This post is from a larger series under the cat­e­gory Friend to Jesus. It is a detailed explo­ration of the three stages of faith: the believer, the ser­vant and the friend of God. If you want to start at the begin­ning, it begins with the post How Look­ing at a Car­avag­gio Paint­ing Can Change Your Life and then con­tin­ues chronologically.

He says one thing, but he does another; it seems to me to be com­mon sense to look at what is done, and not to what is said. Billy Martin

The sacred page is not meant to be the end, but only the means toward the end, which is know­ing God him­self. A. W. Tozer

Going back to look­ing at the life of Peter that we read in the gospels, it can teach us a lot. This is where he was living—he was liv­ing life bound by conventions—what is good and proper. Those caught in the stage of being just a ser­vant have a mech­a­nism which allows them to for­get that they are bro­ken peo­ple. To make them­selves feel good about them­selves, they put in place what psy­chol­o­gists call cop­ing mech­a­nisms. Cop­ing mech­a­nisms can be described as the dif­fer­ent ways in which a per­son attempts to han­dle stress and dif­fi­culty in their lives. Some­times these mech­a­nisms we use can be uncon­sciously moti­vated, learned behav­iors, or most often, skills we mas­ter in order to reduce stress or other intense emo­tions like guilt or depres­sion. It’s impor­tant to note that some­times cop­ing mech­a­nisms are actu­ally healthy ways in deal­ing with our prob­lems and at other times, very detri­men­tal. A com­mon exam­ple of a cop­ing mech­a­nism would be some­one who uses alco­hol or sex to alle­vi­ate pain in their life. Obvi­ously, both of these are neg­a­tive cop­ing mech­a­nisms. Inter­est­ingly, one can use dif­fer­ent aspects of their reli­gion to deal with inter­nal pain no dif­fer­ent than a bot­tle of vodka or a one-night stand. The Bible, in this case, can actu­ally become one of those cop­ing mech­a­nisms. Again, even though in the­ory, the per­son caught in this ser­vant stage of faith knows that they can­not earn God’s approval, deep down, they psy­cho­log­i­cally behave as if they can. This may come in the fash­ion of many dif­fer­ent types of cop­ing mech­a­nisms which are dis­ci­plines of their faith. Some oth­ers might be: pray­ing reg­u­larly, going to church, serv­ing in some capac­ity, etc. Again, each of these dis­ci­plines are good in them­selves, but the per­son stuck in the ser­vant stage of faith uses them to tem­porar­ily alle­vi­ate pain of some kind, to feel good about them­selves, and to try to cre­ate the allu­sion that God is pleased with them because they do these things. These types of aspects are chief to their rela­tion­ship with God and it keeps the whole house of cards from falling. A lit­tle bit later we will dis­cuss another dynamic in what this cycle looks like in a bit more detail.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for spir­i­tual dis­ci­plines and guide­lines on one level. And of course, the Bible is full of direc­tion and prac­ti­cal guid­ance for our lives. Fran­cis Scha­ef­fer says this: Doc­tri­nal right­ness is impor­tant, but only as a start­ing point to go on into a liv­ing relationship—and not as an end in itself. You see these rules that “ser­vants” put together to accom­plish the task of feel­ing good about them­selves and exclud­ing oth­ers are really sim­plis­tic, and on some level not a Chris­t­ian way of doing things at all. So with this, the Bible becomes the arbiter for these rules and the very man­ual that needs to be fol­lowed and strictly obeyed. For some Chris­tians, the Bible then becomes an idol. What do I mean by that?

Before I begin by dis­cussing that ques­tion, I need to declare that I firmly believe that the Bible is one of the cor­ner­stones of our faith. With­out it, we would not have the direc­tion that we so des­per­ately need in our lives and this is beau­ti­fully brought out in the story of Josiah that we find in its pages (2 Kings 22:1–23:30 and 2 Chron­i­cles 34:1–35:27). Amaz­ingly, Josiah became king when he was only eight years old. In con­trast to other kings before him, the Bible is clear in declar­ing right from the start that “He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord.” Some years later, when Josiah was in his mid-twenties an amaz­ing thing occurred to him and to the nation of Judah. Up to this point, ear­lier kings had betrayed their faith in God and did many wicked things in how they lived their lives. Josiah was dif­fer­ent and he tried to restore his rela­tion­ship with God. The remark­able part of his story is that up to this point, the Scrip­tures had been lit­er­ally lost. Can you imag­ine that— to not in any way shape or form to have the Bible to rely on and guide you? What would our lives look like today if this hap­pened to us? Up to this point, Josiah was attempt­ing to fol­low God, but he was doing it in the dark.

