Tax Returns

Alex and I are getting a tax return…mostly because we have an AWESOME accountant. No more TurboTax for this family. It got me thinking quite a bit, though. Under any other circumstance, if people were given a generous gift – our sense of graciousness for the gift just drives people to try to do something (anything) to show the giver of the gift that we appreciate it. Clearly, this doesn’t happen with the Internal Revenue Service. After you get your tax return, you don’t think to yourself, “Wow, maybe I’ll bake a cake or brownies for the staff at my local IRS office to thank them for this money.” We don’t do that because, ultimately, we feel that we deserved this money – the government owed it to us. So we don’t feel the desire to give back.

Making an effort to give back to the person who gave you something underserved, I think, is ultimately the external sign of whether a person feels that they got something that they did not deserve. You gave me something I didn’t deserve; I recognize that you didn’t have to do that – so I want to show you that I recognize what you did for me.

This is exactly how I think Christians should be. The Bible says that God hates ‘lukewarm’ Christians. I think it is because those Christians feel that they somehow ‘deserve’ salvation. Since they think they deserve it – they don’t have the intense and natural response to give back to God for His gift to us. When a person comes to the realization that, “I am a sinner, I don’t deserve salvation – but God, through Christ, is giving it to me anyway.” Then, that experience drives the need to do something, anything, to show your Savior that you recognize that you didn’t deserve this ultimate gift.

So when the Bible says that God hates lukewarm Christians…I think about it this way. If I gave you $200 because I knew you had lost $200 and needed to pay some bills. I didn’t have to, but let’s say I just happened to get $200 in my tax return and decide to give it to you. If I give it to you – no strings attached – and you say, “it’s about time, thanks”, and then go and buy a TV with it. I’d be pretty pissed, too. I gave it to you because you were going to get your lights shut off without it. Instead you were unappreciative, and you STILL had your lights cut off b/c you wasted the money.