Stuck in Lo-debar, Again

Do horses run on rocks? Does one plow there  with oxen?
But you have turned justice into poison and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood — you who rejoice in Lo-debar, who say, “Have we not by our own strength captured Karnaim for ourselves?” — Amos 6:12-13

Lo-debar was a place name in Israel.  It is where the crippled son of Jonathan, Mephibosheth, resided in the house of Machir.  'Lo' is a negation.  Lo-debar is nothing.  When I ran across this word and understood its meaning, I immediately thought of the CCR song "Lodi" which relates the struggles of a musician to reach his potential.  Being "stuck in Lodi again" is an expression of the flailing futility he has found in the pursuit of his dreams.  Fogerty said that he projected himself as a sort of one-hit wonder a few years down the road.  He chose to use Lodi, not because it was a bad place, but because he was intrigued by the sound and because Lodi is up in California wine country, primarily an agricultural region, at least in those days.  It's a long way from Los Angeles.

The Bible often reminds us that it is easy to go astray, to live in futility, to pursue a goal that is, when attained, empty and meaningless.  If wealth and fame and worldly power were able to satisfy any but the shallowest of individuals, we would not see the rich and famous run their lives through a shredder on a regular basis.   No sensible person would try to put a plow to bare rock, yet many of us try to sow the good seed of our time and energy in places as hard and barren as a concrete parking lot. 

Over time and through abuse, even prosperous, productive ground can become worthless, filled with toxic substances, capable of bearing only the bitterest of fruits.  Our own culture has become a wasteland.  We have seen it perverted and poisoned, much of it occurring in my own lifetime.  There is a cure for that, a process of refreshing and resurrection.  We can allow this ruined land to lie fallow, stop trying to plow it up and plant it.  Allow the rains and winds, the snows and droughts of times and seasons to purge it.  Leave  the uncultivated growth to work through its cycles and, through decay and death, restore the empty waste to vibrancy and lushness.  This is not the work of man, and it will not  be done on man's schedule.

Karnaim means two peaks or two horns.  Since mountains and horns often signify strength or power, we might think of it as double-strength.  We might also think of it as two kingdoms, or two aspects of one kingdom — the kingdom of God in its eternal, ideal reality and the temporal, reflected manifestation of that kingdom.  We know there is the mystical, beautiful, eternally triumphant  Bride of Christ — "fearsome as an army with banners", and there is the universal Church as we see it in this world.  The Church is in the world but not of the world; though a derivation of the ideal, it is yet more real than anything which might oppose it.  It remains as all other powers pass away as mists beneath the summer sun.   

We fool only ourselves if we believe that we can overcome or possess either horn of God's strength by our own strength.  No, carnal man sets up his own kingdom in imitation of the nearer peak of Karnaim, a distorted, muddied reflection of the divine franchise.  He captures a mudpuddle and thinks he holds the moon.  He styles himself the Conquistador of Erewhon, the Emperor of Lo-debar.