So back to the story. Not until Josiah requested that the tem­ple be repaired does one of the priests mirac­u­lously find the lost Book. Even though up to this point, Josiah and the nation had been doing their best in fol­low­ing the com­mands of God, not until they re-discovered the Book of the Law did they fully real­ize how mis­led they were liv­ing. In the Old Tes­ta­ment, we read this:

When the king heard what was writ­ten in the book, God’s Rev­e­la­tion, he ripped his robes in dismay…He ordered them all: “Go and pray to God for me and for this people—for all Judah! Find out what we must do in response to what is writ­ten in this book that has just been found! God’s anger must be burn­ing furi­ously against us—our ances­tors haven’t obeyed a thing writ­ten in this book, fol­lowed none of the instruc­tions directed to us.” (2 Kings 22:11–13)

Aston­ish­ingly, Josiah in his read­ing of these sacred words real­izes they have not been keep­ing to the sto­ries and com­mands of the Scrip­ture. This story beau­ti­fully illus­trates the vital nature of hav­ing the Bible in our lives and being able to hear its direc­tion for how we are to live. With­out a doubt, the Bible is indis­pens­able and des­per­ately needed in our lives. If we ever lose it in our lives, we will be lost.

WHEN THE BIBLE BECOMES A WEAPON

How­ever, for some, the Bible becomes an instru­ment in which a per­son can first “use” it against them­selves, and then even­tu­ally “use” it against oth­ers. The end goal then of read­ing the Bible is that the per­son who knows the most is the holi­est. The Bible then becomes a weapon. Have you ever heard the phrase “knowl­edge is power?” In this case, this is a power that is cor­rupted. When one mis­reads the truth of the Bible, they inevitably cor­rupt them­selves and oth­ers. What do I mean by all this? How does a per­son “use” the Bible against them­selves and oth­ers in an unhealthy way?

The Bible is not a John Grisham novel. By no means is it an easy read. It is def­i­nitely not a book you can just flip through like you would a mag­a­zine. It takes great thought and prayer to be able to under­stand its truth (2 Tim­o­thy 2:15). The Bible is a book you must ded­i­cate your whole life to, each and every day. The Bible is so rich and vital that you must cre­ate space in your life daily to under­stand what it is try­ing to say to you. You can­not always just open up the Scrip­tures and pick a verse and apply it to your life. How you view God; what you know about the his­tor­i­cal con­text of the pas­sage; how you apply that pas­sage to other pas­sages in the Bible—all of this impacts how you can inter­pret a pas­sage in the Scrip­tures. Let me give you an exam­ple in terms of how a per­son might read the Bible and apply their own mis­con­cep­tions of who God is. Lis­ten to this verse:

There­fore I will make the heav­ens trem­ble; and the earth will shake from its place
at the wrath of the LORD Almighty, in the day of his burn­ing anger. (Isa­iah 13:13)

When read­ing a pas­sage like this, if a per­son already asso­ciates God as their dad grow­ing up—the guy who was always yelling and scream­ing; who phys­i­cally abused them; who was never around—how do you think they will asso­ciate God when read­ing a pas­sage like this? And if they do it with this pas­sage, they will do it with count­less oth­ers. And if they do it with count­less other pas­sages, the God who they envi­sion is not the God who is mer­ci­ful, for­giv­ing, lov­ing. The very Per­son who they imag­ine God to be, the cen­tral char­ac­ter of the Bible then becomes this crooked Per­son who with each page they turn, they begin to ques­tion why they believe in him in the first place. Once a per­son does this, the whole of the Bible then is impos­si­ble to read because the per­son does not under­stand the cen­tral truths of who God is: mer­ci­ful, for­giv­ing, lov­ing. Is God other things like just and some­times gets very angry and is jeal­ous for us? Absolutely. But he is not the God who is always angry. Deep down, for some this is how they view God. He is never happy and always mop­ing around, and at any moment about to blow a gas­ket. Those who are caught here, only see the God you can never please. And this is a very dan­ger­ous place to be. This is why that the per­son who does not gen­uinely know grace should prob­a­bly be very care­ful in read­ing the Bible. Too often, they will mis­read it because of their pre­dis­po­si­tions and their past.

