Have It Your Way?

Have It Your Way?

John R. Petrilli


Sammy Davis Jr. enjoyed a long and stellar career as a vocalist. One of his most famous tunes was titled, “I Did It MY Way”. The song is essentially a declaration of self-made success. McDonald’s Hamburgers joined the bandwagon with their slogan, “Have it YOUR way”! So much of our culture is built upon the premise that we deserve to get what we want, when we want it, and the way we want it. While there’s nothing inherently evil about achievement, there’s a small distance between achieving a goal and allowing that goal to become an idol. Or even worse, becoming deceived into believing that you are the solution to all your problems. These are traits of what one might call man-made religion. The Scriptures are replete with examples of men and women who thought they could attain eternal life on their own terms instead of God’s. Here are just a few examples of folks who tried and continue to try to get to Heaven by doing it their way.

SOME ATTEMPT TO REACH HEAVEN THROUGH THEIR OWN WAY OF SELF-DEIFICATION. Gen. 3:1-4

“ ‘You will not surely die’ the serpent said to the woman. ‘For God knows that when you eat of it [the God-forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil] your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil’ ”.

Hear the snake snarling out his lies. “Oh Eve, you’re so beautiful, so clever, so resourceful! You don’t need any god to make it to the top. After all, YOU are god! All you need to do is open your eyes to who you really are and it’ll all be yours!” She bought the lie, persuaded Adam to join her, and they both fell from their standing of favor with God. The serpent is the all-time pro at self-deification, for that’s how he approached God in eternity past, declaring that he would “will” his way into being god (Isaiah 14:13-14). Self-deification worked in the garden and is still surprisingly effective today. It jettison’s our accountability for our sins and makes us masters of our own universe. If it were only true!

OTHERS TRY TO SECURE SAVING FAVOR WITH GOD THROUGH THEIR OWN WAY OF SELF-MADE RELIGION. Gen. 4:2-7

“Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil … the Lord did not look favorably on Cain’s offering.”

The fall led to the establishment of a sacrificial system of atonement. God had shed the blood of animals in order to clothe His fallen humans (Gen. 3:21). Knowing full well what God had prescribed as an acceptable sacrifice, Cain conveniently ignores this and boldly presents his own version of a non-blood, vegetable or grain offering. Such audacity met with God’s immediate rejection, sending the arrogant Cain into an unchecked fury that left his own brother dead in the fields. Cain did it his way, and the results were nothing short of disastrous.
This approach of manufacturing one’s own type of sacrificial system has been and continues to be repeated around the globe, none of which meets God’s approval or enjoys God’s favor.

SOME SEEK TO ATTAIN PERFECTION THROUGH THEIR OWN WAY OF SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS. Romans 9:31-32

“Israel pursued a law of righteousness but has not attained it, because they pursued it as if it were by works.”

A quick review of the basic tenets of most world religions will reveal good works as the way to heaven, nirvana, or reincarnated perfection. This approach is nothing more than a remix of Cain’s sin of substituting his way for God’s way. With self-righteousness the attraction is very strong because it appeals to human pride. By nature we buy quickly into a system that puts us in the driver’s seat, and that’s what self-righteousness does. It’s all up to us. If we do this or we do that, we can control our own spiritual destiny. If there is a god in this system, he’s laissez fare at best and absentee at worst. If our good deeds outnumber our bad ones, we’re in. The major difficulty with this system is its complete failure to address the real problem of human depravity. According to God, we have a basic nature that is unable to do anything truly good in a redemptive sense. We’re hopelessly crippled by sin, and don’t have the capacity to do a single thing to atone for our sins or save ourselves. The ancient Jews thought this was the way to God and failed (Romans 9:31-32). Likewise, the apostle Paul tried this approach and found it wanting (Philippians 3:3-9). Worst of all, if someone erroneously believes they’ve “arrived” through good works of their own, they can brag about their achievement, robbing God of all the glory He alone deserves for the salvation process (Ephesians 2:8-9). Legalism is probably responsible for sending more people to hell than any one other belief system (Colossians 2:20-22).

MILLIONS THINK THEY CAN DO IT THEIR WAY BY FOLLOWING THE POPULAR PATH OF SELF-IMPROVEMENT.

“It is not within man to understand himself” (Provrebs .

The bookstore shelves are jammed with the latest “do-it-yourself” religions, self-help titles that promise you heaven with just a little bit of personal effort. Adherents to this system believe that if they can accomplish incremental steps of self-improvement, they’ll be well on their way to attaining personal self-actualization and complete fulfillment. Such a methodology is doomed from the very start, as it expects and requires something that’s irreparably broken to fix itself. Not only can we not fix ourselves, we don’t even have the ability to diagnose our problem!

STILL OTHERS BELIEVE THEIR OWN WAY OF PHILOSOPHY WILL GET THEM BY. Colossians 2:8

“See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.”

The names are memorialized by history. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hume, Nietzsche. The list goes on and on of individuals who set forth what they believed to be the truth about life, and in some cases the afterlife.
Paul describes these systems as empty and deceptive. That’s because they are born out of human source and lack any divine authority or credibility. Sinful men cannot possibly come up with the perfect system of belief because they are flawed themselves. Only God can declare what is truth and what is error. And only God can
accurately diagnose the human condition and prescribe the proper cure. The runaway prophet shuts down all such vain pursuits by categorically stating that, “Salvation is of the Lord” (Jonah 2:9).

MANY SEEK ETERNAL LIFE THROUGH THEIR OWN WAY OF SELF-ABASEMENT. Colossians 2:23b

“Such practices have the outward appearance that popularly passes for wisdom, in promoting self-imposed rigor of devotion and delight in self-humiliation and severity of discipline of the body, but they are of no value in checking the indulgence of [humanity’s] lower nature.”

A close sister to self-righteousness is the practice of self-abasement, also known as asceticism. Here the individual tries to work off his sinful deeds by denying himself the comforts and pleasures of this life. But again, the focus is on the person’s deeds, not on the saving grace of God via the cross of Jesus Christ. Some people crawl up stairs covered with glass; others sleep on beds of pins; others have themselves severely beaten with bamboo rods. All these practices place the focus on something one can do to atone for their sins, and all fail miserably at attaining such atonement.

THE WISE PERSON UNDERSTANDS AND ACCEPTS GOD’S WAY OF SALVATION.

We’ve taken a bird’s eye view of the prevailing ideas that man holds to about the way to everlasting life. The one common thread running through each is that of self-determination. Each one features self effort of some kind to get where they want to go. Man’s way is the way of self-ism. But God says that way never has worked, never can work, and never will work. He calls man’s way of salvation a pathway to death (Proverbs 14:12). God pictures those who follow after their own ways as lost sheep (Isaiah 53:6). Jesus warned that following the crowd down their chosen road of selfishness only ends in destruction (Matthew 7:13-14). And He graciously points us to the right pathway to heaven … the cross. Jesus clearly defines that pathway as being through Him, through what HE did for us, not through anything we could ever do for ourselves (John 14:6)! In light of this, we are called upon to dump our own self-invented concepts of salvation, and got on board God’s way (Isaiah 55:7). Then and only then can we see the forest for the trees, and choose correctly.