I posted the manuscript for The Mind of Christ today. You can get your copy in your favorite electronic format at Smashwords!
-
-
Contact me:
-
ehurst@radixfidem.blog
Categories
Soul Seeds: Worthy of All Sacrifice
“Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all the he had and bought it.” (Matthew 13:44-46)
A few verses before this, Jesus showed clearly He had a purpose in using parables for teaching. It was not enough to say simply He was fulfilling prophecy, but the prophecy itself gave meaning to His method (verses 35-35). The prophet (Asaph; Psalm 78) was speaking of a people who had worked hard to avoid hearing the voice of God, and did all they could to keep from obeying Him. This being their choice, when something very good came from God — His own natural Son — they would not even realize it. But to those who were willing to listen, because they had already built up a concern for what God thought about things, parables would be a marvelous means of revelation.
Those who see in Jesus’ response to His disciples a bit of impatience are probably right (Matthew 15:16ff). In a short time, the whole of the gospel would be committed into their hands. If they couldn’t comprehend the basic issues of the gospel message, what did that bode for the future? Sometimes He explained what the stories meant, making clear in the process it wasn’t as cryptic as they seemed to think. It was simply a matter of getting used to the imagery already used in the Old Testament, but apparently forgotten since those days. His impatience arose from their failure to make the break from the false teachings of their day.
Then, to test whether they were beginning to grasp the concept, He hit them with two more parables, which were actually one basic idea: What should it be worth a man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven?
We don’t know what the first man was doing in the field, nor does it matter. He was going about whatever business he had, and stumbled upon this something valuable. Indeed, it was so valuable to him he hid it carefully, went off to dispose of all his property, and bought the field as quickly as he could. Obviously, whatever he had found was worth more than what the man already owned. Don’t get hung up on the man’s effort to hide what he found. That’s just part of the story, so it would make sense. The point is, the man found it by accident. He was willing to lose all he had to get possession of what he found.
The second man was not simply bumbling along; he was a seeker. He was already in the business of treasures, specializing in pearls. He always had his eye open for that one magnificent pearl. Eventually, he found it. Just as the man in the other story, he disposed of all he owned to be sure he could get that one special pearl. Never mind why he wanted it; just note he had consciously been seeking it. Again, the man was willing to set aside all he had to take possession of it.
We all come to Christ differently. We could survey all the factors we could think of, and build nice categories for analysis, and maybe even have an interesting discussion about the various ways people come to Christ. Here, Jesus divides them into two extremes: those who are not seeking, and those who are. Some go through life with hardly a care in the world, just doing whatever seems to make sense at the moment. Others are driven, living with a purpose, pursuing a concrete plan. Together they represent every kind of person between their extremes. Both of these folks came up against the moment when Truth stands before them, plain as day.
So it is with each of us. Whether we know to seek an answer to life or are content simply to live it, we have that moment when God touches our world. If we know what that touch is, we know we have found all we could ever desire. That’s not the same as all the stuff sinners wish for, and perhaps get, but what we truly need. Perhaps simply realizing finally what we are and what we need is at least half the blessing. It’s so precious, no one bothers to put a price on it, or say what it might be worth. Neither did Jesus in telling His little stories.
What mattered was the punch line of both: They had to surrender everything they had. Don’t fail to notice they did it with joy. They were delighted at such a good bargain; they could hardly care what they were giving up. Jesus intentionally leaves out whether each man was rich or poor. We know only how they had to dispose of everything. So it is with the Kingdom. You want in? Shed everything you have, everything you are, all you ever hoped, etc. Give it up, because you can’t keep any of it. Indeed, there shouldn’t be any conflict at all. This is your one opportunity to have it all; what a marvelous prospect!
Anyone who longs for a return to what they had before they met Christ doesn’t understand what they’ve been given. We could allege they never even got Him at all. Nothing else in all our existence holds a candle to the bright sun of the Son, and the light of His Truth shining into and out of our souls.
Posted in bible
Tagged hearing the voice of god, mysticism, scripture
Comments Off on Soul Seeds: Worthy of All Sacrifice
Soul Seeds: New Life in Old Forms
Then the disciples of John came to Him, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but Your disciples do not fast?”
