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Stuck Between a Rock and a Hard Place? Here's Clarity for Your Situation
Set aside what comes natural to know what comes next
Nathan Harrison
October 27th, 2022
Most people do 1 of 2 things when tension comes along:
Resolve it.
Remove it.
While this comes naturally, it's not what should inform Jesus' followers when deciding what comes next.
Consider Jesus' response when others put him between a rock and a hard place. In Mark 10, Pharisees showed up and decided to try to trap Jesus with a question about divorce. Recognizing the trap of the question, and the likely presence of divorced people listening, Jesus gave his answer.
That answer serves as a guide to wisdom in the middle of our own tension.
Reject the notion that human options are the only options
We often default to "the way others have done things."
Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”
“What did Moses command you?” he replied.
They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.”
“It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied.
Did you catch the shift in language there?
Jesus asked what Moses commanded them, and they replied with what Moses permitted them. To drive the point further, Jesus pointed out this was what Moses wrote - not God. God had allowed Moses to permit a concession in recognition of the state of the human heart.
When staring at human options, we have to ask ourselves if the options we're considering are the fruit of the messy condition of the human heart.
Prioritize God's truth & intent
In every tension you're faced with a choice.
You can justify your way. Or you can magnify God's way. Jesus opted for the latter.
“But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
While they pressed the discussion toward two opposing views of divorce, Jesus redirected everyone to God's definition and intent for marriage.
Imagine children coming to you and asking, "When I fight my sibling, is it best for me to hit them with a closed fist? Or shall I slap them with an open hand? Or perhaps a strong kick would be better? Would a headlock send the right message?" Hopefully resisting the temptation to record it, you'd bring them to a more loving truth and intent - that they'd love one another.
You see, it's only through the tension of prioritizing God's truth that we bring people to the gift of what comes next.
Elevate grace & dignity
Rising above the tension of the human options presented him actually brought about a more productive tension.
It shows up whenever we encounter those who've fallen short of any of God's truth - so all of us. If you'll pay careful attention to Jesus' response above and the ensuing discussion, something emerges.
When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. He answered, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.”
So far Jesus seems to have highlighted truth that would've been painful for many back then - and today.
It's painful because I'm reminded of the pain of divorce in the lives of those I walk alongside. I'm reminded of the pain of those who reject the truth that God created male and female genders, and opt for other human options. And I'm reminded of the pain within the movement in our day and age that wants to redefine marriage outside of male and female.
Yet I'm reminded that Jesus not only prioritized God's truth, he also showed up with God's grace.
As we're reminded in John 1:14:
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Notice the word Jesus highlighted with his disciples in Mark 10:10-12 - adultery - and consider his dealings with the adulterous.
The Samaritan woman at the well in John 4, who'd had five husbands - He pointed out her soul's thirst, then offered to quench it.
The woman caught in adultery in John 8 - He passed up the opportunity to cast stones, and freed her to go and live a life in truth, outside a life of sin.
The adulterous human heart rebelling against God as first love - He sits in the tension of the situation for every one of us and opts not to remove it or resolve it, but remain in it.
Jesus remains perfectly anchored between the rock of God's truth and the hard place of those who've fallen short, with a love full of grace and truth, that we would be and do the same:
Reject the notion that human options are the only option. Prioritize God's truth and intent. Elevate grace and dignity.
I'd write more, but I hear the children getting ready to fight in the other room.
Talk with you next week,
Nathan