Looking for Loopholes

Some actors play parts so convincingly that people can confuse the character for the actual person.  I heard recently that actor Michael Douglas was confronted about his character from the movie Wall Street, Gordon Gecko.  In the movie his character is quoted as saying. "Greed is Good." And then goes on to justify the merits of greed.  He was called out on it and asked if he still believed it.  His answer was that he never believed it.  He was playing a character in a movie and seemed dumbfounded that people had such a hard time understanding that.

And so was the problem of William Claude Dunkenfield, an actor from the early part of the 20th century who is better known by his stage name W.C. Fields.  He often played a sarcastic drunkard and so developed was this character that people often confuse the character with the person himself. He is famously quoted with lines like,

"It was a woman who drove me to drink, and I never had the courtesy to thank her for it."
or
"Once I had to survive for four days on nothing but food and water."

It's hard to know how much is him and how much was his character, but one of these quotes comes from a friend who was visiting him in the hospital.  He was caught reading the Bible.  When asked what he was doing, he responded, "Looking for loopholes."

I we all look for loopholes from time to time.  We like to think that certain rules don't quite apply in this particular situation.  We weigh the consequences of  breaking a rule and decide that maybe it's worth it.  A friend once told me, "A rule without a consequence is a suggestion."

And so it is with taxes.  We hear that such a small number of returns are audited and the IRS doesn't have the manpower to really investigate very many.    As a result, many treat the amount to pay in taxes as a suggestion rather than a requirement.

 

So where is all of this going?  As Christians we are sometime looking for loopholes in the will of God.  We know what it says.  We know the commandments and teachings of Christ, but we just don't want to do that.  So we try to justify our rebellion.  We say God didn't really mean it.  It was a different language and some translations make it sound different.

Love thy neighbor....
Provide for those in need....
Have no Gods before Me....
Thou shalt not....

Looking for loopholes we think that the commandments are nothing more than suggestions.

Watch this clip from Pastor Chris.

"Did God really say that you could not eat from any tree?" Did God really say.  Surely he didn't mean it to apply in this situation.  Surely, if God gave us more detail, then this would be allowed.  Surely, this is not what He meant.

We like to reword what God says to fit our desires of the moment.  We are looking for loopholes and we should know better.  There is forgiveness in surrendering to the Grace of God, received through the blood of Jesus Christ.  We can't get in on a technicality.