Tools for Monday: God’s Runway Lights
Pastor James wrote the following article for the “Lectionary to Life” series, a daily Bible reflection of the Center for Christian Ethics.
Professor Charles Nielsen often quipped to his divinity school students, “Class, you can count on this from me: Eighty percent of my theology is right, twenty percent is wrong. I just don’t know which is which.” Neilsen explicitly acknowledged his need for a consistent corrective to the pervasiveness of self-interest.
The most helpful corrective in the Christian life is the Holy Spirit. The Spirit’s input and instructions taste good, more like honey than cough medicine. The Psalmist even offered that he meditated on God’s instructions all day long. God’s guidance subsequently brought him not only increased understanding but also a sense of well-being, or that realistic and hopeful view of life developed in a loving relationship with the Lord.
Notice also how the Psalmist referred to God’s corrective counsel with terms such as “law,” “insight,” “precepts,” and “ordinances.” These synonyms describe something deeper and more flexible than codified rules. Helmut Thielicke would call them “the runway lights” on the side of the path we are called to walk. In this sense, the law is that which protects us from our illusions of being perfect. Such wisdom was too great even for the Psalmist’s esteemed teachers. He could affirm Paul’s ageless question: “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” (1 Cor. 1:20). God’s path, complete with bright runway lights, makes other paths look dreadfully deadly, and it certainly tempers our attempts to hide ignorance with pretension.