Lying Like the Dead....

In Acts 5, we are given the account of Ananias and Sapphira, a husband and wife who came to Peter with a part of the money they had made selling a piece of property, claiming to be giving all of the selling price.  For their lie, they were both struck down dead.  Not for keeping part of the money, but for lying about giving all they had to God.  While some folks like to use this as a motivation to keep one's tithes in line, I see a big spiritual parallel. 
How often do we feel spiritually struck dead?  Our prayers seem to go unanswered, our study is unmotivated and uninspiring, and worship feels empty?  If we are honest with ourselves and God, aren't these typically the times when we are not being honest about how much of ourselves we are handing over to God?  Aren't these those times in life when our prayer time keeps getting pushed off, or is spent with less than 100% focus, our minds wandering to the day's events and needs, when fellowship with man and God is put off for other activities, maybe good, Christian activities, but other activities nevertheless? 
God wants all of us, and he wants us to be honest with ourselves and Him when we fall short of that goal.  Honesty paves the way for correction.  Why is Alcoholics Anonymous effective?  One of the reasons is that honesty of introducing oneself as an addict, facing that issue, and dealing with it.  When we are lying about giving all to God, we can't be effective because we aren't facing our issues, whether those issues are poverty or prosperity, failure or success.  What is it that we are holding back?  The most common issue today is simply time and focus, I think.  We multitask so hard that just stopping to focus on one thing for a significant amount of time has become difficult.  The distractions that surround us fill our minds and our hands and we find ourselves squeezing God into our lives instead of making Him the foundation.  The result is a whole lot of struck down believers.
The irony of posting this a day late does not escape me, and I'd like to say that it's on purpose, but sadly I can only say that the topic only inspired me to make sure that it did get done, instead of motivating me to get it typed up on time.  So I'll just leave you with the request to step back from life for a minute, and put the question to yourself, as I will be trying to do, am I really laying all I have down in front of God, or am I holding back and being struck down for it?

But what a bout the bunnies and kitties?

I was listening to Ravi Zacharias this week, and a story he told just really slapped me across the ears.  He was talking about the time he lived near Cambridge University and when he went jogging in the morning, the numerous signs posted around the university, declaring the need to ban meat, fur, animal testing, ect.  This was the seventies, nice to know some things haven't changed right?  The crux of this story was his realization that all this focus on animal rights and hyper-environmentalism was the modern equivalent of what Paul was lamenting in Romans 1, with the line "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things." (Rom. 1:22-23)  I've heard the reference before, it just really jumped out again.  We're sitting in the midst of a huge push for green energy, and a constant view of how everything we do might affect the birds and the bunnies.  For example, a recent attempt to start a pipeline to bring oil down from Alaska to the lower forty eight states was shot down by Congress because of the possible environmental effects.  Those possible effects seem to outweigh the jobs and other positive human effects the pipeline would effect.   Kind of like the way the BP mess in the Gulf of Mexico might not have been as bad if the regulations hadn't required the company to be drilling so far out in the ocean.
Some people have probably already tuned out, declaring that I'm just going to say that we humans get to sit on top of the world and tear everything up and down for our own selfish wants and needs.  That's your call, but it's not my point.  My point is that while modern man may not bow down at idols shaped like cows or birds or snakes, many of us have moved those animals or the earth itself up to a holy position, one that is to be revered above anything else, a concept that God has been warning us about throughout the Bible.  When we hold up anything before the instructions God gives us, we are practicing idolatry. Even if it seems like what we're doing is in line with God's commands, if the act or the cause becomes more important than God, it turns into an idol, same as that golden calf or those various ancient statues.  When we put our time and energy into activities that distract us from God's plan for us, even if those activities seem to be good, Christian stuff, we are still practicing idolatry.  (That one's for me as much as anyone else)  
Obviously, God has given mankind a call to take care of this earth, which cancels out ideas like strip mining the whole planet for the sole purpose of making gold trinkets or razing the rain forests to make toothpicks that some people like to try and tack to Christians.  Going back to the Mosaic Law we find instruction to leave all the land to rejuvenate for an entire year out of  each seven, one of the earliest "green" movements.  There's nothing wrong with wanting to take care of the planet, or loving your animal friends, or even eating vegan.  The trouble comes when those actions get placed higher on our priority totem pole than God.

More Than....Conquered?