And Jesus said to them, “Can the friends of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast. No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and the tear is made worse. Nor do they put new wine into old wineskins, or else the wineskins break, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But they put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.” (Matthew 9:14-17)
Few Christian groups can have an ugly argument like Baptists can. Born with open democracy, Baptist groups are known for some of the most horrendous behavior when confronting their own kind over things other believers regard as relatively minor. The reason I can say this is that I was a Southern Baptist for the first half of my life. I am still amazed at the sorts of things people consider so important they would destroy the life of a fellow church member. This is nothing of which to be proud.
It can be argued those most guilty of such unchristlike displays are almost surely not true believers, but simply possess great influence in the local church. That is hardly an excuse, since it is still shameful how such people are permitted to gain that power. They bring into the church body the same combative incivility we might expect from corrupt union bosses, greedy business managers, or political leaders. That’s because disputes are usually about money or power.
Sometimes it’s something simply visceral. One issue over which I’ve seen some of the most idiotic disputes is the consumption of beverage alcohol. It’s important to note the American Prohibitionist sentiment is pretty much a joke elsewhere in the world. One can find some support for it in the UK, but not much anywhere else. The short history lesson is this: American Baptists were born from the same stock as the social work movement, when it first appeared in England. It rose as a response to the drunken squalor one found in the cramped warrens of company housing built from scratch by coal mine operations. Major coal deposits were found away from any cities where housing was usually to be found. The miners and their families in this company housing were ripe for every human ill, and abuse of alcohol (sold at the company store) was prominent.
Everyone agrees alcohol abuse is harmful in every way. But only a fool who knows no history, and very little of the Bible, will deny the Law of Moses permitted Jews to consume fermented grape juice which contained alcohol. It was rare to find any fruit of the vine which was not fermented, since it only lasted a day or two in a world without refrigeration. Let’s stop being silly: Jesus drank fermented wine like every other Jew. That has little bearing on whether we ought to avoid it today. Jesus did a lot of things we would never do in modern times.
What makes the issue so ugly and contentious is guilt from something truly evil: bringing worldly ways into the Household of God. Not the alcohol consumption, but the political maneuvering is what has no place. Trying to force the old fallen life to fit into our New Covenant in Jesus’ Blood is an abomination. Jesus spent an awful lot of time showing how the old rabbinical traditions were just that – traditions not from God. They were not directly connected with the Law of Moses, but were often spurious additions which served no good purpose. Some were indeed sensible; the Feast of Dedication was not commanded by God, yet seemed quite justified. That feast arose after the conquests of Alexander the Great in 323 BC. His successors included some pretty hateful rulers; one of them erected a pagan statue in the Temple in Jerusalem and sacrificed a pig to Zeus on the Altar. Getting all that defilement removed some time later was good cause for an annual commemoration.
But the silly command to fast weekly was just a bit much. John the Baptist followed an even stricter regime, as he belonged to a rather ascetic school of Judaism popular at that time. John’s disciples were puzzled when, after John’s public endorsement, and after several of his disciples became followers of Jesus, the rules for discipleship were quite different. Jesus and His disciples appeared to be in the party mode by comparison.
From the very beginning, Jesus had been teaching how the Law of Moses was not what the Pharisees often claimed it was. Their empty legalism actually pulled Moses down to a lower level. In the second place, the Law of Noah was an older and higher standard; it had been in force far longer, and Moses was more a specific application of Noah. Third, both were mere reflections of an eternal spiritual standard. Merely correcting the false view of Moses would exclude restrictions of the type they had come to expect, and it was confusing to those who hadn’t spent time with Jesus. His answer to John’s disciples was attempting to point out the meaning of “radical” – getting back to the root of things. His teaching was both new and ancient, a new expression growing from ancient roots.
Jesus was teaching a New Covenant, a covenant which brought one into an individual relationship with Jehovah. The Covenant of the Moses, while holding individuals accountable, was aimed at the Nation of Israel. It was a national covenant, a subset of Noah’s Covenant, which God established for all humanity. This New Covenant Jesus taught brought one into the Kingdom of God, a wholly new entity which embraced Noah’s Law and realized God’s original intentions at Creation. It was clearly based on all that had gone before; what was equally clear was how it was a totally different kind of thing, because it had never been done on a wide scale.
