I’m getting old……… I’m probably well past my “best used by” date. Recently a friend, also about my age, commented, “In a few years, all of the stuff I’ve accumulated will either belong to somebody that I don’t know…..or will be in the dump.” It’s a sobering thought………but true. I’m a firm believer in the truth, so this post is about facing that truth.

Soon……….I’m going to die.

I really don’t get too sad about dying. But, I have to admit that the thought of my woodshop being sold at auction to a bunch of guys whom I don’t know and carted off in pickup trucks saddens me. Even worse, somebody will fill MY shop up…….with THEIR junk. Instead of being neatly organized, it will probably just sit there in piles……..makes my skin crawl. They probably won’t weed my garden either.

So how do we……the baby boomers in particular, but everybody else as well, even the very young……deal with the reality……the truth……… that we are near the end of our lives?

I’m a Christian, and I pray every morning. As a part of my prayers, I include this:

Lord,

I thank you for all that you have given.
I trust you for what you have taken away.
I praise you for what I have left.

But………the truth is that soon………God will take away every earthly thing and person in my life. I can get mad at God……I can ignore him or deny him……. I can struggle against my fate. But, that won’t change a thing. My daily trip to the treadmill may buy me a few more days…….but my end is not in doubt.

Or, I can go back to my prayer. I can trust God. He has given me many promises. The first is that he loves me. The second is that he has prepared a place for me. After he takes away this present amazing place, I have to believe that a creator who loves me and has prepared a new place for me, has something nice in mind. If he takes care of me any thing like the way I take care of my children, I’m in for a treat.

The best guess that I can come up with goes like this. My day begins sitting on the porch drinking coffee and talking with people that I love……Jesus, my wife, my sons, people that I don’t know yet. I then spend time in a woodshop where I make beautiful things……where the chisels don’t get dull, the bandsaw blade never breaks, and where there is no sandpaper…….none.
Jesus stops by and gives me a few pointers. I break for lunch where I enjoy more fellowship. In the afternoon, I take a long walk with a friend. Dinner is with my mom and dad. I get a good night’s sleep with no midnight trips to the toilet and no CPAP machine. Then I start all over.

The key here is to love and trust God……..and his promises.

The alternative is dispair.

There really is no other choice.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”

Jesus, NIV

“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!

Jesus, NIV

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

David, NIV

This post is directed primarily at believers……..Christians. If you don’t accept Jesus as divine, then this will mean very little to you. On the other hand, I have found the teachings of Jesus to be trustworthy. Maybe you should read on, and consider the possibility that Jesus may have been on to something.

In the Bible there are two men named Lazarus…….two unrelated stories. The first is the one we all know. Jesus’s friend Lazarus dies and Jesus raises him from the dead. This contains the famous “shortest verse in the Bible”…….”Jesus wept”. This is an account told by Luke about Jesus and the things that he did. The second Lazarus story is not nearly as well known………but it is arguably far more important. It is a story told by Jesus……possibly a parable……..comparing a poor beggar named Lazarus and a rich man. More importantly, it is a brief description of heaven, hell, and the relationship between the two. It is a summary of Heaven and hell, spoken by the Creator. As such, it deserves our attention.

The cliff notes version is this:

Heaven is a place of comfort.
Hell is an agonizing burning fire…….a place of torment.
Both are permanent.
Whichever you land in, you are there for eternity.

I hear a lot of Christians say something to the effect of, “I believe in Christ, I believe in heaven, but I don’t believe in hell”.
A more common statement by Christians is, ” I can’t believe that an all loving God would send Aunt Jane to hell.”

These Christians are wrong. You cannot be a Christian and deny the existence of a burning hell.

Why?

You must believe in a burning hell………because Jesus did.

If you are not a Christian, and if you don’t believe in a burning hell, and if you are wrong……..then you are headed for a lot of pain.

Here is the other Lazarus story……..as told by the Creator.

“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.

“The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’

“But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’

“He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’

“Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets;  let them listen to them.’

“‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’

“He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

Jesus, NIV

I believe that the worst pain that we can experience as human beings……….is when we are unfairly attacked……..by someone we love. When the attack is fair, when we deserve it, it’s not so bad. When the attack comes from an enemy, it’s not so bad. But, when it comes from someone we love, it is devastating.

I used to tell my sons, “you can only truly hurt the people who love you”. There is some big league irony here. But, this is one of the greatest truths that I know.

To be clear here, I’m not talking about forgetting a birthday. I’m not talking about some unintentional slight. I’m talking about intentionally hurting someone who loves you. We seem to know the power of this. Often, we save our most devastating attacks for those who love us. It’s not hard to do. The people who love us are typically close to us. We know them well.

We know just where to stick the knife.

