Out Our Way - Charlie on the Ridge

Out our way, especially when I was just learning to cowboy with Charlie, I was confused by all the various cattle trails that crisscross the Tiger Ridge area. More than once I found I had been following the wrong trail and there as nothing for it but to turn around. Usually Charlie was up on a ridge or somewhere pointing me in the right direction. I still had to do a fair amount of backtracking, but found the right trail and got to where I had been trying to go.

Sadly, not all folks have a Charlie to call them back to the right trail — and some are even more stubborn than the dumbest cow that has determined to go exactly the wrong way. I can herd a cow/calf unit or two back to the trail that leads to the good pasture, but some people aren’t quite so smart. As they say, it seems most times when you argue with a fool, you only increase the number of fools in the conversation. Still, once in a while you might head the lost soul back home, so it’s worth a shot.

I found in herding cows that when you find a few who have wandered off the trail and are heading to the wastelands, losing my temper and wildly yelling at them didn’t help. The first time I chased a band of cattle heading the wrong way, I made the mistake of racing my pony at them to cut them off, but all I did was panic and scatter the herd. Eventually I learned to approach calmly and gently — and found them far more reasonable about turning around and going back to where the feed and water were. 

  Over the years I learned that just as galloping my cow pony full tilt and hollering at strays tends to drive them further away from the home pasture, certain words have the same tendency to cause panic in the modern agnostic. Two of them are “Sin” and “Repentance.”

So many modern  secularized folks — even in some churches — have come to hate those words and often justify their panic by accusing those who use them of being Judgemental. In this age of political correctness. While the word “sin” is judgmental, they have no trouble judging those who use it as sinners. Go figure. Just as we see that those who are most demanding of acceptance and diversity in others are the first to deny it for anyone else. So in this era of “thought police” with the “First Church of Political Correctness” dominating society and even many modern churches. The goal of silencing many Christians has been somewhat effective.

But perhaps if we understood the terms for what the words sin and repentance actually mean, we might be less intimidated by the modern secularists. Although I howled in fury and frustration when the seminary I attended back east required me to take Hebrew and Greek — I have come to give thanks, for I have learned that our modern understanding of some words in the Bible are less than adequate. Like sin and repentance. Most folks, for example, think the word sin is about doing what we think are “bad  things.” But why are they bad? Because I say so — the preacher says so — or even the Bible says so?  If that is what makes a sin a sin, then the secularists have a point in saying that using the term “sin” is a judgment call and merely an opinion. But that is where the error lies — for that misses the point of what sin means. The word “sin” in the Biblical Greek is “Hamartia.” It means “to miss the target.” In the Army, when I shot for my sharpshooter badge, it was based on hitting the bullseye. If I kept missing, the obvious thing was to correct my sights and adjust my aim. To use another example — if I live in the Rockies and want to go to California — heading east is not going to get me there. If I intend to miss the target if I intend to go away from my professed destination ... well that’s one thing. But if I want to hit the target — want to go to L.A. — then the fact I missed or am heading the wrong way is not a judgment call — it is simply a statement of fact.

In the same way, “repent or repentance” is misunderstood. It is “metanoia” and means “to change my mind or direction,” If I keep missing the target (sin), I need to correct my aim (repent). If I am heading in the wrong direction from where I want to go (sin), I need to “turn around” (repent).

As you can now understand, there is nothing judgmental about it — but simply a clarifying of what you want and how you are going about it. There are folks who confuse progress with simply moving forward — but moving forward in the wrong direction is not progress but regression. If I am hitting the target high and to the sick — swinging my sites higher and further left is not progress. If I am aiming to drive from Denver to L.A. and make it to Omaha in record time, I have not progressed. You see, sin and repentance are not about judgment or opinion — but simple fact. Are you accomplishing what you really intend to do? Are you finding yourself at peace, or are you becoming angrier and more frustrated.  If not — you are “missing the target.” And if so, are you doing anything to correct your aim? If not — why not?

Of course the secularist in the church and society will argue that I have no right to raise  the question and let the lost wander into the wastelands. Let them reject the green pastures and still waters if that is their choice. But here they are being judgmental — for they assume that anyone heading to the barren drought-stricken lands wants to go there. Is not that merely their opinion? Their judgment?

Thanks be for Charlie on the ridge, outlined against the big sky whose mere presence showed me the way home. I was never a loud “hellfire brimstone” preacher — but maybe I have been a “Charlie on the ridge” from time to time, pointing the way back to the trail that will get us home.

Blessings,

Brother John