No one born of God commits sin; for God’s nature abides in him, and he cannot sin because he is born of God. 1 John 3:9
Well, if that is so, we shall round up our flawed and feckless relatives and book them on a flight to Sychar in Samaria. It is at once disconcerting and reassuring to learn that the town’s name means “drunken” or “to be shut up.” It helps that Sychar’s most famous citizen is known worldwide as the Sinner who encountered the Savior of the World. The Chamber of Commerce prefers to bill her as The Woman at the Well. Her large home takes in social misfits, not sinners. That sounds too religious. Her guests are simply on a mission – or were sent – to become nicer people and more desirable relatives.
Their hostess arranges trips to Jacob’s Well, but offers no air-conditioned coaches or power drinks. The guys would happily settle for an off-roading vehicle; she even nixes their flip-flops. “Think of this as going to the dentist,” she advises cryptically as she ushers each person out the door on his or her appointed day. Closet “inspiration junkies” all, they are pushing for a memorable spiritual high. Alas, when the “Sun of Righteousness” (Malachi 4:2) bears down on them, they will perspire to the point of terrible thirst. Her mouth had gone alarmingly dry when Jesus probed her supposed dysfunction and drilled until He hit the raw nerve of her sin. Incredibly, He had not ordered her to become “nicer,” but offered to make her a true worshiper of His Father Part 1 of 2
Comment: This, of course, is largely “tongue in cheek” talk, to which I occasionally succumb. It takes “whimsical exaggeration” to put a dentist into the town near Jacob’s well. If his shingle says “Root Canal Specialist,” it will hit a raw nerve with those who know Christ’s knack for habitually probing for the root of their private and public ills.
In 1925, Dr. Charles Menninger and his sons established the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas, inspired by the Mayo Clinic. They aimed to enhance mental health care through a holistic approach that integrated medical, psychological and social treatments. In January 1973 Dr. Karl Menninger published a landmark book titled, WHATEVER BECAME OF SIN? We discussed it in adult Bible classes and it’s still in print. In this space I’ll just mention two things that stood out. Some parents with troubled kids scoffed at such ideas, having cured their rebels by “beating the hell out of them.” A major finding was that the capacity for dysfunction was nearly equal whether the offenders had a religious or secular upbringing. What if we now imagined an optometrist setting up shop in Sychar? Only, he doesn’t prescribe glasses, but looks for specks or logs in the eye. He’s wisely looking through the lens of Matt. 7:3-5 where Jesus pointedly asked, “How can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye’ while the log is in your own eye’”? Does that suddenly cure our itch to gripe about dysfunction? When Jesus stood before Pilate, He was silent. With our sin upon Him, our guilt demanded nothing less than the pouring out of God’s wrath against it on the cross. What if my “respectable sins” outweigh the family hell-raiser’s “dysfunction”?
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