How could the old traditional forms hold this New Life in the Kingdom? They could not. It was like demanding the friends of the bridegroom fast before the wedding celebration was over. And in ancient times, when cloth was largely hand woven, it had to be washed and dried at least once in order to establish its true size. Patching an old garment with this newly woven fabric was foolish without first washing the patch. Who knows how much and in what direction it would shrink?
It’s also as silly as putting new wine into old used wine skins. “New wine” was a specific term, referring to the first blood of the grapes. In order to get the most of what a load of grapes had to offer, they would be tromped in the vat until all that remained was thick slurry. Of the several gallons one might get from a batch, only the first quart or two was of that finest quality, with a much higher sugar content, and fewer solids. It fermented into a rather potent wine, with a fairly high alcohol content. The last drainage of the wine vat came closer to making brackish vinegar – the sort of low-quality stuff issued to soldiers in their rations, and what Jesus was offered while on the Cross.
In the process of fermenting, the better quality stuff released a lot of gases, and only a new wineskin could stretch enough to contain it. Old dry, hardened wineskins had already stretched to their limit. One could put the cheap stuff in there and it might be alright. What Jesus was offering was a totally new level of faith, a higher calling to a close personal communion with God the Father Himself. What the Father gave for the former covenants could not contain this joyful existence. They were tied to a context which had passed. When the personal presence of God comes into the human soul, so very much changes, the old forms break down in the process.
Everything must be wholly re-evaluated. The old ways had to be scrutinized to see if they were useful in the Kingdom. Naturally, some things would carry over, as they had always pointed back to the ultimate truth. It was the same God. Yet, much would not be useful. Paul referred to the process as “rightly dividing the Word” (2 Timothy 2:15). One had to know God the Person in order to discern what parts of Moses applied, and how they applied. One had to understand the purpose of those provisions. So the old allowance for divorce was tossed aside (Deuteronomy 24:1 and Mark 10:1-12), but the command to love took center place (Deuteronomy 6:5 and Matthew 22:34-40).
What held good for John the Baptist was not sufficient to serve Christ the King. What is in our lives prior to Christ is subject wholly to His judgment, whether it shall go, stay, or be changed. Bitter fighting over silly, petty disputes does not belong in the Kingdom. We have the power to love those with whom we disagree. If we cannot act in love, we do not know Jesus.
Posted in bible
Tagged beverage alcohol, culture, history, mysticism, new wineskins, religion
Comments Off on Soul Seeds: New Life in Old Forms
Zephaniah 3
How should Jerusalem remain exempt from God’s wrath if she is no different from Nineveh? In times past, when disaster struck the people would turn from their sins and call on Jehovah. Now they simply turn to ever worse sins. Political and religious leaders alike twist their roles completely backward. While they did thus, God had been the very definition of faithfulness, having lived in their midst the whole time. He manifested His justice to them daily; they openly shamed Him. He destroyed their enemies, demonstrating His power. Surely the would respect Him after all He did! No, she begged for the same treatment by sinning even worse than those who threatened her.
Israel refused to distinguish herself among nations as God’s own unique people. So when He gathers the entire world together for That Day, the nation will take her share of wrath. His judgment will wipe away sin, which of course means He will remove those who cling to it. This purging will see a remnant from all nations respond and turn to Him. People from all over the entire world would worship His Name. So it would be they would all stand with the righteous remnant of Judah. Whatever is left will not act anything like the kingdom He was going to crush in just a short time.
Of course, there can be no literal fulfillment of this. Rather, Zephaniah is seeing with spiritual eyes the day when the Messiah would come and bring forth a New Covenant to all mankind. The image drawn here symbolizes the Kingdom of Heaven, not a politically restored Judah. His wrath against sin reached a climax at the Cross.
So it’s only natural to expect joy unspeakable. The Lord calls on the ancient City to rejoice in the rise of the New Israel. His own Son, the true Messiah, would rule over the people in this Eternal Kingdom, in a Spiritual Jerusalem. Everything Israel was meant to be will return, unassailable against all sin. Those who refuse to join in this spiritual celebration would be excluded. The old shadowy political Israel would be forgotten. We see in Zephaniah’s final words echoes prefiguring the message of Christ, the Good Shepherd. He will restore His fame by His own hand, making His people the blessed nation others would scramble to join.
