Thinning the Herd

Looking at the news today I see that some poor dope got himself killed by attempting to outrun an angry bull this Friday at Pamplona’s San Fermin Festival.

To many of us who have the mental impairment of thinking logically, it’s quite hard to fathom why anyone would voluntarily try to outrun a bull.

Is there a life lesson here?  Whether there is or not, I’ll make one up if I have to.  It’ll be a good clean Christian lesson too from your Uncle Parrot, so enjoy!

Lets begin with some foundational principles:

1) The universe has a defined set of rules.  For example, you can’t outrun an angry bull.

2) When you break the rules, the rules usually break you.  See previous reference to said bull.

With that in mind, I must lament the latest pop-theology to infiltrate the Christian church…the Grace Movement.  The bull will soon become apparent.

The postmodern grace movement is tailor made to our North American culture.  It is narcissistic, suffers from logic so bad it would bring Spock to tears, and feeds the desire to live a life “without the rules”. I’m sure the Apostle Paul is spinning in his grave so fast, Israel is thinking of hooking him up to a turbine to power Tel Aviv.

Somehow I doubt the real Jesus would approve of this new liberalism.  The gospel is reduced to Cosmic-Whiteout, as any and all forms of godly behavior is relabeled as legalistic.

What happened?  How did we get to this?

Maybe I do understand how we arrived here.  Maybe we’re so overburdened with life we just want to say “the hell with it” and THINK we can throw off the rules.  I’m sure that’s what Jose’ thought too before he got a horn through the neck.

I wish I could throw it all off too.  But the red-light camera will still catch me speeding.  The doctor will bitch me out for my all-hot dog diet.  If I work 7 days a week I’ll go on a rampage.  If I jump out of an airplane without the chute, no amount of grace is going to lessen the impact.  And that bull will get revenge on behalf of his brothers for all the cheeseburgers I ate as a kid.    Life has rules.  Life IS rules.

I fear that those in the current grace movement are setting themselves up for a major disappointment.  Christ came to save us from our sins indeed, but not from the consequences.  That is empirically obvious.  Many hoodwinked by this new theology may find themselves looking over their shoulder trying to outrun the consequences of mocking God’s instruction.  This may well be the “thinning” of the Christian herd.

The good news is that God’s rules are still there and are still good for you.  When we submit to his WRITTEN ordinances, that’s when we can truly chill-out, relax, and have some serious fun with life.  We’re not constantly worrying about whether our next action was some form of legalism that we need to whip ourselves over.   And we won’t be gored either.

There is order to the universe.  I suggest we accept it, or start running.