Preventing Soul Erosion

Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body. -- Proverbs 16:24

I am short on time today – although, I suppose, this day has twenty-four hours, too. 

I note that, if the proverb is true, it might follow that ungracious words could make us sick in soul and body.  One could conclude that a lack of courtesy, politeness, etiquette, and decent manners have contributed greatly to the current diseased state of our social structure and culture.  Vulgarity, rudeness, scorn, mockery, and snark pass for humor.  Snide, semi-clever put-downs are considered intelligent discourse. 

Robert Heinlein said that an armed society is a polite society.  Even in my youth, it was still the custom that a rude or offensive remark could be answered with a fist.  These days the vulgar are protected from retribution and are free to say anything to anyone anywhere.

I have no particular objection to certain strains of rough or picturesque language, but there ought to be a reason for it, and the speaker should consider his audience.  The words spoken to a contentious or sullen bovine in the barnyard are not appropriate in the company of Christians at the meetinghouse. 

I am reminded of something the Staple Singers said back in 1971:

Oh, you cuss around womenfolk, and you don’t even know their names,

Then you’re dumb enough to think that’ll make you a big ol’ man.

Maybe it is time for us to grow up.

No Friend of the Devil

And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.  Little children, keep yourselves from idols. – 1 John 5:20-21

John’s letter comes to this point after telling us that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one (v.19).  I want to be modern in some respects.  I don’t like believing in evil spirits.  Spiritual evil sounds less oogy-boogy.  Sometimes, though, evil seems too coordinated to be an “influence”.  It looks more like a conscious, plotting being is behind it all.  I don’t know exactly what the devil is.  I do know he is a reality.

I don’t fear the devil, but I do fear that I might be deceived by him.  That brings us to the point that Lewis made decades ago in the foreword to Screwtape.  We can make two mistakes with regard to the demonic.  We can get too obsessed by it, or we can decide it doesn’t exist at all.  The latter has been adopted by the average person in today’s society.  They do not at all believe in a devil.  Evil is a result of early childhood trauma, lack of education, poverty, maybe religious beliefs, and, certainly, easy access to firearms. 

(As an aside, I used to go to church with a couple who got into a fight one evening.  The husband called the pastor – still a good friend of mine – who arrived at the house and found the trouble was a "demonic-looking" replica wooden African mask they had hanging on the wall for a decoration.  Pastor told me later he couldn’t get the mask to burn even after pouring gasoline on it.  He should have tried diesel and some kindling.  Guns are the voodoo masks of the left in this country.) 

The devil deceives through religion, through philosophies, through pride, lust, greed, envy, jealousy, gluttony, sloth, and wrath.  He deceives through utopian schemes like socialism and communism.  He deceives us by encouraging us to place our trust in ourselves, experts, teachers, mentors, leaders, programs, governments, candidates, parties, Science!, money, possessions, etc. – anyone and anything  -- except the one Person who deserves and merits our trust. 

To keep ourselves from idols, as John admonishes, means to refuse to believe that our salvation, joy, and peace lie in any object, system, or person other than our Lord Jesus.  We have a real enemy who is actively and consciously working to deceive us.   But we also have a Savior, a Fortress, and a Deliverer in whom we may place our full faith and trust. 

The world doesn’t know why it exists.  We know the Way, the Truth and the Life.

Distinction

Then once more you shall see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve him.  -- Malachi 3:18

During the Incarnation, Jesus talked of how things would be for people at the end of His earthly ministry.  He compared it to the days of Noah.  No one expected the flood, even though Noah told them judgment was coming.  They continued to live as though nothing ever changed.  In the time of Jesus, people heard Him speak and tell of terrible times to come – e.g., Matthew 24, yet they continued to live as though Jerusalem would never face tribulation. 

I don’t know if things will become difficult, if judgment of some kind will fall upon the earth.  I don’t know if San Francisco will face another great earthquake, if the Yellowstone caldera will erupt, or if a sweet meteor of death will strike Washington, D.C. or Brussels or Mecca. 

