Missing the Mark

     When I was perhaps ten years old, my parents bought me a bow and arrow set. It was one of those simple deals with a fiberglass bow and three wooden arrows with plastic feathers and what I think are called practice tips. Pointy enough to stick into a bale of hay. Dull enough that I couldn't cut my finger. I don't know if they still make them. If lawn darts were dangerous, this thing, "practice" tip or no, certainly was.

     In any case, my friends and I used to spend hours seeing who could come closest to the big yellow bull's-eye in the middle of the paper target. Now, mind you, this was a fairly big yellow circle. After all, the idea was to make kids feel like Robin Hood or William Tell (and no, I don't recall ever trying the whole apple-on-the-head thing. Can you imagine that with a lawn dart!)

     Not surprisingly, we seldom managed to put an arrow in the bull's-eye. In fact, most of the time we not only missed the target, but the entire bale of hay it was fastened to as well. Archery, as anyone who is seriously involved in the sport will tell you, is a lot harder than it looks.

     Which is very likely one reason that the Bible uses archery in its metaphors about our efforts to live the kind of lives God encourages us to.

     Another is that archery, like agriculture, was part of everyday life when the Bible was written. The same stories, written today, would use images of baseball homeruns and trips to the supermarket.

     The word "sin" means to miss the mark. So to paraphrase the statement that "all have sinned", we might say "you guys couldn't hit the broad side of a barn at ten feet with that thing!"

     It's not that we don't want to. We're trying, really we are. But our arms are weak. And that bowstring is tough. We usually let go before we pull it all the way back and the arrow only gets part way to the target. Or if we do get the arrow all the way back, we're so shaky that the broad side of that barn is pretty safe.

     "Missing the mark" is a significantly different way of looking at sin than "something bad that we've done."

     Something-bad-that-we've-done is easier. It can be defined by a set of simple rules. These things are sins, those aren't. And of course, popular media seems to suggest that most of the fun things in life fall into the first category. So avoid all of the fun stuff and you're on your way to Heaven.

     Surprisingly, something-bad-that-we've-done can undermine our incentive to change. If I steal from you or step on your toe, it's too late to change what I've done. All I can do is make restitution or ask for forgiveness. It's up to you to decide whether or not that's good enough. Here’s the key. Either way, the resolution is out of my hands.

     Missing the mark, on the other hand, presents us with a personal challenge. If we wobble when we hold the bow, we can practice how we stand. We can do exercises to strengthen our arms. We can watch expert archers and see what they're doing that we aren't.

     The resolution is up to us.

     Transforming the world is like that. We can look at climate change, famine and all the rest and take the position that we've done something bad and stand around waiting for someone to tell us what happens next.

     Or we can accept God's challenge and keep at it until we hit the bull's-eye of a just and peaceful world.

     I think I'll go find a bale of hay and get started.