Jesus is one of the few people who can pull the God card legitimately. Like when the disciples catch up to him after he talks with the Samaritan woman at the well and they tell him he needs to eat. He replies, "I have food to eat that you do not know about." Confused, given no one brought him anything, the disciples get this clarification from Jesus: "My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work."
If I were in the pack I would of then thought, "Sheesh, we just thought you looked hungry." I say this not in a mocking tone but to think about why I get slightly peevish when the God card is played. It's a blatant showing of one person's spiritual mindset versus your earthly one. "You want to go rent 'She's All That'?" "No, it's got some language and condones premarital sex." "Oh, ok." So I end up watching it alone, again.
In reality, though, beneath whatever posturing may or may not be going on by the player of the God card, it does show me that my deck is full of a lot of other earthly cards. Sure, I was thinking about regular old food, but it's Jesus, shouldn't I have clued into the fact that his mind is somewhere else? Reading John 4, I was reminded of how often I coast on temporal thoughts and actions. Eat, drink, tell a joke, don't curse. It's not that I have to always link food to doing God's will, but that should be a thought floating around somewhere. If Jesus had said that to Paul, he probably wouldn't have gotten peeved.
2 comments:
quite impressive carson. i might just have to take credit for this in seminary.
this is indeed the one I was talking about. I'll make sure not to use the G-card on you.
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