Tellico Village Community Church Sermons

August 8, 1999

"Spiritual Land Mines"

1 Corinthians 10:1-13

Dr. Robert Puckett

Text - "No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and will not let you be tested beyond your strength." 1 Corinthian 10:1-13

We live in a world full of land mines and pitfalls. There are physical and spiritual dangers all around us, and it is easy to fall prey to either of them.

One of the great dangers that awaited the Kosovo refugees when they returned to their homeland was the possibility of being blown apart by land mines and booby traps left behind by the Serbs. Even though they had survived the ruthless attempts to drive them out or destroy them, the continued danger of land mines will threaten them for years to come.

The destructive power of land mines not only makes Kosovo a perilous place to live, but they have also turned countless other portion of our world into places of constant hazard, killing or causing serious physical injury to people all across the globe. Farmers are blown apart as they plow their fields. Innocent children have feet and legs blown off when they play near their homes. And governments, including our own, play politics with efforts to outlaw the use of these lethal weapons.

Machiavelli wrote in "The Prince": "A man's wisdom is most conspicuous where he is able to distinguish among dangers and make choice of the least."

But the issue of human destruction through the use of land mines and other weapons of war is a symptom of a much larger problem on a much higher level.

They reflect the absence of enough spiritual wisdom to discern the image of God in other human beings who are somehow different from ourselves. Thus, many of the dangers we face are the products of spiritual land mines as well as physical ones.

Spiritual land mines often cause our finer natures to slip away from us. When we become crippled by the, the devil inside all of us is allowed to come grinning out. You can walk down main street in any small town or large city and find casualties who have been afflicted by spiritual land mines. You can hear their stories in bars, before altars, over the fresh dug graves in a thousand cemeteries, and by the used up men who swing their swingblades at the tall weeds behind the city jail.

There are walking wounded who have lost touch or never been in touch with God, and as a result have lost touch with their better selves. Spiritual land mines and their victims are to be found everywhere.

I want to talk today about a few of these land mines and point out some ways in which they can be avoided…

There was a time when the general population, especially those who were members of churches, were far more familiar with the contents of the Bible that many are today.

There was a time when Biblical ideas and images permeated our entire culture. But those ideas and images are not nearly as prevalent as they once were. It they are present at all, they have often become so diluted by our secular culture that they are hardly recognizable.

In addition, there is a widespread religious approach to the Bible which depends upon a proof text understanding of it without careful consideration to the context. I believe that a proper understanding of Scripture depends upon interpreting each text in relation to the whole.

How many people take time to read the Bible and meditate upon its meaning these days? We are constantly bombarded with a flood of information and images leaving less time for quiet reflection about God, the Bible, and its treasure of spiritual wisdom, so that we are less prepared to withstand the tests brought on by the spiritual land mines all around us.

It has been said that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. It takes more than just a little knowledge to withstand the dangers that threaten us.

Our lack of holy instruction from our best guidebook leaves us extremely vulnerable to the spiritual dangers that are always ready to assail us. There is a widespread notion these days that it does not matter what you believe as long as you are sincere, but I believe that it is entirely possible to be sincerely wrong. And those who are sincerely wrong often suffer dire consequences.

Witness the acts of violence committed by people today who dabble in the cult of Satanism and those who get caught up in cult groups that promote hatred toward people and races who are different.

Do you remember the pathetic spectacle of mass suicides on the part of members of the Heaven's Gate cult who expected to hitch a ride to heaven on the tail of the Hale-Bopp comet?

Dennis Covington, an Alabama native who writes for the New Yorker magazine, has written a book entitled, Salvation on Sand Mountain. It is a riveting account of his encounter with the snake-handling cult of the Southern Mountains. It was a National Book Award finalist that some have hailed as a hypnotic book which revives a reader's faith. It is on the book list of the Tellico Village men's book discussion group. But it certainly did not revive my faith! Instead, it underscored my conviction that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing!

The snake-handling cult is founded upon a few scant verses in the Bible, some of which are questionable to Biblical scholars in the first place. Even if there were no scholarly questions about them, they are extremely dangerous when taken literally. The most often quoted is in Mark 16:17 and 18 which says, "And these sings will accompany those who believe; by using my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in tongues; they will pick up snakes in their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them."

Dennis Covington writes well, and it is fascinating to read his book, but it reveals his own lack of Biblical understanding which mad him seductive tot he exotic emotion needed for anyone to get caught up in the cult of the handlers.

Someone on the Boston Sunday Globe is quoted on the cover as having said that the book is "Some of the best writing about the South--and about the nature of faith--to appear in decades." I found that statement to be especially offensive because the snake handlers are in no way representative of the South. I have lived here well over half of my life, and I have never once met a snake handler. Nor do I especially wish to meet one. Nor are they representative of any of the great heroes of faith through the centuries. The most you hear of this cult is when one of their members dies from having been bitten while under the influence of a trumped up emotional orgasm.

There is an old Dutch proverb which says that "He who risks needless dangers dies the Devil's Martyr." I suspect that to be the case with the snake handlers. I believe it to be true as well of people who stress emotion at the expense of rational content.

I recently ran across a wonderful statement by the Rev. George Cary, Archbishop of Canterbury, with which I heartily agree. He said, "The church is like a swimming pool, where all the noise comes from the shallow end." Most noise is made by an empty teakettle.

