THE other day someone told me they thought the Flintstones were making a come­back.  No one I know is on the edge of their seat watching Flintstone fansites, but when your last name is pronounced “Dab-doo,” and Fred has easily become a large chunk of your persona and family heritage, it’s good news.

At nearly 21 years of age, I succumbed to the reality that Fred and I would never be separated from one another.  Like Waco and Koresh, Ozzy and bats, Bobby Knight and chairs, time may pass, I might do other things, accomplish something notable, get a reality TV show, but at the end of the day, the only thing that anyone will ever remember is that my ancestors were a prophetic cult following of the first animated primetime TV series modeled after the Honeymooners.

I really gave in to the affinity with Fred in a big way.  It’s funny because as a child I told people who made the comparison between us to shut-up.  It amazed me in high school when really creative, insightful people would come up to me and say:

“Paul Dabdoub.  Yabba Dabba Do!  Has anyone ever said that to you?”

Incredulously, and with a sincere tone I’d reply: “No, you’re the first one.  Did you come up with that all by yourself?”

When I gave in, I gave in deep – about 7 or 8 layers deep.  I stood in line behind 20 various military personnel who were getting tattoos with tough, manly things like swords, skulls, credos, their wife’s name, and I walked up to my tattoo artist with a picture of Fred Flintstone with his hands raised that I’d found in a checkbook ad.

About 30 minutes later, my new ink sealed my connection with Fred for the rest of my lifetime.

I was pretty happy walking out of Beale Street Tattoos in Memphis, but it didn’t take long before I started hearing criticism: “Paul, you’re going to be an old man in a nursing home one day, and people are going to see that tattoo and make fun of you.”

“That tattoo might keep you from getting a job.” After all, this was still the South.

The more difficult thing was going back to my church basketball league.  I wasn’t at­tending church at the time and played basketball incognito. The tattoo was on my ankle, so I just kept my socks pulled up 80’s style.  Then one day it happened – my sock pulled down slightly to reveal Fred’s left hand.  Someone noticed – because church people have that kind of radar.  By the look on their faces, you’d have thought it was the mark of the beast.  I was caught.  I’m ashamed to say that at legal drinking age, I almost told these people that it was a wash-off.

I should have known.  I was really familiar with the aura of those tattooed people who came to our church when I was growing up.  They were in to something or they were carrying around the shame of their past. They couldn’t be good Christians.  They probably didn’t even use their turn signal when they changed lanes.

I still had one more huge obstacle…

A week later, mom came to visit, and I showed off my new ink.  She wasn’t really keen on it because I’d committed what she considered an obvious Biblical transgression.  In her usual direct way enhanced by an East Tennessee accent she reminded me:

“The Bible says not to tattoo your body.”

And it does say that.  Of course, within that same chapter of various laws in Leviticus 19, it says a number of other things as well:

“Do not mate different kinds of animals.” “Do not plant your field with two kinds of seed.” “Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.” “Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.”

It’s pretty obvious that that we don’t usually reference the majority of these kinds of laws.  There are a few laws in this chapter that we do think are still valid like not forcing your daughter into prostitution.  That’s a good law I think.

But it’s safe to say that it would be dangerous to impractical or mildly silly to practice a lot of these things today.

However, I don’t want to give you the impression that there are things in the Bible that we just throw out or dismiss.  They are still in there. And I think it’s our duty to learn the why behind it.  Historically, what was going on?  Who was doing the speak­ing and who were they speaking to?  What was the significance of the law?

When the Scripture says, “Do not put a stumbling block in front of the blind” is it safe to assume that there were a lot of practical jokers back in that day?

GOING BACK TO TATTOOS…

Let’s take a closer look:

Some of the laws stated in this chapter were about morality (right and wrong), others were about health (not eating poorly cooked meat), and the rest were about differenti­ating themselves from pagans.

Here’s where we usually stop.