And this is tragic.

So you are saying to yourself……”that kind of person is a real jerk…….I would never do that!” And, for the most part, you and I don’t attack those who love us.

But, if you honestly think about your relationship with God, you probably don’t have to look too far to find an episode where you threw him under the bus.

Used his name disparagingly.
Lied.
Took something that was not yours.
Disrespected your parent.
Lusted.
Was jealous of another.
Used Sunday to catch up on work.

And that is just working through the commandments.

How far back do you and I need to go…….to find an episode where we failed to love our neighbor? Not far……probably today……….probably the last time we read an inflammatory political post on Facebook…….or watched the evening news.

So…….here is the hard part.

God loves us with an otherworldly kind of love…..a love that is far beyond our understanding. Try to imagine his pain, when we intentionally attack him by ignoring his teaching, by ignoring him, by denying his very existence.

This is hurting someone who loves you……..writ large.

We do it every day.

And yet, God stands there with open arms, with a heart filled with love……..and, I suspect, with a tear in his eye.

The bad news is that we are guilty………just about every day. Guilt is not very fashionable these days. But, it has a purpose. The purpose of guilt is to guide us away from destructive behavior.

The good news is that God does not hold a grudge. He is just like any other parent. When we get finished attacking him, when we turn back to him, he is still waiting and his love is still there.

God’s love is not diminished because of our failures. His love is not diminished because of our attack. His love is not diminished because we simply are not capable of understanding it.

This makes no sense to me……..but it makes sense to my father. And that’s good enough for me.

Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,”

God, NIV

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Paul, NIV

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Paul, NIV

I’m sure that a great many of us would die to save our child……or our spouse………but would you die to save somebody who treats you badly?

As a conservative, would I willingly die to save Nancy Pelosi?

As a liberal, would you willingly die to save Donald Trump?

Would Trump willingly die to save Pelosi?

Would Pelosi willingly die to save Trump?

Ludicrous, isn’t it?

Our nature is that we are far more likely to wish our enemy dead than to sacrifice our life to save him. And yet that is exactly what God did. We have all sinned. We have all done enough wrong to separate ourselves from God. We have spit in his face so many times that we could easily qualify as his enemies. We pat ourselves on the back and call to mind some act of kindness. But the truth is that we have lied, stolen, dishonoured, coveted, lusted, and far more. On God’s scale of rightness…….on God’s scale of goodness…….on God’s scale of purity…….we are as far removed from him as hell is from paradise.

And yet……..in the person of Jesus…….he willingly died a gruesome death. Why did he do that?

He did it to save us from pain…….he did it to save us from damnation.

What was he thinking? Was he temporarily out of his mind? We would never do something like that for a friend………much less an enemy.

WHY??

The fact is that God is not like us…..he is not like me.

This bears repeating.

God is not like us.

He is so different from us that when we try to understand him, using our rules…….our standards……we fail completely. Our rules just can’t handle this situation. Even worse, we are so satisfied with our rules, our way of operating……..we are so sure that we are right………we are so confident………that we decide that God must be wrong. Some of us even decide that God doesn’t exist……….he can’t exist, because he is so different from us……. because he doesn’t operate by our rules……..how’s that for tolerance?

So……..why would God do something so completely crazy……. something that we would never do? Why would God subject himself to crucifixion?

Love.

Love is the very essence of God. God loves us in a way that is so far beyond our experience that we cannot understand it. Because we cannot wrap out heads around this kind of love, we reject it…….we reject God. And that is the greatest failure, the greatest loss we will ever experience.

Enter faith.

At its heart, faith is the act of accepting the reality of something that we cannot understand. We tend to think of faith as a Sunday kind of act. But, the truth is, we act on faith many times every single day. We do not understand why gravity works; but, we trust that when we toss the dog a ball…….it will fall to the ground. We like to believe that we are rational, scientific creatures; but, we can’t get through an hour without acting in faith on something that we do not understand.

I don’t understand how my computer works.
I don’t understand why the cut on my thumb heals.
I don’t understand how the glue in my shop works.
I don’t understand the love of my granddaughter.

And yet, I forge ahead, acting in absolute confidence that I can rely on these things…….and countless more. I act on faith.

I cannot understand why God, with all of his power, would endure crucifixion……….for me.

I simply accept……as an act of faith……that God loves me with a sacrificial, parental love that operates by a set of rules that I am blind to. I accept this, not because I can measure it or prove it. I accept this purely on faith……..and I forge ahead…… absolutely confident that I can rely on the love of my creator.

I cannot understand it………..but it works……..and my life is far richer for it.

This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

John, NIV

“Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,” says the Lord, who has compassion on you.

