It’s not that we pay no attention to the consequences of our choices, but that our knowledge of the consequences aren’t the primary guide for our choices. We do what’s morally right. Not because of any alleged good payoff, but we do what’s right because it’s right.
We don’t confuse “effective” or “efficient” with “morally right.” The moral truth comes down from above; it speaks to our hearts through Creation itself. It calls on us to, not ignore, but discount what our senses and reason tell us is the best way. Thus, we may at times do the most unreasonable things, guaranteed to fail in terms of reason, because it is what God demands. He never promised it would always work out the way people view such things, but that it would always please Him.
As always, God’s Law is its own reward. We have to unlearn all the lies that make us push back into the shadows the one glaring truth that shouts at us from our hearts: Peace with God is more important than living. This world is one big lie and the sooner He calls us Home, the better. However, while we are hear waiting for that call, we have plenty to do showing the rest of the world what motivates us. We seek peace with God above all else.
That peace comes from embracing His revelation. I get weary trying to help people get it through their thick heads that between the Old and New Testaments is a firm and flowing continuity. I resort to saying things like “Jesus is the living Law of God.” I know the problem comes from the Western tradition that makes law a holy and awful thing the restrains us from having fun. It comes from divorcing the Creator from His Creation. I’ve written about it repeatedly, how those words “under grace, not under law” don’t mean what everyone seems to think they mean. They keep seizing upon the words themselves instead of the symbolism of the words. So we have to keep hammering at the term “Christian Mysticism” as the quickest way to point out that literalism = legalism and that’s what Jesus fought. The culture of the Old Testament never used the term “law” as a restriction, but as a personal expectation of our Father. It was always in our own best interest.
So we don’t want a mythical “rule of law” because that very phrase attempts to kill God in our souls. We want a rule of God, but His rule means we learn to live under the rule of men. And then He goes on to put boundaries on that to prevent the worst aspects of tyranny and oppression. One of those boundaries is that no one has any business governing you unless they have skin in the game. If they aren’t family, they aren’t fit to rule. That’s how God rules. Every other system of human government is a damned abomination fit for His wrath. And His wrath does fall sooner or later.
We make our choices based on what is morally right as God reveals it in His Creation, in His Law and in His Son. There is no conflict between them, only a mass of confusion in people’s minds.
Here’s a word for you: patriot. You can look it up, but in actual practice it refers to making your nation your “father” in the sense of your god. In the minds of many, they read that as the State. And even those intelligent enough to know it’s not the State still make the mistake of worshiping some rational ideal about the people as self-governing, an ideal that has never been the reality, never will be, and cannot ever be. It only works when “self-government” means permission to live in a tribal social structure with tribal government. That’s written into the fabric of reality, so even with all the mental confusion about it, folks instinctively try to restore that tribal structure of life through other means by redefining the meaning of “tribe.” In the strictest sense of the word, you and I are not “patriots” even if we do know how to act patriotic. We do that when it doesn’t conflict with God’s Law written on our conscience.
America is damned and doomed because it was built in defiance of God’s Law. It was built on the pretense of what seems to work best, but it never actually achieved that. At the best of times, it was a shallow fiction. Now we are approaching the worst of times before what we know of as the USA is forever broken and changed into something else. It is increasingly likely that things we do in pursuit of God’s favor will make us appear unpatriotic, if not downright crazy. Get used to that, folks. That’s where God’s favor is.
