A Father Who Listened

This is just a little news item to consider:  Tony Yahle of Ohio was dead for 45 minutes.  He's alive and going back to work.  Dead, I should add, according to doctors.  Maybe the equipment was faulty.  Anyway, Yahle's seventeen-year-old son thought he was dead:

Yahle's 17-year-old son Lawrence had come running into the room upon hearing his father was dead and witnessed the moment when his dad woke up.


"I pointed at him and I said 'Dad, you're not going to die today,'" Lawrence told WHIOTV.com. "I stood there for a few more seconds. I was about to walk back to comfort the family. It went from hopeless to hope in an instant."

The naysayers say, Nay, naturally.  I don't know.  Miracles do happen.  This could be one.

H/T to Breaking Christian News who point out that life and death is in the power of the tongue.

Rebel Souls

For it is you who light my lamp; the LORD my God lightens my darkness. – Psalm 18:28

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. -- Psalm 119:105

For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching a light, and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life -- Proverb 6:23

The spirit of man is the lamp of the LORD, searching all his innermost parts. – Proverbs 20:27

Haughty eyes and a proud heart, the lamp of the wicked, are sin. – Proverbs 21:4

Christians and most other theists believe that man’s moral compass derives its usefulness from alignment with the Divine Nature.  We know what is right and what is wrong because our dark souls have been enlightened by revelation, by the spark of the Spirit who has touched us. 

When we are condemned by the moralizing, atheistic Pharisees of today for our backward, primitive thinking and our superstitious clinging to religion, on what grounds, exactly do they decide that we are wrong and they are right?  If a person says that he only believes what he can see and prove, well, fine.  Prove I am wrong, or, if you prefer, prove you are right.  It can’t be done.  Every proof I’ve ever seen is just a sales pitch, an offer of the scientistic salesman’s vision of a better world.  Marx had nothing to back up his belief system.  He just dressed his little scheme in the clothing of a scientific analysis of history.  Keynesians economists, like climate scientists, create elaborate, mathematical models to justify and promote their very limited representations of reality.   And that’s the problem.  Every political solution, every scientific theory deals not with the universe but with the template.  What we call the universe is not the universe but our “artist’s representation”.  It’s good, in many cases, and mostly quite useful, but it is not the is that is. 

The only possibility of knowing things as they are is revelation.  Most of us most of the time don’t care about quantum mechanics.  I’m generally more interested in getting through the day without turning into the Michael Douglas character in Falling Down.  Revelation gives us truth, and it also, if we are willing to allow it, sheds light upon our motives.  It shows us when we are pursuing an end because it is true and good, and when we have a desire for personal gain or glory tied up in it.  The revelation in God’s moral law, written in stone or upon our hearts, enables us to look out for our neighbor’s good as well as our own. 

If we have and follow this moral law, we have no need for the vast government oversight and regulation that intrudes every moment into our lives, for the ivory-tower academic, centralized control of our money and economy, for alleged scientific solutions to social problems.  But the wicked are illuminated by pride and arrogance of attitude.  They have a commanding knowledge of their map and thus believe they know how to get across the river.  Hey, look, it’s narrow here.  That must be the best place, right?  Disregard the other factors – e.g., depth and velocity – and it will not end well. 

I’m willing to give idiots like Obama and Krugman and Michael Mann the benefit of the doubt.  Al Gore, not so much.  If a person is walking in darkness, I really don’t expect them to understand that their beliefs are simply functions of their own twisted motivations, their need for acceptance and validation, their feelings of inadequacy, their irrational fears, their weaknesses and perversions.  They are sad, sick, petty people driven to grasp for attention and acclamation. 

Yet, because they have a limited understanding, because they lack revelation knowledge, they are convinced they can tell us what we ought to do.  Abortion ought to be safe and legal – so long as one ignores how most women get pregnant and whose life is being ended.  What goes on between “consenting adults” should be private – so long as we ignore the damage done to that most basic unit of a stable society, the family.  Everybody ought to have a right to go to college, to have a nice car, food, clothing, housing, etc. – so long as we ignore who is really paying for it.  We are not allowed to judge people by their behavior and their vile, destructive lifestyles because to do so would be racist or homophobic.    We ought to accept multiculturalism and ignore the violence, lawlessness, and insanity of it. 

These modern Pharisees are wrong because they are blind to the motive that underlies all their schemes and plans and utopian illusions:  they hate Christ and will not have this Man rule over them.

