Contrast
“An idol is usually a good thing that we make ultimate. We say, ‘Unless I have that, I am nothing.’”
–Timothy Keller, from his Twitter feed
Huge numbers of people were following Jesus, so he turned around and warned them, “If you want to be a devoted follower of mine, you have to hate everyone else. If you don’t hate your parents, your wife and kids, your brothers and sisters—even despising your own life—you can’t really be devoted to me. If you can’t carry your own cross as you follow me, it’s impossible to be a fully committed follower of mine. Don’t even start following me if you don’t understand what it costs.
–From Luke 14:25-28a
I do a lot of video editing. Mostly I make videos to enhance my public speaking.
In the decades since I was first asked to start speaking to people as a teenager, I have spoken thousands of times, to well over a million people from 40 countries and 40 states. I have spoken in school gymnasiums, at huge conferences, at business conventions, in giant churches and even once to my former university professors (I was scared to death). I have come to believe that I’m not that good at it.
I’m probably better than some, but the truth is that no one is that good at speaking. I’ve heard famous, high-paid speakers and ingenious strategists, but very few are really that good at speaking. If they were, we wouldn’t get bored. And we do get bored. At least, I get bored pretty easily.
Most of us that speak to people on a regular basis realize that we “zone” in and out when we are listening to other speakers, but we speakers like to imagine that people listening to us hang on every word. I know they don’t. That’s why I do a lot of video editing.
After years of studying what sticks with people and how ideas can be communicated the most effectively, I have come to believe the keenly obvious. People learn better when they can see and hear what you’re talking about. People love stories and visuals help tell the story.
I almost never speak without a video playing simultaneously. I have set up 30-foot video screens in tiny schools in Africa and used 3D video in communities that were an hour from the closest paved road. I have filmed video myself, created animations and downloaded video from YouTube. I have edited, shortened and enhanced a video to make it work better, but there’s one trick that almost always makes every video better— increasing the contrast. Making the dark stuff darker and the bright stuff brighter makes everything clearer and it makes it easier to focus on the subject. At the other end of the spectrum, with the contrast turned down to zero, everything is the same shade and there is nothing left to see at all.
Contrast makes everything more distinct and sharper.
Harsh Words
Jesus used strong language to make his message clear. Like many effective communicators, his ability to use hyperbole to communicate the emphatic nature of his message helped him really bring the point home. His strong language is one of the reasons that he is the most effective speaker of all time. People were not bored when he spoke. People would listen to Jesus for hours without eating.
The problem we have in understanding the revolutionary message of Jesus, is that we have sanitized his strong language. We glance over it and take it for granted. When he says “Don’t imagine that I came to bring peace to the earth! I came not to bring peace, but a sword,[1]” we dismiss it without thinking about it too much. Sure, it’s shocking for a moment, but it doesn’t really fit the picture of the Prince of Peace that we have painted in our mind, so we move on— quickly. Jesus looks more like Gandhi than Genghis Khan in our brain’s portrait gallery. We don’t hang the picture of sword-wielding Jesus next to the lamb-tending Good Shepherd.
When Jesus says that many people who think they are followers of his, those doing great miracles and really helping people, will go to hell, we worry for a minute but try not to examine ourselves too closely.
But Jesus isn’t just using strong language for the sake of rhetorical flourish. He is increasing the contrast. He wants to be clearer, more focused. He is letting us know that the road to the kingdom is a road that’s narrower than you think and the highway to hell is, well, a highway.
“If you don’t hate your parents, your wife and kids, your brothers and sisters—even despising your own life—you can’t really be devoted to me.”
It would be easy to say that Jesus doesn’t actually want us to hate our family, because, of course, that’s true. But dismissing it so easily diminishes the reason why Jesus uses these harsh words in the first place.
He wants to draw a sharp contrast between good and ultimate.
Good things are good, but they aren’t eternal. Good things are beneficial, but they can’t last. By contrast, ultimate things have eternal value. They are immutable, infinite, and transcendent.
We are commanded to honor our father and mother, so why would Jesus use such severe statements to express the contrast between our love for them and our love for him? Because that’s how sharp the contrast is.
Here are a few more times he draws the contrast.
“Don’t be afraid of those who can kill you. They can’t kill your soul. Only be afraid of God. He can kill both your body and send your soul to hell.[2]”
“If you are a servant of God, you will hate money.[3]”
“So if your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.[4]”
Are we really supposed to ignore the danger from people that want to kill us? Should we really hate money? Are we to engage in self-mutilation to keep from sinning?
