I was about to the point of abandoning it………until I saw a recent post by a woman whom I am proud to say I know.
Here is a synopsis of her post.
Times are hard….they will probably get worse. If you are unemployed and struggling to care for your family, send me a private message with your address. I will drop off a bag of groceries. I won’t knock, I won’t call, I won’t bother you. No one will know and I will pretend that it didn’t happen.
This has to be the best example of working Christianity that I have seen in years.
Christianity is a very simple religion. You can basically cook it down to two commands:
Love God
Love your neighbor
If you are a Christian, these two commands should be at the very top of your “To Do list”……..every day.
I’ll go one step further……..it should be obvious to the people around you that those two commands guide your life.
As a nation, I think I can say that we haven’t been doing a very good job of obeying these two commands lately.
As a nation, we haven’t been very Good Christians
I would encourage you to consider my friend’s post. I would encourage you to do something similar.
In this current pandemic, I can think of no better way to serve God…….I can think of no better way to be his feet on the ground.
“give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”
Luke, NIV
Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
Paul, NIV
‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
Things have been a little quiet since Covid hit. Cindy and I have been watching more TV than is typical. We typically watch news and games shows just before dinner then Op-Ed shows and finally dramas for a few hours.
Last night, the Op-Ed show amounted to an angry talking head who was trying to get me mad at some other angry talking head on “the enemy network”. This was followed by another angry talking head trying to get me mad at politicians in the “enemy party”.
We finally abandoned that network and tuned in a Netflix series that we have been following. Some of them, like “Anne, with an E” have been excellent. The show last night spent its time showing a politician as he struggled over abandoning his principles for political expediency………he does. This was interspersed with multiple gratuitous sexual encounters of every imaginable type…….none of which involved a husband and wife and none of which had anything to do with the plot line of the show.
And this is what TV has become. Ozzie and Harriett are long gone. Today the theme menu is limited to: political manipulation, murder, sex, and “flexible, tolerant, morals” which is to say……no morals at all.
Is it any wonder that our society is decaying? I know…….. you’ve heard all of this before. So have I.
What do do?
We are consumers. The TV pays its way by selling ads. We watch the ads and buy the products. The networks…….every last one of them……..give us either what we want or what they want us to want. And don’t kid yourself, they are extremely skilled at making us want what they want us to want. But, in the final analysis, we are responsible. We are directly responsible for the media that we consume. But, we are indirectly responsible for the rest of it……. the manipulation, sex, murder, gratuitous violence………all of it. If we will watch trash, they will broadcast trash.
So……….what if we stop?
What if we pull the plug on the TV……the internet too. What if, instead, we pull out a good book, sit down with our family and read. Two things happen. The first is immediate and highly effective. We eliminate a source of intellectual poison from our lives. By poison, I mean something that you consume that harms you. The second is much slower and requires a lot of consumers pulling the plug. Ultimately, the networks and the advertisers that support them will change…….maybe just a little bit.
I’m not naive enough to believe that millions of Americans will drag their TV and their laptop out to the curb. But, begining today, I hope that you will join me in asking a simple question when you tune in a show or visit a web site.
“Is this product that I am about to consume……. poison?”
My wife and I own a small farm in Kentucky. I go out there to hunt and fish…….and to just get away. This week I went deer hunting. I was surprised to see about a dozen black buggies within a mile of our farm. An Amish community has been buying up farms and has moved into the neighborhood.
I used to think of the Amish as a quaint anachronism. But, now I’m beginning to understand. The Amish are not totally against technology. But, they are against being connected to the grid, the network. They choose to isolate themselves from the social currents that drive our society……..some would say the social currents that degrade our society. They refuse to consume the poison.
I used to think that they were wrong and modern society was right. After last night………I’m not so sure.
So, I am going to spend a be lot more time with a book and a lot less time with a video screen.
And, I think I’ll make an effort to get to know my new Amish neighbors.
Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.
Paul, NIV
After desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full grown, gives birth to death.
My background is science. One of the threads that runs through all of science is the search for truth……..the search for what is, as opposed to what we want. At what I hope is the close of a particularly acrimonious political season, the search for truth really appeals to me. The great truths of science wind up being called laws. They are so central to our world that you know many of them……. even if your background is not in a scientific field. You know the basics of the law of gravity. A dropped slice of pizza always lands gooey side down. The law of inertia is a bit less obvious. An object at rest will stay at rest unless energy is applied and an object in motion will not change its motion unless energy is applied.
