A Christian driveway persona

A story out this week reported that a research firm believes it can predict the political leanings of a city neighborhood by analyzing the types of vehicles its residents drive.

It does this with technology that identifies vehicles parked in driveways and elsewhere using images found on Google's Street Views application.

For instance, in those areas where the number of sedans is higher than pickup trucks, there’s an 88 percent chance of the district voting Democratic. Where there are more pickup trucks, there’s an 82 percent chance it’s a Republican-voting district.

The researchers made other claims about their results, and you can find a summary at this website if you are interested.

While we can debate the validity of profiling a group of people based on the cars and trucks they own, an interesting point can be raised.

We Lutherans confess that our salvation from sin and death is a gift from God received from his abundant grace without any merit on our part.  Our good works are useless in this.  Only faith in the atoning work of Jesus Christ leads to our reconciliation to God, and this, too, is a gift from him.

Some are so firmly devoted to (infatuated with?) this doctrine of "grace alone" that they begin to believe that their outward actions have nothing to do with the faith they hold.  Because faith is an issue of the heart, how can it be judged by the work of the hands or the words of the mouth?  

I once read an online debate among a group of supposedly confessional Lutheran pastors in which they speculated about how vile their speech and how outlandish their actions could become before they "crossed the line" of allowable Christian conduct.

They were asking, in essence, 'How un-Christlike can I be and still claim myself to be Christian?'  

The Advent season reminds us that Jesus has come and will come again as foretold.  And at his second coming all will face judgment.

As Jesus described this judgment in Matthew 25, peoples' outward actions will inform him about what has ruled their hearts.

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.  Whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ (Matthew 25: 41 & 45)

St. Paul reminds us of this in his words to the Galatia Christians, "As we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith." (Galatians 6:10)

We live to be like Jesus to others in all that we do.  Our works matter; they simply don't save us. 

As members of the body of Christ it is our privilege and our calling to aid and support one another in both body and spirit. Jesus tells us that this is how we make a public witness of the faith that we hold.

Our motivation is as clear to Christ as a sedan parked in a neighborhood of pickups.

  

Jesus versus the religious vigilante

Because I enjoy the Western movie genre, I’ve seen a lot of stories about vigilantes.

A drunken cowboy from out of town gets into an argument in a saloon with a local drunken cowboy. Pistols are drawn and the local fellow is killed.

Soon his friends form a “committee” to track down and string up the stranger. Then, just in the nick of time, the heroic marshal steps in to save the killer from the vigilante mob.

He must hang legally, in the hands of the proper authorities, the marshal says, and not at the hands of ruffians.

If I’ve seen it once, I’ve seen it a hundred times.

That’s a good way to think about what Jesus told his disciples.

“Judge not, that you not be judged,” Jesus says in Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 7 verse 1.

He goes on to say that one who judges without authority will himself be judged according to the same standard he used against others. Ouch!

After all, God has already pronounced his judgement against our sins. That’s the whole reason Jesus died on the cross. It’s why Christians have hope.

So when we see someone’s life spinning out of control it’s no time for us to play God and claim his authority for ourselves.

At those times we have a choice: be a religious vigilante anxious to pronounce sentence and string them up or come to their aid with the Gospel and imitate Jesus who seeks repentance and forgiveness for everyone.

By the way, here’s a picture of my Matt Dillion, U.S. Marshal badge that I’ve had since I was a kid.

Pastor Balvanz