Eat the Chicken, Spit out the Bones (Part I)
We can learn from others who aren’t perfect. It’s entirely possible. In fact, it’s the only way we grow as part of the body of Christ. The problem most people have with learning from others who aren’t perfect is the idea that they’ll some how be lead into sin or deception.
Most of you know I spent some time in a Bible college almost fifteen years ago. During that time I heard Mike Bickle say over and over again one phrase that has stuck with me and helped me learn from almost everyone: “Eat the chicken, spit out the bones.”
This was revolutionary to me the first time I heard it. Prior to that, everyone I met was either a defender of truth or a heretic to be avoided. The confusing part was what to do when the defenders of the truth disagreed with each other!
This simple statement communicated so much in one simple phrase. People (believers, specifically) aren’t either all right or all wrong. They are a complicated mix of truth that can nourish you and oddball theologies and practices that you probably don’t want to try and swallow.
Deeper still, there is no chicken without bones to work past, so no matter how good the chicken, expect a few bones. The presence of bones shouldn’t cause you to forsake the chicken, either! The point is that you can read broadly, listen closely to lots of voices, and find truth that is there, without having to adopt anything unbiblical.
For example, unless you’re willing to write off about twelve hundred years of church history, almost all of the writings we have from 300 AD to 1500 AD are Catholic in nature. Now, you can ignore the writings of this time out of fear of growing in the belief that Pope is infallible and Mary is a goddess, or you can understand that these men were a complicated mixture of truth and error and learn from them where you can.
My friends in the missional movement are a tremendous encouragement to me to share the Gospel and recover much of what is missing from the church. However, I’d be lying if sometimes I didn’t see them slip into both theological and political liberalism that I don’t see in the New Testament. The beauty is I can learn from these men and women without having to wholesale adopt everything that they believe.
So read that Catholic mystic, that evangelical mega-preacher, and that missional guy who loves the poor. Just make sure that you don’t worship Mary, crowds, or liberalism instead of Jesus. In fact, I expect you to do the same thing with what I’ve written. We won’t agree on everything, but we can agree on Jesus and learn from the good in each others’ and others’ lives.
Eat the chicken, spit out the bones.
Photo Credit: I Got Bored So I Roasted a Chicken – Picture of My Dinner 09-30-08 by Alvin Smith
Our God is Jealous
You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God…
-Exodus 20:5
One of the ways that God has consistently revealed Himself, especially throughout the Old Covenant is as a God who is jealous.
We don’t talk about God being jealous very often. I think if we were honest, most of us have tried to put jealousy behind us, seeing the damage it’s done to ourselves and others. In our experience jealousy is selfish. We’ve rarely met someone who is jealous and has our best interest at heart. God’s jealousy is different than ours. The jealousy of God is not unstable or unhinged. It’s a burning fire within God that causes Him to pursue the ultimate desires of His heart and the best for mankind.
When God created us, He designed us to have hearts that were totally in love with Him. We were designed to be in love God and only function properly when our hearts are focused on Him and everything else comes second. This is why when Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was He easily replied that it was to “love the Lord Your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind,” (Matthew 22:37). But when sin entered mankind’s experience, we began to give our hearts on other loves.
Think about this for a moment: One of the places where jealousy is appropriate is when holy love is denied. As a husband, if my wife were ever to start to see another man, I would be filled with jealousy, and it would be right. The rightful love that was once mine was given to another. This is the kind of holy jealousy that fills God when He looks at His people. It’s an all consuming love that desires love to be fully shared between Him and His people.
Why is this important? In order to understand how God responds and why He does the things that He does, we need to understand God is a jealous God. He’s promised that He will yet again shake the Heavens and Earth so that everything that can be shaken, will be (Hebrews 12:26-27). The reality is, He’s constantly doing this throughout our lives and He will do this in a final way before the end of the age. If we don’t understand that these things come out of jealous love, we’ll be tempted to believe they come from anger.
Friends, we serve a God so committed to winning us back that He gave us His very Son. He’s loved us, laid down His life for us, and given us His Spirit. He’ll stop at nothing to bring forth the most love possible out of the human heart. His jealousy drives Him there. We don’t serve a God with weak love that doesn’t really care whether you walk away or not. His love burns deeply for you. We serve a jealous God.
Photo Credit: Amor Dei by Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P.
Learning from Imperfect People
Most of us want to learn from perfect people.
Now, I don’t mean technically perfect people. Outside of Christ there is no one who is truly perfect. What I mean is many of us want to learn from those who have their lives together in a greater degree than we do: a pastor, an evangelist, a great teacher. Someone higher than us.
I understand where this attitude comes from. It’s a growth mentality that continually wants to improve and push the boundaries of development. The problem is I don’t know that this is the attitude Jesus wants us to have.
When Jesus comes into the life of a person, we assume that person starts at ground zero. They know nothing about Christ and they have nothing to contribute. The truth is they have no facts, but they have the fullness of God dwelling in them by the Holy Spirit. This is a significant reality that most of us minimize. The Holy Spirit living in us is real, not just a nice thing we say about people. What this means is we have to be willing to learn from those who don’t have their lives completely together, because Jesus still might be speaking to us through them.
Jesus was like this, too, right? He didn’t learn from others, He was the Teacher, but he often pointed to people outside of religious circles to teach others about following God. He used a Roman Centurion as an example of faith in Matthew 8:5-13. Surely the Jews of Christ’s day would have been horribly offended by this. But Jesus didn’t mind that the Centurion in many other ways wasn’t perfect. He zeroed in on his act of faith and put it on display for the whole world to see.
My point is, in your world there are people who, to your critical mind, are imperfect examples of following Jesus. It’s tempting to write those people off and never learn from them. But I have a secret for you: There are no perfect examples of following Jesus. In fact, if you waiting for a perfect example to come into your life to learn from, you’ll be waiting for a long time. Instead, don’t think of yourself more highly than you are. Associate with the lowly. Don’t be to proud to enjoy the company of ordinary people.
Imperfect examples have much to teach us. I’ve learned much about what not to do from listening to imperfect people reflect on where they’ve made mistakes. I’ve seen real life apostles sit in humility as the Holy Spirit moved on the most common people within a church speaking life-changing truth. I’ve sat in Bible studies with new and not-yet believers and been struck with truth about Jesus as we’ve looked at the Bible through their eyes.
All it takes is enough humility to learn from someone you might think doesn’t have it all together. Imperfect people are all around you. You have plenty of opportunities to learn if you want. You just need to be open to it.
Cluster Map
Pursuing Glory 