What a Waste

            What a waste! How many times have you heard the expression? Usually uttered to highlight how an individual has misused their life, talents, finances or similar. It carries the connotation of bad decisions, which I am confident we have all made at some point in our lives. I know when I was coaching sports I would at times have a gifted athlete without a commensurate work ethic. It brought this expression to mind. Yet, in the broader context I wonder if ‘waste’ depends on our perspective.

Let me share some examples. We begin with Eric Liddell. From a cultural perspective he wasted his life. One hundred years ago at the Paris Olympics ago he refused to run the 100 M, his best race, because the heats took place on Sunday and he wasn’t going to compete on the Lord’s Day. He instead ran the 400 M and won Olympic gold. The beginning of a storied athletic career? No. In 1925 he returned to China where he had been born to missionary parents. Eric went as a missionary; he died there in 1945 in a Japanese internment camp. Popular culture may have viewed his life as wasted; heaven keeps a different accounting.

The 1981 movie Chariots of Fire chronicles the events surrounding the Olympics. I saw the film around the time it came out. I wasn’t walking the Lord at the time but a line from the film was deeply impressed upon me. In the movie his sister was critical of his running and asked if he should be running or devoting his life to God. Eric responded with the now famous quote, “God made me for a purpose. God made me fast and when I run I feel His pleasure.” In researching it there is debate about whether the line from the movie is an actual quote from Liddell but he certainly embodied it. The scene is not true as his sister was a child on the mission field in China with their parents and when Eric won at the Olympics they didn’t know for months until they received a letter. What is known of Liddell is that he did say a less famous quote, “God made me for China.”

Now to a couple of scriptural examples, Mary and Judas, beginning with Judas, one of the twelve.

¹ And when He had called His twelve disciples to Him, He gave them power over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease. Matthew 10:1 (NKJV)

Judas was given the same power as the rest, the word here is actually exousia, generally translated as authority, which is how the ESV translates it. Nothing in scriptures suggests that Judas failed to walk in these same demonstrations of power and authority as the rest of the twelve. Even so, he didn’t end well. Judas betrayed Jesus (Matthew 26) and was so embittered that the doorway to his heart was open and Satan entered him.

³ Then Satan entered Judas, surnamed Iscariot, who was numbered among the twelve. ⁴ So he went his way and conferred with the chief priests and captains, how he might betray Him to them. Luke 22:3–4 (NKJV)

Judas eventually took his own life (Matthew 27:5). What a waste.

As an addition there are two other things about Judas that speak not to Judas but to Jesus’ character. We see them in the verses below.

⁶⁴ But there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who would betray Him. John 6:64 (NKJV)

¹² While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Your name. Those whom You gave Me I have kept; and none of them is lost except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. John 17:12 (NKJV)

Jesus knew from the beginning that Judas would betray Him and would be revealed as the ‘son of perdition’ yet still invested in Judas. A waste from the perspective of some, to others a revelation of Jesus heart to invest and give expecting nothing in return.

            Now to Mary. I have written before how I am convinced that Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalene are the same person (see the link below to a previous blog post). I am not the first one to draw this conclusion from a study of the scriptures as I have researched it in the past and others have come to the same conclusion at various times in church history.

            Given that Mary was an immoral woman and tormented by seven demons (Luke 7:36-8:2) the early part of her life was wasted, in a worldly way. The latter part of her life was very different. The story of her love for Jesus and willing to waste all on Him is well known (John 12:1-8). The question before us is best summarized by something I heard Jack Deere say in a sermon many years ago, he spoke about Mary and said something like, “We will all waste our lives on something. Why not Jesus?” http://wisdomfromtheword.ca/intimacy-opportunities-part-2/