The 2012 election in the United States of America has come and gone. President Barack Hussein Obama was re-elected to a second term. That is unlikely to be contested, to my knowledge (as a total amateur citizen in the realm of law and politics), because former Governor Romney already conceded on Election Night. To me, that was a bigger shock and disappointment - or at least it made the election result a bigger one - than just the fact of Obama's having more electoral votes. It is probably better that Mr. Romney has said he will not seek the office again because, after much promotion as the man who would lead us through hard fights to bring business back to America and undo Obamacare, he conceded the same night. If this is a measure of how he leads, perhaps it is better we saw it this way. It is true, however, that President Obama appeared to have won too many - namely all - of the "battleground states", especially Ohio, for any amount of challenging and recounting to undo the final result. Court challenges are not free and most certainly neither are the lawyers who make them. After record-setting campaign expenditures on both sides, perhaps this did in one way reflect well on Mr. Romney - unlike Obama, he didn't believe that the answer to spending huge sums with a poor result, (which expresses President Obama's "stimulus" efforts as well), was spending more. I was seriously unhappy and depressed and angry on Tuesday night after Romney conceded. It was a serious test of a big part of my salvation testimony: that once I was saved, the Holy Spirit created a spiritual "floor" through which moods of depression were unable to pull me further downward. (Remember, I'm ethnically Scandinavian - partly Swedish on one side and partly Norwegian on the other. We know about depression.) That was still true. The Holy Spirit and Jesus did not fail me. I managed to make a transition to realizing what so many others also began expressing on Facebook: that no matter who sits in the Oval Office, Jesus Christ is still seated in Heaven at the right hand of God the Father and he is bigger than any President. Not long afterward, someone I know shared on Facebook a post by Philip VanderWindt of "Route 66", a Christian ministry. He seemed to think it was very shallow of people to start posting things after the election that few had been saying before it. He was referring to the many prolific posts about, "Jesus is still King," etc. He also was referring to what he saw as a great lack of believing in prayer for authorities, which people should have been doing all along. While I myself was resoundingly innocent of that, having been trying for years to promote the monthly prayer calendar idea which has now become "PrayForAuthorities USA", the lack of success I had had for years in creating any interest in the concept hardly disproved that argument. Please don't think that I'm angry at, nor bitterly critical of, Mr. VanderWindt. I am not fully in agreement. We need to move forward as Christians and as conservatives. We need to restore our joy in Christ's salvation. We need to remind those around us that this really is not our home, that we are "strangers and pilgrims" in this world, although we may be privileged to have American citizenship and the right to vote. In the Bible, King David returned with his mighty men to the Philistine city of Ziklag where they had been living to find it destroyed, with their wives and children gone. David's soldiers were angry, depressed and grieved. Some wanted to stone their leader, (the era's equivalent of a firing squad). David - already anointed King by Samuel over Saul's vicious opposition - "strengthened himself in the Lord his God." He proceeded to track down the band of Amalekites who had sacked Ziklag - with God's help and blessing - and recover their families, including his own, plus a lot of their worldly possessions as well. What began to happen on Facebook in the aftermath of a critical battle we seemed to have lost is, to my mind, the evidence of the Holy Spirit working to mend and heal many believers' hearts and souls. It is certainly better to post, "like" and "share" that the Lord Jesus Christ is King than to angrily stomp further into the basement of vicious invective against our President. We have the right to be openly critical of him and what he does. That is given to us by our Constitution and thousands of soldiers have given their lives to preserve it. As Christians, we must still remember what James says about the tongue being "set on fire by hell" and a potent creator of trouble. How we say things is still important. Extremely important. It's part of our testimony. I am extremely happy to see post-election reminders on Facebook of Jesus still being King. Maybe some portion of those posting really do need to fill in some more solid spiritual growth behind their external professions of faith. It was still a much better response to our "Ziklag" than some other posts by dejected conservatives that I've seen. Way to go, people.
