Taking the Easy Way

Bob had a fight with his wife and was angry. He decided to go for a walk to cool off. While on his walk he wandered past the local bar. Outside the bar was a woman who, as he got closer, he realized was his old high school girlfriend, Mabel. She looked as good as she did way back then, and he decided it wouldn’t hurt to stop and say hello. After talking for a while she asked him to come inside and have a beer with her. Things led to things and before he knew it he was waking up in her apartment the next morning. Bob felt terrible, but what could he do? He’d only been angry. He hadn’t meant to get drunk, or cheat on his wife, but here he was with a big headache and a bigger ache in his heart.

The first thing he began to do once he’d realized what he’d done was to make excuses for his behavior. “If his wife had only given in to his point of view, he never would have gotten mad in the first place.” “If his ex-girlfriend hadn’t been there, he wouldn’t have stopped at the bar.” “If that bar tender hadn’t kept on bringing those drinks, he never in a million years would have gotten drunk and gone home with Mabel.” “If only Mabel had gotten fat and ugly after all those years, he never would have been tempted by her.” “It was actually all God’s fault because God created him with these awful emotions that he couldn’t control anyway.”

Many of you reading this don’t think you really relate to Bob’s problem. But is that a correct assessment of your own situation? Basically in every situation in this short story Bob has simply done the easy thing. At every opportunity, instead of doing the right thing, he did the wrong thing. Why was he fighting with his wife? Was it because he wasn’t getting his own way? Was it because she was trying to assert herself and he didn’t like it? Whatever it was, it is clear that Bob was not loving his wife as Christ loves the church. Jesus died and gave himself for the church. Is that what Bob was doing? When he left the house angry, I’m not sure that wasn’t a good idea once he got angry, but what was he thinking when he ran into Mabel? I’m lonely and here’s someone who cares for me? My wife doesn’t understand me and here’s a woman who does? I’m sure he wasn’t planning to get into trouble, but as soon as he said more than hello to Mabel, he was heading for it in a big way. Every step in Bob’s story shows that when confronted with the choice to do the right thing, or to do the easy thing, Bob chose the easy way.

What about you? Do you choose the easy way when things are going wrong? Do you cheat because its easier than doing a good job well? Do you flirt with danger because its easier than facing your responsibilities? How many of you men stay at work because its easier than going home and facing a family that bickers and fights all the time? You know its your job to maintain your family and God will hold you accountable for your fighting family. I know, its hard to do the right thing and sin is indeed pleasurable for a season. But look at the consequences of doing the easy thing.

If you don’t discipline your children, they will grow up eternally lost and very probably socially lost. If you don’t love your wife, she will not submit to you and will turn into a nasty ogre. If you don’t submit to your husband, he will leave you. Maybe not physically, but if he isn’t having a fun time at home, he will not come home—much. Men have a way of leaving without really going anywhere. If you’re single and you don’t wait on the Lord for a husband or wife, you will be bummed for as long as you live when you go the easy way and go out with a non-Christian and he/she breaks your heart. Going the easy way is never the easy way. And in the long run, doing the right thing, is really the easy way.

But, you ask, what is the right way and how do I find it? By right way I mean God’s way. Doing what God has commanded, in the way that he has commanded, is the right way to be living. If God says to love your wife, anything short of that is doing the easy thing and will end up in disaster. If God says to marry a Christian and you date a non-Christian, you are doing the easy thing and are heading for trouble.

But how do you know what God says? Surely God wouldn’t tell you to do something that didn’t feel right? Or if a behavior feels right, how can it be wrong? First of all you know what God says by reading the Bible. There is no other way of finding out what God wants for his people to do. In saying this I am not limiting God (as if I could). I am saying that he gave us his word, written by many people over many years for the expressed purpose of revealing himself to us so that we can worship him and obey him (which is what worship is all about). Why would he tell you to do a thing that he has already told you not to do in his word? He won’t and doesn’t. You are doing the easy thing when you blame God for the sin you are committing. You are misrepresenting God and are therefore guilty of blasphemy, when you say God told me to do what his word has already told you not to do. If a particular act feels right, but God has told you not to indulge in it, you are in sin, and you will suffer both the immediate consequences and God will also deal with you in the life to come.

Another response might be, “it isn’t always that doing the wrong thing feels right, sometimes its that doing the right thing feels wrong. Like disciplining my children. Spanking them when they do wrong things feels wrong. How can it be right to do a thing that feels wrong?” The problem with this kind of thinking is that our feelings count for anything. God says that “the man who does not discipline his children hates his children.” He doesn’t stop to say, “this is true unless he doesn’t feel like it.” Also, we might respond that we love our children and that’s why we aren’t hitting them and to claim that we hate them is a moral judgment that no one else is qualified to make. God is qualified to make any judgment he wants, and he clearly states that you are hating your children if/when you won’t discipline them.

