The Lies and The Truth

And they bend their tongues like their bow for lies. Jer 9:3 

O LORD, are not thine eyes upon the truth? Jer 5:3 

Lies have no purity. They will admit anything inside them. Truth is white and pure. Lies wear the coat of many colors.

Lies don’t walk alone. They walk in a pack like ravenous wild beasts. Lies, if they have to hang, don’t hang alone. Lies will take their friends with them.

But truth should rather hang than lie. Truth admits no impurities. Truth pays care to its health and beauty not to be soiled. If he lied truth knows it’s the surest way to become ugly. Beside he cannot. He wouldn’t even contemplate. He cannot go against his nature. Truth is clean. You can wipe a dish cloth on its surface and there will be not a single speck of dust. Truth wears only white. You cannot find mud splashed on it.

Truth does not fear. When others stampede in a dash for life truth stands alone, fearless and courageous. Truth does not fear to die. Truth fears no man.

Truth does not wear make-up. Truth is himself.  Well, truth admits no affectation. It wears no fake parts. It admits only the original. Truth cannot be bought. It admits no price. Everything else is cheap compared to it.

Truth has an uncanny ability to detect a lie. Flattery will not lie to it. Truth will recognize it, and scorn it. Truth knows a cheat when he sees him a mile off. Nothing can lie against the truth. It will return to you and it will eat you up.

You may harm the truth but it will never die. It always rises again from the dust. Truth will haunt you. But it will stop when you accept it. It will become your friend. It will protect you, and guide you. It will never leave you nor forsake you. Truth will die for you.

Truth demands loyalty. It will be annoyed if you mix it with other friends not like it. Truth will get sick when it is denied.

Truth is jealous. It will give you up to your desires when you scorn it. Then what happens to you will be your own problem. Truth will not be there to protect you. But it will come if you call on it in truth and with a contrite heart. Truth forgives, it forgives and remembers your sins no more if repented.

It is a lonely life to be far away from the truth.

Truth and lies cannot coexist. One has to go and the other remains. Truth has few friends therefore it is often a lonely house.

Truth convicts. It stands upright and it is as straight as a pole. Lies are not so. They bend and shrink when it gets too hot. They rarely stand alone but require more lies to be strengthened. Without more lies for support they are blown down like the dust.

Truth never exhausts its reservoirs. But lies do. Eventually all lying missiles in the world will be exhausted. Then lies will flee under the heavy barrage of truth. Truth will never surrender but lies will. Eventually lies, to avoid being killed, will apostatize, renouncing their king and their faith.

Lies are always cold. Truth is always hot. You will never find any other like truth. I am Jesus Christ. I am the truth, the way and life.

The Plague of Indecisiveness - “To be or not to be, that is the question.” – Part Two

Their heart is divided_ Hos 10:2

No man can serve two masters_ Mat 6:24  

And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions?_ 1Ki 18:21

A double minded man is unstable in all his ways. Jam 1:8 

I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. Rev 3:15 

These are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest_ 2Pe 2:17 

The indecisive fellow is the quintessential doubter.  He tries to see but every time he lifts his eyes up he comes upon an embankment with this large writing on it “No!”

He rarely comes upon a sign that screams to him, “Yes!” But when he does he ponders for an eternity whether it is really true or his eyes are playing him a trick. If he wears spectacles like I do he will remove them and gently rub his eyes and then put them on again. He might have to repeat that gesture until the chickens have come home to roost. All for want of proving whether what he is seeing is true or not.

Again he is like the man who runs to the ruffle office with the winning ticket in his hand - and his first question to the superintendent as he hands him his ticket is “Is it true that I have won?”

That is the tragedy of the perennial doubter. It reminds me of the story of the beggar Lazarus and the rich man after their deaths. The rich man was in hell and the beggar was in heaven. Then the heat in hell got rather hot. “Father Abraham,” the rich man cried. He wanted Lazarus to be sent to his living brothers on the earth so “that he might testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment.” Father Abraham replied that “They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.” But the rich man persisted, “Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.” It is then that Father Abraham added this damper, “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead” (Luk 16:19-31).