Should you really not fear people who can kill you? It’s a good idea to stay safe, but the serving God isn’t safe. Safety is good, but it isn’t ultimate.
Hate money? Money is useful for taking care of your family and it can do a lot of good, but it isn’t ultimate.
Cut off you hand? Your body is a good thing and you should take care of it, but it isn’t ultimate.
Hate your mother, father, brothers and sisters, your wife and kids? Being a respectful son/daughter and sibling is good, but it’s not ultimate. Being a decent spouse and parent is good—even essential. Those things are not ultimate.
But why can’t it be both? Why is the contrast so sharp? Is Jesus so insecure that he gets as jealous as a teenage boyfriend, when his best girl glances at another guy? Surely, the creator of the universe is secure enough in his own identity that he can handle a little competition.
This contrast isn’t about his identity though, it’s about ours.
Real ID
Jesus is telling us that our identity must be in him or nothing else will work. The good things become better when we get our priorities right. Even good things become toxic when we find our identity in them. When we say, “Unless I have that, I am nothing,” we have defined our personhood with a dangerous definition.
Why? Because good things can be lost—ultimate things cannot.
This idea is central to the message of Christ. When he says, “Don’t let life’s necessities—what you eat and drink and what you wear—dominate your thoughts. Go after the Kingdom of God and he’ll give you everything you need,”[5] he’s making the same point. When he says, “Don’t build your treasure here on earth where moths and rust destroy things and thieves steal them, but build up your treasure in heaven,”[6] he’s laying out the same priorities.
Why? Because good things can be lost–ultimate things cannot.
Many of us want to add God to our lives in some sort of God-is-my-co-pilot accessory to our already-awesome lives. But consider this:
-
- If you could unravel all of the DNA in your body, it would span 34 billion miles. Enough to reach to the planet Pluto. And back. Six times.
- Our sun is so large that you could fit the earth inside of it 1.3 million times.
- After the sun, the closet star[7] is 25 trillion miles away. It would take well over 100 years to get there with modern space travel.
- · There are 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (that’s 300 Sextillion) stars like our sun in the universe. That’s more than all the grains of sand on Earth.
- Matter makes up only 5% of the universe. The rest is held together by unknown forces. The unknown forces are probably unknowable.
The God that created the universe wants to have a relationship with you. You don’t put a God like that in the co-pilot seat. He wants to fly the plane. You want him to fly the plane.
St. Augustine of Hippo said, “Christ is not valued at all unless He is valued above all.” God isn’t a plug-in, he’s the program. Nothing else works.
The apostle Paul writes, “In Christ, there’s no gender, there’s no economic status, there’s no ethnicity.”[8] Ethnic heritage is interesting, even important, but not ultimate. It is not an ultimate identity. It is merely good.
There are so many good things. Being wealthy might make you comfortable, but it won’t do anything for the ultimate issues in your life. Being fit and healthy can extend your life, but not forever. You will, ultimately become frail and die. Safety consciousness can’t protect you from everything. Ultimately, we will all face God. Time is an undefeated foe in this world. Wisdom is valuable and can lead to ultimate things. Wisdom, in and of itself, isn’t ultimate.
Our ultimate identity must come from him. If you find your identity in being a parent, a son, a daughter, a husband, a wife, a brother, or a sister—an identity crisis is on the way. You will not—you cannot—always be those things. Your parents will probably die. Your kids may move away and have their own kids. God forbid, they could die before you do.
Unless an untimely tragedy hits that takes both husband and wife at the same time, one spouse will leave the other behind. The until-death-do-we-part part will happen. And that’s if you have a good marriage. Bad ones end sooner—and usually even more tragically.
You will, someday, no longer have the career you may have now. Who will you be then? The great recession taught a whole new generation that savings can be wiped out and the home you own might become a negative asset. You might even lose it—along with your good credit score. Your good health will, almost certainly, be lost to disease, injury or age, at some point in the near or distant future.
When everything else is gone, the only thing you will have left is the only thing you need—an identity found in Christ. It cannot be lost—even in death.
Saved Alone
Horatio Spafford was a prominent and wealthy lawyer in Chicago in the second half of the 19th century. He was also an elder in the Presbyterian church and a friend and financial supporter of famed evangelist, D.L. Moody. By the time he was in his 40’s, Spafford had 5 children, a boy and 4 girls, with his wife Anna. He had amassed enough wealth that he needed to diversify his savings portfolio. In the spring of 1871, he invested heavily in real estate holdings north of Chicago. In October of 1871, the Great Chicago fire reduced the city to ashes, destroying almost all of Spafford’s life savings. His son had recently and tragically died of scarlet fever.