Soul Seeds: Holy Detectives
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore, by their fruits you will know them.” (Matthew 7:15-20)
Just moments before this passage, Jesus had warned against judging others harshly (7:1ff). Whatever He meant by that, He did not intend we should simply treat everyone as an angel from God. In this specific case, we are to be on guard against anyone who claims to be a fellow believer, and wants our support for their projects.
While Jesus specifically names those who claim to be prophets, I’m confident it’s no stretch to say this applies to spiritual leadership in general. A prophet in Jesus’ day was just about anyone who claimed to have a message from God, and were demanding folks should hear their message and take appropriate action. The setup for guarding against those who make this claim falsely is the previous paragraph, where Jesus describes His teaching as a narrow and difficult path.
Therefore, taking into account Jesus’ warning we should not take ourselves too seriously, and we should expect all this to be challenging, we are in proper humility to consider the threat from those who would deceive and mislead. What motive could there be for such a thing? Most of the time, they are not as diabolical as our first instincts would have us think. For Jesus to call them “ravenous wolves” is not painting them as knowingly Satanic in intent. Wolves are not necessarily evil, just hungry.
Most false prophets are hungry for attention, power, control, money, or any number of other things they value. They aren’t driven by a sense of calling to God’s purpose. Even recognizing this, things are far from simple. They may indeed have been called by God and gotten off track. Their motives may include a genuine desire to see God’s People in a better state. They may genuinely love the brothers and sisters, and they may well be truly born-again. Indeed, motives are merely inferred, as only the Lord truly reads the hearts of man.
Thus, we come to the whole point of this parable. We do not see the workings of someone else’s soul. Discerning of spirits is not like magic, where you get a tingling in your spine or something equally peculiar. That’s more likely to be simple human emotions in action. God forbid we should let our emotions lead us. True spiritual discernment is a matter of taking the whole picture, including whatever messages God may give in one’s spirit, however it is He does so with each of His servants (Philippians 2:12). It most certainly must take into account the clear Word of Scripture, which is what we have here: You will discern potential leaders by the result of God’s Word working in their lives.
We need not examine in detail here what all that means; sufficient it is to refer to Paul’s examination of the matter in Galatians 5:16-26. Given the assumption we know what fruit of the Spirit looks like, we are in a position to discern wolves from shepherds. Everyone claiming to speak for God had better get used to the idea of being examined, and taking it with good grace. Indeed, as one who seeks opportunities for spiritual leadership, few things are more frightening than encountering a group which embraces me without checking me out. It causes me to wonder if it is they who are all wolves in sheep’s clothing.
When a leadership candidate exhibits mixed fruit, perhaps they can benefit from encouragement. Otherwise, we will most often find there will be a preponderance of spiritual evidence whether they are someone we can work with, or someone whose passions cannot be trusted. We need not pull out the swords unless folks turn feral on us, blatantly seeking to destroy. The Body at hand should simply quarantine the threat, and go on under the assumption they may in future days heal and be useful.
You and I know that today’s sheep herding dogs are but a few bits of DNA away from the ravenous wolves which once devoured sheep. While that may not have been in Jesus’ mind at the time, I’m sure He would have tempered taking this parable too far by pointing to the context in which it was given, beginning with “Judge not, lest you be judged.” The Gospel message includes noting the nature of fallen man, and the great need of redemption. Our responsibility is to take the action appropriate for the moment, redeeming the times, and turning the moment to His glory. By His power, He can enable us to fend off those who cannot be trusted. By His power, He can also turn today’s wolf into tomorrow’s sheep dog.
Posted in bible
Tagged mysticism, propaganda, prophecy, psychology, resistance
Comments Off on Soul Seeds: Holy Detectives
In the Prison of Anger
One of the folks here in my neighborhood went to jail recently.
The tale is long and complicated, and I know only half the story, if that much. The woman in question has had a difficult life, to say the least, but I’m quite certain at least a part of it has been her own broken choices. That’s because more than once I’ve observed evidence of uncontrollable rage. I recognize the demons I’ve chased out of my own soul. (Game note: She looks hot, but puts up a good front. Not particularly seductive, but tries to hide it for all sorts of reasons, which amounts to manipulation. Beauty can be very deceptive, as this one is dangerously close to psychotic. Learn the signs.)
