The Nation of Israel (even its priests) was once told: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge…Since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.” Hosea 4:6.
That’s us too. Chapters one and two of Romans is our story. Particularly I’m thinking of Romans 1:28-32.
“Man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself. He can never know who he is unless he has first looked upon God’s face and then descends from contemplating Him to scrutinizing himself.” –John Calvin.
Today I read an article about an “atheist Chaplain” who’d been denied a Chaplaincy by the Navy. Of course, the Navy didn’t take a stand that an “atheist Chaplain” was an oxymoron and an insult to Chaplains and the Chaplaincy. No, that’d be “intolerant.” They didn’t say, “No, that’s dumb, go away clown.” Basically they just said, “Not right now.” I wonder what insignia an “atheist Chaplain” would wear anyway. And, of course, advocates of the “atheist Chaplain” spoke against the “favoritism” of the Navy. Crazy Navy! What’s wrong with having an atheist Chaplain? After all, it was just recently that the military allowed a Major to list “humanist” as his, “Religious preference” on his ORB. So come on! Let’s allow doctors who don’t believe in medicine to practice medicine. Why not, right? Let’s Bar Certify lawyers who don’t believe in justice, and hire cooks who, while they like food n’ all, are just personally opposed to feeding groups over five. Crazy Navy! Right?
We really are a confused tribe. Mostly it’s because we don’t know God. Secondly, it’s because we don’t know ourselves…because we don't know God. One result of this is that we’ve utterly lost the ability to entertain ourselves in a room without some print or gadgetry. Most of us are just not all that interested in us. Collectively, we’re not a people one step below wisdom anymore. No way! We’re at least three or four steps down from wisdom I think. I watched Wretched TV (www.Wretchedradio.com) the other day and saw some San Franciscan entrepreneurs who opened themselves a, “Sex truck” business. It’s a moving van style truck filled with “items” you can rent by the quarter-hour to have someone drive you around downtown San Francisco while you have private sex inside it. You really don’t have to think long to see the depth of folly in our land today especially among the…I was going to say, “Younger crowd,” but really, I can’t, it’s in every demographic. What I mean by levels down from wisdom is that you can’t get to the place of collective debauchery we are at today overnight. It took a lot of things first like piece moves on a chess board. Here are a few examples: It took the proliferation of Darwinian Evolution to allow acting like animals to be acceptable. It took a few world wars to desensitize us to the violence of them. For us in America it took a sex and drug revolution to get here culturally regarding sex, and to allow us to slaughter our babies for love of our sex. It took the deification of Hollywood (and air brushes) to make us no longer want to be ourselves, and therefore not know ourselves because we spent so little time truly with ourselves. It took the likes of a hundred Hugh Heffners to desacralize intimacy, and make women filthy objects to the likes of which we see them now. It took an internet, and the personal computer, even with all their benefits, to divide us and de-personalize us. It took a generational smorgasbord-style-surfeit of media outreach for the cheap and superficial Arminian laziness of the American prosperity “gospel” saturated church to grip the land. You add all such things up and you get levels only further and further from the wisdom of God. You naturally invent new systems of values at lower levels. It’s kind of like prisoners who won’t hurt you if you just steal and kill, but call you trash if you’re a child molester. It’s like someone wanting an I-Pad, walking into a public restroom where someone clearly just set theirs down to wash their hands, taking it, and then genuinely and truly thanking “god” for providing. It’s a system where almost no one has a problem with open blasphemy in the streets, but yet where sneezes are replied to with as many, “god bless yous.” We really are a confused tribe.
In all of this we are still laborers in God’s vineyard. Christ will come again. Don’t be caught spinning the web of the now on The Day. Be about Him. Be about eternity. In the darkest rooms the smallest light shines brightest. I encourage you: “Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” Matthew 5:16. Let’s not hate, Matthew 5:43-48. Let’s not return evil for evil, Romans 12:21. Instead, let’s be a people of grace, Acts 4:33. We’ve been given such; how can we not show it, Matthew 18:23-35.
Get to know yourself by getting to know God. There is only one God, and only one place to find Him. There is no way to know the God of the word without knowing the word of God. You will not test God’s word; it will test you! Go ahead, test yourself. Read it. For those of you who’ve been proven by it, prove it to those around you.
Grace to you…
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