 This post is from a larger series under the cat­e­gory Friend to Jesus. It is a detailed explo­ration of the three stages of faith: the believer, the ser­vant and the friend of God. If you want to start at the begin­ning, it begins with the post How Look­ing at a Car­avag­gio Paint­ing Can Change Your Life and then con­tin­ues chronologically.

Spir­i­tual growth requires the acknowl­edg­ment of one’s own need to grow. If we can­not make that acknowl­edg­ment, we have no option except to attempt to erad­i­cate the evi­dence of our imper­fec­tion. M. Scott Peck

When you work with peo­ple through coun­sel­ing, you get this unique gift and respon­si­bil­ity in that you get to know peo­ple at a deep level. It’s what I love about my job. That’s exactly what I did 24–7 and in a way, I have been able to learn a lot about a lot of dif­fer­ent peo­ple. Through these expe­ri­ences, I have learned one thing very clearly, we are sin­ners; we all are tremen­dously fallen cre­ations. You see, through coun­sel­ing I have had the priv­i­lege to see all of a person’s quirks, their mis­giv­ings, their dis­or­dered per­son­al­i­ties. I get to hear it all and on the one hand, that is a ben­e­fit of being a coun­selor, but on the other, if you aren’t care­ful in my work, it can make you a bit jaded. It’s like being a police offi­cer, doc­tor or nurse; you get to see the harsh and hard side of life. You know that part of you that slows to see a car col­li­sion; I would essen­tially slow down every day and get to see these emo­tional, spir­i­tual and rela­tional acci­dents every day. I have espe­cially seen this dynamic of being open and vul­ner­a­ble when I meet with cou­ples whose mar­riages are falling apart. The wife or hus­band feels slighted and so they come in and lay it all on the line. In some cases, they totally let out all the dark­ness about the other per­son and you just kind of sit there and go, Wow, now that’s more infor­ma­tion then I needed. Often, when a per­son gets into coun­sel­ing its no holds barred and they will share any­thing and every­thing with you.

So with that, let’s ask that impor­tant ques­tion again—are you bro­ken? And if so, how do you observe this? How do you deal with that truth? I usu­ally find this at work—people either view them­selves as com­pletely with­out any fault or the worst per­son in the world with­out much of any hope. With a lot of us, there is no mid­dle ground. I am either a saint. Or I am a sin­ner. For myself, gen­uinely in my heart, I some­times don’t see my sin so well and my bro­ken­ness is not always evi­dent in my own eyes. In some ways, it is eas­ier for me to see my good­ness than my sin. In my busi­ness, we call that a blind-spot. How­ever, with other peo­ple I meet, they only see them­selves as destruc­tive, mean and a wreck. Some­times, it can be dif­fi­cult to stay in that mid­dle ground that I am both a saint and a sinner.

Again, going back to when I have done mar­riage coun­sel­ing, this is the great dan­ger. One part­ner is try­ing to change the other, because they gen­uinely believe the entire prob­lem in the mar­riage lies in their partner’s court. The prob­lems and the fail­ing mar­riage has lit­tle to do with them per­son­ally. When­ever I have coun­seled a cou­ple like this, essen­tially each per­son is say­ing, Kelly, if you can get this jerk to change, our mar­riage will finally be mov­ing in the right direction.

Yet some­times when I am in this sit­u­a­tion, if I were to chal­lenge this per­son and ask them where they need to per­son­ally change, they most likely will just look back at me with a blank face. Me?! You have to be kid­ding. I’m not the prob­lem! She is! Peo­ple have a hard time real­iz­ing they are bro­ken; that they are the prob­lem. And when they do fail in real-time—meaning they were caught lying or threw the plate across the room or cheated the wait­ress out of her tip—they either beat them­selves up beyond belief or sim­ply ratio­nal­ize the facts at hand that they have not done some­thing wrong. How do I know about this dynamic? Because, I do it all the time. Why? Because just like you, I am bro­ken as well and actu­ally have gained a great degree of exper­tise at fail­ing in my life. Again, as I said ear­lier, just like Paul, you and I are the worst of sin­ners (1 Tim­o­thy 1:15–16).