While whole books have been written on anger as a human emotion, I’ll offer a good starting point. James Altucher discussed in a recent article how to break free from prisons of your own making. While the rest of the article is almost useless to me, he discusses things to which he needs to pay attention in order to defeat their power over him.
– when am I angry. Not to suppress it. Just to notice it. Not to act on it. Not to kill someone. Just to notice it. When is it happening? Why? It’s a hot plate that cools under observation rather than if I try to ravish it too quickly.
If you don’t take the time to notice what lights that fire, you’ll never know how to keep from getting burned. Strangely, once you try, even if you fail to understand, just the effort to trace it back to the source suddenly opens portals in the soul you never noticed before. When you chase the path backward through your mind, you discover triggers hidden from you, but which others can see so very plainly and can use to manipulate you.
Granted, some things tend to work on just about everyone. Our culture creates weaknesses in us, and the system in which we live sees whole sectors of our society built on this very thing, working hard to enhance the control it gives them. The majority cause of anger is control itself, the sense of loss of control over things some part of you is utterly certain it can and must control. We get angry with interference in that control. While that sort of thing is fundamentally justified, the problem with it is (a) we tend to demand control over things we simply cannot control, and (b) attempt faulty methods for exercising that control.
The single biggest factor, to which Altucher alludes, is taking yourself too seriously, which is deeply entangled with keeping up a false front to the world. This puts us in a position of attempting image control, which never works. Once you decide what it is you really are in this world, and what you can do about it, lots of senseless anger fades away.
In the case of that woman in my neighborhood, I have observed more than once her furious attempt to demand something of some other person or creature she could not have, or at least could not have it through the methods she insisted on using. It’s that old, “Dammit, you will do it my way or you will pay!” And the payment is a furious physical attack. Not that she isn’t capable of carrying it out — she’s pretty tough — but it simply doesn’t work that way. It demands someone else be in prison with her, so to speak. Enslaving others to fear is the worst possible route to control over factors in your life.
It’s also taking this world entirely too seriously. She paid lip service to the idea of holding otherworldly values, but never actually managed it.
At any rate, anger is not inherently wrong, but part of her sentencing is taking that bogus “anger management” class governments use to install satanic moral perversion into human minds. The Bible says, “Be angry, but do not sin” (Ephesians 4:25f). Anger is not a result of the Fall, but its ruthless rule over us is. Anger was wired into us by God to empower a just response to a just provocation. When someone threatens your mission from God, anger is appropriate, and so are some angry actions. Train your anger; don’t let it train you.
Like fire, anger is a useful servant and a fearful master.
Soul Seeds: Hard Paths
“Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find.” (Matthew 7:13-14)
Jesus lived in a Hebrew culture, based largely on what we know today as the Aramaic language. Though they referred to it as “Hebrew,” it was not exactly the Hebrew used in most of the Old Testament, but similar. Old Hebrew texts read aloud in public were quite difficult to follow for the average Jew of the first century AD. It was common to have an interpreter on hand for such readings to translate. They usually rendered it somewhat less than literally, though they were supposed to be careful about too freely departing from the Hebrew text (Nehemiah 8:1-8; note especially verse 8: “giving the sense”). The practice was known as targum — to paraphrase or interpret.
The New Testament was published entirely in Greek, and for the most part it appears the writers used Greek in composing the material. For some, that would be rather challenging. Greek scholars tell us John’s Gospel was written in good, grade-school level Greek. His grammar was correct, but simple. At the other end of the scale, Paul’s mastery of Greek was legendary. He knew it well enough to make up his own words by combining other words and they would be understood quite clearly.
Matthew may well have composed his first draft in Aramaic, since his approach was to appeal to Jewish minds. Yet, there were so very many Jews born in foreign countries, who grew up speaking some other local language. Since they knew only a smattering of Aramaic ritual terms, his Gospel would have a far better distribution in Greek. Greek was at least the second language everyone learned in that part of the world, if not their native tongue. There is no reason to believe Matthew had to have help translating his Gospel. Romans had long since learned to use Greek as an official language, since most of their empire had learned it under the aggressive tutelage of their predecessors, the Greeks who conquered under Alexander the Great. It was much more convenient simply to use the current common speech of their empire than to demand everyone learn Latin. Doing business with Roman bureaucrats would require a knowledge of Greek, and Matthew had been a tax-collector for Rome, one of the hated publicans.