A congenitally indecisive fellow is like that. You give him one proof, even the miracle of Lazarus coming back to life itself, but he will still find it hard to believe. He will instead ask for “one more” proof. But Christ knew such hard fellows. He saw through their recalcitrance and informed them plainly that they were not fooling him, “But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you.” Others he saw through their stomachs, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled.”   

They saw his miracles and even acknowledged that “Never man spake like this man.” But still they remained unconvinced. They kept asking for “one more” sign up to the time he was dying on the cross. Even now people will persist in their unbelief until Jesus comes back again. And then it will be too late.

That is the tragedy. A doubter, or an indecisive fellow jumps from one hurdle of unbelief to another. A miracle does not assuage his unbelief, but rather it increases it.  “Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?”

 

The God of Yes

Paul when he wrote to the Corinthians clearly affirmed that God is never indecisive.  

“But as God is true, our word toward you was not yea and nay. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us, even by me and Silvanus and Timothy, was not yea and nay, but in him was yea. For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen” (2Co 1:18-20). 

God has made a covenant and He will never detract from it. Probably that is what we all should do so as to dispel the confusion and to bring order in our lives again – and respect. Write it down and stick it on your wall, “This is my final decision!”  

Otherwise chronic indecision will open floodgates of despair. And next it will lead invariably to a cropping up of all manner of diseases and emotional malfunctions.

Going with the Wind

The apostle James put it succinctly. In describing the person who is a doubter, the writer compares him to a wave of the sea which is “driven with the wind and tossed.”

An indecisive person also behaves like that. He is at the mercy of the wind. He has no standing. And wherever the wind blows him there he calls his home.

  

Paul compared such a person to a child who is without a firm hold on life. “That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive” (Eph 4:14). 

It seemed these believers were not entirely certain about what to believe. Every teaching hanging out there sounded a good teaching and they devoured it hungrily. They seemed not to know exactly what they believed in and why they believed it. These were victims for indecisiveness. 

On the other hand Paul used several adjectives to describe a stable person. He is “grounded and settled, and [is] not moved away.” He is “rooted and built up in him, and established in the faith…” (Col 1:23; 2:7). That is the sight of a stable person. Like a strong firm tree, he is “grounded and settled” and he cannot be moved away. That is a person who knows what he believes in and why he believes it.

What is the one thing you believe in with your whole life? Why do you believe it? Then go for it and don’t turn your back. Christ showed who is a dependable person to him and who is not. He said the man who ploughs but keeps looking at his back is not dependable. “Remember Lot’s wife.” Ultimately it depends on whether you can depend on yourself or not.

An indecisiveness fellow is like a ship at sea without anchor. And that is a very dangerous ship not only to its user but to other ocean goers as well.

Prolonged indecisiveness will inevitably lead to death. “To be great is to be misunderstood,” said Emerson. Personally I doubt there is any greatness in that. “But wisdom is justified of her children,” said Jesus Christ.

The Cure for Indecision  

Know what you want in life and stick to that. Tracking too many paths invariably gives birth to indecisions. Seeing too many visions, too many possibilities, too many ways. But we have only one head, and one heart. Don’t get squeezed in the middle by a multiplication of desires.

It is the same when a man has a single woman and a woman a single man. Trouble happens when dreams begin to cross each other at night – and when all that is dreamt and seen looks good. Indecision will make a fatal attraction in the end. You cannot split the heart into two without killing it.

Otherwise dishonesty will set in and respectability will fly outside the window. Make a road map and don’t deviate from your itinerary. Believe in it and be ready to die in it.

Lack of principal causes dishonesty, causes lies, causes shifting of goal posts. Have something you believe in – then believe it to death. You will never be indecisive ever again after that. You will never suffer emotional sickness again because of it.

Perhaps this is a good rule to kill indecision. If a thing isn’t worth dying for in the first place then it probably isn’t worth pursuing either. That will give you sound ground to stand on. It will give you principal.

I bet God meant the same thing when he said they shall become one flesh. If she (or he) isn’t worth dying for now then the plague of indecisiveness will never leave your house.

