The Briar Patch: How Difficulty Can Cause Lasting Character Change

By Gavin McKinley

We are used to acquiring certain titles to signal our success, and we all want to be successful. We Christians are no different. We figure the titles of “pastor” or “singer” or “evangelist” or even a title like “president” or “head” of some sort imply we’re headed the right way. But the Christian life is different. We should be led by the obedient, not the successful. This book talks about that.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Dec 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9781664211490

Gavin McKinley

After a rural Ohio upbringing and High School and college in Ohio, Gavin McKinley worked as a missionary then moved to Colorado, then Missouri. He now lives in Ohio with his wife and eight children, where he drives a bus.

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Copyright © 2020 Gavin McKinley.

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Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible, New International

Version® NIV® Copyright © 1973 1978 1984 2011 by Biblica,

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ISBN: 978-1-6642-1150-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-1151-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-1149-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020921816

WestBow Press rev. date: 11/09/2020

CONTENTS

Preface

The Briar Patch

Why We Did What We Did

How We Built Our House

LGBTQ

Moving

Gleaning

Television

Goody-Two-Shoes

Leslie Learns A Few Things

God’s Way

Marriage

Fear

Moving An I-Joist

Sin

Submission

Work

I Cut Some Cedar Trees

Parenthood

Emergency C-Section

References

Attractiveness

Downing A Tree

An Overseas Experience

Difficulty

Expectations

I Can’t Use You.

Drinking Water

Painful Realizations

Solutions

The Tower Of Babel

Technology

Family Size

Earning

Government Assistance

America

God’s Qualities

Driving Fence Posts

A Home Birth

Changes In Circumstances

The End (Why You Won’t Do Any Of This)

PREFACE

My challenge is to convince you that success as a Christian is the opposite of what we expect and hope it will be. As Americans, we want to follow the successful, the victorious, the prosperous. I hope to convince you we should be led instead by the obedient.

Another impossible attitude is that toward change. Mostly we change when we are startled or intimidated. Even if we change our actions, we ourselves haven’t changed. Just because our behavior changes doesn’t mean we have.

All of us, in our better moments, want to change. But when we think of change, we envision a bigger nose or being taller or thinner or younger. We rarely consider inner character change. Since change is unpleasant, we move on. But the change I refer to is not change springing from a new and startling set of facts. It’s painful, time consuming and occupies our entire life. I believe true change results from enduring difficulty for a long time. ¹ Even if we believe the wrong facts, we assume God will correct us but won’t allow anything painful in our lives. The New Testament says otherwise.

If we were perfect as we are, change might be a building up of our personality and adding layers of confidence and pride and well-being. But for one who’s not perfect, change will involve removing as much as adding. Peeling away the confidence and pride and well-being not to make us more receptive to the suggestions of others but more receptive to the suggestions of God. And the best way for this to happen is to endure difficulty.

And by change, I mean change God wants, not change our friends or associates would like to see. It’s only an accident if they like how we change.

An important aspect of my thinking is that I’m a Christian. I don’t mean a cultural Christian, which is different.² A cultural Christian is someone who figures he or she was born that way. A cultural Christian feels secure because of birth. He or she was born into a specific family or clan, and never figure an individual decision was needed. Some Americans are like this. Occasionally on the news I’ll hear of a Christian community in Africa or somewhere that was wiped out by neighboring Muslims or something. Some of those people may have been Christians. But that’s not the kind of Christianity I mean. I mean I’ve chosen to repent of my sins and accept Jesus’s payment for them to have peace with God. My understanding of Christian is that, by definition, you can’t be born into it. Since I view Christianity as a decision, not merely membership in a particular group, the idea of oppressing a Hindu or Muslim, or even a gay person or an atheist, is alien. To me, they are the same as any other sinner who hasn’t yet accepted Christ.