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We should always interpret and apply individual portions of Scripture in light of the immediate context - the Scripture surrounding them - and in light of the overall revelation of Scripture. "The whole counsel of God," it has often been called. Otherwise we can miss some of the deeper truths. Consider Jesus Christ's famous "Sermon on the Mount" in chapter 5 of Matthew's Gospel, specifically [5:43-48]. Jesus' instructions are hard to misunderstand in their immediate context. By and large, I think few people do. "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust." However, like many things Jesus said, this has more than one dimension to it. In His own later prophecy in Matthew chapter 25, concerning His giving of judgment at the end of human history, He made clear that He identifies personally with His children and with how each of us has been treated. Both to the righteous, (in a positive sense), and the condemned, (negatively), Jesus says he will tell everyone that what they did or failed to do to "one of the least of these my brethren," [verse 40 and verse 45], they did or failed to do to Him. In his second letter to Thessalonica, the Apostle Paul minced no words. The Christian church in that city was undergoing harassment and persecution by its enemies. Some of the Christians and those persecuting them had once been members of the same synagogue, (see Acts 17). When Paul first reasoned with the Thessalonian Jews from the Scriptures, some of them believed in Jesus as Messiah. They were followed by "a great multitude of the devout Greeks, and not a few of the leading women," (verse 4). Unfortunately, this made the rest of the synagogue envious. Until then, these "devout Greeks" were those who had been following them. This short little homely guy, Paul, showed up and after only three weeks they were following him instead. The persecution that began then probably continued after Paul's new Christian friends sent him away by night. Second Thessalonians is a short letter. It is three chapters long and in my New Testament it only covers about 2-2/3 pages. By the third sentence, Paul is already telling them, "...Since it is a righteous thing with God to repay with tribulation those who trouble you." (v.6). He speaks of Christ appearing from heaven with his "mighty angels", (chubby childlike cherubs were a medieval European invention), "in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ." (v.8). Yet, Peter said in his second epistle, (II Peter 3:9), "The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance." Putting this all together, we come back to the thought expressed in the title of this post. By all means, we are supposed to be concerned for the salvation of the lost - if we can bring ourselves to be so politically incorrect as to call them "lost" - and when persecuted we are supposed to pray for them. If we are truly saved, we appreciate that it is by the grace of God that we have come to believe and appreciate the truth of the Scriptures and the perfect character of God and His Son, Jesus Christ. In the end, I believe one reason God has inspired these things to be written in Scripture is to make us realize how much our lost co-workers, neighbors, friends or relatives need our prayers. Eventually, either they will go to Him or He will come to Earth and then - just like some of us who are parents, who would have to restrain ourselves from rending to pieces anyone who would harm our child - He will take personally what has been done to us. I hope that it will sound much less flippant now when I say, "Pray for your enemies - they'll need it."
The Midwestern United States are being hurt by high temperatures and low water levels. Crops are withering, fish are dying. Do I believe this has something to do with God's displeasure with killing the unborn and redefining marriage? As well as the harassment and persecution directed at those who object? Absolutely. The fact that I have not changed anything in the Prayer Calendar on this site does not mean I'm against praying for this drought to end. It's a national problem and calls for all Christians in this country to pray for it. The entire situation is simply more reason I need to develop the prayer habits I have tried to encourage by creating the Calendar. Yes, I miss days. Too many. But I have not given up, nor forgotten the concept. To that degree, it has taken hold in my life, and I hope it will take hold in other believers' lives also. (First I need to see more page visits in my statistics.) If we as Christians want to see America move in a particular direction, obeying God's Word by fulfilling His instructions to pray for "all who are in authority" will help our prayers to be answered, just to start. Far too many historic Christian writers who are widely accepted as knowing about prayer have spoken of how we must pray specifically. By directing specific prayer at specific leaders and even bureaucratic personnel in government, some of whom may have never been prayed for in their lives before, we will have an effect. As I've mentioned before, we all have our "betes noirs" in some level of government for whom it would be hard to pray for them to be blessed or relieved or helped, or whose change of heart or salvation seems like a remote possibility at best. To us, at least. They are still human beings. Few are worse, or even as bad, as the Roman emperors for whom Paul said his contemporaries should pray. Not just at, but for. In some cases, that is a tall order. If the best you or I can manage in some cases is "The Tsar's Blessing," [a reference to a scene in the musical, "Fiddler On the Roof" where a rabbi says that the appropriate blessing for the Tsar is, "God bless and keep the Tsar - far away from us!"], that's better than nothing. But if we are led by the Spirit to do better, which we may, let us pray better.
