What is the One Thing That Gets Everyone Off-Track?

Did you see them?  Did you see the two big stories of the week?  In one, you saw rich people behaving badly, doing pay-offs and bribes to get their kids in the right schools.  But as bad as that was, it only got worse didn’t it.   For in the other, you saw a white man behaving horrifically, slaughtering 50 innocent people while they were simply praying to God.

But do you realize what both these stories have in common?  The same lie lies at the heart of them both.   In fact, that lie lies at the heart of all human brokenness.    Now, what is this lie?   More crucially, how does this one lie mess everything up?   In this story, God shows you the way?   Let’s listen and hear what God has to say?

Genesis 3:1-15

Why do you get up every morning?  Beyond all the stuff you do, you have a larger purpose over it all, something that you believe will give you ultimate value, that will make your life worthwhile.  Everyone has a why, something that you are aiming for either consciously or unconsciously that you believe gives you value and worse.  That personal mission can be all sorts of things.   But whatever it might be, your mission is likely a false one.  It will never be able to bear the weight of what you’re asking of it.   But before you can even figure out what your false mission might be, you’ve got to see first why you have one in the first place.

That false mission began because a lie has captured everyone in this room today, everyone.   It’s the same lie that captured Adam and Eve.   As we talked about last week, this story has almost nothing to do with the tree.   It has everything to do with the trust. 

And that’s the lie that lies at the heart of the story.   It’s what the serpent gets Adam and Eve to believe.   The serpent gets them to believe simply this.  God doesn’t really love them.  And if God doesn’t love them then how can they trust God about the tree?   When God tells you not to eat from this tree, God isn’t trying to keep you safe.   No, God is holding back the good stuff.   God is holding you back from the greatness you’re destined to have.

And when Adam and Eve eat from the tree, the lie has taken hold.   By eating from the tree, they basically say to God.   I don’t trust you.   I don’t trust that you love me, that you intend the best for me.   I don’t trust you at all.   And whether you realize it or not, you’re caught in that same lie.   And because of that lie, you tend to think way too highly of yourself, and not so highly about God. 

You already begin to see that even before Adam and Eve eat.  Do you see what happens right before?  This happens. When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.

Now you may think, ok.  What’s so interesting about that?  In these words, God is showing you that Eve and by implication Adam (who, by eating, shows his agreement) have made a crucial change in how they see themselves.   They basically see themselves as way smarter than God.   They look at the fruit.  They evaluate it on how good it looks to eat, how pretty it is, and on what this random serpent has told them, and they take a bite.   But think about this a bit.  That’s not exactly the best rationale for a decision.

If you go out in the woods looking for mushrooms with that logic, it will not go well with you.   Hmm that mushroom looks and smells good, and this random stranger said it’s awesome, so let me take a bite.  With that rationale, you’ll be dead or on your way to the hospital pretty quickly.

Yet human beings make these sort of bad judgment calls all the time.   In fact, shocking us with those bad judgment calls is how the Nobel winning Economist, Daniel Kahneman sold a million and a half copies of his book.    In 2011, Kahnemann published his bestseller,Thinking, Fast and Slow.   And to grossly summarize a 500-page book, basically Kahnemann wrote that whether you are thinking, fast or slow, you have a good chance of thinking wrong. 

And he gave example after example of experiments that proved his point.   For example, he and his fellow economist, Amos Tversky, asked people whether Gandhi was more than 114 years old when he died.  Of course, they said no.  That would be ridiculous.   

But then then they asked a different group whether Gandhi was more or less than 35 years old when he died.     And again, folks answered more.  They knew that. But then they asked each group this question.  So, when did Gandhi die?  Guess which group guessed an older age at death and which guessed a younger?   Any guesses. Let’s just say.   You and I are really influenced just like Adam and Eve by the last thing we heard whether it is true or not.

Let me give you another of these experiments.  One group was asked whether they would opt for surgery if the “survival” rate is 90%.   And another group was asked whether they would opt for surgery if the “death” rate is 10%.   It’s the same information, just framed differently.  But did it change the way folks answered the question.  You bet it did.  It turns out just framing the very same information differently makes you think differently.    

I could go on, but you get the idea.  Basically, Kahneman said, human beings are way too overconfident in our thinking because of one false concept that he called WYSIATI.  It stands for What You See is All There Is.   Yet of course what you see isn’t all there is, by a humongous amount.   Yet you and I make judgments based on that fallacy all the time.   