Still, we are on somewhat shaky ground if we try making too much of the precise words which appear in our Greek text of Matthew, especially where the words of Jesus are recorded. We are reading a targum. Some scholars have attempted to translate back into Aramaic, but I believe they would be on even shakier ground, for the most part. This has nothing to do with assumptions about the quality of the textual sources themselves. Such questions deserve whole books, or at least whole websites (and there are several).
With all that in mind, we are still generally safe in assuming Matthew did very conscientiously apply himself to the task of expressing in Greek his best understanding of what Jesus had said in Aramaic. I am firmly convinced what we have is what God intended, remembering that it was further translated into our English.
Jesus was giving an image of how His followers should live. They ought to pass through as a habit the gate which is tight and narrow. This is no call to asceticism, wherein the principle is always to make things harder than they have to be. Rather, it is a warning of comparison. If the path is all too easy, making no demands on the one who passes through, then it’s suspect. If everyone is doing it, that’s a sure sign it’s probably wrong.
Human nature is to take the path of least resistance. Following God surely puts demands on you, and requires you often do what does not come naturally. So stop and think; take a look at where your spiritual steps are carrying you. Don’t ever completely relax on this issue. Examine everything in light of God’s calling on your life. Acting reflexively can destroy everything God wants for you. Accepting the discomfort — and sometimes, downright weirdness — of what comes from following Jesus should become our norm.
Those who read in this verse a strong pronouncement condemning the majority of humanity to Hell are missing the point. The concept of the masses is not the focus, but their presence is a symptom of the problem. This is about making the difficult choices every day, and getting used to being different from the folks around you. Don’t revel in the difference; don’t gloat at their stupidity. Take your alternate path with joy and peaceful humility, knowing some will see your joy and consider joining you.
Burying My Wounded Heart on My Knees
What our government did to the natives is a long forewarning of how she will treat her own prime citizenry.
The US government was more faithful in betraying their treaties with Native Americans than in honoring them. So the famous book title — Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee — recalls a line from a poem which seemed to embody the last refuge of those who have been rendered powerless in every possible way. There is much common ground in the otherworldly outlook of Native American culture and that of the ancient Hebrew. What can you do when all you can touch, see and name has been turned upside down and inside out? If you have no hiding place for your soul outside this world, you are the most miserable of all creatures.
I almost laugh when I hear people throwing fit about some perceived injustice. Over the most pitiful slights they will create a scene worthy of any cheap movie. No one suggests they did not suffer some wrong, only that their response is simply worse. In the name of some small wound they shred everyone around them. When they turn to me for some sign of moral support, more than once I’ve told them to go screw themselves for being so childish. Yes, my granddaughters I would be expected to embrace and carry them through their moment of sorrow, but they have already submitted themselves to my guiding hand, and I will surely teach them better, given time. But I will not be party to a human grade of dirty vengeance arising from a very petty complaint.
“Feelings! Whoa-o-o-o feelings! I wish….” I wish they would stop operating from a child’s sense of justice. Children are natural solipsists; the world revolves around their whims because they are incapable of thinking in any other terms. Part of the definition of the word “adult” presumes you outgrow that limited reasoning capacity.
Ladies and gentlemen, let’s understand something. Your access to that electronic store of value at the bank will be blocked when the banks close at some point down the road. All your retirement accounts and investments are likely to be confiscated in the near future. All your guaranteed government support payments, regardless of the official reason they were granted, will be cut off. That includes my veteran’s pension. Everything tangible will be subject to confiscation without warning or compensation. It won’t matter if you capitalize names or not, there is no invocation the state is bound to honor. There is no law higher than the bureaucratic purpose of keeping the system alive and ascendant as long as possible. When you can stop pretending you expect “the law” to protect you, you may be ready to face reality.