In the controversy that has arisen over the words of Chick-fil-A's CEO, (who is the son of its founder), and the funding actions of its philanthropic foundation, concerning same-sex marriage, some seem to consider it a convincing argument that Jesus "said nothing about homosexuality." This is just one instance of an ongoing issue of many years' duration concerning the weight of New Testament scriptures other than the four Gospel accounts which contain things actually spoken by Jesus. In order to assert that Jesus "said nothing about homosexuality," or in fact that Jesus said "nothing" about other subjects, one has to overlook a number of things. First is the doctrine of the Trinity itself: that God is eternally one in substance but three co-equal persons, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. If the argument that we should give Jesus' personal sayings more weight is based on His being God then the issue is whether God said it. If the Father or the Holy Spirit said something then that should have equal weight. In John 17:7-8, Jesus said in His "High Priestly Prayer" to the Father, "Now they have known that all things which You have given me are from You. For I have given to them the words which You have given Me..." So, the things which were spoken on earth by Jesus, Jesus Himself said were from the Father. Another place where he said this was John 14:24 - "...and the word which you hear is not Mine but the Father's who sent me." In verse 26 He then said, "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you." In Paul's second epistle to Timothy, he said, "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God," (II Timothy 3:16), and the apostle Peter included Paul's epistles among the Scriptures at the end of his second epistle, (II Peter 3:16). This would therefore include the things that Paul said about many specific subjects in his epistles to the churches in Corinth, Galatia, Philippi, Colossae, Thessalonica, and Rome, some of which are usually at issue when the argument is raised that Jesus "said nothing about" a subject. Thomas Jefferson in the 18th century asserted that the apostles had added these things onto the Christian religion without the input or consent of Christ so this is not a new argument. To assert that "Jesus said nothing about" any subject because the teaching is in the epistles rather than the four canonical Gospels or the short beginning segment of Acts prior to His ascension into Heaven, is to ignore or deny the authority of Scripture on these key issues and I am not going to listen to anyone who does. Are you?
The National Republican Convention is almost upon us and former Governor Mitt Romney has essentially already become the party's candidate for the 2012 Presidential election. While he represents many of the things that we need in a President to recover from the damage done to our economy by the actions of the current administration, including the impending colossal damage by the taxes and other provisions in the Affordable Health Care Act, I admit to disappointment. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, (the "Mormons"), like members of the Catholic Church, have similar convictions and practices in certain areas to what born-again Christians believe in: protection of the unborn, clean living, strengthening of the traditional family structure, and possibly others. However, their theology and specifically their Christology and doctrine of God is influenced by the Book of Mormon and differs enormously from Christian belief guided exclusively by the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. I was at first very reluctant to support Governor Romney because I did not know how these differences in belief might affect domestic and foreign policy decisions, should he take office. The way that the Republican primary contests were conducted caused me to become progressively convinced that Governor Romney was the best of the candidates available. As I mentioned in earlier posts, the alternative candidates whom I hoped at first to see chosen to bear the party standard proceeded to rule themselves out as desirable choices. No one but Romney seemed to have the background in finance and business necessary to patch the leaks in the listing and crippled ship of the American economy. Some of the other candidates resorted to lying about Romney's record even after their charges were clearly and decisively rebutted. One Republican primary candidate in particular, of whom I had thought highly as a Republican politician and as a scholar of American history, made an ill-fated proposal, not only to renew visiting the Moon but to build a colony there. The awesome and mind-boggling commitment to spending to establish and then to maintain and supply such an establishment showed that, far from being our potential answer to the current engorgement of Federal spending programs, he would be worse, as impossible as that previously had seemed. Another candidate of whom I had thought highly up until the 2012 primary cycle disappointed me as a potential standard-bearer for responsible and moral government by continuing to resort to charges against his opponent (Romney) which continued to be proven false or distorted forms of the truth. For the record, I am profoundly disappointed in the inability of the so-called "Christian Right" - which the Left so often proclaims to be a threat to their intentions - to field an acceptable leader for the conservative cause. The best we could come up with as a movement, as a party, and as an ostensibly "Christian" country, was a Mormon whose religion holds that, "what Man now is, God once was, and what God now is, Man can become." That being said, I am unaware of any significant flaws in Governor Romney's personal morals, family life, or business record that would prevent me from voting for him. For four or eight years, he may do. He may do well. I hope we can come up with better leadership in the future.