In our modern day application of these verses, Christians seem to focus in like a laser beam on the set-apartness of God’s people as a set of standards set on certain behav­iors like voting preferences, appearance, and the removal from the whole of culture. It might mean your kids go to a Christian school, you have a fish swimming on the back of your car, or your radio is welded on a Christian station.  In other words, we focus more on what is being done and the command to be different rather than the real “why” behind it all.

In this passage, do we really think that all God was concerned about was haircuts and outward expressions of religious allegiance?  Did God just want people who were a little quirky and borderline obsessive-compulsive when compared to other peoples? Somehow, I think this is all a far cry from the set-apartness that God truly wanted.

God is speaking to His covenant people Israel. When He tells them not to do some­thing, it’s not because He didn’t want them to be fashionable or trendy, nor did He want them to be counter-cultural.  He is specifically telling them to stay far from the religious practices of the surrounding people groups. The prohibited religious prac­tices in these verses included eating bloody meat, fortune telling, cutting or marking the body for dead relatives, cultic prostitution and consulting psychics. Even certain bad haircuts were a kind of “sacrifice of the hair” to false gods.

Tattooing was a common practice in that day.  Often people would tattoo themselves with pictures and symbols of people who died as a part of a pagan mourning rite.  Others would tattoo themselves showing their identification or allegiance to a particu­lar diety.

You might remember a scene in the movie Gladiator when Maximus uses a sharp rock to cut his military tattoo off his arm.  Juba, another gladiator slave, saw the tat­too and asked Maximus: “Is that the mark of your gods?”

It is important to note here that the context of this passage is not one of body décor but one of marking one’s self in connection with cultic religious worship.  With the Hebrew track record of idolatry throughout the entire Old Testament, it is safe to as­sume that they weren’t merely part of a growing fad, they were willingly participating in pagan worship.

BUT THERE’S A MUCH DEEPER ISSUE…

The whole point is that what the Jews had been doing here was not a passive reflec­tion of the surrounding culture. They were actively engaging in something vehemently opposed to God.

God really did want a people who were set apart – a holy people who differentiated themselves from the whole of humanity. We identify ourselves with that as Christians today. Unfortunately, for most of our recent existence as the Church, we’ve spent the majority of our time avoiding culture itself as though culture in and of itself is equated with the worship of false gods.  We’ve opposed things, forbidden things, separated ourselves from things, all in the name of being different.  But differentiating ourselves isn’t the same thing as being holy and set apart to God.

SOMEHOW, WE MISSED THE POINT…

While there were a lot of forbidden practices for the Jews to separate themselves, there was also a “do” list – those things that were a sign that Jews followed the one, true God. The most definitive visual mark that a Jew could give would be that of cir­cumcision.

Circumcision was instituted in the 12th and 15th chapters of Genesis when God made unconditional promises to Abraham that his descendants would be more nu­merous than the stars in the sky; that through his descendants all the nations would be blessed; and that Abraham’s people would be given a great land to occupy and that all who blessed them would in turn be blessed.

The key here is that circumcision was to be a “sign of the covenant” that had already been given to Abraham with no strings attached. The point of circumcision was that it was supposed to be an outward symbol, a reminder of the relationship that God had with these people.  It wasn’t a symbol of what they could do to earn that relationship; it wasn’t a symbol of what they could do to keep it; it was a symbol of grace. God was saying, “On My own name I’m making a promise to you.  No matter what you do, no matter what happens, you will be Mine. It’s not about how good you are, it’s about My goodness.”

The sad reality is that circumcision became less about grace – this undeserved, un­earned favor with God – and more about a religious ritual of something to do to earn God’s favor.

A truly devout Jew would typically be defined as a person who spent their lifetime avoiding forbidden things and maintaining commanded religious practices including circumcision.  And they got really good at it as well.  As a matter of fact, over the course of hundreds of years, the Jews seemed to have put all that pagan worship be­hind them completely.  They were doing all the right things, saying the right things, and avoiding all the things that would have defiled them.  And then Jesus steps onto the scene and gives them a little review:

Matthew 15:8-9

These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship is a farce, for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.