Two years later, Spafford was still in financial ruin, but felt compelled to accompany and his support his friend, D.L. Moody, in England. He decided his wife and 4 daughters would also travel with him. But at the last minute, business demands delayed Spafford’s trip. Spafford and his wife decided that she and the girls would travel ahead of him and he would join them after what would, hopefully, be a short delay.
On November 22, 1873, while crossing the Atlantic, the recently renamed , the steamship carrying Anna and her 4 daughters, was struck by an iron clipper in the middle of the night and was nearly broken in half. The ship, which was carrying 313 souls, sank in 12 minutes. In the collision, some of the lifeboats were destroyed and most the life jackets were stuck to the recently painted deck. Only 86 people survived.
In the chaos following the collision, Anna Spafford rallied her daughters, carrying the youngest, Tanetta in her arms. As the ship sank, debris knocked Tanetta from her mother’s arms and she drowned. The other three girls were said to have dog paddled as long as they could, but they soon succumbed to hypothermia from the near freezing water. Anna was found unconscious, floating on a wooden plank.
The news traveled the world, and back in Chicago, Horatio Spafford awaited news of the fate of his family. 9 excruciating days later, Horatio received the telegram of his wife’s fate. The telegram was sent by Anna. It began, “Saved alone.”
A few days later, as Horatio Spafford traveled on a ship taking the same route that his wife and daughters had taken, he passed near the watery grave of his four girls and wrote the now famous lyrics to the hymn, It is Well with My Soul:
When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to know,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.
Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul.
My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!
For me, be it Christ, be it Christ hence to live:
If Jordan above me shall roll,
No pang shall be mine, for in death as in life,
Thou wilt whisper Thy peace to my soul.
But Lord, ’tis for Thee, for Thy coming we wait,
The sky, not the grave, is our goal;
Oh, trump of the angel! Oh, voice of the Lord!
Blessed hope, blessed rest of my soul.
And Lord, haste the day when the faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,
A song in the night, oh my soul!
It is well with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.
Ultimate Value
A beautiful family is an amazing gift. It is good. It is not ultimate.
An excellent reputation is valuable. It is good. It is not ultimate.
Financial security is a source of great comfort. It is good. It is not ultimate.
Good health is a blessing from God. It is good. It is not ultimate.
A fulfilling career is satisfying. It is good. It is not ultimate.
Being created and loved by the creator of the universe is ultimate. Living the purpose that the savior of humanity calls you to, is ultimate.
Like diamonds displayed on a background of black velvet, the contrast proves the shimmering beauty. Velvet is a valuable material, but you would never gift it to someone who you were asking to spend their life with you. Velvet is good, but the diamond has become the ultimate symbol of undying love.
Hopefully, the day never comes when you must choose between your family and your faith. It does happen, but choosing between your family and Jesus isn’t why he says you must hate your family. The issue is your identity. If you find your value in anything in this world, you will have nothing left when those things are lost.
In contrast to your love for the ultimate, your valuation for good things must look like hatred. Then, you can really love the good things in the way that God, who gives all good things, intended.
Jesus wasn’t an excellent teacher, a great leader and good example.
You shouldn’t follow his advice.
He’s not a religious icon.
All of those ideas diminish who he is. He is more than that.
He is the WAY, the TRUTH and the LIFE (John 14:6). The ALPHA nd OMEGA (Rev. 22:13). The only SAVIOR (John 4:42). The BREAD of LIFE (John 6:35). The CORNERSTONE (Mark 12:10). The GREAT HIGH PREIST (Heb. 4:14). The JUDGE of the lving and the dead (Acts 10:42). The KING of KINGS (Rev. 17:14). The LIGHT OF THE WORLD (John 8:12). The only HOPE (1 Tim. 1:1). The EMANCIPATOR (Job 19:25). The CONQUERER of death (Rev. 3:21). The CREATOR (Col. 1:16-17). The WORD of God (John 1:1). The LORD OF ALL (1 Timothy 6:15).
Change how you think about Jesus:
Jesus called people to make tough choices. What tough choices is he calling you to make?
Challenge your Assumptions:
What things in your mind do you regard as ultimate? Which are really only good things?
Choose to Live Differently:
How do you need to re-arrange your priorities to reflect the ultimate/good contrast?
Footnotes:
[2] Mathew 10:28
[3] Matthew 6:24
[5] Matthew 6:31-33
[6] Matthew 6:19-20
[7] Alpha Centauri C is 4.24 light-years from our sun
[8] Galatians 3:28