Monday, December 24, 2012

Lies From The Pit Of... Man?

This meme makes a truth claim.  It says that God hates the pain of divorce. Can I assume then that God only hates divorce when it causes pain, but He is otherwise OK with it if the feelings are mutual?  When we make claims about God like the one on this meme we ought to be very careful, for we are acting as prophets declaring a "truth" about God.  Any claims we make therefore should be able to rest on God's Word, and not on a conjured up image of a god that feels more acceptable.  So does the Bible agree with this claim?  Let's take a look:
"I hate divorce," says the Lord, the God of Israel,
(Mal 2:16)
There's no clarity lacking in that short statement is there?  There's nothing to be found about the pain of divorce here either, nor anywhere else in scripture.  But that's how Satan works.  He twists what God says.  It is a familiar tactic, indeed the one he used to bring down the human race:
"Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, "Indeed, has God said, 'You shall not eat from any tree of the garden'?"  (Gen 3:1)
Notice Satan isn't sinister sounding here, or apparently not even repulsive.  He just twists God's words ever so slightly so that they say something God never said.  That's what this meme does too.  It is based on feelings and man-centered theology.   At the heart of it is the insinuation that man is basically good and his not being distraught (experience pain) is the goal of God's love.  This view is eternally disastrous and dangerous.  If man actually is deserving of God's love, then how do we reconcile that with what the Bible says is the eternal destiny of those who reject his Son?  Such a view does not grasp the reality of man's position as a sinner before a holy and righteous God.

The Bible says that all men stand condemned before God and are objects of His wrath, divorced or not.  But the Bible also presents us with Good News.  It says that we may hide in the righteousness of God's one and only Son and thereby escape His wrath.  The real question is not, does God love me in spite of my sin, but rather, have my sins been washed from God's sight by the blood of the Lamb?  As the old Hymn, written in a time before man-centered theology had become predominate, says:
"Just as I am without one plea,
but that thy blood was shed for me".  

Saturday, December 15, 2012

The Fog Of Senselessness

Yesterday's addition to the growing roster of massacres will be viewed just as the previous massacres were viewed, which is in a vacuum.  It will be as if there were no indicators leading up to it that would have warned us that this sort of thing will be a new reality in our brave new world. It will have just happened, out of the blue, so to speak.

Sure, there are those who take advantage of these events to enact some new law, so it won't happen again of course. There will be reflexive demands for more gun controls.  And we will all be sad that twenty innocent children were murdered for no apparent reason.  But in the end it will simply be senselessness.  But that's just it.  Once a a society rejects God, everything becomes senseless.  Everyone will have a vague notion that things have gone horribly wrong, but few, unfortunately, will be able to identify why.

The reality, however, is that these events don't happen in a vacuum.  First, today, like yesterday and the day before, thousands of children will be murdered in this culture, with the culture's blessing.  The only sin of the victims of these murders will be that they are out of sight, and as such, out of mind.  More senselessness. I have often pondered what the response would be if 4000 children a day were lined up and shot because they were unwanted.  Given the response from yesterday's events, I'd say we'd be sickened; in fact I'd say that we'd risk our very lives to make it stop.  But we don't, and they won't.  They are out of sight.

Second, the very school where this tragedy took place is no different from the previous ones.  They all teach that there is no ultimate and objective good and evil.  They all teach that everyone of us came from nothing, and are the result of nothing, and have a destiny of nothing. Life, we are taught from our earliest years, has no meaning.  The school must teach it.  It is the law.  If there were ultimate laws, you see, that would imply that there is an ultimate law-giver.  And if there is an ultimate lawgiver, there is one to which we will all give an account.  And such as that will simply not do.

Third, these schools teach materialism.  They are materialistic because they are designed by secular materialists sent by the populace to do just that.  As such, education is worshiped as the sole means to the best materialistic life that can be achieved. It is a high place... an idol. The idea that anything is higher than one's own life or material achievement is wholly alien to the properly trained child.  Gone are any transcendent realities or altruism, or worse yet, any fear of God that would give good reason for one to reign over himself and his passions.

When a society teaches itself that life is ultimately meaningless, then it ought not be surprised when some in its ranks take that teaching to heart.  It is in that heart, understand, where the ultimate problem resides.  Attempt to conform the outside with your millions of laws and regulation all you want, but it will be the heart, darkened or otherwise, that will dictate a man's path.

Given that many of those darkened hearts who exercise their passions simply take their own lives in the process, just how are the attempts to reign them in by legislation to be applied anyway?  They can't be.  They can't be because the problem is not a legal problem but a heart problem.  The problem is the rejection of God.  Having put God away, concepts such as objective truth and sin have receded into the fog of senselessness.  They're no longer seen or noticed.  But they do rear their ugly heads still, as from out of nowhere... as if out of the fog. They harass us... like a hand extending from the fog to slap us from our drunken stupor.