I was listening to a sermon from Charles Stanley (audio archives here, you'll have to search for "Spirit That Conquers" for the message in particular, too much Javascript for an easy direct link) and it got my wheels spinning.  We as Christians talk a great deal about our freedom and our ability to conquer that is granted us by our faith in Jesus.  Yet a little digging into the Bible finds many references to our being conquered by God and being slaves to Him.  This is seems very contradictory, especially to our freedom loving Western minds.  Romans 6 puts this contradiction bluntly, verse 18 declaring that we are "set free from sin, and have become slaves to righteousness."  How is it we can be free and slave at the same time?  Numerous Psalms declare our freedom, with 119 declaring our freedom comes directly from obeying God's laws.  Freedom only by obedience seems a bit contradictory to many mindsets today, especially a few very loud ones that I'm not delving into right now.  Their mindset is nothing new, Peter spoke of it in 2 Peter 2:18-19 "For they mouth empty, boastful words and, by appealing to the lustful desires of the flesh, they entice people who are just escaping from those who live in error. They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity—for 'people are slaves to whatever has mastered them.'"while at the same time hitting on that contradiction, that even if God is our master, we are slaves to Him.  Peter mentions it previously in 1 Peter 2:16, imploring believers to "live as God's slaves". 
So, we are conquerors and conquered, free and slave at the same time.  The ability to conquer our old worldly selves is granted only by being conquered by God's will.  To be free from sin and the fear of death, we have to let God be our master.  It's a meshing of spiritual and physical that is difficult for us to wrap our minds around, and as I mentioned earlier, I think that our Western mindset has a big part in that difficulty.  No, I'm not advocating a leap to Eastern spiritualism for the Church, or even the need to study various spiritual "techniques" to bring us closer to God, that is not where I'm going with this.  But I am amazed, that after many great revivals in Europe and America, after great works of building faith over the centuries, that when you read of exponential church growth and miracles now, they almost consistently are coming out of Africa, India, China, and South America, and I think that a better cultural understanding of how the spiritual and physical worlds mesh is a large part of that.  That understanding has been bent and twisted over the centuries in a whole lot of very unGodly directions, but the move is on to return these sheep to the fold, and hopefully bring with them that understanding so that the rest of us can get out of our ruts, tear down those walls in our own minds, and become more than conquerors, but properly conquered.

The Greatest Commandment and it's National Implications

Last week, I ended with a mention of the Golden Rule, and the possibility that applying the rule before it would solve a lot of the problems tackled in the post.  Well, first off, I messed up.  The passage I was thinking of doesn't have that golden rule, per se, but it's pretty close. "Do to others as you would have done to you" is Matthew 7:12 or Luke 6:31.  I was thinking of "love your neighbor as yourself" from Matthew 22:39, preceded by "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." Matt.22:38.  The lesson here, always double check your references, even if you're 100% positive that you are correct and have known said reference for ages.  So with that little misappropriation cleared up, onto the train of thought.

Whether we say it as treating others like we want to be treated or loving others as we love ourselves, either way it is almost universally accepted that doing so makes the world a better place.  If I don't want my stuff stolen, I shouldn't steal from others.  If I don't want people to talk nasty about me behind my back, I shouldn't talk nasty about other people.  Yet that preceding rule, the greatest commandment as Jesus called it, generates much more debate.  The debate comes from many directions.  People have trouble defining love anymore.  Western culture has love and sex so intertwined that those Biblical concepts just go completely over our heads..  We have our concepts of parental love so far askew that we don't do parental things like discipline kids or set expectations for them.  People have trouble defining God anymore.  We get into the Bible and find out exactly who God is, and what loving Him entails, and we don't want to give up those worldly thought patterns and habits.  Or we don't get into the Bible, and get inaccurate definitions of who God is and what loving Him entails, and can't reconcile those wrong ideas with that innate vision of Him that is somewhere in our soul, whether we pay attention to it or not.   

My not so humble opinion has long been that the Old Testament nation of Israel was intended by God to be, among other things, an example of what can happen when a large group of people truly do follow that greatest commandment.  When Israel was standing on the Law, not out of responsibility and in action only, but had God first in their heart, mind  and soul, the nation experienced unparalleled prosperity. I'm sure that even in those high times, there were dissenters and people who fell short, but that is what the Temple sacrifices and the Day of Atonement, with it's scapegoat were for.  When they, as a group, fell from grace and lost sight of that love, the proverbial stuff really hit the fan.  Does any of this sound familiar?  While the U.S. has never been a theocracy, Christian morals and values have (contrary to the revisionists) been the foundation of our ideals and laws for the majority of our existence.  The Declaration of Independence cries out that we are endowed by our Creator with those unalienable rights.  For two hundred some odd years the United States was, for the most part, a bastion of prosperity.  Yes there were hiccups in there, yes bad stuff still happened to people, that's why I said for the most part.  It has been in recent history, as attacks on those founding ideals grew, that the prosperity has slipped away.

