Stumbling Questions

Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. "But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him." (John 11:9-10)

I keep having more questions regarding these verses the longer I think about them. I am going to add these to the ones I listed previously.

What does it mean to stumble?

What would cause one to stumble that light could prevent from happening?

Notice that the cause of stumbling is not what Jesus talks about seeing. Rather it is seeing the light that prevents one from stumbling. That seems compelling.

What is meant by walking?

Why is it assumed that one will stumble at night? You don't always have to stumble just because it is dark, unless of course there are unseen, unavoidable obstacles to trip over.

One is not likely to stumble if they are not walking. One way to prevent stumbling is to remain still and not try to walk anywhere. But Jesus does not seem to consider that an option here.

In the daytime phase of this verse it seems that the light is external since it is something you can see. But then in the nighttime version Jesus implies that the light should be inside of you. But then by implication also, if the light is inside it evidently would not be night. Does that mean that even in the day the light is supposed to be on the inside?

Are there lights both on the inside and the outside at the same time? I don't yet see much evidence of that concept.

It is not mentioned specifically, but the night was also divided into twelve hours. Why did Jesus only mention the hours of the day and not the night?

The use of the word anyone has strong implications. It seems all inclusive and allows for no exceptions. This seems to be a very emphatic black and white statement with no alternatives.

Walk in the day seeing the light – don't stumble; walk in the night without internal light – stumble. There seems to be no other options.

What are the basic ingredients in this cryptic statement?

• Time
• Walking
• Stumbling
• Light

The mixture of these ingredients revolves around the choices of the person involved.

• Will I choose to walk? Or is that a given to start with that I am going to walk?
• When will I choose to do my walking?
• Will I stumble or not stumble? What factors play into the answer to that question?

The two main factors that seem most important to remember when making decisions seems to be the issues of time and light. How do I need to prioritize my life in relationship to these two things?

I believe that other passages that talk about stumbling can shed significant light on this passage. Stumbling is most often associated with offenses. This ties back very tightly to the subject of the trap of offense and the issue of forgiveness. How do those things figure into the context of this story and what might Jesus be trying to say to His disciples under these circumstances?

The disciples were afraid of going back to where people wanted to kill Jesus. That is understandable. How was Jesus relating to those fears? And what was going on in Jesus' mind about His own situation?

Obviously He was thinking about His friends in Bethany and the situation with Lazarus. But there was much more emerging in this story than just His plans to work a stunning miracle by resurrecting Lazarus. The whole scheme of history was coming to a head and He knew that this overwhelming evidence of His divinity would be the final straw that would catapult Him toward His death at the hands of those who hated what He represented.

How do these verses apply to Jesus personally? Clearly He lived His life very carefully so as not to stumble. Living as a human being totally dependent on His Father's guidance through the Holy Spirit in every moment of His life, Jesus was showing His disciples and everyone else how to live in perfect harmony with heaven. Jesus chose to live as a weakened human being avoiding occasions to stumble just as all of us need to do. So, what in these circumstances would have been an occasion to stumble that Jesus needed to avoid?

Night and Day

Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. "But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him." (John 11:9-10)

I want to unpack this much more than anytime previously.

The time system used back then was a technique of dividing the day into twelve equal parts called hours and the same was done for the night. Why did Jesus ask this seemingly redundant question?

He seems to be distinguishing or contrasting between actions in the daytime versus in the night.

What did He mean by the phrase, the light of this world?

What is significant about the light not being in a person? Note that even those who walk in the day do not have light in them. How is that significant?

Is Jesus referring to Himself as the light of this world or is he emphasizing the external focus of our perception of reality? Is the light of this world referring to our own inherent sense of what is real, what is right, what is true and just but our inability to see reality from heaven's perspective?

Implied in this statement is the preference for not stumbling. Stumbling is assumed here to be something we do not want to do. To prevent this one must make choices about when they are going to do their walking. There are better times than others to walk.

How does the reference to twelve hours play into this? There must be some important reason Jesus made this statement.

This whole section is dropped right into the midst of the story about the death and resurrection of Lazarus. What is supposed to be revealed encoded in this cryptic presentation?

