Samuel, God, and Progressives

1 Samuel 8

The people want a king. God tells Samuel that this desire of the people is a rejection of Him, not of Samuel. How much does it stretch things to liken God's list of the dangers of concentrating power into human hands to the dangers of doing so in the progressivist movement today? It should at least inform it. Instead of looking to the Body of Christ to play a primary role in feeding the poor, housing the homeless, educating the children, and other forms of showing love to people, the progressives demand that God bless and endorse the centralized governmental structures to do it for the people, for God, and for (that is, in place of) the church.

Doing Nothing

The enemy wants you to sit in silence in a darkened room, doing nothing. This is not the struggling active engagement that looks like nothing but is more commonly known as prayer.  The enemy is more pleased by flickering first person shooters and futile infertile fantasies. He loves to see us get passively passionate about partisan politics, especially those that deny the dignity of the opposition. He wants us to empty out our lives of all deep purpose and lasting meaning. Don't give him that satisfaction.

The Sexual Revolution = Anti-Society

The sexual revolution was/is profoundly anti-society because it was/is anti-children. The older I get, the more I understand how irreplaceably valuable children are because I grasp with greater depth how valuable people are. I am struck with how wrong it is to see sex as primarily, let alone solely, a source of pleasure as opposed to being primarily a source of invaluable and precious people.

The Calling and the Patience

Jonah 4:1-11

Jonah would have been right at home in our polarized, tribalistic society. When God told him to go to Nineveh, "them" to Israel's "us," Jonah absolutely refused and ran in the other direction. And when he finally gave a grudging obedience to God's command, and his work accomplished what God has hoped, Jonah couldn't stand that God had done something good and merciful for "the bad guys." His hatred for the other side was just as blind and irrational as anything you'd find on partisan websites and TV channels of all stripes today.

What's remarkable in all this is that Jonah is a prophet chosen by God. Was Jonah as rude and unloving when God called him as he is in this story? How remarkable is it that Jonah's disobedience didn't immediately result in God striking him down? How amazing is it that God sent a whale, then the sheltering weed, and then tried to teach Jonah instead of destroying him?

In the same way, God calls each of us to unique missions, unique lives and tasks. But while we do see His righteous and just judgment throughout Scripture, we also see His grace and patience, which flows into our own lives.

Just because you've screwed up, or even rejected God entirely, doesn't mean your usefulness to Him, your preciousness to Him, is gone as well. Look for His grace in your life. See the opportunities for repentance and growth, and accept His mercy. Join Him in the work He is already doing around you.

The Sexual Revolution and the Definition of Love

The Sexual Revolution hijacked, commandeered, the definition of love. To them, love refers primarily to one's desire, not one's self sacrifice. Thus, when we hear someone emphasize that the essence of following Jesus has to do with love, we unwittingly may pull their definition in, and think that that version of following Jesus is almost infinitely malleable, and more selfish than not.

A theology or ethic defined by the SR's definition of love leads to accommodating everything to our own desires. The endgame of such a definition of love is to make things seemingly easier and easier for the self, even if it puts others at a disadvantage. The endgame or purpose of Jesus' definition of love is to put the self at a disadvantage for others' benefit. 

The Hope of the Landowner - A Communion Meditation

In Matthew 21:33-45, the parable of the landowner, the father expected the best from the vine growers. Even after they had beaten and killed the others he had sent, "He sent his son to them, saying, 'They will respect my son.'” He believed that the new outcome would be better than the previous outcomes.

The Father similarly offers hope to us, in spite of our previous disobedience and sin. His mercies are new every morning. He offers us new chances, expects the best from us. And if we have accepted His Son as our Lord and Savior, and thus have the Holy Spirit indwelling us, He directly and constantly enables and empowers us to live up to the hope He has for us. He opens the horizons of hope to us, then joins and encourages us on the path, throughout our journey.

We are reminded of His presence, His enabling power, here at this table. This is His body. This is His blood. He invites us to partake, so our visceral, physical experience matches the truth, more real than the air we breathe, that His spirit is already within us, working, growing, building His kingdom.

Offering Meditation

We are foolish and wasteful with the various resources, in various realms, that God has given us. We are not perfect stewards. But God continues to provide for us, and through us He provides for others. His new mercies are poured out into our time, our knowledge, our relationships, in so many ways, including our wallets.  Give as generously as you have been given to.

Transfiguration

The walk up the mountain was mundane. Jesus likely knew what was coming, but the disciples didn't. But because they stayed with Jesus, they experienced the transfiguration.

You never know when God will reveal His glory. Just stay with Him.

God Asks, "What Do You Want?"

My child,

I've been asking you, repeatedly, over the years but more intensively over the last several months, the question, "what do you want?". I'm asking you this for several reasons (as always).

The first is, down in your soul, down in your heart, mixed in with desires that have other sources and varying levels of legitimacy, I have placed some dreams and desires and goals. I want you to find those, bring them to the surface, and make the pursuit of those goals your own. I want you to embrace those desires, and chase after those dreams, so you and I can pursue them and work on them together. But first you have to see them. First you must find them.