Huh? Hundreds of years of cleaning up, ousting of false gods, rules, and record-keeping and this is the kind of review these people get?  And the worst part is that Jesus wasn’t even original when He said this.  As a matter of fact, He was quoting Isaiah who gave the same review hundreds of years before.

And the religious elite (known as Pharisees) that Jesus was talking to were irate.  “Didn’t it matter?  Didn’t it matter, Jesus, that we did all these things that we were commanded to do?  Didn’t it matter that we avoided all these connections to all that was unsacred?  We did everything we were asked to do!  How dare You!”

And Jesus was like, “You guys just don’t get it do you?”

You see, something was implied when those kinds of commands in Leviticus were written.  It should have been understood and profoundly experienced as a daily re­minder when they saw the visual reminder on their very being.  Isaiah made it blatantly obvious to the people who were missing it.

The point was not rule-keeping. The point was not religious practices. The point was not living differently than everyone else. The point was not living more moral. The point was not wearing the sign of circumcision.

And the Pharisees were astounded and resentful.  They acted as if Jesus was chang­ing the “rules.”  But He wasn’t.  Jesus was harkening back.  He was making a plea.  If the laws, if the cutting flesh, if Isaiah’s rant were only whispers, Jesus wanted to make it abundantly clear that the point is, was always, will always be, the heart.

The Jews mistakenly thought following the rules would earn God’s favor, and they’d get Him off their backs.  But the conversation God was trying to have with the Jews was that He didn’t want them to follow out insincerity, but out of the devotion of their hearts.

The Pharisees did all the things right and wore the mark of circumcision as an arro­gant sign of their own perfection, superiority, and righteousness.  But God was trying to point out the inferiority of that kind of mark and promised a work that only He could accomplish within them:

Deuteronomy 30:6

The LORD your God will circumcise your heart, and the heart of your seed, to

love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, that you

may live.

God was going to do some cutting.  He was going to leave a permanent mark.  He would tattoo their hearts.

Is this relevant for today?  Does all this sound strikingly similar to you?  It does to me. It sounds a lot like what we’ve come to know as Christianity.  Somehow, Chris­tians have come to be known as people who don’t do certain things.  More specifi­cally, we’re known as people who are against things, but known very little by what we are for. Christians have a to-do list, just like our spiritual forefathers the Jews. We do things to get God off our backs, to appease Him, or to point to our own arrogant superiority, while the whole time God is saying:

“You have my love. You have my favor.  Receive it, and live out of it.”

I think the simple reason that most Christians live so defeated, so guilt-ridden, I think the simple reason that 80% of teenagers who grew up in church walk away from God before they reach Christian adulthood, I think the reason why, with all our knowledge, good works, and outward signs, we still live so unchanged and con­demned is because we haven’t truly experienced the basic essential in the whole of humanity, in the whole of the Gospel – God loves us.

It’s become cliché.  It has no punch or power.  You know why?  Because God’s love is something that we have a head knowledge of, but never has the height, depth, length or width of this love ever been truly experienced by the heart.

With Abraham, God wanted to start right there with an outward symbol, a physical scar, an actual surgical process to say: “Just as this is being carved into your flesh, I want to carve into your very being My love.”  And what did we do with it?  We turned that very sign into something we had to do to earn love.

What is the command that surpasses all?  What is the command that is foundational to everything in the Kingdom of Heaven?  Love God with all your heart, mind, and strength.

If we truly breathed the truth of God’s love into the depths of our beings, then we would be people who respond with extraordinary love and devotion. And you know what?  That’s all God wants from us.  If God gets our love, then everything else is just details.

OKAY, TELL ME SOMETHING  I DON’T KNOW…

I’m not pretending to say something that hasn’t already been said.   In fact, I’m sure I’m saying something that you already know.  But when I say “know,” understand that I mean with a head knowledge. We know it. We believe it.

But let me ask you this: Have you experienced it?