Human beings do that with God.  When somebody says, “I could never believe in God because of all the terrible things in the world,” do you see what is going on?  That person is assuming they know better than God, are more moral and compassionate than God, have a better grasp of reality than God.   And on all those points, well, let’s just say the record of human beings is pretty spotty.   Yet, people do that sort of judging of God all the time.  Why?  They think they know better, even are better.

Heck, if you are anxious or worried about something, the same thing is going on.  You think you know better.  You think you really know how whatever it is has to go, and if it doesn’t go that way, that’s bad.  But you don’t know.   You really, really don’t know. 

And this faulty thinking leads you to not only a false perception of yourself and of God, it leads you to a false focus for your life, one that can never bear the weight of what you ask of it. 

And let me be clear, your false focus can be a good thing.  It just can’t be the mission of your life, your ultimate source of value and meaning.  

Let’s say you make the focus of your life, having an awesome spouse or outstanding kids.   Now, those are good things.   But if you make that the focus of your life, your source of value and meaning, it will mess it up.   No spouse however good he or she is can survive being their partner’s source of value and meaning.  Why?  They’re not perfect.  They’re going to mess up.  And if they think their partner is going to collapse when they fail as they surely will, that marriage will have hard days, days it likely will not survive. 

And with kids it’s even worse.  What was going on with those rich parents making pay-offs and bribes to get their kids into top schools?   They might have told themselves.  I’m doing this for junior, for my daughter or son.  But they weren’t.  They were doing it for themselves.  They were doing it to fulfill a false personal mission.  They were believing things like this.   I won’t have value as a person, as a parent, unless my kids are successful going to the best schools, so I gotta do whatever, whatever it takes to make that happen, even if it hurts them.   Or maybe it was.  I won’t truly have value unless I am successful everywhere, at work, at home, and with my kids.  And nothing can get in the way of that success.  And if that means breaking the law or messing up my kids so they meet my personal mission of success, then so be it. 

I could go on and on with these examples.  There are so many of these false missions.  Heck, even religion can be one.   People can think like this.  If I don’t abide by the rules the church sets out or the Bible, then I have no value.  And so, they become rigid, terrified of failure, willing to do anything to protect their image of goodness, of righteousness.

And of course, you can have a mission that’s not good at all.  Those missions lead to horrific things.   Some people have as their meaning in life, an enemy, a group of people they must defeat or destroy.   In its milder forms, this personal mission leads to rigid political divisions.  One side demonizes the other, the sort of thing that infects our nation right now.  In its more virulent forms, it leads to war, to genocide.  It leads to the horror that visited those mosques in New Zealand.

Do you see how devastating these false missions are?   And in the end, they don’t make you larger, they make you smaller.   After all, if your mission is simply about you, some way you’re finding fulfillment for you, then that diminishes the world to just you ultimately.  And that’s a very small universe in which to live.  

But a larger mission awaits you, a true mission.  In the last sentence we read, God tells you what it is.  God says to the serpent.   “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.” In these words, do you see what God is doing?  God isn’t talking about people being scared of snakes.  God is declaring war against the lie, against the evil that spreads the lie throughout the world.  More than that, God, in these words on the offspring, is sharing how God will call others to join God in the fight against the lie, against the brokenness the lie creates in the world.   

That’s why every Sunday at the church I serve we say those words to one another: God loves you no matter what every Sunday.  We’re not simply saying some words to help everyone feel good.  We are fighting the lie.  We are fighting the lie by proclaiming the truth of the love.   But we don’t fight that battle alone.  We have a champion.  And in the final sentence, God points you to his coming.   The first part of this sentence is plural, but then it changes to singular.  “He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”  Why?

It’s because God is saying.  A champion will come, an offspring of Eve, who will crush the lie.  But in that battle, he will suffer.   The lie will wound him.  But it cannot destroy him.  And in that wounding, he will destroy the lie forever.  

In Jesus, these words come true.  For in Jesus, you see the love of God like never before, you see the love that crushes the lie once and for all.    And when you know that love, when you know the truth of that love, it starts crushing the lie in you.  More than that, it gives you your true value and your true mission.  You grow to love others even as Jesus has loved you.   And in that love, you discover the only mission that truly fulfills.  You discover the mission that transforms you and by God’s grace working in you and so many others is even now transforming the world.  So,  live in the love.  Live in the truth.  Live in the mission until that day when God’s love will vanquish the lie forever.