perfection was a fact, was a reality in this life, that is no longer so. We now can become perfect only in and through our own death and resurrection.

That may be unfortunate because it then becomes all too easy to not try. I mean, why make the effort when we won't see the results, when we won't see perfection, in this life? Why indeed? If we buy that reasoning, we've swallowed the snake's line once again.

The reality of the situation is to understand that even the attempt is worth the effort; the struggle itself is worthwhile, that carrying a cross is good and necessary. That's another line, of course. It can be grabbed onto or it can be passed up. But whose line are we going to believe, the snake's or Jesus'? Seems to me that the snake has had all the lines long enough. It's time we started listening to the Writer, the Director, the Playwright in the drama of Salvation instead of listening to one of the actors.