We do want to be people who love God.  But that feels so far away, so distant. We seem so helpless to even begin to do such a thing, especially with our whole being.

I’m pretty confident that this “loving God with our whole hearts” can’t take place until our hearts are made whole.

Loving God, giving Him what He desires – our very hearts – is a response.

Here’s what Paul said about this to the church at Ephesus:

I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowl­edge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Paul’s earnest desire for these Christians was that they would be rooted and grounded in the love of Jesus.  “Rooted” is a botanical term that life is only given, sustained, and grown out of love.  Like a plant can’t survive without roots, we cannot survive unless our roots our firmly planted in love.

I think this is what Jesus intended in the Parable of the Soils.  Jesus notes that some seed fell on rock. This wasn’t plain rock, but slabs of limestone in certain parts of the field just under the surface with an inch or two of soil over them. The limestone would hold the warmth of the sun throughout the night, and for a while the new plants would spring up and grow vigorously, that is until they ran out of moisture. Since they couldn’t get a root down into deep soil, they would quickly wither and die.

If we’re defeated and dying, is what is rooting us something other than love.  Do you know people who thrived and then faded into nothingness and defeat?

“Grounded” is an architectural term relating to foundation.  A pastor friend of mine led a capital giving campaign for a new building on their existing church campus.  A team of architects and consultants drew up plans for a state-of-the-art facility with what they felt was an adequate price tag. The church embraced the vision and gave, and one year later the construction began.  The first week they began digging.  At the end of the week they had to cut a heavy check for the work that was completed.  The second week, more digging, and at the end of that week, another heavy check. This went on for weeks.  It seemed no progress was being made besides digging and mov­ing around dirt.  My pastor friend was watching their bank account quickly emptying and was ever growing frustrated.  He had no idea of how far the construction guys really had to dig to get a solid foundation.  It cost a ton of money; more than they previously thought, because they made a lot of assumptions about the land.  At any point they could have stopped digging and started building. If they didn’t care about the longterm investment they were making, they could save money, build the struc­ture, and eventually lose everything when it started falling apart. If they really didn’t value life, they could have built a structure that could have functioned but at any moment could collapse and kill or severely injure people.

I wonder how many of us were building and creating structure long before we truly had a foundation. We’re trying to do great things for God. Why? At the end of the day are we feeling weak, vulnerable, and questioning our status with God?  Are we unfulfilled, ever seeking more?  Is it possible that we are out building and building on a weak foundation?  If it’s not founded on love, we’re going to implode.  We just weren’t made any other way.

The heart is powerful.  It will run, it will go when our minds and bodies won’t.  But it’s fragile.  God found our hearts when we were completely broken.  And for a lot of us, instead of allowing God to heal and make it whole, we went into performance mode.  We quit sinning.  We started looking and living differently.  And now we’re toast.  Or at best, we’re still plugging away, unhealthy, and feeling like frauds.

Can you take a moment to respond?  Can you just put this book down along with all the stuff you have to do that seems so important, and make a move towards God that, if it doesn’t just restore your life, it may very well save your life?

Paul’s prayer was that these Christians would grasp (literally “seize”) and know this love.  “Know” here was the Greek word “ginosko” which meant a knowledge that was bigger than information. This knowledge was experiential.

How can you respond right now? Maybe you ask God right now to reveal to you the things that you’ve rooted yourself in.  Ask God what you have used as your founda­tion that is not His love.

Move toward God, as best you know right now and ask Him:

“God, I want to seize your love. I want to know Your love. Lord, will You show me the depth, the height, the length, the width Your love is for me? Will you overwhelm me with the knowledge of Your love?”

Now what?

Keep praying that prayer.  It’s not a one time “yeah, I did that.” We’ll never know the fullness of His love, but God will continue to reveal it.  He desires for you to know that love.  As a matter of fact, our hitting walls, deflating circumstances, and break­downs are all a part God’s intentional design for us to find our being in, and only in, His love.

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