Hiding Behind the Monkey Mask

Home Coming 2009

Did you hear about Dave Vontesmar of Phoenix , Arizona ?  Dave has accumulated 37, yes 37, traffic tickets for speeding and each time, he’s been photographed by a surveillance camera.  But Dave is refusing to pay the tickets which amount to over $6,000. 

He’s not paying because he says that, even though they have a photograph of the driver, they can’t prove it’s him..  It seems that the driver is wearing a monkey mask, so the photo appears to be a monkey driving the car, clear as day.  However, the car is his distinctive Subaru. 

There are witnesses who claim to have seen Dave putting on a monkey mask, but on other occasions, he’s a giraffe mask.  A legal expert has pointed out that the court has to prove the man behind the monkey mask was Dave Vontesmar every time to require him to pay every one of the 37 tickets. 

It appears that Dave, by putting on the monkey mask, misrepresented himself 37 times.

But, no matter what, I can’t help but like Dave.  He sounds like a fun guy. 

But it’s one thing to misrepresent yourself; it’s something else again to misrepresent God.. 

We have the record of three men who misrepresented God.  Eliphaz had come to Job along with two others and told Job that the reason he was suffering so much was that he was a sinner and God was punishing him.  But that wasn’t the case and Job knew it..  Near the end of the book, God breaks through to Job and his three friends an tells them, “. . . the Lord said to Eliphaz, ‘My wrath is aroused against you and your two friends, for you have not spoken of Me what is right . . .’” (Job 42:7)

We might wish that with this stern reprimand, any and all misrepresentations of God would’ve stopped way back when, but they didn’t.  Acts 15 and Gal. 1:8-9 show us that misrepresentations of God and His Word continued. 

And today, there’s one misrepresentation all over the place, and like some invisible germ, not easily noticed.   The bacterium is there and hard to resist. 

The reason we don’t notice it is because of how we’re born and built.  All normal people are born with a moral capacity; we call this capacity a conscience.  It’s this capacity that sorts things out for us and may shout, “Guilty!” from time to time.  One thing about a conscience, it’s a great communicator..  It communicates so well that it makes us feel bad at times. 

Another reason the bacterium is hard to spot is that our parents and teachers inject us with it, as well do other authority figures.  Here in the South, we are proud of the fact that, “We were raised right.”  Our parents and teachers taught us to say, “Yes, sir,” and “No, sir.”  They taught us to address adults by “Mr.” and “Mrs.,” not by their first names.  A writer wrote about how he was raised in Georgia : “I was taught to respect the law, stay away from scandal, have some sort of religious leanings, and respect your neighbors and their property..”  

Being “raised right” meant the parents expected such behavior, the church celebrated it and school backed it up.  The bacterium, which led to the monkey mask, was just about in place.  There was only one more thing: politics.

The bacterium mutates just a bit in the political area, but it comes out the same germ.  If a person is a political liberal, he tends to think that “being raised right” means that there is a set of social ethics to adhere to.  If he’s a political conservative, he tends to think that there is a set of personal ethics and you were raised right if you have and abide by those ethics.  Neither claims to be perfect, but the major concern is: avoid scandal and that’s sufficient. 

OK, let’s get down to it.  There’s a word for this germ which infects people with the monkey mask of misrepresenting God and His Word: moralism.  It’s this germ that makes the person infected with it read the Bible the wrong way and come out misrepresenting it. 

Moralism infects people with the idea that the gospel can be reduced to improvements in behavior.  Once the infection germinates in a church, it causes the church to communicate to lost people the message that what God really wants for them and what He demands of them is that they “straighten up,” “get their lives straight.”  Now!

This bacterium infects people in the rank and file (you and me) and people in powerful positions.  Senator Ted Kennedy was one of the infected.  Before he died, Senator Ted Kennedy wrote a letter which he had President Obama take to the Pope.  When you read the letter, it shows just how ingrained the infection was. 

In the third paragraph, me comments on his declining health and how disease is taking a toll on him.  In the fourth paragraph, he writes about how he’s preparing for “the next passage of life.”  

Then, in the 7^th paragraph, he shows that the bacterium was incubating in him as he was being raised in moralism.  All his life, he believed in a God and a gospel which were misrepresented to him by his church, family, and school.  Here’s what the letter said:

“I want you to know, your Holiness, that in my 50 years of elected office, I have done my best (here the symptoms of the disease first show up with the words, “I have done my best”).  There’s not one word in the gospel to “Do your best.” 

He says, “I have done my best to champion the rights of the poor and open doors of economic opportunity.  I’ve worked to welcome the immigrant, to fight discrimination and expand health care and education.  I’ve opposed the death penalty and fought to end war.  Those are the issues that motivated me and have been the focus of my work as a U. S. Senator.

“I want you to know that although I am ill, I am committed to do everything I can to achieve access to health care for everyone in my country.  This has been the political cause of my life.” 

When and if he read the Bible, when and if he heard the Bible, it was always wearing a monkey mask someone, including himself had put on it.  Whether it was a priest or his mother, whether it was when he read the Bible, he put the mask on it, it was the same old thing, with the mask on, he heard or read the Bible as a manual of ethics, a book telling the him to “Straighten up!”  The gospel is not a set of ethical behaviors.

In his estimation, he was raised right.  In his estimation, he believed that his works had achieved for him righteousness.  In that respect, he was like the Jews Paul wrote about who were going about “to establish their own righteousness.”  (Rom. 10:3)  He spent his decades in the Senate infected and the fever from the infection caused him to build a body of what he considered ethical legislation.   

You probably noticed something in the letter: there is not a word in it about Christ and Him crucified.  The letter is a brag-a-mony, pointing to the writer and all he’d done.  His letter is filled with “I’ve-done-this” and “I’ve-done-that.” 

Over the letter should be written, “Wait a minute!  Salvation is the gift of God, not of welcoming the immigrant, fighting discrimination, expanding health care, promoting education, and fighting to end war, lest any man should boast..”  (cf. Eph. 2:8-9) 

And it is at this point that we can be misunderstood.  The Bible does contain a set of ethics and it’s comprehensive.   We have a responsibility to communicate those ethics; parents are to teach them; the church to celebrate them. 

BUT we must be clear: the ethical standards of the Bible are NOT the gospel.  The gospel is not “Behave!”  It’s not a code book of human behavior which substitutes that behavior for the gospel. 

The gospel does not demand moral improvement from the lost.  Moralism does as it tries to produce people who behave.  But our behavior can’t save us: Gal. 2:16. 

It’s a temptation to succumb to the infection because that’s what people already believe; it’s popular.  Moralism makes sense to people.  It’s in their heart, it’s in their soul, it’ll be their breath should they grow old.  

But Homecoming is a time of re-commitment for this church to the gospel because the average person believes moralism IS the message of this church and every church.  The average person believes that the message of Christianity is “Behave, be nice, come on, try.”   Homecoming is a re-commitment that every Sunday, every Wednesday we’re not going to put the monkey mask of moralism on the gospel.  Hell will be populated with an awful lot of people who were raised right. 

It’s a recommitment that Christ and Him crucified, that Christ is the Son of God who died for our sins, rose from the dead and promises everlasting life to anyone who trusts Him alone for it.  At homecoming we say again that the gospel is in our hearts, in our souls, it’ll be our breath should we grow old.

 Truth to Take Home:

Moralism is a monkey mask.  Never put it on the gospel.