So far so good.
Entropy is a bit tougher still. At its core, entropy is the law regulating disorder. The second law of thermodynamics basically says that a system will become less organized, more random, unless energy is applied. Anybody who has raised children has seen the practical application of this law……..in their bedrooms.
In practical terms, the second law of thermodynamics, the law of entropy, the law of disorder, says that you can make hamburger out of a cow………but, it is very hard to make a cow out of hamburger.
As we watch the world around us, we can see the natural growth of entropy, disorder. We apply energy to the system we live in constantly in order to keep entropy, disorder, at bay. The largest and most obvious arena in the fight against entropy is the environment. And we have made a lot of progress. The air is far cleaner today than it was when I was young. We expend a lot of money, energy, to make it so. If we stopped putting energy, in the form of effort, resources, thought, and money into the environment, air quality, water quality, and many other facets of the environment would deteriorate, probably rapidly.
Here is my point. Look back over your life…..at the world we live in. In spite of the energy we apply to the system we live in, during our lifetimes, disorder is growing: climate change, plastic in the ocean, contamination of our water supply, extinctions, and many more.
So far so good.
But, now, consider the secular humanist, scientific, creation story.
A giant explosion, a cloud of subatomic particples, the particles assemble themselves into atoms, the atoms assemble themselves into molecules, the molecules assemble themselves into cells, the cells become alive, they reproduce, they evolve into every living thing on earth, including Angelina Jolie. All of this occurrs in a closed system without the application of outside energy. All of this occurrs without the intervention of an outside intelligence.
All of this organization……..all of this decrease of entropy……. occurs in blatant violation of the second law of thermodynamics.
Returning to the present, experience tells us that today, the world is becoming more disorganized in spite of the energy we have applied to fight disorder. And yet the secular humanists, the scientists, tell us that this incredible, complex planet and everything on it came about by a string of trillions upon trillions of random, consecutive, cumulative, positively adaptive, interdependent…….. accidents. In practice, the scientists, the secular humanists, throw the second law of thermodynamics out the window. Their justification……..”there was a lot of time for all of the accidents”.
They are wrong. The second law of thermodynamics holds. You cannot use millions of years of time to reverse the second law of thermodynamics………you cannot use time alone to create order out of disorder. You can wait a lifetime, but unless somebody applies energy, and intelligence, to the system………your child’s bedroom is not going to become organized. In your heart, you know this.
To create order out of disorder in a closed system…….you must apply energy and intelligence………from the outside. You can quibble about the details……..but this is a good working definition of a “creator”.
This incredible planet is no accident.
It is the result of the application of energy, energy applied by an intelligent creator.
And he cares deeply.
For you.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
John, NIV
“I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the Lord, who does all these things.”
God, NIV
“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
Many years ago a rift developed between me and my oldest adult son. We were very different people. We didn’t agree on much of anything. There were many reasons behind it and they really don’t matter at this point. The question of blame really doesn’t matter. We weren’t talking……we rarely met. He was living in an apartment somewhere. I remember one day driving down the street of a nearby town and seeing him walking down the street………on his way to something. I can’t remember if I stopped or not.
But, I hated the distance that had developed between us. I can’t speak for him, but I suspect that it bothered him too. I began looking for some basis to begin building a relationship…….some common ground. I went down the list of my interests. I went down the list of his interests. I literally couldn’t find anything.
Then it hit me. We did have at least one thing in common. We both ate lunch. That was about it.
So, I tracked him down. This was probably before cell phones……at least before he had one. The question was simple.
“Can I buy you lunch?”
It turned out to be cheese conies at a local chili joint. We sat. We ate. We made small talk. I probably dropped him off somewhere afterwards. It wasn’t a big thing……..and yet it was. We began meeting for lunch from time to time…….and that went on for the few remaining years of his life.
I’d like to tell you that we became close……that our opinions and our interests aligned. That we became pals. That we lived happily ever after.
It didn’t turn out that way.
But we did meet for lunch. We talked. We laughed. We told stories. We repaired some of the damage.
And that, in the final analysis, has been extremely valuable.
Maybe you don’t have a relationship like this one. If so, you are blessed. Enjoy it. But if you do, consider asking the simple question.
“Can I buy you lunch?”
The other guy will probably be confused. He may be angry. He could even lash out or just hang up. But, he just might surprise you. And, if he does surprise you, you will have an opportunity to repair a relationship.
Use it wisely.
And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
James, NIV
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.