The best remedy for the spiritual land mine of Biblical ignorance is a through grounding in the whole Bible and not just a few proof texts here and there. One needs to pay close attention to Jesus when he said at the time of his own temptation, "Do not put the Lord your God to the test."

It is amazing how often people want to test God by asking him to do something that is entirely against his nature.

There are many esoteric cults dotting the modern landscape. Fundamentalism is among them. Not long ago I was driving down the Tellico Parkway toward Lenoir City when a young woman passed me. On the back of her car was a bumper sticker which read, "Fundamentalism is death to a thinking mind!" I shouted YES! as she passed by.

There is however, another dangerous land mine that often lies hidden in what I have just said.

This in one of those land mines that I have to guard carefully against. It is one that all religious folks need to guard against. And it is one that Jesus condemned most vehemently.

We are all tempted to look down on those who are different. One of the great sins of religion is its tendency to condemn as heretical anyone who does not believe exactly as we do. That is what the Inquisition was all about. Some of the darkest pages of human history are the result of religious wars fought over this issue.

We have just gone through the process of calling a new Associate Minister, and I was a member of the Search Committee. It was an interesting process. And under the capable leadership of Bill Bauer as chair of the committee, I think we arrived at an excellent choice.

At one point in the process, we reduced the list of applicants to seven and in a telephone interview asked each of them a series of questions. One of the questions was particularly tough. None of them know what we were going to ask ahead of time. The tough question was, "What is the greatest issue facing the church today?"

We got a variety of answers. Some were good, some were not.

I honestly don't know what I would have answered if I had been asked to respond off the top of my head without time to reflect. I would probably have stumbled around and come up with an inadequate answer.

I have thought a lot about the question, and I think I can now answer it much more adequately. It seems to me that the most important issue facing the church today is the problem of disrespect in our culture. There is a serious loss of respect and civility among us.

This loss expresses itself in terrible acts of violence such as the massacre that took place in Atlanta last week, the shootings of high school kids in Littleton, Colorado and elsewhere, and the random acts of murder that are daily reported on Tellico Village and in our newspapers.

It is a lack of respect that expresses itself in street violence, the lack of decorum and safety in schools, the invasion of privacy by the press, harassment in the workplace, and the dirty language and offensive gestures that fill our daily encounters.

Disrespect carries with it catastrophic consequences which threaten to tear apart the fabric of our society. When we fail to respect others we demean or diminish them.

On the other hand, when we give them respect, we nurture them. Respect gives undiluted attention and treats others in the same way we would want to be treated - with compassion and dignity.

Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, a Harvard sociologist, has recently published an excellent book simply entitled, "Respect."

What respect all boils down to is the ability to see Christ in the face of every person around you. This is how one of the people in her book, a black female doctor expressed it, "We could say that there are a gazillion faces of God all around us, in every person, that should cause us to be respectful of each person. You know, you will never know when you will meet up with Christ…maybe you will meet Christ in a policeman, a used car salesman, or Governor Wallace in his heyday!" (p.81)

The ability to recognize the image of God in another person leads to what Martin Buber calls an "I-Thou Relationship" rather than an "I-It Relationship." And that is what makes genuine meeting with compassion and acceptance possible. It enables us to be genuinely present to another person with respect.

We live in a world full of spiritual land mines and pitfalls. In addition to Biblical ignorance and spiritual arrogance, one of the most dangerous is spiritual indifference.

There are seven dire warnings given to the churches mentioned in the book of Revelation. One is the warding concerning indifference. In it God warns, "I know your works; you are neither cold or hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth." (Revelation 1:15 & 16)

Unfortunately that description of spiritual indifference applies to many Christians today. It may even apply to some of you who are present this morning. You may have started out on your Christian journey with great enthusiasm, but somewhere along the line your commitment slacked off and you have grown cold and indifferent in you faithfulness to God.

The temptation to grow lax in you commitment to God robs those who yield to it of the vitality and power needed for Christian living.

But there is great wisdom in the text with which we began. It says, "No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and will not let you be tested beyond your strength." You may not be faithful, but God is always faithful. This is one of the greatest promises found in the Bible!

Temptation may be older than sin and the mother of shame, but God has promised to draw near to us if we will draw near to him and give us the strength to overcome every temptation that threatens to undo us.

One of the characters in an Oscar Wilde story said, "I can resist everything but temptation." And Mae West is reported to have said, "I was a pure as the driven snow until I drifted."

Unfortunately, most of us have been there ourselves because to live in the proximity of the temptation is a part of our human nature.

But we do have a promise from God that if we stay close to him, he is faithful and will not let us be tempted or tested beyond our strength.

The Gospels tell us that even Jesus was tempted, but that he resisted and overcame temptation by staying close to his father and our father. And if Jesus needed to say close to God in order to overcome temptation, so do we!

There is a wonderful old hymn which says, "Yield not to temptation, for yielding is sin; each vict'ry will help you some other to sin; fight manfully onward, dark passion subdue; look ever to Jesus, he will carry you through. Ask the savior to help you, comfort, strengthen, and keep you; he is willing to aid you, he will carry you through."

A faithful commitment to Jesus Christ is the best way to avoid most the spiritual land mines that threaten us. A faithful commitment to Jesus Christ involves being grounded in scripture as he was in order to avoid the land mine of Biblical ignorance. It involves the kind of humble respect he demonstrated toward others in order to overcome the land mine of spiritual arrogance, and it involves the kind of commitment to God that he had in order to avoid the land mine of spiritual indifference.