This post is intended to expand on a Facebook comment that I posted earlier today. Concerning the Supreme Court's upholding of the Affordable Care Act, ("Obamacare"), another person observed that this would lead to compelling obstetricians and hospitals to abort infants. A subsequent comment said that God "will punish us for killing babies." My response to that was that I am convinced God is already punishing us and has been for some time. When President Clinton was first elected in 1992, with his well-known endorsement of special "gay rights" and abortion by choice, my initial reaction then was also that he would bring on America God's judgment. After a few months of further thought I revised my opinion to say that he was judgment. While remembering chapter-and-verse addresses in Scripture is a challenge, I firmly believe that God said clearly in the Old Testament that part of his judgment upon a nation can include who their rulers and judges are, how they rule, and if their integrity and wisdom should dwindle progressively, that could also be His doing. During the first part of 2001, instead of exuberantly rejoicing in President Bush's election, I felt led repeatedly to write to representatives in Washington that God's judgment might be impending. I cited how God let his children the Israelites live in bondage in Egypt for four hundred years to give more time for repentance to those in Canaan. Child sacrifice, male and female temple prostitution, and rampant indulgence were openly part of their pagan worship. (Imagine Rio's Carnival, or the Mardi Gras in New Orleans, going on continuously. Canaan was probably the prime "party destination" of the known world, as those places at those times are today.) Yet God gave them four hundred years - but it ended. I felt led to warn that America might also be on a "ticking clock" of unknown duration. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, I no longer felt led to write any more such letters or e-mails. IMHO, far too many of us, be we Christians or non-Christians, assume that God has only one or two ways of dispensing judgment upon a nation. If none of those few things are happening, then He's not acting. Even a partial awareness of God's Word before Christ, (the "Old Testament"), should reveal that He has many more ways of judging a nation than just pouring fire and brimstone on it. He has ways of imposing it progressively so that those who know His Word and His ways will see it but those who are spiritually blind will not. I already have mentioned His warnings that He can put inexperienced leaders in place and take wisdom away from judges. He also discusses in more than one place that He can use the insects, beasts, birds and fish to harass a nation. He said that He would do this to the Canaanites to help Israel drive them out. Later, God said that He could in turn do the same to the Israelites, too. For years, there have been warnings from our scientists and our government agencies that invasive plant, animal, insect, and fish species are threatening and in places irrevocably altering our ecosystem. Highly-charged electrical barriers have had to be erected to keep giant ravenous Asian carp from spreading into the Great Lakes. There is now a debate whether they have already done so. Some of these invasive species are submarine shellfish or microscopic algae which come here via foreign merchant ships, in their ballast water. These can also cause problems. We have stories of Burmese pythons in Florida, one of which exploded itself by attempting to eat an alligator. Just because these invasions can often be traced to the careless release of unwanted exotic pets does not mean God has nothing to do with them. We are fighting a multi-front war against invasive species. As is usually true with a war on simultaneous fronts, we are losing. We need to pray for America, without question. But we need to pray for the right things. To pray against impending judgment from God is too little and much, much too late. In my humble opinion, of course, based on God's Word. We need to beseech Him to roll back the judgment He has made already. The things that we Christians believe are the reason for judgment are hardly diminishing, nor are they pointing at all in that direction. Like the Red Queen's Race, (as described by Lewis Carroll in "Through the Looking Glass"), it may already be requiring all the prayer we do now to keep things from becoming worse.
