What is it with us and our inclination to be contrary? Even when it’s to our exclusive advantage to agree with God, we’ve got in our heart a big fat “yea but” which prevents us.
The Lord brought something to mind while i was praying this morning. It was just a snippet of a memory. Many years ago, another fellow and i were cutting tobacco, and as we were cutting and stacking the crop which needed to go hang in the barn to cure, we were talking about getting some help, wherewith i mentioned hiring one particular guy but didn’t know if it was a good idea. As i remember the conversation, the other fellow said to me, “He’s a pretty good fellow alright, but he’s just… contrary… and i’d just as well leave him at home as to have him around.” In the moment it was a pretty good chuckle, but this morning, God brought it all back to mind. Yea but…
We hold church at the jail every Thursday night, and the other night in particular i heard some very familiar words, “Yea but” this, and “yea but” that. We would say, “Jesus is the answer” and one fellow would say, “Yea, but if He would only…” Almost no matter what was said, that guy would tag in a “yea but”. He was just … contrary. By nature, not that he didn’t agree necessarily, but it was his nature to be contrary. Yea but this, and yea but that. Contrary.
How often, in your life, do you read something from scripture, and even though you may generally agree, somewhere in your heart is a “yea but”, which adds a condition to the Lord’s words? He said He will never leave us and is always with us, yet we add “yea but, i feel so alone.” You know, as Kevin says, “If we’d simply be honest about ourselves and situation, many things would resolve themselves, simply by being honest.”
One time a very angry lady said she truly believed Jesus was Lord and God, and when i agreed with her she then added, while slamming the Bible with her hand, “Yea but, there’s so many contradictions in the Bible i can’t bring myself to believe it.” Upon further discussion, the r-e-a-l issue was that the Lord has righteous boundaries, and says, very plainly, some things are simply wrong. Well, those very things were things she, personally, didn’t see anything wrong with doing, and rather than agree with God, she re-decided that HE was being contradictory. In the moment, i told her i was not a hammer and she didn’t look like a nail, but if she was going to follow the Lord, then follow Him, and if she wasn’t then don’t. But she really should consider to get herself out of the torturous position of indecision. If she would simply be honest about herself it would go a long way to not being angry and conflicted.
1 Kings 18:21, “And Elijah came near to all the people and said, “How long will you go limping around between two different paths, sitting on a fence? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.” And the people did not answer him a word and nobody made a move.”
The word for “limping” is used in the sense of someone who is on crutches who hobbles around or dances around something, and the phrase “two different paths”, as in two points of view, is used in the sense of either going left or right. The entire verse is about being conflicted, being di-vided, or having di-vision. Hobbling around an indecision without making a decision is a big “yea but”, which means we are dancing around deciding whether to go left or right, and Elijah was addressing the painfulness of being at the crossroads of indecision. Is He God or not? Yes. Then act like it. And if you don’t want to believe He is, be honest about it and don’t. We can’t go left AND right at the same time, it still leaves us wrecked in the middle, still hovering around not being able to come to a conclusion. i think for a large part of my life i’ve been the Chief of the Yea But tribe, whose favorite phrase is “yea but” “yea but” “yea but”, living on the ever desolate high plains of the mountains of indecision, slamming back and forth like clothes in the washing machine, being beaten back and forth, coming to no particular conclusion.
A constant stream of “yea but’s” from us is an indicator of confusion, and in 1 Corinthians 14:33 Paul writes that the Lord is not the God of confusion. The Greek word for confusion refers to being caught up by a “contrary wind which blows this way and then that”, can’t make up it’s mind, popping the sails of the boat back and forth. It is a word indicating unrest, turmoil, and disorder.
The guys at the Mebane Freedom League gave me a good example once. They said living in the momentum of our “yea but” is like trying to force a square peg through a round hole, and the problem with forcing a square peg through a round hole is that there are “leftovers”. If you do actually mange to force a square peg through a round hole, it shaves off certain portions of the peg just to make it “fit”, and sure, after you’re done with all your forcing, it can be said that it “fits” in the end, but what about the bits that got “shaved off”? Afterall, this IS the truth we’re talking about and even the “shavings” matter! Except “yea but” people end up with a HUGE pile of shavings and when asked, what about the HUGE pile of shavings, they attempt to “explain it away” or divert us. “Yea but” is like forcing that square peg through a round hole, and it rips chunks out of the truth to make it work.
Is the Lord God or not? If He is, then act like it, and if you don’t want to believe it, then don’t…. stop dancing around two ways to go, and get on with it.
What do you think?