Investigating the Bible: Accepting painful mistakes

By DAVID CARLSON PASTOR

A newspaper advertisement for an upscale grocery store in Great Britain included an embarrassing typographical error. It read: “Foot tasting, arranged through the courtesy of Marks & Spencers and Safeway, gives customers a rare chance to try some of those more exotic flavors.”

Humans inevitably make mistakes; some are devastating. At 7:02 a.m., December 7, 1941, Hawaiian Islands radar operators saw a large mass of airborne blips on their screens approaching and reported this to their supervisor. He falsely assumed they were returning American airplanes. If they had sent out that forty minute warning, Pearl Harbor battleships would have prepared and casualties greatly reduced.

The apostle Paul struggled with his human tendencies for mistakes and sin in his letter to believers in Rome. “So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:21-25, English Standard Version used throughout). Paul offers several reasons for this ability to conquer sin.

God gives believers the fruit of his success. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus … For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh.” Maximilian Kolbe was a priest during World War II. He could have escaped Poland, but remained to help others with shelter, food, and worship. He was arrested and eventually transferred to Auschwitz. In July 1941, a prisoner successfully escaped from the prison. As a deterrent against future escape attempts, the Nazi commander randomly selected ten prisoners to be locked in a cell without food or water until death. One of the prisoners selected cried out, “My wife! My children!” Kolbe stepped forward and said, “Take me in his place.” Likewise, Jesus “…has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.” (Hebrews 9:26).

God gives believers his Holy Spirit. “…(B)ut you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba Father!’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God, and if children, then heirs – heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.” (Romans 8:15-17).

Mistakes and failures, like any painful experience, can lead to empathy. Paul wrote that he has the “…God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” (II Corinthians 1:4).

God protects those who trust in him. “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39).

The late LeRoy Eims, a Christian leader, told a story of this kind of trust. A sea captain, in the days before engines, sailed across the Atlantic. A hurricane came, creating monster waves and terrifying all the passengers. The captain’s eight-year-old daughter was sleeping when the commotion awoke her. They told her about the terrible storm. She asked, “Is my father on the deck?” They said, “Yes." She smiled, put her head back on the pillow and promptly fell asleep.

David Carlson Pastor (yes, that is his last name, not his profession) is a Polk County resident and graduate of Bethel Theological Seminary in Minnesota (M.Div., M.Th.).