In recapitulation know what you believe in and why you believe it. You do that and nothing will move you “away.” You will be rooted, grounded, and even more you will be settled. You will no longer be tossed to and fro. You will no longer be a ship at sea without anchor.

Choose persistency, and consistency, rather than slogging forwards and backwards. In the end whether you fail or succeed you will at least be content and at peace with yourself - that what you did you did very well and you gave it your best shot. In the end even the world will notice that. And you shall have earned your accolades on this side of heaven.

Not so for the man who is still stuck at the cross roads. Not so for the man who is still walking on the road left and right. Watch out for him. Such is a danger to himself and other road users.

The Plague of Indecisiveness - “To be or not to be, that is the question.” – Part One

Their heart is divided_ Hos 10:2

No man can serve two masters_ Mat 6:24  

And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions?_ 1Ki 18:21

A double minded man is unstable in all his ways. Jam 1:8 

I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. Rev 3:15 

These are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest_ 2Pe 2:17 

Whether Hamlet was really mad or merely putting on an “antic disposition” is not the question here. 

The tragedy with Hamlet is that in the end he never decided early enough what he ought to have decided early enough. Prolonged indecision can make one insane or prove fatal. In Hamlet both these results proved true.

Indecision nearly killed Lot once except the angels plucked him out of his “lingering.” His wife though wasn’t lucky. She turned back to look and that was her last look. She hadn’t quite decided whether to go or not to go.

If you have decided you have decided and don’t look back. It can prove fatal. But other times deciding can be the easier part. The harder part is following up on that decision. That is called procrastination. It is the cousin to indecisiveness.

The instruction from God to Abraham had been definite once. “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land I will shew thee.”

But it would seem Abraham had left matters of deciding to his father, Mr. Terah. “And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son's son, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there.”

Mr. Terah took matters over but he didn’t finish what he started. For when he arrived at Haran, Mr. Terah and family booked a place, including Abram, and “dwelt there.” But the instruction had been to go to Canaan. And the instruction had been to Abram and not Mr. Terah.  But indecision seems to have weighed heavily on Abram. To go or not to go with his family? 

In the end his family delayed him. Friends or family can delay you in arriving at your destination. The decision to “decide” is a personal initiative. Don’t bring your parents or siblings into it. They will delay you.

On a fictional note, Hamlet delayed acting on instructions from his father’s ghost to kill Claudius his uncle who had murdered Hamlet’s father and married his mother. From his initial indecision were added more indecisions. Eventually Hamlet’s indecisions killed not only him but many members of his royal family.

We all come to the valley of decision at one time or another in our lives. We have to get out of it early or we will be delayed in our enterprises, or worse we can die in the valley.

Unfortunately we can never take leave from deciding in this life until we are dead and our mind is shut and closed. For technically one cannot refuse to decide – for in refusing to decide that in itself comprises a decision – or a judgment. And to refuse to judge is to refuse to think.

The Causes of Indecision

Sometimes it is not a refusal to think – but to think too much, or too widely. Many options present themselves, and all of the options are genuine possibilities. It is not one woman but all of them that have the potential to make good wives. But then one can only marry one wife. If all possibilities look good then close your eyes and pick one. Then get married to it and live with it until death do you part.  

Other times it is not the lack of ambition that is the problem, but over-ambition. You want it all. You run not after one but after all. In the end you will lose all. A rolling stone gathers no moss. It lands clean and swept at the valley below.

Other causes are lack of conviction, doubts and too many fears. “What will they think?” “What if I fail?” “Where do I go from here?” “How long have I got to live?”

A perfectionist streak is another cause of indecisiveness. Remember only God is perfect. No matter how good or “perfect” we think we are, in God’s sight we are but vanity. Being humble will prevent the perfectionist streak from running riot. Be not “over wise: [for] why shouldest thou destroy thyself?”  The preacher also boldly affirmed that “in much wisdom is [also] much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.”  Find place for humour whenever you can. Life is hard enough without deliberately adding further sorrows to it. Besides the more we increase in the knowledge of God, the more we shall also increase in the knowledge of our true selves - that we are nothing, and are far from perfect. The challenge is to bring a man to this simple understanding, for everybody is perfect in his own sight.