I do know that I will die someday, and I’m not the only one to which this end will come.  When that happens, I believe I will be required to give an account of how I have lived since I entered this world.  Some of that account is going to be pretty embarrassing, if not downright shameful.  Still, I believe in the mercy, grace, and forgiveness of God.  As Jeremiah said in Lamentations, the mercies of God are new every morning.  I will not exhaust His clemency or His compassion. 

I am not anyone else’s judge.  As many failures as I have had, as many times as I have willfully and intentionally done the wrong thing, I can in no way be acceptable to God on my own.  But I am not on my own, for … [I]n Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them … (2 Corinthians 5:19).   Christ stands between the righteous and the wicked as Aaron the priest stood between the living and the dead (Numbers 16:48).

But for Christ, I could in no way be counted among the righteous had not the Father [f]or our sake  … made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).  Christ is our distinction.

Harmony

Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be conceited. -- Romans 12:16

I know nothing about music.  I never understood harmony or melody or any of that stuff.  My immediate family was not musical at all.  None of us sang or thought we could sing or played any musical instrument.  I am told that harmony sounds pleasant because it involves balance.  Something creates tension, and something releases tension. 

To live in harmony, then, doesn’t mean uniformity.  Even I know enough to realize there is no music in a single tone.  That is not the symphony the Lord has written.  There is tension and conflict and resolution; there is tragedy countered by triumph.  Most of us doubt life is worthwhile apart from this masterwork.  We could wonder if life is even possible without it.   

We need to harmonize with those around us.  To do that, we need harmony in our hearts, to resolve the tension in our own souls.  There are aspects of my nature that trouble me, that create discord and dissonance. 

The events and my reaction are notes in the melody, occurring in time, horizontally.  I need the vertical element of divine harmony to intersect, like the upright of the Cross, to bring resolution and joy.

Stones of Remembrance

Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen and called its name Ebenezer; for he said, Till now the LORD has helped us. -- 1 Samuel 7:12

July 4^th weekend is a good time to stop and think about how we came to this point as a nation, where we might be going, and why God has helped us – at least until now. 

America -- like most countries in the world, has a lot of unrighteous people in it.  Again, like all other nations, those who have position, power, and influence in government are mostly corrupt, power-mad, greedy, and ungodly – whatever their professions and protestations.  They may use the kingdom of heaven as their template in a “we are the world” sense, but they are at the top of the hierarchy – a secular priesthood of spiritually degenerate plutocrats.  The question I ask is, why did God ever help us at all? He helped Israel – the short version – in order to bring Christ into the world.

Empires rise and fall.  Nations come together and break apart.  We were remarkably situated during the 20^th Century, isolated to some extent, from the civilian horrors of the world wars.  The last war on our soil kept mostly to the battlefields, as had been the fashion from the end of the Thirty Years’ War.  Now, of course, a new kind of war – sometimes called 4^th Generation warfare – has broken out in the world.  We are not being spared from that, but I don’t want to get into the politics of it all. 

The kingdom of heaven is at hand.  We can enter it.  I believe the Lord has helped us until now and will continue to help us as we keep our focus on Christ.  History is a spiraling, halting, flailing, and sometimes failing movement toward the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.  It is not because history has a goal.  Nor is it because men have grand visions of how the world ought to be.  Even the most intelligent, clever, and insightful members of humanity cannot escape the law of unintended consequences -- though the Founders did it about was well as anyone ever has.  No, it is because God has a goal.  In His great strategic plan, we are sometimes players and sometimes pawns.  We might even be both as often as not – though we likely won’t know. 

So, on this celebration of the birth of a nation, put down your markers and your memorial stones in the certainty that our current uncertainty in no way worries the Almighty.  That rock Samuel called ‘Ebenezer’ wasn’t there for the Israelites alone.  It was a reminder to all their enemies that, as David would proclaim not long afterward, the battle is the Lord’s.