Not All Locks are Keyed Alike

One of the most common phrases on earth is spoken from wife to husband, "I just don’t understand why you_____(_fill in the blank_)______. But, they’re not alone in this perspective: men don’t understand why the coach called that play, teens don’t understand adults, right handers don’t understand lefthanders, and Christians don’t seem to understand anyone uncloned. And, that’s within the context of a common language. Once you attempt to join hands cross oceans of culture, it’s amazing anyone understands anything different. It all depends on perspective.

Recently, my perspective came crashing to Earth. As I lay there on the ground, my fractured heel not yet asserting itself, I fought to clear the confusion, swirling as stars, from my head. Eight days later, the pieces knit together in a new clarity of understanding. I was painting the bedrooms of my stepson’s new house. He had provided me with the keypad code to the garage door and a key to enter from garage to house. All went well over the weekend; but on Monday morning, as I attempted to open the house in preparation for the arrival of my painting crew, I found the pad unresponsive. "What the…" I tried again and again – nothing. Just on a chance, I tried the key on the front door. It didn’t work.

Now what was I to do? My men were due any minute. Of course, why fool around here? I had a ladder on the roof of my truck, and we had removed the locks from the bedroom windows. It was a simple solution for a boy who had grown from climbing trees to climbing ladders. Up I went, and with one step onto a patch of unsuspected frost, back down I went. I was fortunate to only suffer that fracture.

When my wife and her son heard what had happened, they were astounded. Why didn’t I call, was my wife’s question? A predictable response. Call? Why? It was a no-brainer for me. "Brainless!" Another predictable response. "I just don’t understand…"

Mike’s exasperation was the key point, however. "But, I had the locksmith change the locks. They’re all keyed alike. Why didn’t you just go in through the back door?" The very door I fell next to.

Why indeed? How was I to know that?

"You should have called!"

"Why wouldn’t you think of that?"

Why would I? After all, he had given me the code and told me the key unlocked the connecting door. If I could go in through the back door, why bother with a code? And, by the way. "How come the code didn’t work?"

He had disabled it because too many people knew what it was. But, he was so busy he didn’t get around to telling me. Besides, he just figured I use the key on the back door. Huh?

That’s a perfect example of the flawed perspective which creates confusion in the world. Later, one of my men told me he had been told about the key pad the night before – after I had left. But, he hadn’t gotten there yet; and, besides, he hadn’t been given the revelation of the identical lock-sets. Oh, and the lock on the front door had been accidentally jammed, so my brief experiment had been flawed. I’ll come back to this in a bit. First I want to relate an existential point.

A week later, I limped on my crutches into the paint store. After preliminary recitations on the situation, one of those impromptu discussions morphed into religion. It being common knowledge that my wife is Jewish, I was challenged with, "How can you be comfortable knowing your wife isn’t saved?"

"I don’t think that’s any of my business," was my response.

"But, isn’t it your duty as a Christian to promote Jesus to the lost?"

I was put off by his boldness. Most professing Christians, in this country would probably defend him and his next point. "Don’t you feel differently around people that haven’t accepted Jesus?"

"I threw gas on the fire with, "Generally, I feel more comfortable than with those who profess Christianity, but don’t live it." This took the conversation through a number of points which finally lead to. "But, it’s their free choice whether or not to accept Jesus as Savior."

"No it’s not!"

"What do mean? Everybody has free choice."

"Nope. That’s an illusion. Nobody really has free choice"

My last point left him without an answer. He had expected me to fold with the free choice point. I went on to explain. "See. It’s a matter of perspective. We’re all slaves of society, what we’ve been taught, what we’ve experienced. Things are always so clear on our side of the fence, but the other guy sees it in a different light.

It’s like those locks. I was working from a preconceived notion; that I had the code necessary to enter. I wasn’t aware things had changed. My stepson didn’t see a problem with changing things around, because he knew my key would open the back door. He had not conception I wouldn’t know that. He had always had a locksmith cut his keys to fit all the locks. Meanwhile, I had never had one key for all. I had always done my locks myself. A specific key for each lock. My worker, Bob, who knew that things had changed, still didn’t have the full message; that my key was good in all the locks. I went on the basis of my presumptions, as did my wife’s son. The trouble is, we had differing basis for perception.

It’s been like that in Christianity. Each person gets an incomplete message and attempts to fill in the blanks on the basis of previous experience. Nobody comes to Jesus without baggage of some sort or another. We don’t know how to deal with that, but God does. He’s given us this life to learn how to access perspective through the eyes of our fellow learners. That’ why we suffer, that’ why life gets harder as we age. That’s why no one seems to have the full answer for anything.

We each have a piece of the puzzle. The only way to get the full picture is by cooperating and putting our pieces together. It’s seems hard to understand why someone would take to terrorism, until you get into their head and feel what it’s like to lose your children, or life-mate, or close friends to someone else’s expression of fear. They’re in pain. They’re lashing out; trying to even the score somehow. Trying to force others to see how they hurt. The problem is, it becomes a self feeding chain reaction. That’s where Jesus comes in.

The way of peace is perfectly expressed in what religionists call The Beautitudes. That’s just Latin for blessings. "Blessed are they who ____________ ." It’s a shame all these big words have to get in the way of such simple expressions. It’ like all that legalize lawyers like to use to keep us little guys from understanding what they mean. Only those in the private club are wise to the secret language. Religion tends to be like that as well; but knowing what Jesus really said is like knowing one key opens all the doors.

Just think about some of these things expressed by Jesus. A bunch of people followed him out into the mountains hoping for some answers. They were advised, among other things, "Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy. Think about it.