For the perfectionist I say let us temper our seriousness of life. We are only human. God knows and He understands that. His mercies reach from here to heaven. Having said that let me also add that – yes - God understands but God is also not mocked. In the end we shall all harvest what we shall have planted in the gardens of our lives.

At our death we shall all leave behind some work that will not quite have gotten finished. So don’t be too hard on yourself. Only Jesus finished his. But that was only on earth. He has more work still going on in heaven.

Other causes of indecisiveness are lack of stability, consistency, and lack of patience.

Types of Indecisive Fellows

Life is like a buffet of sumptuous choices. Some people want to pack everything into one plate. The indecisive fellow is the one who holds up the queue. To eat three pieces of chicken or four? To eat roast beef or boiled? To eat lamb or crocodile? To eat fish or pork? To eat five or ten pieces of chapattis?

Some, presumably the chronic lot, will then pack everything on one plate. But after they take their seats a pervasive guilt will inundate them like a plague. Perhaps they packed up too much? Perhaps everybody is watching them? Some will leave it all altogether and stand up and walk home hungry. The courageous will unashamedly pull the plate to themselves, and work on it after they are done with theirs.

Indecision makes for veritable grief and anguished suffering.

Some have drawn up neat time tables but they are notorious for never completely arriving at a decision to stick to them. They might do it for a day or two. After that all hell breaks loose in their lives.

Others are never quite sure they have locked up. They wake up at midnight to go and confirm. Then the perfectionist comes along. Before they sleep everything has got to be in its place, everything. These take longer to sleep just wondering if everything is truly in its place.

The flagellant is an addict. This is an incorrigibly indecisive fellow. His abode is in the musky and misty existential margins of this life as whips of indecision upon indecision mercilessly lash his mind – and life – and he is greatly enamoured of it. This is a demonic impulse and only the power of Christ can deliver such a one.

So is the perfectionist. So is the malignantly indecisive. This lot can walk half a mile to the right only to turn suddenly to the left and walk back half a mile - before finally deciding to walk to the right after all. In the morning this man will still not have arrived to his destination. As a matter of fact this man walks all his entire life and never quite arrives at his destination.

Another lot is ever stuck at the cross roads wondering whether to go to the right or left. They are perpetually stuck at the cross-roads and never quite make a move.

What sort of an indecisive fellow are you?

(To be continued).

Of Cain and Abel: And Of Hate and Daily Acts of Terrorisms

“For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three. The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.” Luk 12:52-53 

“Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.” Jer 13:23  

Someone has said terrorism is a nebulous term. That it means different things to different people, hence the rather rancorous saying, “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”

Someone too would regard the bloody scenes in the Old Testament of the Bible as terrorist acts. Indeed others have been bold enough to regard God as a chief terrorist.

Personally I believe there are many various forms of unethical and gratuitous excesses in the world we live in and which I should regard as terrorist acts.

It may be the famous road rage or government (legislative and economic terrorisms), or Church (ecclesiastical terrorism; and what the preacher George Morrison called The Tyranny of Type); to domestic and work places acts which border on moral insanity – or simply terrorism.

Debauchery is another form of moral terrorism. We adore “action packed” movies, where the protagonist mauls with a machine gun a whole village somewhere in Vietnam or Iraq. It excites us on the screen but when it comes to life in our own streets it shocks us.

What of pornography and child prostitution?  What of murderous games like boxing and wrestling? Violence, let’s accept, excites us, and it would seem, without regular doses of it, life would be abysmally dull. Already our recent tragedy has been packaged into “action packed” movies. The videos are selling like hot cakes in the streets.

Elsewhere embryos of unborn babies are flushed out in tens or hundreds thousands in the world per day. But this is not tyranny but human choice or freedom.

In the old days people committed worse acts of depravity and God disapproved it. It is why He rained death massively on whole populations. God’s desire was only to contain them, so their depravity did not spread – otherwise we should still be sacrificing our children to Molech. But hasn’t the world raised up a new god called the god of pro-choice? But aren’t there many other gods which have newly come up in our midst?