I'm not saying we need to turn around and enforce a Christian faith on every American citizen to dig us out of the pit the nation is sitting in socially and economically.  A forced faith is no faith at all.  I'm saying that we all need to admit that when we were proud of our Christian heritage and acknowledged it instead of trying to bury it or deny it for fear of offending some folks, the country was in much better shape.  I'm saying when anybody, but specifically teachers, politicians, cops, and other folks who happen to work for and in the government could freely talk about their own faith and how it shaped decisions they made without fear of accusations of harassment or bigotry, those decisions seemed to be a bit more productive and positive. Even the most vehement "wall of separation" folks should be honest enough to admit that.

Holding to high (double) standards

A bit of writer's block today.  Lots of interesting tidbits to build off of in the news, like why is Lindsy Lohan even on the news and not relegated to Entertainment Tonight or Extra where such fluff belongs?  Or how about a discussion of the Occupy folks not realizing that protesting is supposed to be a means to an end, not an end unto itself?  Europe is getting closer and closer to economic collapse, which in this constant movement to a one world economy, is going to strike the sinking ship that is the American economy.  The new Cain harassment allegations remind us that character counts, but only if you're not a Democrat, reference Bill Clinton or Chappaquiddick or John Edwards if you don't believe me. I think we'll go off of that one today.  Herman Cain is a nasty threat to both the Democrat and Republican establishments.  He's not a career politician, he's not an extremist nut that can be easily dismissed, and more importantly, right now he's gaining a lot of support.  Suddenly, with that support rising, these old allegations arise.  Details are sketchy, just enough to generate headlines and speculation.  I'm not giving the man a free pass, but it's fascinating the furor and firestorm he gets, particularly from people who think Bill Clinton was the greatest thing since sliced bread.  Clinton settled his suits out of court, for a lot more money than what we've been told the Cain cases were settled for, and people moved on. 

The disturbing thing about all of this is the blatant double standard that raises it's ugly head.  Just not liking President Obama's failed attempts to fix our economic woes is reason enough to declare a person an evil racist, but the (left) attacks on Herman Cain have been some of the most disgusting racist garbage I've seen in a long time, calling him the Republican's "black friend" and accusing him of sucking on the conservative crack pipe.  Nobody but the evil conservative pundits are pointing this out, and even then it's still just more Republican racism. 

Another blip popping up on the news radar is a renewed fight between healthcare reform and Catholic organizations.  Many of these regulations are being used to try and push providers, especially adamantly opposed religious ones, to provide medications and services that go against their beliefs, specifically birth control and abortion.  Again that nasty double standard shows up.  You can't have a prayer at a high school graduation on the grounds someone in the crowd might not be a Christian, but you can force a Christian hospital to provide abortion services in the name of equality and freedom.  It's insane.

But, pointing out a problem isn't enough.  What's the solution?  Unfortunately, like last weeks topic, that solution isn't easy or quick.  It still lays squarely on all of our shoulders.  It requires us to step up and call out so called journalists who perpetuate these double standards.  It requires stepping up and teaching ourselves and our sphere of influence that what's good for the goose is good for the gander too.  It requires acknowledging that it is impossible to remove all the offensive bits from life without creating a flat, empty grey world.  It requires going to that Golden Rule, do unto others as you would have done to you.  Applying the rule before that would go along way to solving these nasty issues to, but maybe we'll just save that one for next week.

Playing the blame game....and losing.