I have thought a lot over the years, since becoming a Christian, about what relationship feelings or emotions are meant to have with my faith in Christ. There are numerous Scriptures addressing the subject but putting together a full picture requires balancing one part of Scripture against another, as is usually the case. Certain Scriptures are very popular with believers while others which I feel have bearing upon the subject are so seldom quoted or preached upon that I can't help but wonder if people know them, or recognize any relevance. One of the most popular, of course, is in chapter 2 of Paul's epistle to Phillippi, which says to, "be anxious for nothing, but in all things, with prayer and supplication, let your requests be made known unto God, and the peace of God which passeth all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." There is also Galatians 5:22, which describes self-control as a component of the fruit of the Spirit. Well and good, but does this mean that all Christians are supposed to possess a perpetual state of utterly unruffled emotional equilibrium -- and that those of us who do not are in sin? Or at least showing ignorance of what we could have? Jesus Christ himself showed strong emotions at times. Most of us know that he wept when he witnessed the grief of the sisters of Lazarus, Mary and Martha, when he had come to Bethany to raise him from death. Jesus also wept over Jerusalem, knowing what was to come upon the city in future years because he would be crucified by its rulers. Angels were sent to strengthen him in Gethsemane as he sweated blood facing the prospect of Calvary. In Hebrews 5:7, speaking of Jesus, the Spirit-inspired author wrote, "Who, in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear." When his hand-picked followers, the apostles, asked if they should call down fire upon a Samaritan city that had evicted them, he was angry with them, saying, "You do not know what Spirit you are of." More than once he expressed frustration with his disciples or with the people, saying such things as, "O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you?" Knowing these about Jesus should make it clear that His Word does not mean to reprove us for having feelings. The Hebrew Scriptures deal with this subject abundantly. David, the Psalmist - a king and a man of war - spoke of times when his tears drenched his pillow. (Just as one example, Psalm 40:12 says, "For innumerable evils have surrounded me; my iniquities have overtaken me, so that I am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of my head; therefore my heart fails me.") He prophesied Christ's suffering on the Cross in Psalm 22:1 and was quoted by Him in Mark 15:34 - "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" Yet he also knew great rejoicing - he danced with such fervent joy when the Ark of the Covenant was brought to Jerusalem that his first wife, Michal, thought it totally unbecoming of royalty. (She was King Saul's daughter and evidently did not share the same spiritual faith as her brother Jonathan, David's closest friend.) Even the prophet Ezekiel, in his vision of God's judgement of Jerusalem, recorded that God told the angel with the inkhorn, sent out to mark those to be spared from judgement, to mark those who "sigh and cry" in their prayers to lament the abundant sin and corruption. The "big picture," as I see it, is not just what emotions we have or display, but the subjects about which we have them. The Apostle Paul had a great burden of care daily, praying for all the churches. The "flip-flopping" of the Galatians, who at first loved him ardently and then were turned away from him by the false apostles, caused him frustration. Some things are recorded as grieving the Holy Spirit, or grieving God, and they should grieve us. Being overcome by concern for the lost world around us, as happened to famous evangelists like Dwight L. Moody, once observed weeping as he embraced a globe, is no sin, nor a failing. We are told to "rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep." But the truth of the Resurrection, Paul told Thessalonica, means we are not to grieve as do "those who have no hope." His second letter to believers in Corinth said we are to draw on the comfort which God has given us in our troubles to comfort the troubles of others. The Bible has never said to act as if we have no problems. It does say that we can eventually learn, as did Paul, to rejoice in the way that these troubles can show us and those around us how great is our God and his grace that He gives us to get through them. Our feelings should never control our faith. For that matter, they should not control us. The well-known (and probably copyrighted) illustration by Bill Bright, of Campus Crusade for Christ, of the train with Faith as the engine and Feelings as the caboose, pretty well expresses the way of things. All of the power to pull the train is found in the engine. The only way the caboose can lead is if it is going backwards or coasting downhill by gravity. But we will always have emotions. Some of us have stronger emotions than others. Some of us are quicker than others to understand what we ourselves feel, or those around us. When we don't understand, God is gracious (through Peter) to tell us to come to the throne of grace in time of need. On our own behalf or for others. True spiritual victory, I believe, does not lie in subduing and hiding emotions - most certainly not in eliminating them - but in subjecting them to the Spirit and aligning them with His Word, with His ways, and with His priorities. Yes, "the joy of the Lord is your strength," (as in Nehemiah). There is also an Arab proverb, however, that "all sunshine makes a desert."