At this point in time, “the law” is little more than a popular cultural notion not shared by those who run things. They belong to another culture. Join yourself to the folks working in any bureaucracy and you will be drowned in the new culture, taught to compartmentalize yourself so your real human conscience is disabled while on duty. That’s the fundamental nature of Western Civilization, to depersonalize the operations of the state and dehumanize everyone involved. When you hold up that fancy gilded crucifix, it won’t stop the vampire army attacking you. Your mythology is of no interest to those with power, except when it serves their lifeless purpose.
We have no idea why God allowed the European settlers to dispossess the natives living here in America, but we can easily understand the barbarism which drove that horrific slaughter and enslavement. Worse than the dead bodies was the lifeless corpse of a morally superior culture left rotting in the sun. Our God says His ways are inscrutable, but He did reveal a value system which condemns what we did. He hasn’t forgotten it, and will hold us accountable for our bottomless greed and violence. The biggest sorrow is not how many innocents will be harmed in the process, but the vast number who were silly enough to buy into that illusion of divine destiny and to believe the lies about their entitlements. God says you have a right to bow before Him voluntarily instead of being thrown prostrate.
Uttering darkly and vehemently, “That ain’t right!” won’t make anything better when the same crushing hand falls on you. All the more so when you somehow expect your words to magically stop the hand of power from squeezing so hard. Get over yourself.
For quite some time the Lord has given me the opportunity to see all this coming, to know it for what it is. I let that silly boy slip back into the nursery and closed the door behind him. I’ve been on my knees, begging for a chance to surrender all the stuff I can’t keep in the first place, and a chance to see with fresh eyes what it means to invest in another world where such evil cannot touch me. You should try it.
Soul Seeds: Pigs and Pearls
“Do not give what is holy to dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces.” (Matthew 7:6)
The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) was not a laundry list of free-standing epigrams. One thing leads to another. The whole bunch is a corrective restatement of the Law of Moses according to the higher spiritual principles to which the Law points. In this context, Jesus shows how previous Talmudic teachings are actually against the Law of Moses. The dominant school of thought in Jewish society was Pharisee, and it had to be broken. In the previous chapter of Matthew, Jesus hammers home the requirement to divorce ourselves from materialism.
Pharisees would judge the handling of property by a long list of rules and customary assumptions, all of which formed a very complex and heavy burden of regulation. Yet it was clear all that teaching tilted the playing field in their favor. Whatever it was they were doing could always be justified, but whatever it was poor peasants were doing was usually wrong. This was an obvious double standard. In particular, the Pharisees made much of what we today would call “saving for a rainy day.” Their teaching and legal maneuvering kept the peasants poor, but kept themselves wealthy. They gave exemptions for tithing and charity which applied only to the wealthy, largely by virtue of exempting things only the wealth could manage. They complained the peasants were being greedy when they didn’t bankrupt themselves for the Temple offerings and taxes, but always paid their own out of pocket change. Everybody could see through this, and it was a common complaint of that day. They made wealth their true god, and Jehovah could sweep it all away overnight.
Thus, the rather obvious meaning of the verses just before verse 6, about the speck versus the beam in the eye, warns the Pharisaical minded to apply the condemnations of greed to themselves. Our own modern day proverb for that one is, “Clean up your own backyard first…” No one says we cannot judge sin in others, but we should only preach about things we’ve conquered (or are conquering) in our own lives. Jesus wanted His listeners to understand this was not a blanket condemnation on pointing the finger at sin, since the Law called for such (Ezekiel 33:7-9). He next told them something which literally required them to judge — recognizing some folks were proverbial swine or dogs.
Most of us have a tough time accepting, much less understanding, the Jewish cultural distaste for dogs. We tend to think anyone who doesn’t like dogs is barbaric. Without tracing down the lineage of why dogs were hated, let’s say simply this: For as long as anyone could remember in that part of the world, dogs were a serious threat to life and limb. They were wild, and would kill just for the thrill of it. They carried diseases which made them all the more repugnant. Further, the term “dog” was used to label the homosexual male prostitutes in pagan temples. Dogs served no useful purpose in Jewish society.
So when Jesus advised His listeners not to throw anything holy to dogs, it seemed on the surface He was “preaching to the choir” — to suggest they would do so was almost insulting. No one would knowingly feed anything at all to dogs, much less food which had been part of a sacred meal. What most likely came to mind when Jesus said this was the Passover Lamb. According to the Law of Moses, the host was required to throw leftover lamb in the fire before morning. Tossing it to dogs was unthinkable, an abomination.
