Bad Default Settings

Bad Default Settings

One thing that brings me comfort in a digital world that is moving faster than my ability to keep up is the lifeboat of factory default settings.

You totally screw up your new Iphone? Just return it to factory default settings and start over.
Airpods won't connect? Factory default settings.
Wife isn't seeing things the way you are? Factory default settings.

Oh wait, that's not the way it works. (Unless you live in Stepford)

But seriously wouldn't it be nice if we could fix our human problems the same way we fix of technology problems.

What if every morning we woke up with new factory default settings and all the baggage, sin, and mistakes from the day before were gone?

Yeah...that's not happening. In fact, it's the opposite.

I was sitting in a small group with some men that are much wiser than myself and one of them said "My problem is that I have bad default settings."

He was bringing attention to the daily struggle he has to make sure he is intentional in his Christian living, because left to his own natural sensibilities he lives outside God's way.

Now this sounds more like reality.

I know it's true because I was just at a gymnastics facility with a foam pit and about one hundred elementary school kids playing around it. At first I was just assisting my daughter getting in and out of the pit, but then I had this thought, "Wouldn't it be funny if I started pushing random strangers kids into the foam pit?"

So I tried it...and it was awesome. The shock on the kids faces when a middle aged man surprisingly chucked them into the foam pit was everything my gentle malevolence was trying to achieve. What could cause me to act in such a way?

Bad default settings.

It's what we call sin in the Christian tradition. It's not just something we do, it's a part of our nature. If we aren't fighting it every day, we will fall back to it with almost no effort.

The Apostle Paul said it this way in the letter to the Romans:
"For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature."

Every day is a battle, a mountain to climb, a cross to bear, whatever metaphor gets the point across to you; you have to work for it.

Because we have bad default settings.
Thank God we have a savior in Jesus.

A savior who's grace leads us into better, more compassionate wholeness, that reorients our default settings into something and someone who can love and serve the world around us.

Get up and get your settings right with Christ, he's got something for you today.