The Wall of Babel

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

The people decided to build a tower in Babel "whose top will reach into heaven" (Genesis 11:4).  They convinced themselves that building bricks and mortar hundreds of feet into the sky would allow them to "reach into" heaven.   It's the essential mindset of godlessness: that human beings can, by their own efforts, by natural means, lay hold of spiritual blessing for themselves.

Scripture says their foolish belief that they could seize heaven by building a tower tall enough was based in their desire to "make for ourselves a name" (ibid).  Isn't pride always at the heart of godlessness ?  Is there anything God hates more than pride ?

I've been thinking this week about one of the first teachings God put directly into my thinking (i.e., "heart"), over 40 years ago: that we have nothing we were not given.  And that God is the only Giver of "every good thing given and every perfect gift..." (James 1:17).

I understood from the thought He put in my heart that we are profoundly foolish when we struggle...especially when we struggle in our own strength, and by natural means...to seize blessing.  We are foolish as well to struggle to keep possession of His blessing.  Blessing is entirely and only in God's gift, at His will: our struggle is with our own ungodliness and pride, which keep us from His will and His blessing.

Our current president continues to insist that his multi-billion dollar border-wall will keep "illegals" from entering America...from taking American jobs, from spreading crime across America, from stealing services and resources that belong to Americans.  And many have convinced themselves that building a steel and concrete wall for thousands of miles across the land will keep and protect for Americans God's blessings to America.

Is our border-wall any less an attempt to seize spiritual blessing by our own effort that the tower the people of Babel built, or any less the product of ungodliness and pride.

Is there anything God hates more than man's ungodliness and pride ?

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Praying for North Korea

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

I've been praying for the people of South Korea.  A close friend's family lives in Seoul, 50 miles from the border, and they and all their countrymen are very much on the spot when national leaders start blustering nuclear threats.

I've been praying for the people of North Korea too.  They are even more in the cross-hairs.

North Koreans need our prayers, and our pity.  They follow a man they've been taught to believe is wise and good, who loves and protects them: even though the un-brainwashed world can see he's a violent egocentric liar.   But North Koreans had no say in choosing that kind of leader.

I pray for and pity the people of the United States too: even the ones who did choose that kind of man as America's leader.

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Non-controversial

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Jesus said "I AM . . . the Truth . . ." (John 14:6).

Nobody then who follows lies and liars is following Jesus.

It's a controversial thing to say today, to politicized American Christians.

It should NOT be.

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Honesty Toward God

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

The word(s) "honest/y" appears in my favorite translation of the Bible far fewer times than I would have expected. The sole New Testament use was in the parable of the sower, when Jesus characterizes the "good soil" as those who hear the word in an “honest and good heart,” hold it fast, and bear fruit “with perseverance” (Luke 8:15).

But it’s probably not scripture-twisting to think of honesty as part of…or even roughly equivalent to…”integrity.”   "Honest" may even be the general attitude and practice that scripture means by “righteousness.”

I have to think too of “honesty” as a response to Truth; which makes it specifically an orientation toward Christ. That “lies” are the contrary spirit and the contrary response seems to bear that out.
In Jesus’ parable, an “honest and good heart” is the only soil in which God’s word takes root and grows. I understand our interpretations of what God “speaks”…Truth/Jesus, scripture, reality…to be some of the “fruits” that grow from our heart-orientation: and honest and good interpretations only  from an “honest and good heart.”

Certainly LACK of honesty seems the common characteristic of those who “cherry-pick” facts, or try to live in an echo-chamber of their own making, or block dissenting comments from their blogs. In all those instances, the individual's purpose is clearly to “validate” his own alternative "reality" against the reality God perfectly (in Hebrew, "completely") speaks.

I have to think those who choose to interpret the facts of reality dishonestly ultimately seek to deny God’s sovereignty: and in dishonest hubris, substitute their own.

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Monty Python on Reality

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

I remember a Monty Python piece . . .

A grubby industrial city in the north (Leeds, as I recall) had hired a magician to help put up new public housing.  One Python, dressed as a magician, was standing in front of a screen on which a film-clip of an apartment-building demolition was played backwards.  As the magician waved his wand, a pile of rubble lying on the ground leaped into the air, and formed itself into a tall apartment-building.

In the skit that followed, a resident was being interviewed in his apartment.  He extolled the amenities of the magical building, and how much he enjoyed living in Leeds.

The interviewer asked (quoting from memory), "Where did you live before ?"

The resident mentions off-handedly that he formerly lived in the manor-house at his estate in Devon.

"But", says the puzzled interviewer,  "Wasn't that much nicer than a one-bedroom apartment in a public-housing block ?"

A quizzical look crosses the resident's face, and the light of thought begins to show in his visage.

"Well, yes," he says, as he seems to suddenly awaken, "Yes, that was ever so much nicer."

Camera-work makes the walls of the apartment seem to slowly lean to the right, slightly out-of-plumb at first, but at a greater and greater angle as the resident comes to his realization, and an ominous loud creaking grows.

The resident and interviewer both rush to the opposite wall, and throw their weight against it.

"NO, NO !" cries the resident, "I like it here much better !"  The wall begins to reverse itself toward plumb.

"It's much nicer here !  Much nicer."  And the wall returns to vertical.

It's a pointed parable for our time.  Reality stands by itself.  False realities, peddled by all varieties of con-men, collapse when the victim wakes up and stops believing in them.

The con-man's guiding adage was always that "you can't cheat an honest man."

Today's political landscape of "alternative realities" probably says a lot about the honesty of most people's political thinking.

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

"Missing It" in Scripture

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

I'm amazed that sometimes when I'm meditating on a subject, and do a search to see what the Bible says about it, it doesn't appear in scripture at all, or only rarely.

"Honest" (and "honesty") was one such surprise.  It's a quality which seems cognate with, or the foundational heart-attitude of, "righteousness:" which scripture enjoins as one of man's primary duties. But the word only occurs once in the New Testament, in Jesus' parable of the sower, where He explains that the "good soil" on which the seed falls is "an honest and good heart" (Luke 8:15).

More recently, I had that experience when I was looking to see what scripture says about "unrepentance," or the "unrepentant."  Scripture often speaks of  "repentantance;" again, a primary duty of all men.  So I was sure the Bible had some trenchant comments about the contrary attitude and action.

But those words don't appear in scripture at all.  To find what the Bible says about unrepentance, I had to re-think my search-terms: what would the Bible call that attitude ?  And when I mentioned this quandry to my wife, she came up with the same scriptural terminology I'd settled on: "stiff-necked."

That search-term opened up some scriptures: and I'm still pondering what scripture says.

My take-away was, again, that God's thoughts and God's ways are not our ways and our thoughts  (Isaiah 55:8): sometimes not even our search-terms of God's thoughts.

I was reminded of the point my teacher Derek Prince emphasized in his seminal teaching on "Agreeing With God:" to hear, and comprehend, what God is saying, we have to think in God's definitions and God's categories.  Experience shows me that I often do not, even when I think I AM. That even when I believe I'm thinking in the right "religious" terms, I can miss God's ways and God's thoughts.