WHEN SOMEONE POINTS OUT YOUR WORST

Some years ago I went through this denial stuff and it was pointed out to me in a rather hon­est man­ner. Every Wednes­day night, I would play bad­minton with a bunch of peo­ple. I love the game, because it’s fast and yet at the same time almost any­one can pick up the game quickly. When I play any­thing, whether its bad­minton or a board game, I can become com­pet­i­tive. Some­times, I almost don’t know I’m being aggres­sive. Some­times, I don’t take other people’s feel­ings into account, espe­cially if I am play­ing a team sport. I can get grumpy; I can be chal­leng­ing; I can be too author­i­tar­ian. One night, I was play­ing with a friend of a friend. We were get­ting beat pretty badly, pri­mar­ily because we were not play­ing very well as a team. Play­ing dou­bles in ten­nis or bad­minton can be a chal­lenge if you don’t know exactly what the other per­son is doing. Dur­ing the game, I was try­ing to tell this per­son who was new to the game where he needed to be on the court and where he needed to posi­tion him­self. If we missed the point, I imme­di­ately turned to him and men­tioned what went wrong. But mid­way through the game, we lost another point and I men­tioned that he needed to go to the net on the play. He barked at me that he knew how to play and I didn’t need to give him advice. At first I thought he was jok­ing, but then he went on and basi­cally said that I was being a jerk. He was harsh, man! I tried to apol­o­gize in a round­about way, which really wasn’t an apol­ogy at all and for the rest of the night we basi­cally stayed to our own cor­ners. As I drove home that night, I was wrestling with the inci­dent. I was play­ing around with it in my mind, going over what I had done and what he had said. Basi­cally, I just felt he was the jerk and tak­ing the sit­u­a­tion way too seri­ously. The whole inci­dent in my mind was that it was his fault—that jerk!

About a mile from home, a still small voice spoke to me and it sim­ply said this, Kelly, you were the jerk… and often when you play bad­minton you are way too hard on peo­ple and way too com­pet­i­tive. Finally, some­one called you out. You were the one at fault. And you didn’t like that, did you? The words were the voice of God or what some call our con­science. You know what, I didn’t want to hear that. It was his fault—he was the one who spoke with vehe­mence. But guess what, God was call­ing out for me to look at my own sin. He wanted me to take own­er­ship of myself. But I wanted to deny it, and when that didn’t work, I tried to ratio­nal­ize why I was the way I was. On the way home I came up with some pretty sound reasons:

• You should always do things with excellence.
• Even though win­ning isn’t the most impor­tant thing, you should always try to play your best and as a team.
• I was the one who has been play­ing bad­minton longer; this guy should have been open to learn­ing from me and learn to take a lit­tle criticism.

But God had some­thing else in store; he wanted to con­front me about my sin. I had to own my stuff and let that guy own what he had to own. And this is why he had to deal with this bro­ken­ness in me; this sin of con­trol and pride didn’t just come up on Wednes­day night’s play­ing bad­minton. These behav­iors were a fairly com­mon occur­rence for me and hap­pen all the time: with Julie, with my sons, at work, etc. On that drive home, God was see­ing if I would admit what was obvious—that I needed to change in these areas of my life. It took awhile, but by time I reached for the garage door opener when I drove into our drive, I finally came clean and slowly began to look in the mirror.

It is very painful admit­ting that we are messed up, because some­one else usu­ally points these kinds of things out to us (e.g., your spouse, your kids, a co-worker, etc.). You should never be sur­prised that you make poor judg­ments and fail. I some­times see this when I am coun­sel­ing par­ents of young tod­dlers or chil­dren. Some­times they are sur­prised that their kid is doing awful things like hit­ting another kid at school or talk­ing back to them. Once the child gets older and is mov­ing into ado­les­cence, the par­ents begin to blame them­selves. What did we do wrong? What could we have done dif­fer­ently? Why is she act­ing like this? I never raised him to be like this? All of this spells out how much free will we have as indi­vid­u­als. For exam­ple, no, your par­ents prob­a­bly never sat down with you and taught you how to lie. Okay now, son, if you want to learn how to lie, here are some point­ers. First, always tell a lie with a straight face. It works bet­ter that way. Sec­ond, make sure you remem­ber your lie or oth­er­wise you might actu­ally tell the truth and mess the whole thing up. And finally, son, if you are going to become a really good liar, you have to learn how to not feel bad that you are deceiv­ing and manip­u­lat­ing people.