This has been an eventful week. Since last Sunday morning, when I sent a Mother's Day e-mail to my stepmother thanking her for her long and loving relationship with my father, a lot has happened. A lot has gone wrong with my father's health, but not as much - or at least not the worst things - that we initially thought were taking place. Of course I understand that at age 86 some things are going to happen and some things already have been happening. I thank the Lord that it turns out he has not apparently had an embolic stroke, nor another condition that would have required major abdominal surgery for which he is in no way ready. He has regained motor control, but is still weak, and is at least occasionally able to recognize his family and weakly talk to us. He is by no means out of the woods, and may never be. But he is there, and aware, and compared to how he appeared to be Tuesday evening, by Friday when I was able to visit myself, he is at least out of the cave with the bear within the woods - but still in the woods. I am thankful that my step-siblings love my father, have worked together to help get his care at the hospital improved - even aa sister several states away lent her medical expertise by phone to help get the right answers from the right people. Not every family is fortunate enough to have that available. I am also thankful that my brother was able to come from his corporate job in another state, with his wife, and help care for our stepmother and coordinate matters. And I am thankful this happened before our stepmother left on a trip she had planned to take this week, and not during it. While I would rather this whole situation had not happened, I am going to thank the Lord for those things that I can. (UPDATE: June 7, 2012) -- Until I saw the date that I wrote this blog post, just now, I had been thinking it was just under two weeks from the Sunday (May 13) that my father was taken to the hospital until his passing on Saturday, June 2, 2012. It was three. I have a lot to be thankful for as his son but it may take me time to put it together. I have talked with family members about setting up a memorial Facebook page for him. No link is available yet but it will appear in a future post.
During the Tianenmen Square protests in China in the 1980's, I noticed that one young lady had made a replica of the Statue of Liberty and labelled it, "The Goddess of Democracy." Yes, to some extent that has to be ascribed to translation and cultural issues. Still, I think she caught onto something about American society, whether or not she fully knew it. When the Statue of Liberty was reopened after its extensive overhaul for structural and safety reasons, New York City had an enormous celebration with fireworks, colored spotlights, et cetera. I had recently read about a celebration in an Asian country where a massive Buddha was draped with flowers and garlands, anointed with scented oils and spices, presented with sacrifices, and so forth. Those people were under no illusion that this statue was actually the Buddha, the historical person. It merely represented the principles that they worshipped. Likewise, the people of New York City and the rest of the United States were under no illusion that the Statue of Liberty had any supernatural powers. It merely represented a principle that many of us have come to worship. It is already prohibited in Canada for the clergy to preach against homosexuality from the pulpit even though the Bible makes it clear how much God disapproves. Many would like to make this the case in the United States as well. Any opposition to the practice is labelled "bgotry" and "hate" and whatever similar pejorative terms can be thought of. It has become such a "lightning rod" issue among Christians and Catholics and Mormons - and yes, even Orthodox Jews have expressed reservations about same-sex marriage - that the actual message of the Bible, especially the end of the first chapter of Paul's letter to Rome, may be fading out of view. The actual message at the end of Romans chapter 1 appears to me to say that homosexuality is more of a symptom than a cause of our country's spiritual ills. While there are certain physical diseases which are treated by dealing with the symptoms - I believe dysentery is one of those - the premise is that the body's defenses will eliminate the attacker if it does not dehydrate itself in the process. If the bacteria remain in the system, treating the symptoms becomes a treadmill. Romans chapter 1 makes it very clear that, as much as God has stated elsewhere in Scripture how much He opposes homosexuality, (although He also expressed through Paul to the Corinthians that it is forgiveable, saying, "...and such were some of you..."), it is actually something that is always around for people to fall into and