“Their sorrows shall be multiplied that hasten after another god: their drink offerings of blood will I not offer, nor take up their names into my lips” (Psa 16:4).  

What of latter day slavery? What of materialism? What of racism and raw tribalism, the accompanying hubris and blatant jingoism? Wouldn’t these be summed up as tyrannical acts – or gods?

As I write this, a boat carrying about 500 African migrants has capsized off the Italian island of Lampedusa. At the end of the day the death toll will probably shoot to over 300 people. The silence from the world is deafening. How different are these deaths to those deaths which occur in conventional terrorism acts?

Yet the crime of these people is only to hope, and to dream of a better life. Why are some people obscenely rich, and others obscenely poor? The other day a man risked being expelled from New Zealand because he had grown too fat and had become a liability to the state. Perhaps there is such a thing as a tyranny of indifference?

But things will get worse. Read Paul’s “in the last days” discourse (2 Tim 3:1-4). The love of many has already waxen cold. And “All these are the beginning of sorrows.”

When Christ came, He raised the bar on the definition of terms, including on who is a murderer.  “Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him” (1Jo 3:15). I believe indifference and exploitation of any sort falls in this category. And according to that definition we have all murdered – and we need to repent.

Cain and Abel

The first “terrorist” act recorded in the Bible is in the book of Genesis. This is where everything first begun. And the first terror (murder) was caused not by a stranger but by an unrepentant brother to his own sibling. Same parents. Same house. Same tribe. Same nation. Same blood. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” was Cain’s retort to God for asking him where his brother Abel was.

  

The story of Cain and Abel is a template of our malignant nature. God asks the world, “Where is Abel thy brother?” And the world retorts, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

The anger Cain felt is anger we are all too familiar with.  The crime he committed is a crime that resonates with the crimes we hear about every day, or we commit.

The problem of hate is a Spiritual problem. And our natural systems cannot cure it. Only God has the answer - and that answer is Christ. We have to start where the rain started to beat us, and that is starting to believe in God again. “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Eph 6:12).

There is a war going on out there, fierce and malevolent - but it is a battle that is invisible to the natural man.

God told Cain, in warning him and educating him, that “sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.” It is a warning Cain refused to heed. It is a warning we have refused to heed too. Sin begets sin. Cain refused to acknowledge his sin. He only got worse, not better. He allowed sin to rule over him. It became his master and he became its slave. Sin pushed him to go and kill his brother. And on top of the sin of anger came the sins of jealousy, hate, rudeness, arrogance and cruelty. In the end sin made Cain a fugitive from his God and his family.

The Sin and the Hope

Sin will bring up a breakup of things in the end. It causes a separation of people, from their friends, from their families, and from their God. Is God still among us? Is our family still with us? Are we still with them or have we become fugitives? “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” (1Jo 4:20).

Sin pulls us further and further down until it brings us to the place of open grave. It is Christ who comes and lifts us from that mire. Christ who comes and resurrects us from that death. It is Christ who gives us a new heart, not a stony one, but of flesh, and a new hope.

It is a heart that feels. A heart that is not timid but is valiant for the truth. It is a heart that is capable of loving with a true love.  “For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous” (1Jo 3:11-12). 

But charity begins at home. So go there and forgive there first. Go and love there first before you love others. Then all things will be well between you and your Maker, and between you and other people. That is the word of God.

Let us desire to be found of Him, that we might sing with John Newton the amazing song which he sang - Amazing Grace. For that is the desire of God for every one of us. We had become fugitives once, like Cain. We had gotten lost once, “having no hope, and without God in the world.” But Christ came to reconcile us back to God. That we might become friends with Him again, and not enemies. But sin separates us from God, therefore let us repent, abandon sin, and turn back to God.

For Christ did not come to kill but to save.

To recap, let us not retort to God when He speaks to us like Cain retorted to Him. For in doing that sin stands at the door of our heart. It is in such temperaments that we can then hate and murder like Cain murdered. Sin makes blind and deaf. We cannot see and we cannot hear. And when we have reached that state there is no longer any difference between a murderer and a terrorist. That is the word of God.