This whole con­cept is very dif­fi­cult for those stuck in the ser­vant stage of faith to under­stand. On prin­ci­ple and on paper, they will acknowl­edge that they are bro­ken. That is a given, but in the end, this becomes sim­ply the­o­log­i­cal cor­rect­ness: Jesus died for me, a sin­ner. Again, this sort of per­son knows it in their head, but not their heart. And this boils down to one truth.  There is one very dra­matic way you can tell if per­haps you or some­one else has been a “ser­vant” too long as it relates to all of this:

• You never say you are sorry.
• You rarely say that you are wrong.
• You are rarely, if ever, the one at fault.

This is espe­cially true in our most inti­mate of rela­tion­ships, with our wives or hus­bands, with our chil­dren, with those clos­est to us. Ask your­self that one ques­tion, how often do you find your­self say­ing you are sorry and really mean­ing it? If you as a per­son are uncom­fort­able with those words, there’s a pretty good chance you are stuck in your faith as well. Those who have gen­uine friend­ship with Jesus are okay at being wrong, they are okay with step­ping up and say­ing they are sorry. The per­son stuck in the ser­vant stage of faith is not. They never say they are sorry; they are rarely in the wrong and if they are it is because of minor infrac­tions. If a per­son is never apol­o­giz­ing in their life, they are liv­ing as if the cross meant noth­ing to them. One way to think about this is that it’s easy say­ing you are sorry to God; how easy is it for you speak those words to those who are clos­est to you? Do you ever? Is it a once a year occur­rence and even then the con­ver­sa­tion ends by you blam­ing the other per­son for the wrong? I’m sorry for call­ing you that name, BUT you shouldn’t have made me mad! That is no apology—that is you just blam­ing some­one for your own sin pat­terns. Here is an exer­cise, when was the last time you said you were sorry to your hus­band or wife? Your son or daugh­ter? Your good friend? If you can’t remem­ber, some­thing isn’t quite right.

 This post is from a larger series under the cat­e­gory Friend to Jesus. It is a detailed explo­ration of the three stages of faith: the believer, the ser­vant and the friend of God. If you want to start at the begin­ning, it begins with the post How Look­ing at a Car­avag­gio Paint­ing Can Change Your Life and then con­tin­ues chronologically.

We have been far too tol­er­ant of pain and suf­fer­ing when it isn’t our own. We are far bet­ter at fix­ing parts than peo­ple, far bet­ter at sav­ing souls than com­fort­ing sin­ners, far bet­ter at killing than car­ry­ing for the wounded. Thomas Lynch

We all need a mis­sion in life. God has given each of us a pur­pose which is grand and should be a focal part of our life. How­ever, for some, the life­work of being a Chris­t­ian can go awry and turn into some­thing that it should not. Some­times “being a Chris­t­ian and serv­ing the Lord” can actu­ally become an idol. Some­times the causes we become involved in can actu­ally lead us into doing things that don’t model any­thing that Jesus taught or exemplified.

I’ll give you an extreme exam­ple of a “Chris­t­ian group” who is doing it for the cause, but are miss­ing the point entirely. Have you heard of the West­boro Bap­tist Church? This group epit­o­mizes what it means to be a ser­vant of Jesus way too long. They are a church (if you could call them that) known for its extreme stance against homo­sex­u­al­ity and its protest activ­i­ties, which include pick­et­ing funer­als of those they believe are in the wrong in some way. You may have seen them on tele­vi­sion or the inter­net; they are the group that has the signs that say God Hates Fags. Jon Stew­art had an inter­est­ing com­ment about them, “The West­boro Bap­tist Church is no more a church than Church’s Fried Chicken is a church.” This group has a cause. This group is very pas­sion­ate about its cause. How­ever, its cause is also extremely mis­guided and hate­ful. In many ways, this group epit­o­mizes the Phar­isees of our day.  I like what F. Scott Peck, the Chris­t­ian psy­chol­o­gist said about such folks, while it may seem harsh, there is truth in his words about the dan­ger of liv­ing for a cause and then let­ting it go awry:

Since they must deny their own bad­ness, they must per­ceive oth­ers as bad. They project their own evil onto the world. The evil attack oth­ers instead of fac­ing their own fail­ures. Strangely enough, evil peo­ple are often destruc­tive because they are attempt­ing to destroy evil. The prob­lem is that they mis­place the locus of the evil. Instead of destroy­ing oth­ers they should be destroy­ing the sick­ness within themselves.