Choosing to walk in the day takes advantage of existing light. But worldly light is external. Our light is only available when the sun is up but is available to everyone. If one fails to get their necessary things done in the daytime they will have much greater difficulty getting it done when the light has faded.

Seeing the light of this world reinforces the idea of the light not being internal.

This whole cryptic message was Jesus' response to the disciple's intense fears aroused about returning to Judea where the life of Jesus had just been threatened several times. As friends of Jesus they also felt threatened and their natural feelings of self-preservation were being aroused. They were also feeling protective of Jesus so His desire to return so quickly into dangerous territory was baffling to them.

Just previous to this it states that Jesus had left the place where the Jews wanted to stone Him and was staying beyond the Jordan where many were more readily believing in Him. The gospel work seemed to be flourishing in this place in contrast to the intense hostility and difficulties of changing people's minds in Judea. So returning to Judea while leaving a place where they were having so much more seeming success simply made no sense to His disciples. This is the context of this statement.

Baby Steps part 2

If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; but if I do them, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father. (John 10:37-38)

As far as I know, this is one of the only times that Jesus ever invited people to not believe Him. I find that significant enough to look deeper to see what elicited such a strange statement.

It revolves around the issue of works – a sore spot for me in the religion in which I was raised. In my mind the idea of works was mostly connected with perfectionism, the striving of each person to eliminate sin (bad things in deed or even in thought) from the life to get one's self ready for Jesus' return. There was little talk of maturity but a great deal of emphasis on external performance. Because of this preconditioning my mind and heart has some real triggers that go off related to many religious words that have required a great deal of healing and rewiring that is still ongoing.

The answers however, are not found in going to the other extreme as so many of my friends have chosen to do who grew up in the same environment as I did. I do not blame them for doing that and I too seriously considered that option for a time. Yet too much of religion nearly everywhere I turn is shaped much more by reactive fears based on trying to NOT be like some other religion that has underlying issues that need to be corrected, rather than by carefully seeking for what is original truth. This is one of Satan's most successful schemes to keep people from coming to a true knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus.

Now, after years learning to deeply root my beliefs in the Word of God and learning to listen more acutely to the guidance of the Holy Spirit in that context, it is becoming less confusing and intimidating to revisit many of the things that previously turned me off so quickly. I now discover time after time as I come to these previously troubling passages that they are now full of life, of instruction and very often do not mean at all what I assumed they meant or as taught to me by others.

But as I was saying, some words have real issues associated with them so that even today with many of them I have to intentionally force into the open my feelings connected to them to expose them to the light of increasing revelation as I have been exposed to it over recent years. I have discovered the value of placing old ideas that were distorted in my past into a new context of the revelation of God from the life of Jesus, and I believe this is the only safe means of squaring religious terms with the real truth they were originally intended to convey.

Sometimes I find that a word may mean something quite different when I look it up in the original language. In this instance that is not the case. The word translated 'works' means pretty much that, although it could be translated 'deeds' just as easily. But clearly Jesus intended to mean His external deeds and treatment of those around Him by choosing this word. So what I want to explore is why Jesus invited people to take an intermediary step toward believing that He was the real Son of God while not at first embracing that fact up front. He allows people freedom by not feeling pressured to believe in His divinity while still inviting them to explore that possibility by evaluating His life and comparing that to what God is like.

But it is at this very juncture that a real problem emerges. Nearly everyone I know has screwed up ideas about what God is like to begin with. In fact, that very problem is precisely why Jesus came to this earth in the first place, to reveal what God is really like to a world filled with lies and misconceptions and misapprehensions about Him. So if God was already deeply misunderstood and Jesus came and acted just like God, then obviously Jesus would be misunderstood just the same – and that is exactly why they rejected and killed Him in the end.

Our natural beliefs about what God is like and how He treats sinners lies at the root of all sin and sinful behaviors. It is the inherent lies about God that were implanted into the very psyche of the human race that caused our first parents to act very defensively in fear and shame immediately upon being approached by God about what had just happened. As a result, our hearts are now predisposed to assume that God is out to condemn us, to pressure us to conform to His rules or any other number of distorted notions about what He is like found in the human heart.

