Let me stumble and fall on my own, please; this is how I learn.
There’s a prophetic fire burning in my heart and I have to expose something. But first it requires a little context. The prophetic gift can take all shapes and flavors, so try not to confine your thinking to the current Western Christian mythology about it. When I noted that my common human empathy was a faculty that arose from living heart-led, I was trying to give hope to others. I am not a natural empath; you don’t have to be an empath to exercise the spiritual gift. However, I do have a peculiar kind of prophetic empathy in that I feel it on a deep personal level when something offends Creation, particularly when this transgression of God’s moral character is sure to hurt people. I am frankly a little slow to jump into action when I see someone getting hurt, but my soul is set on fire when I discern a moral transgression in the fabric of reality. So while I’d be a rotten nurse, I am comfortable sharing prophetic stuff.
That doesn’t mean it demands your attention; it simply demands that I write about it. Whether you pay attention, as always, is between you and the Lord. It’s not a matter of conceptual absolutes; that’s something I deeply resent coming from Western rationalism. It’s quite possible something I write here will turn out mistaken in the sense that I may not do such a good job of explaining it. I’ll always come back and correct that if I can. Sometimes I’m just a little slow catching on to subtle implications; I’ll try to correct my writing on that point, as well. But sometimes God simply doesn’t fully reveal what He plans, and sometimes He simply changes His mind. In other words, I’m not trying to jerk anybody around. I can only share what’s on my heart as best my mind can tell you.
Over this current holiday season I’ve felt a little lonely and down. Because of my prophetic temperament, I often trash social convention and rituals in favor of blunt honesty. Some people don’t like that, so I accept a certain amount of isolation for that. I’m still as loving and kind as I know how to be, and I’m quite willing to keep my mouth shut and not advertise any alleged moral virtues. I’m willing to let folks make up their own mind to like me or not. Thus, I blew it off at first when I sensed that shadow following me around. Still, I prayed about it because God has been quite generous lately in answering my queries on things like that: Was this a normal facet of my existence, or did it have a more specific meaning?
This morning it took shape. It regards something I’ve been watching on the political scene, only because it affects my ministry here. Specifically, it affects the practical matter of what I have to watch out for versus things that aren’t likely to be a problem. Paranoia about every imaginary threat is pointless and dissipates the energy better spent on real concerns. I’ve already warned that Trump’s allies include a powerful Zionist element and that could result in a little harassment here. That’s pretty lightweight in terms of real harm, but I’m gearing up to defend my position with Scripture and history against the specific weak spots I see in their attacks. This strengthens the belief of those who know the truth but may not be called to dig into the details as I am. But now there’s something else.
This is the hard part and why it’s “off the cuff.” I’m not in a position to see the specifics, but I’m deeply offended at something my heart discerns as a threat to a great many people. This past week has brought a shift behind the scenes with Trump and his friends. I don’t know what it is, but it has already rippled across the moral sphere. There’s a very ugly and painful deception going on, something that was only recently introduced into the game. This is much more than just a politician and his campaign promises; that would hardly warrant mention. This is something truly nasty, maybe unprecedented. It almost certainly relates to imperialist dreams, but it won’t become apparent for a while. A corrupt bargain has been made.
I suppose the hardest part is that, on the surface, this thing will be very popular at first. It won’t be racist as the hysterical noise suggests, but it will be fascist in nature. At this point, that’s all I can tell you. Even then, I may have to eat some of my words here. I’m okay with that, but the point is that you pray for your own sense of peace and preparation. This thing hits me hard in my prophetic gift. Call it a “disturbance in the Force” or “my spidey sense is tingling” but this thing is too potent for me to ignore. I’ve numbered the title of this post because I also sense there’s more like this coming.
God grant you peace.
Comments on Matthew 18
I got distracted for a while, particularly with computer issues. I’m back in the saddle now and today I began working again on my revision of my Gospels commentary. Here’s a section from Matthew 18.
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There had already arisen sensitivity over their relative status as leaders in Jesus’ ministry, and He had already been teaching them that it was near the time when things should come to a head. Since they didn’t know quite how to handle the idea that the crown lay through the Cross, we find them considering instead the details of how the Messianic Kingdom would play out, specifically regarding who among them was designated for which position in the Messianic Court. They were still suffering from worldly ambitions, envy, and confusion about Messianic expectations.
hildren were given scant attention in the Ancient Near East, except within the privacy of the family. Even though highly valued and prized as a proof of God’s favor, their social status was quite a bit lower than we in the West would find comfortable. While Hebrew tradition was a little better in such things than just about every other culture at that time, we note that men didn’t give them a lot of time until they were old enough to commence education and training, sometime around age nine. Indeed, we learn from the laws of the time the death from abuse of one younger than nine provoked no curiosity from officials, because their loss was simply a loss to the family. Only after their Bar Mitzvah ceremony, meaning literally "a son of the Law," did they have any status in the community, so that they could ask questions in the synagogue, for example. We know from several Gospel passages that Jesus broke this mold. While He didn’t go the extremes found in Western society where youth and childhood are idolized, it was surely different from Hebrew traditions. When the Disciples asked Him about their assignments, He called a nearby child, who was surely younger than nine. The boy took his place in the center of the group.