I don’t expect to have the last word on submission in marriage, evolution, the nature of God, and creation. My intention is not to convince or sell, only to communicate.³ My mental energy is focused on understanding the truth and communicating it clearly, not trying to manipulate others into accepting it. Only those with an ax to grind could find the Bible unclear on controversial issues such as family size and abortion. Also, like I said, changes of heart are mostly the work of the Holy Spirit, not merely words. Remember, A man convinced against his will remains unconvinced. So, I’m here to communicate, not convince.

One quality of my thinking is that it’s not the conclusions of a theologian. I came by these ideas from comparing my actions to what the Bible said. Being disconnected from academia helps insulate me from the fear of what they might think. So, while I don’t fear being wrong, I’m excited and engaged trying to understand.

The only way to pretend I have anything to say about this would be to claim that my eight kids or my twenty-three-year marriage mean I’m successful. But the violation of their privacy would cause the opposite of the peace and tranquility I’m talking about. Since I have no worldly qualifications to write about any of this and am not a professor or writer or teacher anywhere, I must depend on the value of what I say to vindicate it. The Bible says the truth is discovered by living, not talking. I’ve never had the luxury of thinking about any spiritual truth I hadn’t first lived.

I don’t claim that a theologian or author or professional can’t learn these things. But they must appear successful to fit into their world. So, while they could learn the value of difficulty, most haven’t. In any case, it’s not mainstream information, not a common attitude. When I’m challenged to explain why I’m qualified to speak about this, I can only do what Jesus did—live the truth that the Christian life is, by its very nature, not credentialed and professional.

We assume, since our culture is secular and commercial, not religious like Jesus’s was, that everything we say and do needs to make money—be marketable or sellable. Our democratic minds assume radical ideas should be watered down so everyone can partake. But I don’t do that. I don’t dumb anything down for the sake of certain readers. Some teachers claim that if you don’t like it, the truth of God isn’t always pleasant. This lets the author pretend people object to his controversial message, rather than its mediocre presentation. But I’ve not watered anything down. Any lack of exactness is due to my own mental limits, not an attempt to make things easy.

I focus on how I should change, not how I might change others or my culture. The Old Testament of the Bible was intended to shape Jewish society. God made rules, and the children of Israel were expected to follow them. At that time, the kingdom of God was literally the physical borders of Israel and the people who lived there. But even within the Old Testament were prophecies that a new leader would come, born and raised in Israel, who would save not just the Israelites but the entire world from their sins.

The Old Testament has a group, corporate feel. It tells how God ordered a society. While it was written to the people of God, they were members of the family for a different reason. He punished the entire nation but rewarded it also. Wealth and power were signs of His presence, a sign that people were behaving properly. The kingdom of God was a physical space—the Holy Land, Israel.

Jesus initiated a new way of reaching God—the New Testament or New Covenant. In the New Covenant, the kingdom of God is within people; it’s no longer the real estate of Israel. Although Jesus’s attitude clearly fulfilled prophecies, his behavior was so strange that most of the Jews rejected him. He lived in the spiritual realm invisible to all humans then and now. He showed none of the warlike tendencies, displayed none of the victory or prosperity Jews associated with God. Jesus continued, throughout his time on earth, to show a peaceful side unfamiliar to the Jews. He ushered in a new era, in which responsibility lies with individuals. Rewards and punishments are felt within each of us. Since anyone under the New Covenant can become a child of God, being Jewish has less meaning. With the Holy Spirit potentially living within each of us, prosperity is possible to those in prison or in poverty. This is as alien now as it was then.

While He doesn’t change, God is like all sentient beings, reserving the rights of all sentient beings. And His relationship to all people in the Old Testament—since it was written to Jews—is to family. No amount of messing up could make them less Jewish. If the Old Testament seems gruff and legalistic, it’s because it was written by a God to His children. He may have occasionally caused the earth to open and swallow them, but he never kicked them out of the family.

If the Old Testament appears legalistic, it’s simply the tone of a patriarch reminding His people