The point is that the real truth about God can never be found by looking inside ourselves to discover God by what we assume and feel about Him internally or by basing our beliefs on the opinions of those who claim to represent Him in religion. The only safe way for anyone to find the real truth about how God feels about and relates to His sinful children is to observe carefully and thoughtfully the life and spirit and disposition revealed in the way Jesus treated people like us. Only in this way is there any hope of having our own false assumptions exposed and replaced with attraction toward the One who's heart is only full of love towards us and wants to save us from our fears and lies about Him.

These men that Jesus was facing in this passage were likewise filled with false ideas about God. Sadly they were people who were the most convinced that they knew the truth about God and in their minds their version of God was far more accurate than what Jesus was purporting about Him. Because of this they could see little truth in what Jesus was saying about God and strongly resisted believing His claims about a loving, forgiving, compassionate Father longing to embrace all His wayward children back into intimate fellowship with Himself.

Their view of God was firmly rooted in a picture based on stern obedience, rigid conformity to multiplied regulations and an earned love based on high performance and compliance with religious ideals. The idea that religion might be more oriented to what is in the inner chambers of the heart more than outward appearances came as something repulsive to them, humiliating and even intimidating. They did not want their inner ugliness and selfishness to be exposed to anyone after having spent years convincing themselves and each other that all God expected was perfection of lifestyle and conformity to His rules. They felt threatened by a religion that required a deep examination of the motives and inner secrets of the soul.

But Jesus in His graciousness offered them an intermediary step toward accepting His claims to be one with the Father, a God that they found to out of harmony with their views of Him. Even the very suggestion of calling Him Father was out of harmony with the kind of God they pictured. Yet Jesus asked them to at least consider, based on the standards they themselves used from the laws of Moses, to compare His life, His treatment of people against the true meaning and standards laid out in the Torah. He invited them to judge His life against the law by which they claimed to measure righteousness and see what the conclusions might look like. And He knew that if they were willing to be honest then what they would discover from that analysis would lead them to take the next step and seriously consider believing that His version of God was actually the more accurate one and that He was who He said He was.

Believe the works, so that you may know and understand... What an invitation to one resistant to belief! And He offers the same thing to skeptics and believers alike still today.

As I choose to dwell on and fill my mind with the stories of how Jesus related to people with problems and doubts similar to my own, the implications from the stories of His life produced in my heart naturally begin to create longings to want to know Him better so that He can make the same kind of changes and transformations in my life as He did for others. As I dwell on the incredible kindness and goodness and forgiving attitude of Jesus towards people with similar faults and fears as my own, hope springs up inside my heart and longings are intensified to experience the same kind of joy and blessing and healing that Jesus brought to so many who were touched by His presence.

What I see Jesus telling me here is that if I too struggle to believe some of His claims about Himself, then it is alright to just take time to consider His works, His deeds of kindness and love and all that His life revealed. As I absorb the truth about what Jesus was like I am also rewiring my opinions and notions about what God is like, for Jesus treated people no different in the slightest degree than how God treats people.

And that is really the everlasting good news (which is the actual meaning of the word 'gospel'). The true gospel is not a list of doctrines or a creed or any other such formula; the real gospel is the incredible truth that the all-powerful God who created everything in the whole universe, in whose presence sin cannot exist without extreme torture from disharmony – this very God is not at all how His enemies have made Him out to be. The natural assumptions my heart has about God cannot be trusted and the only safe way to find and embrace the truth about Him is by filling my mind with Jesus and in turn having my heart absorb the same, the revelation of God as lived out in the life of His Son, the Messiah who came to change all of our minds about Him.

Competition or Convergence

Jesus answered them, "Has it not been written in your Law, 'I SAID, YOU ARE GODS'? "If he called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken)... (John 10:34-35)

When one begins to sense the implications of what Jesus is saying here about our proper role as gods in relationship with each other connected with Him, all sorts of peripheral things suddenly start to make more sense. (If you are a little confused about this idea, take time to read the last post and the related ones connected with it.) I feel it is important that I start paying attention to what the Spirit is revealing about this subject considering that Jesus made one of His most emphatic declarations regarding this fact saying concerning it, “the Scripture cannot be broken”.