This rather unimportant figure became an object lesson. Jesus referred to a need to be changed, to experience a complete shift in understanding how the world works. Rather than the child needing to be trained to the ways of life, it is the world which needed the understanding of a child to enter life in the Kingdom. Not everything thing that happens to children in the socialization process is what God intended. Some of what children lose should have been kept, and Jesus implies His society made huge mistakes in what they take away, with adults making a virtue of the wrong things. It’s a subtle parable about going back to the ancient ways when the Hebrew culture was new and vigorous, before it was filled with clutter from other nations and cultures. But the remedy is individual conversion, since you cannot roll back the tide of human cultural drift without making things even worse. The effort would be perverted by long-standing vested interests that couldn’t exist in a newly formed society.
Once people as individuals are "converted" to become like children in their unspoiled openness, they are fit for citizenship in a new society, the Kingdom of Heaven. This presents a bewildering paradox to the Twelve, who by now had begun to think of themselves as a class apart within the aging Judean kingdom. It’s not their leadership they needed to work on, but their very inclusion in the Kingdom. Children lack ambition, and are all too happy just to be included, to be taken seriously in any degree. They are quite indiscriminate in following the leadership of any adult who seems to care about them; that’s their nature. Becoming childlike is the sort of thing which fits men for leadership in the Kingdom.
Once having adopted this childlike faith and trust, any leader in the Kingdom takes up the responsibility of welcoming other children. It is a solemn duty, and taking it lightly by casually misleading them is no joke. Taking advantage of their dependency by leading them astray for any reason is a sin so great that they deserve one of the most hideous forms of Eastern punishment known: tossed in the sea weighted down by a millstone large enough it requires a donkey to push it. It’s bad enough the world is loaded with people who lead others astray, but those who abuse spiritual seekers deserve the greater punishment from God. It would be worth any price to avoid seducing the vulnerable. It’s not hard to imagine Jesus that draws a picture of the repulsive creatures who debauch children while pretending to love them. If you can’t keep your hands to yourself, or even your eyes, remove them. It’s better to live life with maimed flesh than to stand before God having seduced any spiritual child to sin.
Further, the dismissive attitude many leaders of that day showed to their subordinates was completely unacceptable in the Kingdom. We all stand before God as children before their Father; relative differences in roles are not really significant. Becoming impatient and dismissing someone who doesn’t rise to your personal demands is approaching blasphemy. You are not God. Furthermore, God keeps the angelic representatives of His children close at hand. Jesus uses the image here of a tiny elite group within the court of an Eastern potentate. Most people with business at the court never actually see the ruler, but deal with his servants. The word of his servants are taken as the words of the lord himself. A choice few are permitted to actually see him face to face on a regular basis. In God’s courts, each soul is precious! A better translation of verse 12 has the shepherd leaving his flock in a safe place in the wilderness, while he goes off and seeks the one which got lost. It’s not a matter of the others having no value, but that all are invaluable individually. Their individual needs may warrant varying levels of attention. This is frankly a revolutionary concept in that context. While some shepherds would give names to their sheep, it was extremely rare he would do so for a large flock, yet Jehovah calls each of us by name.
Thus, when dealing with a straying brother, leaders must assume his soul is so precious that they would be loath to cast him aside. Give him every chance to repent. In the ancient Hebrew society, your neighbor’s moral wandering was a direct threat to everyone around him. Rule by your own kind promotes this kind of familial concern. In Jesus’ day, rabbis had long since gotten used to Israel being under a foreign ruler in part because no one bothered to concern himself with his neighbor’s sins (Leviticus 19:17); the hassles of foreign rule became the bigger threat. Jesus emphasizes the biblical communitarian instinct built into the Kingdom. Go to the brother privately, where it’s most likely he’ll climb down from presumptuous sin. If that fails, bring a few witnesses to establish whether he is indeed hardened in this sin (Deuteronomy 19:15). If all else fails, let the whole congregation know why they must ostracize this brother. The obvious assumption is the fault in view is dangerous to the community of faith, something which would cause a child to stumble in thinking it must be normal. Such irresponsible behavior is symbolically associated with heathens (goyyim or Gentiles) and those Jews (collecting taxes for Rome) who served them.