But his citizens hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying, We do not want this man to reign over us. (Luke 19:14) 

Whoa, Woe

But you, O LORD, reign forever; your throne endures to all generations. -- Lamentations 5:19

When Jeremiah wrote his lamentations down, things were about as bad as they could get:   We must pay for the water we drink; the wood we get must be bought … we are weary; we are given no rest … [w]e have given the hand to Egypt, and to Assyria, to get bread enough … [s]laves rule over us … [w]omen are raped in Zion, young women in the towns of Judah.  Princes are hung up by their hands; no respect is shown to the elders (vv. 4-12). 

What was true of Jerusalem in the days of the prophet is true today in churches.  I started to say “in the Body of Christ”, but I don’t think that is possible.  There is too much nominal Christianity, too much of a mixed multitude.  It is the apostates that have gone over to the world (Egypt) and surrendered to the demonic (Assyria) because they could find no rest in Christ, no satisfaction in the Bread of Life.  We find leaders in so many of the churches of America are enslaved to lust, greed, gluttony, and perversion yet think themselves fit to be in authority over God’s people.  While the Lord invites us to drink of the Water of Life freely, those who preach the gospel for fun and profit will tell us that God won’t help us unless we give them our money.    

Bad as it may be in the Church, it is worse in the world.  Governments are not bound by the rule of law.  Oppression, violence, tyranny and corruption run wild from the highest levels of society to the lowest.  Much of an addled populace is placated by shabby, shallow entertainment, drugs, junk food, and government checks.   Our nation is in a debt-spiral to collapse.  Antichrist religions are on the rise, and nihilism is about the only philosophy that makes sense to otherwise intelligent people who have cut themselves off from God.

But, the Lord reigns.  The Lord is sovereign.  He has never lost control.  He does not panic.  He is not worried.  Nothing is happening that He can’t handle.  To understand this is to fear the Lord, and the fear of the Lord is not only the beginning of wisdom but peace in the storms of life.  We don’t deny the horrors around us or pretend that our troubles do not exist.  Instead wisdom tells us to get out of the path of destruction when we can but to never fear what may come for it all comes from the strong, gentle hand of God. 

Separating the Sheep From the Goats

And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. – Genesis 12:2-3

Our lives exist within a network of relationships.  Connections may be close and strong, with, we might say, lots of bandwidth, or they may be distant and very narrow.  As Christians we know we are called to love others and care about them.  We will stand at the Judgment Seat of Christ and answer as to how well we fulfilled our calling.  The Christian CEO will answer as to how faithfully he did his job, how he handled what had been entrusted to him, but also about how he treated the people carrying the basura boxes.  It works both ways.  Never doubt that there are people who are going to bring blessings or curses into their lives based on how they treat you. 

Thus we turn the other cheek; we are careful about how we respond to aggression and oppression; we do not take revenge when we are wronged.  There is a good chance that you and I – even as we are being tested – are a test for someone else, for the police officer enamored of his own authority, for the politicians who think they rule over us, for the petty, tyrannical supervisors who like to yank us around on the job.   If someone pushes me or threatens me, and I rise up and beat him down, all I’ve done is teach him, perhaps, not to judge a hillbilly by his overalls.  What if I let him “get away with it”?  Commonsense would say that I have reinforced his aggression, that he will be more likely to push me next time.  Most of the time, that is exactly what happens, and here is the point where it is critical to know that God loves us.

I readily confess that I stumble over verses telling me about the love of God.  Of course God loves me if I do right.  That’s the way I read it.  To my natural mind it seems like arrogance to think that I am of any particular value or interest or concern to the Creator of the universe.  He loves the world.  He loves everybody.  I fall into that general category. 

I had good parents who loved me.  I was not an especially good child but I tried to be obedient because I loved Mom and Dad and didn’t want to cause them any trouble, cost them extra, or create additional work for them.  Sometimes I did, and it was always like a cold knife through my heart to see them cleaning up my mess.  I never in my life felt that they owed me.  I was always in their debt.  They never told me that or did anything that I can remember to give me that impression.  As far as I know, I was born with that attitude.  It seems to be inherent, and I carry the same attitude toward God. 

But the Lord says something very different.  He cares about each of us individually.  We have the favor of our heavenly Father.  The people in our lives who support, encourage and help us will share in that favor.  None of us can make on our own.  There is no need to feel as though we didn’t earn all the blessings, help, and opportunities we have received.  No one does.  Accept it graciously and gratefully.  Thank God for it, and know that those who have been good to you will be themselves recipients of grace, mercy, love and joy that they “earned” only by treating you well.   