Ok, haven't talked politics for a while, trying to focus on more important things, but with all the stuff going on right now, it has been difficult.  We've got the Occupy X movement going, the Republican candidates are vying for the nomination, Obama vying for re-election points, and that's just the big blips on the national scale.  Europe is falling to pieces economically and politically on the international scene, while the Middle East is abound with revolution, supposedly moving towards more democracy, but we will have to wait and see.
Times are rough everywhere, and just about everyone is busy looking for whose fault it is.  The OWS folks blame the "1%", Republicans blame Obama and the Democrats, Obama and the Democrats blame the 1% and the Republicans.  Sounds like a circular firing squad to me.
Too many of us are not looking at the issues through a wide enough lens.  If we did, we would have to admit that all of this stuff has hit the fan, and the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of............... us.  Why is our government full of idiots, ideologues, and muckrakers (not all of whom have a (D) behind their name, (R)'s are just as much in the sights on this issue)?  Because we keep voting them in, either by not supporting other candidates or by simply not voting.  National voter turnout runs 30-50 percent of registered voters bothering to show up for elections, and I'll wager the majority of those don't really have a clue who they are voting for and what they are voting for, just going off those letters behind the name or which one's commercials stuck out in their mind.  Look at the state right now.  Republicans are arguing over which candidate is electable, not which one has the best plans and abilities for the nation, and despite O's Bush level approval ratings and numerous failed programs, no Dems have the backbone to stand up and run against him.
That's just the national level.  How about on the state and local levels?  Do you like everything your city council is doing?  How about the county government, whatever it's title is where you're at?  Your state senators and governor?  Did you get out and cast an intelligent, educated vote last time they were up, or did you miss that one?  How many various acts have been put to a public vote in your area in the last year?  It does still happen.  Guess what, it isn't the 1% screwing the 99%, the 99 is doing it just fine to themselves.
On that note, much of the OWS furor is directed at corporate America.  There actually are a few legitimate gripes leveled by the group there, but they are drowned out by envy and laziness, with these protesters wanting all that wealth they don't have ripped away by the government and handed to them.  The sad fact is that just like our elected officials, we are simply lying in the bed that we have made.  An easy example here is that big evil Walmart.  I'm not going to lie, I'm not a big fan of Wally World, but I still pick up what needs to be gotten from them quite frequently, sometimes based on price, sometimes convenience, occasionally because there's nowhere else to get it from.  I admire Sam's business plan, creating the distribution centers which bought product in big enough bulk to get massive discounts, then shipping things around his darn self instead of making each store an island.  I also remember when Walmart had a much more significant variety of products, be it electronics, music, clothes or toys than they do now.  So how did Walmart go from a great business idea to an evil corporation?  Again, because we got lazy and apathetic.  What happened to that little shop downtown with the cool clothes?  Too many people settled for Faded Glory tshirts instead of the nifty stuff that little shop carried.  What happened to the hardware store that always had that one bolt you needed for this weekend's project?  Same thing, only now Walmart doesn't have the room for 150,000 different bolts, so you're out of luck on that project.
We The People made this mess, period.  We made by getting apathetic anLet the OWS folks think that by holding their signs and refusing to leave their camps that they are making some kind of difference.  They aren't.  Let the politicians bicker amongst themselves like they are willing to fix the issues.  History and most available evidence shows they aren't.  If America is going to get out of this hole, it's going to happen in the homes of the people.  People are going to get smart, and get tired of waiting, and get to work their darn selves, scraping together ideas and businesses.  Either that, or America will join many other great nations on the list of collapsed powers of the world.  The unfortunate fact is that if we do start to climb out, it's going to be a long hard road for everyone.  Anymore, that seems to be the hardest pill of all for so many of us to swallow.

To Finity, Then Beyond!

Ok, this week is the last in this burst based on Ravi Zacharias' presentation "Growing Through Our Disciplines" (I think that's the first time I put the title in here).  Here again are the links, again to the fifteen minute edits part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4.  So far, the 'tudes that have been discussed were solitude, gratitude, and certitude.  This week's 'tude is finitude.  Spellcheck doesn't like it, and even I thought Ravi may have made it up, but a couple of different dictionaries pull it up as a scholarly word, one that means exactly what it sounds like, simply the state of being finite.

A knee-jerk reaction to this might be simply responding that we are not finite, our souls will live forever.  That is true, and not the direction this 'tude goes.  The finitude here refers to our lives and time here on earth, and what we do with that.  Ravi quotes C.S. Lewis with the line "We do not have a soul, we are a soul.  We have a body."  That soul will go into eternity, based on the actions of this body, during this body's finite time in the world.  I've been getting the newsletter from Voice Of The Martyrs  for several years now, as well as keeping up with email and twitter lists from them, and it never ceases to amaze me the handle that some people have on this finitude, even if I didn't have that word to attach to it yet.  In parts of the world, believers have to hike miles into the woods to have Church services in order to avoid severe harassment, imprisonment, torture and/or death.  They risk their bodies here to tell others about Jesus, knowing that even if that act does cost them their body, it's just the finitude they knew had to dealt with.

How many of you were believers in school, be it public or college?  That was a finite opportunity to touch a lot of people, wasn't it?  Yes, lots of our Facebook and Twitter friends are old school buddies, but think about the masses that you were immersed in every day in that period, even if it was a small school.  Moving forward, to present day, think about your work, that 50 hour a week commitment that replaced school as the major time consumer in life.  How many people do you interact with there?  How many have disappeared from there, quitting, moving, being promoted, laid off, whatever the reason, their finitiude had passed yours.  Did you use that crossing of paths?  Did you put it off until tomorrow? Some of those persecuted believers I mentioned aren't the only ones in their countries facing a shortened finitude, and that person they choose not to speak to today may be another mark on a list in a dark prison by tomorrow. 


Dealing with spiritual life and prayer, finitude is the fuse we have burning.  As believers, we know that once that fuse burns up, we have infinity to worship and fellowship with God. We don't have infinity to let others know, to leave and live a legacy that will outlast our own finitude.  Properly using our own limited time is the fuel for this life, as are the other three 'tudes from this series.  Solitude gets us in communication with God, filling our spiritual tank for whatever lies ahead, be it growth, attack, or even a streak of the mundane.  Certitude keeps the motor running, knowing that there is a final goal, and the potholes and roadblock here won't matter, only how we handle them will.  Gratitude makes those hard times easier to handle, and makes the good times praise to God, not blocks of pride.