Second, I want you to drag out those other desires into the light of day, like you pulled out the decades-old junk from your mother-in-law's old storage room into the light of day. Like that old stuff, your old desires need to be evaluated in the light, and then dealt with appropriately. Some need to be burned and destroyed. But others are redeemable, recyclable, and yet others are perfectly good, even precious; they just need to be dusted off and given their proper place in your life.

Third, I ask you this question so that you may participate in My work. It is good and right that I am your Lord, and that you are My slave and child, obedient to Me. But as My child, made in My image, you have the ability to create, to shape and form beauty and order that didn't exist before. In this way (among others), you come alongside Me in My work. I am eager to see you join Me in this way.

But I need you to be open, honest, and fearless. You need to dig into those storage rooms in your soul and bring out all their contents so you and I can review them together. Some of the desires you find will be sinful. If you obey Me, we will deal appropriately with those desires. The point is not to demean, punish, or put you down because of what we find. The point is to remove the poison from you, to lead you toward wholeness and healing, toward the life I've always meant for you to have.

Bring it out in the open, to Me. Let it sit in the sunlight of My wisdom and love. Let me show you how your life will be fuller and richer and wiser and better without the sinful desires that have been woven into your heart. You identify with so many of them that really aren't part of you, that are actually foreign to who I've created you to be. Let me show you the child-more-alive that you are without them.

You are so precious to Me. You always have been. I gave authority and responsibility over you to people who sometimes did well, handled things like I wanted, but many times did not. In this you have much in common with many, many people. Life is the process of letting Me help you sort through everything you've believed about so many things, including how you see yourself, letting Me guide you into all truth.

Brace yourself, for this is a task that will not end this side of the grave. But at the same time, work to open yourself to the healing and joy you will find on the other side of this work. I am with you. You are not alone. We will keep after this together. You can trust Me; I hope that you will trust Me.

Giving Into Temptation

Instead of giving-in to temptation, collapsing in the face of persistent pressure, could it instead/also be giving (i.e. pouring oneself, donating) into temptation?

Temptation, the enemy, pulls and plucks at us, picks at us, until we take what we have within us, the life we carry within, and let it leave ourselves. We put that life, pour that vitality, into what we were tempted with. And because the focus of the vision was a tempting and not a divine drawing, the object we pour ourselves into does not deliver or develop more life; it destroys it. A sieve, our life goes into and through it and is wasted. 

The Unrepeatability of Life

At some point in my 20's or 30's I realized that my unwitting attitude towards the unrepeatable nature of life wasn't aligned with reality. On more than one occasion I found myself surprised at situations where I didn't get a second chance. When I stepped back and thought about it, there was no rational reason I should have expected second chances in those situations. But unconsciously, I did have that expectation. Why?

The best theory I ever came up with was the way my mind had been shaped by video games. Over and over, if I died too many times in the game, all I needed was another quarter, or to own the game, to keep on playing. I came to expect that reality worked like that somehow.

But of course it doesn't work that way. There are consequences to our actions, and most of the time nothing short of miracle will undo those consequences.

What's doubly amazing to me about this pattern in myself is that 1) our family never owned a videogame or videogame console; 2) growing up I didn't have the amount of quarters it would take for me to hammer home the message that life is a repeatable, disposable thing like it sometimes seems it is; and 3) when I was growing up, video games weren't ubiquitous like they are today. Is this other assumption of repeatability also ubiquitous today?

What about you? Have you internalized this sense that everything in life is repeatable? Do you wordlessly assume that if you fail this current situation, there will always be more chances? How do you combat this feeling, and align your life with what is, instead of what you wish was?

The Humble Anonymity of God

One of the things that bugs me, and has bugged me for years, is when people attribute something that I believe is the work of God to someone or something else.  Some examples:

• when someone talks about looking for their life’s calling, and phrase it as “what yourlife is calling you to do,”
• when someone talks about listening to “the universe” for answers to a question,
• when someone outlines a process where you describe a problem at one point in time (e.g., in the morning), then at a later point (e.g., in the evening) listen to or read your description and you receive an answer to the problem “because you are really conversing with someone much wiser and saner as you write: your authentic self.”

I don’t want to diminish or dismiss the ability that humans have, the role we play, in creative output of all kinds.  I do believe that humans can and do create (albeit in a qualitatively different manner, being a rearrangement of what exists, from God’s ex nihilo creating).  But to me it’s a mystery to describe where all new ideas come from.  Maybe new ideas are spontaneously (?) generated within the human heart/mind/soul, at least some of the time.  But I have to believe that some of the time (how much of the time?) God actually drops ideas, solutions, into our heads.  He provides guidance to us.  He comforts us, “reminds us of the truth,” leads us in the way everlasting, etc.  I don’t know exactly where that ends, and where independent information, creditable to us as humans and not (or at least less) to God’s activity within us.