While most of us Gentiles love ham and bacon, we aren’t likely to be fond of live pigs in their natural state. They wallow in any damp spot during warm weather, and will consume anything which even vaguely resembled food at one time. If it smells rotten, they are all the more excited by it. In ancient times they carried a host of diseases and parasites which could infect humans. No surprise then God made it forbidden for Israel to eat them. In fact, Jews would never willingly get within stone-throwing distance of pigs.
Pearls were one of the most valued jewelry items in Jesus’ time. Few people had even seen pearls up close. About the only place the translucent cream-colored beads could be seen was decorating the extremely wealthy and powerful. The idea of offering them to pigs was, again, completely beyond their imagination.
Of course, this was a parable, not to be taken for its literal meaning. It represents a higher principle. The teaching of Jesus was the Word of God. It was holy, valuable beyond measure. It could not be priced in worldly terms. It was precious, and living its principles made one precious to God. It was to be shared with others, spread abroad to all the world. It was God’s precious gift to all humanity.
This Truth of God was all encompassing; it applied to, and affected, every detail of life. Indeed, it defined life, was life. Obeying the underlying spiritual principles of the Law of Moses would make life worth living, and would reveal God’s heart. It was the substance behind all Creation, the Divine Principle of existence itself. Having received this treasure from God, the Jewish leaders corrupted it, twisted it into an empty husk of legalism. Such careless handling of God’s Word made them no smarter than pigs or dogs. They had no idea what they had been given. Taking the true meaning of the Law back to the Pharisees was no better than feeding Passover Lamb to dogs, or offering pearls to swine. But this image has broad implications.
On the one hand, you must look deep in the mirror of God’s Word and take His power to victory over sin in your life. What you have not conquered is difficult to preach. Either way, we are not called to condemn people, but sin. People will condemn themselves when you speak the truth with love, because their own conscience will witness against them. If not, don’t get worked up over it. They are like pigs or dogs, and don’t know the value of love and grace. Only God can change hearts.
In our daily walk with the Savior, there are people crossing our paths who will simply never grasp the testimony of His power in us. Sometimes we can tell immediately; sometimes we have to work with them a bit. As we reach out to them in love, that same love grants them the full right to avoid that love. We persist as long as He presses us to present His love to them. We move away, not if they reject it, but when His love says so.
But they are not the pigs and swine to which Jesus refers; He was pointing at those who claimed to have the Word already. It tires me to hear the teaching of evangelism presented with such a false human urgency that everyone listening receives unjustly a sense of guilt and condemnation. I am angry at all those who chopped the gospel message up into neat little packages to be memorized as canned presentations. Their reasoning was it would save time if everyone could learn “this proven technique.” Yes, people are dying and going to Hell every moment of every day. If it truly depended on us to save them all, then we might as well lie down and die now. We cannot save them. Only Jesus can save them. This sort of frantic spirit of fear, that we dare not even sleep lest we miss some opportunity, comes not from God. It is from Satan to make fools of us and to ensure our ineffectiveness.
I’ve seen over-zealous “soul-winners” literally close the door on someone’s heart because they pushed when their target was least receptive. The canned words and cutesy outline failed utterly to register. The Gospel is not our message until it is living in us, in our unique situation of life. It takes time with God, His Word, and His people to even begin. If it is our nature to be gregarious and eloquent, we may have a head start. If not, it’s best to remember: How we act in general is more important, and must precede any words. This writer can affirm beyond a shadow of any doubt how all the people I know who came to Jesus through my efforts were unanimous in telling me that they were touched by how I acted, and only later by what I said. It has been ever true from the first day I served Him.
It takes good, wise judgment of situations and people. Far more important it is that we make our every waking moment simply in His Spirit, and in His power, whatever it is our bodies and minds find to do. Let us be found faithfully going about the business of life as He gave it to us. Early or late in our walk, this is the one proper way to share the pearls of truth.
Posted in bible
Tagged mysticism, pearls before swine, religion, scripture
Comments Off on Soul Seeds: Pigs and Pearls