The
dark places of the earth are full of cruelty… The tumult of them increases
daily_ Ps 74:20, 23
“Mirror mirror on the
wall, who’s the fairest one of all?” so asked the wicked witch in Snow White.
The magic mirror always replied that she was – until Snow white came along and
the mirror blurted out the real truth for a change.
Fortunately in real life
such mirrors don’t exist, but that does not stop us in our erstwhile fecundity to
improvise anything we like – including the manufacture of truth.
Daily we stare at
ourselves in front of our magic mirrors and we ask the same question. “Mirror
mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest one of all?” Sometimes it gives us the
truth which we like to hear, but then at other times it gives us the ugly truth
which we don’t like to hear. It is at such times that we wrench our faces into
a grimace and swear loudly that the mirror has lied.
At such times there are
only two things we can break, either break the mirror or break ourselves. Most
of us choose the easier way out. We break the mirror and we walk away from it
with “ourselves intact.”
But the mirror never lies,
or dies. We can deface it but we can never browbeat it into submission. The
mirror is a stubborn servant.
The trouble is we can –
and we do - make lies our refuge. Scripture calls that changing “the truth of
God into a lie.” The apostle James exhorted the people as follows, “lie not
against the truth.” And in another place Paul summed it up rather trenchantly “For
we can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth.” In the third but very
brief epistle of John, the word truth rings out aloud five times in the first
eight verses.
Such is the
inexhaustible weight of truth.
It was thus that the messengers
of God often faced the full wrath of the king and his cronies. For the truth
God gave to them did not always resemble the truth they wanted to hear.
The king’s ears – and his
peoples’ - itched for another kind of truth, the truth that caressed their ears
and made their hearts glow. But the messengers of God stood firm and declared
God’s message, whether the king and his people liked to hear it or not.
The messengers of God
made their faces hard like a stone – and they said to the people what God had
said to them to say. Such are messengers that God uses even today. “Who shall
abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy holy hill?” the psalmist asked,
and he replied, “He that walketh
uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart.”
He also added it is “he
that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not.” That means he stands like a
man and declares the truth which is in his heart without fear.
Like what the indefatigable Daniel
once did. He didn’t fear the lions or the fire. Can you stand up for your
convictions like that? Can you stand the heat and the growling lions that are
pouncing threateningly at you? The psalmist concluded that “He that doeth these
things shall never be moved” (Psalm 15). Yes you can die but the truth shall
never die.
Are you ready to die for what you
believe in? If not then whatever you believe in is probably not worth believing
in. Stand not for the bread alone when it is being ostentatiously flung your
way. Stand up also for the stones when they are being fiercely hurled your way.
Nothing scared the true
messengers of God. They were reviled and ridiculed. They were called liars. Jesus
was called the chief devil. But they stood their ground. Christ simply said what
he had to say on earth, and he concluded, “If any man have ears to hear, let
him hear.” And he left it at that. Likewise the true messengers of God are to
do that, for “It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the
servant as his lord.”
In the end Christ died
for what he believed in. Most of his disciples followed suit as the writer of
Hebrews testifies: “And others
had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and
imprisonment: They were stoned, they
were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about
in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented….”
But their message remained
implacable and impregnable. And always it rose from the death on the third day.
Even when pseudo prophets (who knew what side of their bread was buttered)
sided with the king and convinced him that the prophets of God were liars. They
told the king in effect, “God did not say that.” They prophesied peace instead
and the king believed them.
That is that “other”
mirror of life which resonates with our egos. Yet by the third day peace is
nowhere to be seen and the king, and his cronies, and his state are soundly
vanquished in battle. Always that is the symmetrical path such a battle always
takes – and always ends.
Jeremiah the prophet
faced many such trying times like these - of what God said to the people and
what the people said to God in turn. At one time they approached Jeremiah with
a request. “That the LORD thy God may show us the way wherein we may walk, and
the thing that we may do.” Then Jeremiah replied to them.
I
have heard you; behold, I will pray unto the LORD your God according to
your words; and it shall come to pass, that whatsoever thing the LORD
shall answer you, I will declare it unto you; I will keep nothing back
from you. Then they said to Jeremiah, The LORD be a true and faithful witness
between us, if we do not even according to all things for the which the LORD
thy God shall send thee to us. Whether it be good, or whether it
be evil, we will obey the voice of the LORD our God, to whom we send
thee; that it may be well with us, when we obey the voice of the LORD our God.
Jer 42:4-6.
After ten days Jeremiah came back
with the report. But it wasn’t the truth they had expected to hear. So they
called Jeremiah a liar. “Thou speakest falsely: the LORD our God hath not sent
thee to say, Go not into Egypt to sojourn there” (Jer 43:2b).
In the next chapter the people
got even bolder. They gave as much to Jeremiah as they received from him: “As
for the word that thou hast spoken unto us in the name of the LORD, we
will not hearken unto thee. But we will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth
forth out of our own mouth.”
But God was
unflattering in telling them the truth. That “this people hath a revolting and
a rebellious heart; they are revolted and gone.” He added, “The prophets
prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to
have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?”
Paul famously declaimed
that the days when the ears of the people will itch for a more tolerable “truth”
are coming. “For the time will come when
they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap
to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their
ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables” (2Ti 4:3-4).
The verdict is out.
Either we worship God according to His image as it is delineated in Scripture
or we hear that “other” god whom we have fashioned in our own image - and who
is inevitably hyped up. In Elijah’s time the false prophets outnumbered the
true prophets of God eight hundred and fifty to one. In our own time that
contrast is doubly augmented.
And so the mirror of
God is a stubborn mirror. There is nothing we can do against it short of breaking
it, or removing it from the wall. In some nations of African origin many men
were removed from their walls and placed in permanent hiding in ten foot houses
underneath the earth. Their crime? They dared speak an unspeakable truth. And
the State sent them to the guillotine for that.
Others were taken to
torture chambers where they were sorely broken. Many are limping. Many others
have had their mouths impaled against their walls.
But that mould of
defiance will never be completely silenced, even when it is gored ten feet
underneath the soil. One may kill the truth but there is no way of silencing
it. Even in death truth raises its voice to God like the blood of slayed Abel.
God admonishes us to be
our brothers’ keeper. Therefore when we speak against injustices committed to
the people we are speaking on behalf of God. We are being our brothers’ keeper.
We watch over him day and night. We also watch over the king that he does not
excite himself to death.
So today be that outstanding
person God would use for Himself. Speak your conviction without fear. Be
unmoved. Swear by it even if it is to your own hurt, and change not. If the
king is walking naked in daylight tell him. Yes, go to the palace and tell that
to the king, and say boldly with Esther, “I go in unto the king, which is not
according to the law: and if I perish, I perish.”