And ultimately, if there’s an area that is in any way “gray” concerning when we should credit God vs. crediting ourselves, or some semi-anonymous pseudo-entity, I want to err in the direction of giving God more credit.

What’s amazing to me is that God, who is obviously doing far more than we give Him credit for, doesn’t express some displeasure at being ignored in this.  He continues to serve us with creativity, guidance, teaching, and love, whether we acknowledge His work or not.

Midas

When everything you touch turns to gold, you Midas well touch the world. 

Greatness

What is greatness?

Gladly seeking and accepting every opportunity to shape and guide one's children, the next generation, and through them all they will go on to influence.

The Affirmation of the Father

My Father loves me.

My Father values me.

He will not stop loving or valuing me, no matter what I do.

He is proud of me when I do good work.

Opposing the Proud, Supporting the Humble

God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. This seems to be a core tenet at the center of understanding everything.

If you are enamored of your own self-sufficiency, awed by your own autonomy, then remember that thereby do you make God your enemy. He will work against you in your arrogant ways. 

Conversely, if you work hard to keep a balanced, full, and rich understanding of your complete nature, remembering the image of God woven through your entire being and  your desperately broken, fallen, sinful nature, this is humility. And by it, God becomes your supporter and friend, giving you grace, strength, and wisdom.

Building Life

Procreation shows us that building life takes more than just one person. We build life together. Sin alienates and separates us from each other. Separate, we cannot build life abundant.

A marriage is not two autonomous people wandering around following each individual's desires as they ebb and flow. It is the mystery of union, joining dreams and goals together to follow them as one.

Implicating Against Poverty

The idea of implicating prayers says that we must be acting and doing in the world in ways that support and bring to life the words of our prayers. Some who advocate for such prayers also advocate for the government to continue to take the leading role in combating poverty. They don't see the two as being contradictory. Instead, they often see them as consistent with each other. In both cases, they argue, they are utilizing and leveraging the resources they have (personally and politically) to drive resources to the poor.

But that's only true if 1) the government's actions toward the poor were effective in helping the poor, 2) those actions were not significantly wasteful, and 3) doing so was not giving to Caesar what irrevocably belongs to God, and therefore to the Body of Christ, to address and accomplish. I don't think any of these three things is true.

You Are Not Powerless

Jesus wants to challenge your largely unspoken belief that you are powerless to change things. The gifts you have received from Him give you a certain kind and sort of power. You need to know how to exercise that power with love and wisdom, but also with humility. You, and even the power you have, are flawed and incomplete. To let the insights of that power steer and drive you without intentional reflection and restraint would be arrogant and foolish. But to not use the power at all would be a dereliction of duty, an abdication of responsibility, and a genuine tragedy.

Perhaps you can't change very much in this world, but you are not valued or measured by the size of your impact. You are inherently valued by God no matter how much you shirk your responsibility. But somehow He will reward us all for doing what is good and right, and how we rightly handle our responsibility. Obedience to God is the measure we should aim to increase, not clicks or votes or pats on the back.

Hear, Obey, & Be Blessed

When you get a chance to do something that you know is obedient to God, how do you feel? When you approach a time that's set aside specifically for expressing gratitude to God, worshipping Him, are you resentful because it's intruding on or interfering with your time? Or are you thankful for the opportunity? Some of both?

The psalmist in Psalm 122 is overjoyed when he is told that the time has come to go to Jerusalem, the city built just for giving thanks to and worshipping God. What makes him so happy? Why is the thought of worship the trigger for that happiness?

In Ezra 6 we see both King Darius and Cyrus acknowledging that Jerusalem is where "the god of heaven" is to be worshipped. We don't know that they actually revered or worshipped the God who led Israel out of Egypt, but they did give up resources to support the effort of the Israelites' descendants' efforts to build the city where that God was meant to be worshipped.

In the last passage today (Luke 8:19-21), Jesus says, "My mother and My brothers are these who hear the word of God and do it." Another way of putting this is that those who promptly and practically respond when they hear God speaking are closest to Jesus, are becoming more like Jesus, are blessed.

The challenge for us is to daily remember who God is, in all His beauty, power, and grace, which He generously and graciously offers to us every day. As we grow more deeply in the habit of remembering this, the more naturally we will feel the psalmist's joy when we hear an opportunity to worship and give thanks to God, obey God, and thus become a little more like Jesus.

Progressivism: Coercion over Competition

Progressives prefer coercion over competition. They believe better outcomes will be achieved by a stronger central government forcing everyone to do what that government says is "right" than by a wide variety of solutions being attempted by many different groups to see which ones are more effective.

Progressives generally do not prefer a strong central government because they are truly enamored of strength or strong man, per se. They prefer centralized solutions for society's  problems because they genuinely believe that is the best route to a solution to those problems.

Conservatives, on the other hand, do not believe that centralized strength is the most effective way to solve problems. Instead, they assume that solutions will not be obvious, even to well-educated experts. They believe that the shortest and most effective route to effective solutions for societies problems is competition among a large number of potential solutions.