Cattle Prods Might Work, Too

And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. -- John 2:15

I've been going to church pretty regularly for the last few months.  This is, in part, to keep me from becoming a hermit.  As someone way over on the introvert side of the continuum, stress and pain drive me to isolation.  The Raccoon family has been and continues to be my principal outlet.  Still, interacting with people face to face is a skill set that it took me years to learn and develop so I can sort of pass for relatively normal most of the time, and, like a musician, I have to continue to practice.  Attending church forces me smile, shake hands, speak pleasantries, and hold brief conversations with strangers.  Some of them are even stranger than I am.

I like the pastor.  He is a very nice man, and I think he does a good job of presenting a balanced, truthful message.  He is not going to downplay the Cross or the Blood.  He challenges and exposes without frightening people too much. 

Nevertheless, if I have a complaint about traditional, exoteric religion, it's that it can be "pablumatic".  Those of us who have been around a while have memorized the eye chart and can rattle off the received answers with hardly a glance at the question.  The truth is that Jesus is disruptive, e.g.: 

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword (Matthew 10:34). 

And when they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city authorities, shouting, These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also (Acts 17:6).

So there was a division among the people over him (John 7:43).

Authentic Christianity is probably going to make us somewhat uncomfortable on occasion.  Yes, there is peace and joy, contentment and fulfillment in Christ.  However, if we are not, from time to time, driven to question our assumptions, if we don't get beyond ourselves now and then, it may be because we are too quick to back away from what the Lord is calling us to do. 

I'm back to the point we've discussed before that the truth comes across at many levels.  We have different gifts and varying capacities.  Some of us respond best to reason, some to emotion, and some to a two-by-four to the head or a boot to the rear end.  God understands this much better than politicians, for example.  He doesn't try to make one size fit all.  Each of us can find what he or she needs to respond to the call if we will only pay attention.    

Troublers and Clingers and Insane Clowns

When Ahab saw Elijah, Ahab said to him, Is it you, you troubler of Israel? -- 1 Kings 18:17

It is not inevitable and not a hard and fast rule, but it is often the case that the accuser is guilty of the offense.  Elijah had come on the scene to prophesy three and a half years of drought and famine upon Israel.  The ten tribes had been apostate since breaking away from Rehoboam after the death of Solomon.  One golden calf with its altars stood in Bethel and another in the territory of the tribe of Dan, yet no king had been as depraved as Ahab son of Omri and husband of Jezebel.  Those who worshipped the one true God were pursued and persecuted and the prophets put to death.  They worshipped Baal and Asherah with dark and demonic rites, practicing witchcraft and wickedness, making gods of their own lusts.  They dredged hell for judgment to pour out on their own heads.  Then, when they began to gather in the harvest of their iniquity, they blamed God.        

In other words, there is nothing new under the sun.  We are having the troubles we have today because of the judgmental, narrow-minded, intolerant, right-wing Christians.  It’s all these people who don’t realize this is the modern world and times have changed, that we are all right no matter what we believe or what we do.  Traditional marriage and monogamy are conventions.  Marriage is kind of like Halloween, a time to dress up and put on a show.  It doesn’t matter if a man wants to marry another man or a woman wants to marry a Mercedes. 

The truth is dead.  Everybody lies.  Everybody cheats.  You just need to be able to do it with style.  It’s a matter of how good things sound and how we can make things look.  The only reality is perception.  We can have any kind of world we choose.  We can be like gods, deciding by popular vote what is right and what is wrong.  Morality is what we say it is.  Hell, sex is what we say it is.  Don’t want to be a man?  We’ll sprinkle some fairy dust, say, Shazam!, and, behold, woman, thou art loosed! 

And if anyone disagrees, they are the trouble.  If anyone tells the truth, they have to be silenced.  We can’t allow those bigoted, xenophobic clingers with their rules and traditions to dictate to us.  Life is sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll.  Party hearty and die at thirty, er, seventy-five.  Don’t worry.  We have antibiotics and a vaccine for AIDS. 

Under the sun, it’s all been done, and the end is always the same.  The pendulum falls back in the dark of the moon.  That’s not to say it won’t get worse before it gets better.  It will get better, if it takes five years, fifty, or five thousand.  We have no guarantee our particular step on the ascension to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ is all that close to the top.  My hope is in Christ and the kingdom of God; otherwise, I would have no hope. 

Truth Has A Depth Charge

Teach me Your way, LORD, and I will live by Your truth. Give me an undivided mind to fear Your name. – Psalm 86:11

The talent of the illusionist is to hold the attention of the audience and focus it where he wants it. An illusion is effective because what we see is more convincing than what we know.

Even as we seek the truth, we find what our eyes see so convincing that our mind is too often divided. James reminds us: For the doubter is like the surging sea, driven and tossed by the wind. I have more than once gained some insight only to be overwhelmed by the winds of circumstances, driven away from a solid anchorage in a gale of doubt when it came time to live by the truth I knew. Knowing the truth will set us free when we know to the point that our mind is undivided.

The illusion today is that things are out of control. This is the case for me personally, and, I suspect, for many others on a grander scale. It appears that chaos reigns, from senseless acts of violence to crashing financial markets to incompetent, power-hungry politicians. Who can but wonder: is anyone at the helm?

On a personal level, I see the people around me, the people I love, trapped in illusions. They are cast about from one crisis to another, suffering, yet refusing even the attempt to live by the truth, saying, in effect, there is no reality beyond the shifting relativity of the surface. I am rejected because I refuse to agree with their point of view and offer them, instead, a place to stand on the solid Rock. They would grasp the wind in their defiant fist as they are blown they know not where.

The psalmist called on the Lord to teach him His truth. The writer may have regretted that prayer, for when the Lord sets out to teach us, He teaches by trial and experience. James reminds us again: Consider it a great joy, my brothers, whenever you experience various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. But endurance must do its complete work … (James 1:3-4).

Endurance, patience, perseverance – to be tried is to be delivered from a divided mind.

Why am I caught off guard or surprised by the trial that follows my insight? Of course if the Lord is teaching me He will send the trial to make the new understanding real, to incorporate the truth in my very being, my heart rather than in my head.

Do not be surprised. Each time the low gong sounds it calls us to the arena. It is the shallow intellectual in me that fails to realize grasping truth is a little like Bilbo taking treasure from the dragon’s lair. It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations.

It could be that we have the beginnings of an awakening, both of truth and the trials that accompany it.

I been standin’ on the rock
Waitin’ for the wind to blow.
I been standin’ on the rock
Waitin’ for the wind to blow.
I been standin’ on the rock
Waitin’ for my seeds to grow.

--“Standin’ on the Rock”, John Dillon (Ozark Mountain Daredevils)