A few weeks ago, I wrote Reframe the World. That article generated some comments, both online and among my local friends and family. To summarize the comments, a lot of people responded with, “Yea, but…”
Today, I wanted to spend some time discussing why we often respond to God’s commands with a “Yea, but…” And to be clear, this is just as much my issue as anybody else’s. We all do this.
The Inner Lawyer
Whenever God tells us something and we respond with “Yea, but…” it’s a sign that our Inner Lawyer has been activated. When provoked, our Inner Lawyers want to debate the fine points of whatever we’re wrestling with. We want to cross-examine the issue on the table every which way. “I object, Your Honor!” our Inner Lawyer screams. “Is everything really so black and white? What about this? How about that? Where are the loopholes?”
Everybody has an Inner Lawyer. You do. I do. We all do. For some of us that Inner Lawyer is buried deep in our psyche and we rarely say “Yea, but…” For others, the Inner Lawyer is a foundational component of our personalities and we’re always saying “Yea, but…” That’s me, incidentally. When I was a kid, I loved to argue and debate and find loopholes in everything. If I hadn’t gone to engineering school, my parents were convinced that I would have gone to law school.
The Greatest Commandments
Back in Jesus’s time, some of the folks with great Inner Lawyers were the Pharisees and other religious leaders. They liked to debate anything and everything. For instance, if you asked a Pharisee about what, exactly, constituted “working” on the sabbath, they would go on for days. Every last part of the Law was debated and re-debated, and then debated some more.
Remember when we covered the Greatest Commandments?
We didn’t spend a lot of time on it then, but Jesus’s description of the Greatest Commandments leads directly into the parable of the Good Samaritan, and it’s a top-notch example of a religious leader’s Inner Lawyer coming to the surface.
Let’s follow along in Luke 10:25-37 (NLT):
The Most Important Commandment
25 One day an expert in religious law stood up to test Jesus by asking him this question: “Teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?”
26 Jesus replied, “What does the law of Moses say? How do you read it?”
27 The man answered, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.’ And, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
28 “Right!” Jesus told him. “Do this and you will live!”
So far, so good. The religious leader asks a question and Jesus replies with a question of his own: “How do you read it?” The religious leader then answers his own question, and Jesus affirms what he says as the truth.
But the religious leader’s Inner Lawyer can’t leave it there: “Yea, Jesus, but…”
29 The man wanted to justify his actions, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
Verse 29 is interesting because it tells us the man’s intentions. He wanted to justify himself. In other words, the man knows that there are people in the world that he has not loved, and he doesn’t want to be responsible for breaking the law. He wants to find a loophole so that he can continue thinking of himself as righteous. So, he asks, “Who is my neighbor?” In other words, “Yea, but… you don’t mean everybody, Jesus. That’s my Jewish neighbor, right? The one who lives just down the road from me, but not somebody from another town in Israel, right? And surely not THEM, right?” I’m sure the man’s Inner Lawyer had cooked up a whole bunch of exceptions, all rationalized quite nicely.
So, Jesus answers with a story — one of the best stories in all the Bible — The Parable of the Good Samaritan.
The Parable of the Good Samaritan
To really understand this story, you first have to understand the subtext, and that requires a short history lesson.
At that time, Jews and Samaritans hated each other. Before the conquest of Israel and Judah by the Assyrians and Babylonians, Samaria was the region of Israel allotted to the tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim, and it became the capital of Israel after Judah was split off and there were two kingdoms. After the Assyrians conquered Israel, they resettled it with a lot of foreigners, particularly in Samaria. Consequently, the Samaritan Jews intermarried with these foreigners and started to worship their gods, too. By Jesus’s time, the Jews considered Samaritans as polluted half-breeds, not proper Jews. Samaritans were the other and definitely less-than a Jew. Most Jews would not talk to Samaritans or interact with them. When going on a trip to a place on the other side of Samaria, many Jews would walk around Samaria and avoid it entirely. Yea, it was bad.
So, when Jesus throws down this parable, he’s definitely pushing the buttons of the religious leader who asked him the question. It’s almost as if Jesus replies with, “Who is your neighbor? Okay, then, let me tell you…”
Parable of the Good Samaritan
30 Jesus replied with a story: “A Jewish man was traveling from Jerusalem down to Jericho, and he was attacked by bandits. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him up, and left him half dead beside the road.