that God actually "gives them over" to it in a certain situation: idolatry. It doesn't say that God causes it to spring up or creates it, just that He "gives them over" to something already there. Parents with children with drug or alcohol problems are sometimes told that they have to stop sheltering and feeding them and let them experience the full consequences of their addiction if they are to realize they need to change. Has liberty become an idol in America? Do we worship the idea of freedom to do whatsoever we wish, regardless of cultural or moral objections or physical consequences to ourselves and others? Listen to the arguments that are being presented in favor of same-sex marriage, "marriage equality," whatever the phrases that are used. Do we argue for Bernie Madoff to have the "freedom" to encourage people to send him money to misuse for personal gain? In the beginning, like most Ponzi schemes, his investment company paid good returns to people, resulting in ringing endorsements and more investors. But we know (and the investors know in hindsight) that it couldn't last. Are the people who argue for "marriage equality" arguing for freedom to film and distribute child pornography? Not all of them, certainly. Most of us will admit, (some of us only if backed into a corner), that "liberty" has to be practiced within some boundaries. On the whole, though, we seem to be hearing a rising chorus praising Liberty and Freedom as ends in themselves, as ultimate Good, which must be pursued to the farthest extent that they possibly can. Is this a foundational glitch in our country's principles? Has it been so instilled in our national psyche that we cannot bring it back down to a reasonable level? Unless we admit that at some point we must stop exalting Liberty and tell Liberty she is subject to Law, then we will not only have removed from our Pledge of Allegiance the phrase "one nation under God," we will also have rendered hollow and meaningless the closing phrase, "with Liberty and Justice for all."
This "little" three-letter, one-syllable word occurs often in the English-language Bible. Frequently, it's a "game-changer." It has often been said, for good reason, that the Christian life isn't hard to live, it's impossible. If any one word could be said to be at the root of that truth, this is it. Of course, when a Christian says it is "impossible" to meet God's expectations, it is made possible by the change of heart and nature brought about by accepting Jesus Christ as one's Savior and receiving God's infinite gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit. "Marvel not that I said unto thee," Jesus told Nicodemus, "ye must be born again." (John 3:7). However, spiritual birth is only a beginning: growth must follow. In both the Old and New Testaments, however, many of the recommendations, requests, and requirements that God asks of a believer have their difficulty in the presence of this word, "ALL." Consider Proverbs 3:5,6 - if it only said, "Trust in the Lord with thine heart;...in thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths," how difficult would that be? By saying to trust "with all thine heart" and to acknowledge him "in all thy ways," God asks far more. If Ephesians 5:20 only said that we should be "giving thanks for things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ," would that be difficult? We all do that at times, for certain things. By saying, "giving thanks always for all things...", it puts most of us short of the mark. Or should I say it puts us all short of it? If we put away "bitterness,and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking,...,with malice" from us, that is one thing. But the Holy Spirit wrote through Paul in Ephesians 4:31, "Let all bitterness...be put away from you, with all malice," and how many of us can consistently do that? In his massive masterpiece, "The Gulag Archipelago," the Russian philosopher Solzhenitsyn said, "The line between good and evil runs through the middle of the human heart; and what man is willing to throw away a piece of his heart?" But balance is everything in the Christian life. It would be unbalanced to dwell on the part that this little word "all" plays in God's demands and leave out what it does for His promises. Paul wrote to the believers in Corinth, (I Cor. 1:5), "That in every thing ye are enriched by him, in all utterance and in all knowledge." He wrote to Phillipi, (Phil. 4:13): "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." Nor would (Matthew 19:26) be the same if Jesus had not said, "With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible."
This is only a tiny, partial reflection upon the role of this word in the Scriptures and in our Christian life. That is not all, folks. |
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