In some ways, it’s easy to be zeal­ous. Whether its ani­mal rights, a polit­i­cal agenda, or a reli­gion, being obses­sive in this sense sim­ply means you need to be really pas­sion­ate about your ide­ol­ogy. Any­body can do that and peo­ple become fanat­i­cal about dif­fer­ent issues for count­less reasons.

• Peo­ple become zeal­ous for a cause because of hatred.
• Peo­ple become zeal­ous for a cause because of a self­ish motivation.
• Peo­ple become zeal­ous for a cause because of boredom.
• Peo­ple become zeal­ous for a cause because they feel they need a call­ing in their life.
• Peo­ple become zeal­ous for a cause because of ignorance.
• Peo­ple become zeal­ous for a cause because of loneliness.

As an exam­ple of this, I remem­ber some years ago, a good friend had reached out to a guy who was in prison and he would help him lead a Bible study for some other inmates. This per­son who had been in prison for about three years had become a Chris­t­ian since his incar­cer­a­tion and he had become very pas­sion­ate about his faith. He loved shar­ing it with oth­ers; he loved study­ing the Bible; he wanted to always do the right thing. He was the ideal Chris­t­ian or so every­one thought.

How­ever, a cou­ple of years later he got out of prison. Once he was released, he lost his zeal and pas­sion for his faith, and instead placed that into things like motor­cy­cles and women. He sim­ply did this—he changed his pas­sion from Jesus to these things. From the above list of rea­sons why peo­ple become pas­sion­ate about a cause, some of the likely rea­sons he was so pas­sion­ate about being a Chris­t­ian was because he had self­ish moti­va­tions, the lone­li­ness of prison life, or sim­ply because of bore­dom. Sadly, once he got out of prison, he sim­ply trans­ferred or changed his passions.

An exam­ple of this that we know from Scrip­ture is through the story of Mary and Martha. This is how the story reads: 

As Jesus and his dis­ci­ples were on their way, he came to a vil­lage where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sis­ter called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet lis­ten­ing to what he said. But Martha was dis­tracted by all the prepa­ra­tions that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sis­ter has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

 “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are wor­ried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has cho­sen what is bet­ter, and it will not be taken away from her.”

I love that line Jesus shares with Martha—“you are wor­ried and upset about many things.” Isn’t that pre­cisely what the West­boro Bap­tist Church is all about. They are wor­ried that the great United States of Amer­ica is going to hell in a hand bas­ket. And they know who the cul­prits are, don’t they—it’s gay peo­ple! And this is who they picket with their God Hates Fags plac­ards. Because of this, those caught in the ser­vant stage of faith sim­ply have not learned how to do a very impor­tant thing. Jesus alludes to it in the pas­sage above. They don’t know how to rest. Rest from their com­pul­sion that they must always be doing something.

Again, obvi­ously serv­ing is a key com­po­nent of being a fol­lower of Jesus. Giv­ing back to some­one else in what­ever capac­ity is vital in being a per­son of faith. But it is not who we are; it is just some­thing we do in our grate­ful­ness to God for what he has done for us. I always tell my sons that because our fam­ily has been blessed in many ways, we need to share these good things with oth­ers. It is the Chris­t­ian way. But again, it is not who we are. We should never base our iden­tity off our creeds, con­vic­tions or causes. First and fore­most, we are God’s child, and not his employee or hired hand. We should never feel that we are oblig­ated to do some­thing for God. Those who do that get caught in serv­ing the cause and not their Maker.

To drive home this point, you have to go rent a movie. Have you ever seen the movie The Great San­tini? It is a tremen­dous film on so many dif­fer­ent lev­els. Robert Duvall plays a hard-nosed mil­i­tary pilot; in some ways he’s Peter incar­nate. Duvall is a man who is dri­ven and every­thing has to be just right. He deeply desires that his wife and kids have the good life. How­ever, he is also a man with a dark­ness about him. At dif­fer­ent times in the film you see him ver­bally and phys­i­cally assault­ing his wife and his kids in epic pro­por­tions. He, in many ways, has all the right motives, but gets it entirely wrong as a father and hus­band. The film gives us a great per­spec­tive of what some­one looks like when they have been a ser­vant way too long. It is a great movie which depicts a man who loves his fam­ily, but in real­ity doesn’t really love his fam­ily at all, because he is too pas­sion­ate about being the per­fect dad. In Duvall’s char­ac­ter, he cap­tures who Peter was at one time in his life, before Jesus dra­mat­i­cally teaches him about grace. We will get to that story soon.