Fire On Your Head

Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual.
The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven.
As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven.
Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.

At the place I currently work, new molds are set up on a regular basis in any of the dozen or so machines throughout the plant. When the material is being fed through the injection process and into the mold itself to see how the parts will run, we will always have a bunch of scrap parts in the first several cycles. These scrap parts could have too much material, resulting in wings and extra “flash” on the edges. Or they could have holes in the part where the liquid plastic didn’t quite fill out the mold, resulting in it being short on material. Or maybe markings that shouldn’t be there from some of the dry pellets that didn’t quite melt and created a ‘cold slug’ in the part that is visible, making it no good.

Once the job is finally running according to plan, the supervisor on that shift–as well as maybe some of the quality inspectors–depending on the shift and who is around–one of them will approve of the part, which is referred to as a “first-off“. Once the mold is running smoothly and has produced a perfect or satisfactory part, the supervisor will take it, and put a sticker with their signature and date on it, signifying they are giving it their personal approval. It will then be put it in a plastic bag and left at the work station of the machine it was produced from, so that as that job runs, if a questionable part comes out of the machine, it can be compared with the first-off to determine if it is acceptable or not. If a job runs for several days or weeks, the employee can have the sample part to see what is acceptable.

When I find a marking or a little bit of excess plastic forming on an edge or in a hole, then I’ll look to see if the first-off has the same blemishes on it. If it does, then I know the parts I’m getting from the mold are acceptable. If the first-off has less, then that means there’s too much blemish or too many defects with my parts, and what I’m getting are scraps, and the machine may need to be adjusted.

Oh how this has amazing parallels to our relationship to Jesus Christ, who in many ways is our “first-off”.

I tell unbelievers and those with a real aversion to Christianity and the church in general all the time–go according to Jesus Christ Himself to get an idea of what true Christianity is supposed to be, not the hypocrisy, or blotches in our history that bring shame to the body of Christ worldwide. There are plenty of scraps all over the body of Christ, and the point is not to let them be a distraction to us and those honestly and sincerely seeking Him.. If we want to know if someone is like Jesus, they will be like Jesus. Pure and simple. Compare the person’s life to that of Jesus’–who said things like We must be perfect as our heavenly Father is (Matt 5:48). As Tommy Tenney says, “Godly people are godly people or else they’re not godly.”

As for hypocrisy, in a perfect world–or heck, according to the Bible–we have a blueprint for what the life of a believer is supposed to be like. In short, Christians are supposed to be like Jesus Christ.

Sounds simple enough right? Really, there is no excuse for some behavior of believers.

Please forgive my using another separate work-related example, but I remember when I worked at Subway over 5 years ago, and was filling the slot created by a guy who quit. This employee quit so he could go to college out of town, and had left on significantly bad terms. He used to be the drummer for a well known Christian band in town at the time, that almost got a record deal but had basically parted ways to pursue other goals. Well anyway, on busy bar nights–Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays– a second employee would be scheduled to come in from midnight until 3 am when the store closed, to help with the busy crowd that would be created by the bars downtown all closing at 2am and people seeking something to eat afterwards. This particular ‘brother’ was known for coming in for those shifts after going out clubbing, and being drunk on the job. So drunk that he passed out one at work. When he quit, he burned his bridges so badly, that the employer who hired me was making special effort to make sure I wouldn’t do the same things he did on his last shift, when I quit–such as leaving the store without doing any of the chores required (violating numerous health codes, I would assume). I had to live down the bad taste someone else had left in their mouths.

It was pretty pathetic, since I knew this brother was a professing believer. One of the employees who worked with him was telling me this stuff and I immediately said “he’s a hypocrite then” (I used to be blunt back then, which is a far cry from how I am now, I know). This co-worker I was speaking with thought I was being judgmental of the guy I replaced, and had a mistaken belief that all Christianity was about was mental beliefs and church attendance but not practical difference in lifestyle, which I more than happily explained to him using whatever I could off the top of my head in that moment from the Bible, to say things such as “you will know a tree by its fruit” (Matt 12:33), or the world will know we are Jesus’ disciples by our love (John 13:35).

Friends, do our lives match the life of our first-off, Jesus? Are we known for being gossips? Are we backbiters and divided? One time recently, someone I met in a birthday party or a similar type of setting began telling me this guy in her class in college–who I knew of personally–she didn’t have any clue he was a Christian because of how much he cusses, and she thought believers don’t do that (so did I!). Do the people around us find themselves shocked if someone told them we are a believer in Christ? If so, what kind of lousy example of Jesus is that?

I speak to myself as I always am when issuing challenges like this in my blog entries, but friends, I am tired of pathetic testimony after pathetic testimony I hear of friends of mine and acquaintances. I don’t want it to be said of me–or if it’s said, I don’t want it to be true of me–that I’m a hypocrite or that I have no business bearing the name of Christ.

Don’t get me wrong. There will be people in our lives who are unreasonable and nothing we do will ever satisfy them. And also don’t think I’m saying that being immature in the faith is the same thing as being a hypocrite. Peter denied Jesus, yes, but picked himself back up. Judas didn’t. There’s a difference between tripping and falling while walking on your way to the cross, as opposed to not going that direction at all.

Anyway, let’s be all we are supposed to be, and they will know we are like our first-off, and approved of by our Father in heaven.