Conversely, those who choose to attack us, dishonor us, manipulate, and curse us will not partake of God’s favor.  The worse people treat you when you are trying to follow Christ and do right, the more the Lord will bless you.  Meanwhile, we may trust that He knows how to deal with those who make themselves our enemies.    

Read Father Stephen

The Secret Hand of God is far better than anything I might write today -- or any day.  And this:

God is good and all of His work is good. I can affirm this, believe this, and share this. But I cannot argue this nor make it transparent to a heart that is opaque. The very effort will darken my own heart.

Amen, and amen.  

Update:  Mrs. Voskamp riffs like the trumpet in a Charlie Parker piece.

Confidence Interval

And now we call the arrogant blessed.  Evildoers not only prosper but they put God to the test and they escape.  -- Malachi 3:15

There is nothing new under the sun.  There is nothing new about people mocking God or being convinced that their wickedness has no consequences.  It’s a funny thing, though; you can plant radish seed and have radishes in a couple of weeks.  I planted asparagus last year and won’t eat any of it until next year.  My apples trees are laden this year but just a couple of seasons ago I was wondering if I would ever have any apples. 

Sometimes instant karma gets you, and it is a blessing.  Disobedience produces a harvest of bitter herbs which spring up nearly overnight with ramifications undeniable.   Other times, the seeds of destruction develop mostly underground over a very long period of time.  What does appear above only reinforces our haughtiness.  It may seem initially a thing of grace, a marvel and a wonder.  Yet no matter how appealing this fruit may be, there is death in the root, and those who partake of it will perish. 

So, throughout the ages, men have convinced themselves that the fire will not burn them, as Kipling says.  The proverb, speaking of adultery, asks if man can take fire to his bosom and not be burned, and, while the correct answer is apparent, at first the man might say, “I’m merely warm.”  Over and over man has tempted God and reaped catastrophe, but the next generation or nation or ideology comes along and claims it will be different this time.  We are more modern, more advanced.  We have the benefit of history and new technology.    Applying all the latest innovations, they succeed in creating a fruit that is perhaps bigger and sweeter and of a different hue but the root remains toxic, and the end is always the same. 

Maybe Twain was right and perhaps history does rhyme because the last foot of any line sounds like something we have heard before … cattle, chattel, battle, death rattle.  We have a bias toward uniformitarianism with all things … continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.  And it does, as they say, until it doesn’t.  There are the great upheavals like mountain ridges erupting from the gently rolling plains of our ordinariness, crossed at peril then all but forgotten because they are called history.  No more predictable than an earthquake and no less certain, we will see a whole lot of shaking going on. 

Happy Christian Cynics Day

Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God … -- 2 Corinthians 3:5

I was checking the news this morning just to see what was going on in the wide, wide world.  Looking at the uproar over a rodeo clown in an Obama mask in contrast to the betrayal of Americans in Benghazi or the trashing of the Fourth Amendment by the NSA, one can easily become cynical.  Good Christians, I have been told, should not be cynical.  I ain’t that good.  Hence, today, which, by a strange coincidence, happens to be the birthday of someone who stabbed me severely in the back and had to be forgiven, I hereby initiate the Semi-Eternal Somewhat Cheerful Order of Christian Cynics of Greater Foose.  Our coat of arms consists of eyes rolling over a burning Chevy Volt bearing the UAW label in a field of windmills with a decapitated bald eagle.  Our motto:  You can never expect too much from God or too little from men.  Since we are Christian cynics, we must humbly acknowledge that we fall solidly into the latter class, which separates us from the pagan cynic, and, of course, hipsters. 

Sometimes we really can’t get there from here, and we have to go someplace else and start over.  Starting from ourselves, if our path is not toward God, we find ourselves inevitably at a dead end.  The sense that we cannot do what God seems to require of us is a valid assessment of our human limitations and not a reason to either question God’s standards or to despair.  As we say in software, it functions as designed, that is, to draw us toward the Source, the One who is able to make us sufficient for whatever challenge we face. 

I am often surprised at the calmness and peacefulness exhibited by many in the midst of great turmoil and tragedy.  There are the stories of panic and mindless, animal-like stampedes when the herd instinct overwhelms and sweeps individuals into the maelstrom.  Those stories are the more remarkable for how often they do not happen.  People we might never expect to be open to God find themselves in the role of a Samaritan who is not so bad.  People that we think should be broken by the unbearable instead bear up, finding strength and resilience they never knew existed.  When our backs are to the wall, we find that it was a secret door all along which opens when we are pressed to release the grace of God into our situation.  

Further along in this same letter, the Apostle relates his personal struggle and how he prayed for deliverance from what he thought he could not endure:  But he said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.