In those days there was
no king in Israel, but every man did that which
was right in his own eyes. Jdg 17:6
If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. Joh 8:36
At one time a long time ago men were
actually free. They could do anything they liked and no one did them the
offensive duty of preaching to them.
Meaning to pursue life after the
Epicurean fashion, they soon sunk into an insufferable ennui. They devised many
other inventions, as they still do. But their towers come crumbling down every
time they reach the first heaven.
Total happiness is still a mirage
here under the sun. “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.” The Preacher opined.
The Good News version makes no bones about it. “It is useless, useless, said
the Philosopher. Life is useless, all useless.” God meant for a higher purpose or
higher calling for us on this side of Jordan - than money, sex, food and drink.
And so we miss the boat by a mile every day, as the world flies away and
everything in it.
But we asked for it, we demanded it, it was our
right. So God gave it to us, and we
mistook that for love. It is spiritual judgment. “God gave them up.” That is a terrible
road to be riding on.
So our inner eyes have closed and we hardly behold
our own ugliness, and our rampant greediness. We have seared the conscience
with a hot iron, and it is sealed. Hence “it is a shame even to speak of those
things which are done of them in secret.” We are slaves. Men and women in
shackles. The chains ring loud, ominously announcing that the truth is out
there, in the street.”
But we don’t see. “We grope for the wall like the
blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes: we stumble at noon day as in the
night; we are in desolate places as dead men.”
Modern slavery is no longer of the scale of spatial plantation.
The plantations are now in our minds and we work at them daily. And factories
for manufacturing our happiness raise up smoke and fog in our cities day and
night, clouding our vision so we can hardly see clearly anymore.
Lights glitter and dazzle us at night. “Free
yourself. Let it play. Let it ride.” “For the man who knows what he wants in a
woman.” “Don’t scratch it. Don’t rub it.” There will never be true freedom and happiness
when the urge is forced upon us by the chimera of market.
Money, sex, food, and drink will not free you. Look carefully again. “There is a hole in the
bucket.” So you will keep drawing water and returning again to the well.
These are spots in your feasts of charity, when they
feast with you, feeding themselves without fear: clouds they are without water,
carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead,
plucked up by the roots; Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame;
wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever. Jude 12-13.
Saying “it is my nature” is escapist. You are
escaping from the mirror.
It is like saying I take poison because it is in my
nature. Sin is in our nature, it enslaves us, and blinds us. “Whosoever
committeth sin is the servant of sin.” But we can obey a higher thing than that
which is inside us.
There is a higher thing, a higher Being. His name is
God. Being wise is to know Him, to learn of Him and to understand Him. Know what you believe and why you believe.
The benefits are legion. Self-assurance, peace, joy, love and liberty.
When we love God first, everything else falls into
place, it will spill over in every facet of our lives. We don’t so much benefit
God but ourselves. It is not God who gets peace but us. It is not God who gets
“free” and healthy but us. It is not God who dies but us. These blessings are
unto us, and unto our children.
Jesus did not only stand for what he believed. He
died for it. That is principal. What this world sorely misses are men and women
of conviction. The world we live in consists of two main ingredients only, the
innocuous applause or jeer. So called winners and losers.
But what do they win? What do they lose? Get
substance. Get value. The Disciples of Christ were only fishermen. There were a
lot wealthy men in their time, men of renown, huge… but the world hardly
remembers them anymore. But Christ I know, and Peter, and John, and James and
Paul. These I know and many others know them as I know. Their names are writ in
blood. But as long as the ephemera is
“set in great dignity” here, this excitement will continue to build, rising and
falling like a breath. The applause will burst and die. The house will come
down. The glass mirror will disintegrate in a thousand splinters. And there
will be no remembrance of it anymore. Nor of the house.
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