One of my favourite movies is “A Christmas Story”. It’s about a little boy named Ralphie who all he wanted for Christmas was a Red Ryder BB Gun. There was something in Ralphie’s wish that struck home with me. I always wanted a BB gun but unlike Ralphie, I never got one. Even so, I still got my BB gun experience. My best friend Ronnie not only had a BB gun, but a pellet gun too, and at some point, he wound up with a BB pistol.
BB guns can be used rightly or wrongly depending on what you’re aiming at. Obviously, you don’t shoot people with BB guns…but inadvertently that’s what little boys do with BB guns. I don’t remember ever shooting anyone but I do remember being shot in the back of the hand by a boy down the street who denied it up and down. Another of my friends got shot, I think in the thigh, and the BB was embedded enough to have to be pried out with a knife.
You’re not supposed to shoot peoples’ pets either…but that’s what little boys do with BB guns. A pellet gun pumped only once will only sting an animal. You can make a cat jump four feet in the air and assure they will never return to your yard like that. I remember Ronnie’s neighbour had a dog penned up in the backyard that barked incessantly. Ronnie solved that problem. Every time the dog started barking, he cracked the screen on his bedroom window and shot it in the bum. After a couple of days, the dog immediately stopped barking at just the sound of the screen cracking open.
Another thing you shouldn’t shoot are animals in general…but that’s what little boys do with BB guns. Ronnie and I needlessly killed bunches of birds and squirrels pretending to be hunters. The smaller the bird, the better shot you had to be. I remember one time while spending a week at my great-grandmother’s, we even shot a bull in the tenders. We were expecting him to run off in a rage, but he only twitched.
The right way to use a BB gun is shooting appropriate targets like cans or paper targets under parental supervision. Ronnie was always a better shot than I. When it came to a can on a fencepost he rarely missed. I, on the other hand, more often than not missed. My genius lay in a different use for a BB gun…killing flies with the air burst and stuffing grasshoppers by the head into the end of the barrel and using the airburst to make a big splat. (I’m glad I’m not preaching for the call with this sermon.)
Now hold to your thoughts here on the difference between Ronnie’s marksmanship and my own and let’s talk about sin. The NT Greek word for sin is hamartia and it’s an archery term meaning to miss the mark. Sin, biblically speaking, isn’t just a collection of things we’re not supposed to do. If the life that we’ve been given were a BB gun, sin isn’t simply that we use our BB gun to shoot things we’re not supposed to shoot, though that’s a part of it. Rather, sin would be that we have a problem with our aim. We can’t hit the target. So, even when we are shooting at things we’re not supposed to shoot, though it may seem fun or beneficial, whether we hit or miss there is a down side. Either we kill what we’re shooting at or if we miss, there is always something nearby that’s going to be damaged by the stray BB and usually, it is the people we care about the most.
Sin is the fact that the human aiming system, how we orient our lives towards goals, our ambition, our endeavouring is fundamentally flawed. Sin even comes through in people who are religiously oriented. There is no such thing as saying I’m going to stop sinning and on my own effort start trying to please God that always leads to legalism and self-righteousness because we will supplant pleasing God with serving religious laws.
Sin means that there is a problem with our aim. In our NIV translation 2 Corinthians 5:9 reads, “We make it our goal to please Him (God)”. The NT Greek word there for “making it our goal” can also read “we make it our aim” or “we have as our ambition”. Sorry for yet another Greek lesson. The word is philotimeomaiand it consists of two words being smashed into one and then being made a verb. The first word is philos. We know it as one of the root words for philosophy. Philos is the devotion friends have for each other. Philosophy simply means or devoted to wisdom (Sophia). The next word time means honour. So, philotime means devoted to honour. The last part of the word, the ending –omai makes the word a verb in the sense of “I do this for my own benefit, for myself.” So, to make something your aim, to philotimeomai, is to be devoted to honour for one’s own benefit. The scope of this word (philotimeomai) is how we bring honour to ourselves? The point of the verse is that we bring honour to ourselves when we live to please God…when we make it our aim to bring honour to God.
When we talk about sin as a problem of our aiming mechanism, we are saying that we have a fundamental problem with the way we go about trying to be honourable. God created us, indeed, this whole creation in such a way as it brings honour to God. This isn’t to say that God is a narcissist. When an artist makes something beautiful, the artist receives praise. Part of the beauty that created in us is that when can and should strive to be honourable people. There is nothing wrong with striving to be an honourable person, that’s the BB gun so to speak. The problem isn’t as simple as saying we tend to use that striving, that BB gun, in the wrong way. Yes, we do that. We will at times seek our own glory by an entirely wrong means. The problem with sin, the problem with our aim, is that we just can’t hit what we’re aiming at when it comes to being honourable. In the best of worlds if we strive as hard as we can to bring honour to God in everything we do, there will still always be the specter of seeking our own glory that taints it. There will always be something lurking about in us that dishonours God, that doesn’t bring praise to God. It can be overt in our actions; in the way we treat others through our bent to serve ourselves. It can be covert in our inner world of the things we think and feel but don’t express. Those things that we hide believing that if anyone knew this about me, I am toast. There will always be something about us that dishonours us, that dishonours God, and it can, does, and will leave a wake of pain like a spray of stray BB’s.
So now, what does this look like in real life? I guess it starts with simply asking the question of how am I striving to bring honour to myself and is it pleasing to God. For example, does our cultural value of striving for wealth bring true honour in God’s eyes? Let’s also question the myth that wealth is God’s blessing upon those who work hard and are morally upright, i.e., those who are honorable. Check out the billionaires who have been in the news lately, are they honourable, are they blessed by God?
I think true honour is not found in playing that evil power trip game of accumulating wealth but rather in the humility of setting oneself aside, not seeking one’s own glory but rather seeking to be compassionate, generous, patient, forgiving, hospitable, faithful, even-tempered, self-controlled and honest to your family and to neighbours and to friends and to strangers and to the downcast. These efforts bring honour to God.
Above all, I think that just letting yourself be a vehicle through which God proves his love and faithfulness to others is the honourable life. God has put his own Spirit in each of us for us to be just that, a vehicle. The Holy Spirit is fixing our aim, making your aim to become more and more like Jesus’ aim in which everything we do brings honour to God. The Holy Spirit prods that desire in us to be a loyal disciple of Jesus. Because the Holy Spirit is in us and we have this desire, we each are a new creation. The old life is gone. That old life is wrapped up in death. The old life of being a BB gun that shoots anywhere and everywhere like it had no aim. We are New Creation. Let us make it our aim to bring praise to God rather than to ourselves by emptying ourselves of the desire for self-glory and bring praise, bring honour to God through the beauty of unconditional love. Amen.
