{"id":1684,"date":"2013-12-12T10:47:43","date_gmt":"2013-12-12T16:47:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/?p=1684"},"modified":"2013-12-12T10:47:43","modified_gmt":"2013-12-12T16:47:43","slug":"more-than-jars-of-clay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/?p=1684","title":{"rendered":"More than jars of clay"},"content":{"rendered":"

“But we have this treasure<\/strong><\/em> in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” 1 Corinthians 4:7 (emphasis mine)<\/p>\n

For the month of December I decided to follow a Bible Plan.\u00a0 From the 1st of December to Christmas day I am reading someone else’s thoughts on the Christmas story.\u00a0 I never use these plans as I find I get more out of just reading the Bible by itself and talking about it with other people than following a prescribed plan but I thought I’d do something different this year.<\/p>\n

There are a few things that have quickly become apparent to me.\u00a0 I’ve been out of the evangelical Christian mainstream for a while.\u00a0 Until very recently I have not attended an institutional church that meets on Sunday mornings nor have I really hung around the people who attend those churches.\u00a0 There’s a lot of evangelical Christian jargon that I haven’t heard for a while.<\/p>\n

So when I started reading this Bible plan all this Christian jargon started popping up again.\u00a0 It’s not that I haven’t heard these things before, albeit many years ago. But some of the lingo sounds very ‘odd’ to me now even though I had just accepted it in the past.\u00a0 Some of the lingo downright bothers me, in fact.<\/p>\n

Take, for example, this quote (in speaking of God’s favor to Mary): “…favor means, simply, that God is willing to use<\/strong><\/em> you.” (emphasis mine)\u00a0 What?!\u00a0 ‘Use you’?\u00a0 Why would the author employ this language?\u00a0 Where, in the realm of our human relationships, would we ever speak of ‘using’ people?\u00a0 Not in any healthy relationships, that’s for sure!\u00a0 When we hear the language of ‘using’ people, it is largely in a negative context, such as cases of abuse and exploitation.\u00a0 Is this the picture we would want to paint of God?\u00a0 The concept of ‘using’ people implies a devaluing, that people are ‘property’ to be ‘used’ rather than holding any intrinsic worth.\u00a0 This is certainly not how I believe God views people or how He views humanity.<\/p>\n

However, to be fair, there are Bible references that have been used to reinforce this concept of God using people.\u00a0 Very often it is the references of God being the potter and man being the clay (Isaiah 29:16, Isaiah 64:8, Jeremiah 18:6, Romans 9:21).\u00a0 When I looked closer at these passages, from my perspective, their main point is to emphasize that God is greater than we are, so who are we to question His actions or think we can hide our actions from Him.\u00a0 These passages don’t explicitly speak of God ‘using’ people.\u00a0 When I looked for specific references that would say “God uses…” or “God used <so and so>…” I couldn’t find any…in the whole Bible.\u00a0 There is one passage I found that speaks of us being ‘useful’ to God (2 Timothy 2:21) but that doesn’t communicate the same thing as God ‘using’ us.\u00a0 You can still have intrinsic value and be useful to a task or project.\u00a0 Rather, I’ve found references of God appointing people or choosing them for a purpose.\u00a0 Again, this doesn’t communicate the same devaluing message as the idea of ‘using’ people.<\/p>\n

My point in all of this is we should be careful the language we employ when describing God and His relationship to us.\u00a0 All throughout the Bible, the stronger message is that God loves the human race, that He put Himself in harms way for humanity, that He goes to whatever lengths necessary to communicate to mankind that we are dearly loved by Him.\u00a0 But when we say things like “God uses us”, it undercuts that whole message of love.\u00a0 If a person hears such things long enough, they will subconsciously start to believe that they do not have worth in God’s sight or that He actually loves them, rather that their only worth is in what they can ‘do’ for God.\u00a0 This message marginalizes grace.\u00a0 The Gospel is no longer the ‘Good News’.\u00a0 It puts heavy chains on people who are broken and just trying to scrape by.\u00a0 If they do not know they are loved, if they do not believe they are precious and beautiful…in the midst of their brokenness…, what hope will they have?<\/p>\n

We all need to know we are loved and valued.\u00a0 We need to know we are so much more than jars of clay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” 1 Corinthians 4:7 […] Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1684"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1684"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1685,"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1684\/revisions\/1685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}