31 “By chance a priest came along. But when he saw the man lying there, he crossed to the other side of the road and passed him by. 32 A Temple assistant walked over and looked at him lying there, but he also passed by on the other side.
33 “Then a despised Samaritan came along, and when he saw the man, he felt compassion for him. 34 Going over to him, the Samaritan soothed his wounds with olive oil and wine and bandaged them. Then he put the man on his own donkey and took him to an inn, where he took care of him. 35 The next day he handed the innkeeper two silver coins, telling him, ‘Take care of this man. If his bill runs higher than this, I’ll pay you the next time I’m here.’
36 “Now which of these three would you say was a neighbor to the man who was attacked by bandits?” Jesus asked.
37 The man replied, “The one who showed him mercy.”
Then Jesus said, “Yes, now go and do the same.”
So, Jesus takes a member of a hated people group, a Samaritan, one of THEM, and makes him the hero of this story. I’m sure that really got under the religious leader’s skin.
In the story, the Samaritan doesn’t care whether the half-dead man is a Jew or not. The other Jews in the story didn’t want to get involved. But the Samaritan does the right thing and takes care of the half-dead man.
The message of the story is clear: everybody is your neighbor and God calls you to love all of THEM. Everybody is made in His image and is valued and loved by Him.
So, What About THEM?
Yes, surely, some of THEM do really bad things. THEY are crazy and even sometimes evil. THEY create problems. THEY get people hurt, or even killed, by their stupid actions. THEY sin. THEY make everybody around them so angry.
And yet, God loves them anyway and still wants them to repent, believe that Jesus died for their sins, and accept the free gift of life that He offers. And how are they going to know about Him if you’re unwilling to talk to or spend any time interacting with THEM?
The larger point here is that God demands some pretty challenging behavior from us. Super challenging. He asks us to love everybody, even our enemies. He asks us to pray for them. When they strike us, he asks us to turn the other cheek. He says that he will deliver vengeance, and that we should stand down and forgive them. Worst of all, he tells us that they will hate us just as they did Jesus. In some cases, he calls us to the ultimate sacrifice — martyrdom.
Yea, I get it. All those commands are really tough, and they instantly provoke your Inner Lawyer. They provoke my Inner Lawyer, too. I squirm and squirm, and my Inner Lawyer fights desperately to find a loophole.
“Love them in all circumstances? Forgive them unconditionally? For anything? Even if they do such-and-such? Don’t defend ourselves? Forget any claims to vengeance? Let ourselves get trampled on? Doesn’t that just breed more abuse, maybe get us killed? Seriously? Are you kidding?”
No, He isn’t kidding. There is no loophole. When you became part of the Kingdom of God, that was the mission you signed up for. That was the deal. In return for salvation from your sins and entry into the Kingdom of God, you agreed to follow Jesus and obey his commands, whatever the cost. Believe me, I know how hard those commands are. And yet, there they are in your Bible, many in red letters, direct quotes from Jesus himself.
Again, one of the big ideas behind Simple Christianity, this Substack, is that Christianity is simple, but it isn’t easy. This is a great example of that.
So, now, the big question is whether you’re going to be obedient to your savior or not? What’s it going to be? Do you trust God enough to let him fight your battles and worry about dealing with the craziness that THEY inject into the world? Or are you going to try to fight back yourself?
Once you’ve made the decision to obey him, tell your Inner Lawyer to stand down and believe that God is still God even (especially!) during the hard parts, even when he’s asking you to sacrifice your claims against THEM on his altar.
Because you have a mission. There are a lot of THEM that need to know about Him, and time’s a wastin’.
If this article spoke to you, leave me a comment and let me know. Your feedback is always appreciated. Does somebody in your life need to read this? Share it with them! If this spoke to you, please subscribe to get future articles. And always like and “restack” this post in Substack to help others find it.
Reframe the World, Part 2
Oh David. How this indeed spoke to me. So very timely with what I have been struggling with (my inner lawyer). Yes. Simple Christianity. Not easy though.
Thank you. God bless you. I am grateful for your teachings.