Now that I’ve got you all riled up let me make another point that many might be a little upset with. No where does God tell us to feel anything. He tells us to do things, and the assumption is that the feelings will follow. For example, he tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves. Is he telling us to feel love for them? No! He’s telling us to do loving things for them with the same intensity that we do loving things for ourselves. Is he saying anything at all about having feelings of love towards our neighbor? No! He is assuming that if you do loving things for your neighbor, your feelings of love will follow. So when he tells us that we are hating our children when we don’t discipline them, he isn’t telling us that we feel hatred for them, he is telling us that we are doing hateful things to them when we don’t discipline them. This explains why when you avoid God’s command because it feels bad you are still held accountable for your lack of obedience whether you feel like it or not.

The measure of whether a person knows God is by what he does. If you are not living rightly, you have no reason to believe that you are a Christian. The Christian is really the only person who can do what is right. The Bible says that a Non-Christian cannot do what God commands, nor do they want to. This is because though you may want to have a nice life, or a life that seems to run smoothly and though you realize that it is because you are doing things the easy way rather than the right way, you now want to do the right thing for the easy reason. As long as this is your motive, you will never receive the power to overcome your selfish nature. The Christian wants to do the right thing because he knows God and want to serve him. The blessed life that follows, follows as a benefit of knowing and serving the living God.

Every once in a while we read in the paper about a person who wins a marathon race, only to find out later that they cheated by taking a short cut. The race was so important, or maybe I should say winning was so important that they wanted to win at any cost. So they took the short route to victory. The problems with running a race like this are many. First of all the runners who cheat aren’t really running the race at all. The race is 26 miles and they are only running a part of that distance. They can’t really say they ran the race. Second, by cheating they are diminishing their victory, making it hollow at best. Third, They have broken all the rules. Finally, and most important, the race judges know they haven’t competed according to the rules and throw them out of the race and take the victors crown away from them. The person who tries to cut the corners, and take the short cuts in the end has just wasted their day and brought themselves into disrepute.

The race we are running, as Christians, is very similar to the marathon races we have on our city streets. It is long, it lasts our whole life; It has a goal, Christ’s likeness; It has a judge, Jesus Christ; It has other competitors, though we are not actually running against them; We have as a goal of our running, to get others to join with us in the fun; And, we have ample temptation to cheat and to take rests that cause us to stop running or to be thrown out of the race altogether.

One of the major differences in our two kinds of races are the boundaries. In the world’s marathons the boundaries are marked out on a map for us. The race officials give each competitor a map of the course with all the problems and possible problems clearly marked. They are marked so that the competitors will know were they are supposed to run, both to avoid problems and to compete correctly. In the Christian race, the boundaries are marked out in the Bible. God has given us all we need to run the race in his word. The Bible is a complete text book, clearly marking out the route we are to take as we run the race God has given us. In the world the boundaries are physical. They put up big pylons and barriers so that the runners will know where they are supposed to go and not supposed to go. We don’t want our racers to fall into a river or a ditch while competing. These barriers also keep the fans off the tract so that there will be a clear delineation between the runners and the spectators. In the Christian world the borders are moral and ethical. God has set up barriers for us in life that keep us running with God. These include commands pertaining to every area of life. Living according to these barriers is what running the race entails. The Biblical commands also keep the Christians from the mere fans. The non-Christian can only try to run the race, but because the race is long and the commands are hard apart from the grace given by God and the power given by the Holy Spirit, they will sooner or later fall away and drop out of the race.

Jesus gave parables about wheat and tares and about sheep and goats. These parables tell us that the race we run appears to have both real Christians and people who for one reason or another want to be thought of as Christians. We have a command from God that tells us that we are to be in the world but not part of the world. This means that we are running our race right along side of the fans, those who are not really running the race. In human marathons the fans generally cheer the runners on, throwing them food and water to help them on their way. In our race we have beings and fans who don’t want us to run effectively. They are in rebellion against God and they do what ever they can to cheat and to try to get us to cheat as well.

There is a temptation for the runners of both races to get tired running and to desire to take a short cut. For the Christian this is especially problematic as going through the trials, and facing them squarely is how we get stronger to run the race more efficiently. If we succumb to the temptation to take the easy way, we lose our opportunity to grow.

Taking the easy way isn’t really the easy way.