The problem of course comes in when sin skewed the original design and function of our lives and our relationships. Rather than competing to see how much we can bless each other like those in heaven do, encouraging each other and allowing our lives to be sources of life-giving service to others, we have been predisposed by sin to selfishness which reverses the order of God's creation in our lives and now live grasping for everything we can get for ourselves, often at the expense of others. Thus life becomes an ever-intensifying competition for shrinking resources. This is the very basis for Satan's invention about our origins: the evolutionary theory. In this model based on the selfishness of the human heart, people assume that life is all about survival of the fittest. And since sin has affected all of creation here on earth it appears that there is much evidence to support this theory.

Yet God never intended for His creatures to live selfishly or to clamor and fight over resources. He designed us to live as benefactors to all around us, receiving to give to others rather than seeking how much we can take or hoard for our own pleasure. Yet the very concept of selfless living seems so foreign and incompatible with our natural instincts that we often question its validity or even its viability. It seems too strange to be real, and yet it must be embraced and experienced if we truly want to live in the upside-down kingdom that Jesus came to establish.

In God's way of relating, in God's government, all live to bless to others. Nature was designed this way and the underlying pattern can still be seen in many of the cycles of nature in spite of the severe damage sin has caused. Man is the glaring exception to this principle of serving, for humans are the ones so infected with the selfishness of sin that they tend to exploit rather than nurture. But in God's system of sharing life, all things and all creatures live and have their proper place in a great circuit of life and love that all originates and ultimately returns to Him. As we live in harmony with these eternal principles of life, we find ourselves the recipients of blessing from many around us and in turn joyfully pass on the blessings that come to us to benefit many others. Life becomes a great convergence of blessing for all involved rather than a competition against others where my gain is someone else's loss.

The key for the success of God's system of government is an ever-present cognizance and submission to the Father's sovereignty and authority and complete trust in His goodness. When all creation lives in joyful trust in the Father as the original source of all good things, then harmony is realized and we begin to appreciate the true joy of perfection and thriving the way God designed intended. We begin to experience what God declared at the end of creation week when He said that it was all 'very good'. Creation as it came from the hand of God was never intended to be a competition for resources or love or provisions; it was designed to be a convergence of life-giving resources that were ever increasing that in turn would result in ever-increasing exclamations of praise and gratitude to the Creator who exhibits such amazing love and goodness and graciousness through His creatures.

How does this relate to me today? I look at my own attitudes, my selfish motives and the damage that I daily inflict on those around me because of faults and confusion in my life, and I cry out for much more grace, for healing, for a totally new perspective and a new heart. I see more and more clearly how narrow my views of life really are, how limited is my awareness of the goodness of God, how lacking my heart is in gratitude and appreciation, and I am appalled at my own deeply entrenched selfishness. But I have hope, not because I have any ability to change my own heart but because God has the ability and is eager to fulfill His promises in me as I allow Him access through my spirit. As I read the last half of Ezekiel 36 this morning with my daughter, my heart was again deeply moved by how clearly God promises that He is going to give me a new heart and remove my heart of stone. And all that He describes there He emphatically declares He will do for His reputation's sake, not for my benefit.

That may sound at first like God is a selfish person Himself. But as the truth becomes more clear I remember that the problem of sin is skewing all of my perceptions about reality and often prevents me from appreciating what God needs to do. Until His reputation is salvaged nothing He has designed in all of creation is truly safe from harm. For me to have hope of living in joy and fellowship and life for eternity with the saved as well as to enjoy close intimacy with God, His reputation – what everyone thinks about Him – must be fully repaired. Only when all His creatures finally come to realize His total trustworthiness and freely return all praise and glory to the origin of life will it be safe for Him to fully restore us into close intimacy with Himself.

What will I choose today? Am I going to allow myself to continue playing the games of competition for resources that infects so many of my relationships with others? Or am I willing to be transformed by the renewing of my mind and choose to begin living in proper orientation within the great convergence of blessings and provisions that God designs for me to pass along to others?

Father, keep changing me. Change the way I think, the way I perceive, the way I react and especially the way I think and feel about You. Keep revealing Your heart, Your goodness, the real truth about what You are like to my mind and my heart. Let me see Your glory much more clearly so that what I reflect to others under pressure will be Your character rather than my selfishness. Do this for Your name's sake just as You promised to do. Thank-you.