God, NIV

“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends,”

Jesus, NIV

I once saw a cartoon. A mathematician was trying to solve a complicated problem. He had written dozens of equations on a blackboard, each logically following the one before. Then, on step number 30, he wrote ,”something magic happens”. He then went on with more equations till he reached his conclusion.

It was a joke. But, the point is that the “magic” step nullified the entire exercise. Science has a similar problem…….actually, it has several:

The big bang……. We have no idea what it was like, what caused it, or what preceded it. It is a “magic” event that we created to fill a gap in what we know……….in what we want to believe.

The origin of life……. We have no idea how life began and even less of an idea as to how it propagated. We talk about lightning striking the primordial ooze and causing simple molecules to assemble themselves into a living, reproducing entity. But, this has never been acheived in a lab………it is just more magic.

The diversity of life…….We have no idea how we wound up with billions of different intimately interconnected life forms. We trot out Darwin and his theory. But, we cannot document the creation of a new species. More magic, masquerading as science.

Why do we do this?

Like the mathematician in the joke, we have a starting point and an end point. We are looking for a logical, scientific path to explain how we got to where we are. The trouble is that there isn’t one. So we invent “magic” steps to fill in the gaps.

The trouble is that, just as in the joke, the “magic” steps nullify the entire exercise. Without the “magic” steps, science fails to tell us what we desperately want to know.

So what do we do……….when science fails to answer the greatest question of all……….”how did we get here?”

The answer is…….that we must look outside of science.

Enter religion.

But, you say, that’s just more “magic”!

If you define magic as things beyond the limits of current 21st century science, then you are right. Religion is “magic” too.

But, that really isn’t the issue. The real issue is: “is it true?”

I’m a Christian. So, for me, the real issue is: “is the Bible true?”

I say yes…… that there is enough historical, archeological, and eyewitness evidence to support the truth of the Bible.

And furthermore, the Bible gives me a moral framework to live by:

Love God……Love you neighbor.

Science and Darwin tell me:

There is no God……eat your neighbor.

If you take a good hard look at our current political conversation……..it is driven more by scientific morality than by biblical morality. How is that working out?

There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death.

Solomon?, NIV

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Jesus, NIV

WARNING

If you are a big fan of “fairness”, you may not like this week’s post.

My sons often would come to me with a complaint…….it often ended with the statement……..”It’s not fair!” I would say to them, “check your contract…….where does it say that life is fair?”

The fact is that there is very little in life that is fair. A two year old kid gets cancer. A bike rider is mowed down by a careless 80 year old woman. A dynamic woman who is the pillar of her family gets ALS.

It’s not fair!

So what does this have to do with hell?

We have all done things that are wrong…….some more than others. In a perfectly fair system, you could make a case that we are all doomed to hell. But, fortunately, fairness has nothing to do with it. You and I might not approve of this………but we don’t get to make up the rules. God does.

So what are the rules for avoiding hell?

Recognize Jesus as God.
Accept his gift of forgiveness……blanket forgiveness………for every single rotten thing you have ever done….or thought about doing…….even the stuff you got away with…… or thought you got away with.

It’s just that easy.

Or you could deny his existence……his divinity. But, if you do…..you had better be right. I worry a lot about my friends who deny God……..without ever considering what it might cost them…….if they are wrong.

What are the practical implications of these simple rules?

The dividing line between heaven and hell is not goodness(an extremely common misconception)……it is forgiveness.

This bears repeating.

The dividing line between heaven and hell is not goodness……it is forgiveness.

And that’s not fair.

On the other hand, absolute fairness could mean universal damnation.

So………

Heaven will not be full of good people. It will be full of forgiven sinners.

Hell will not be full of bad people…….it will be full of unforgiven sinners.

What follows is one of the greatest ironies of life.

The people in hell will not be substantially different from the people in heaven. Some of the people in heaven will have been far less “good” in their lifetimes than some of the people in hell were.

Some of the people in hell will be really nice people. Some of them will be your friends. Some of them will be members of your family.

One of them will be a real Prince of a man……..the nicest guy in hell.

It’s not fair……..but, hey, nothing is.

So, do you know somebody really nice…….a guy who would give you the shirt off his back…..a guy who would drop whatever he was doing to come to your rescue…..a guy who doesn’t believe…….a guy who is a candidate for the nicest guy in hell?

Something to think about.

Christians spend a lot of effort trying to “save” people who are “bad”. Maybe we need to invest some effort in the really nice people. Maybe we can help create the nicest guy who is NOT in hell.

all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

Paul, NIV

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Jesus, NIV

Jesus is “ ‘the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone .’ Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved .”

Luke, NIV

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Paul, NIV

“so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.” For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Jesus/John, NIV

Finally, here it is……..the post you have all been waiting for.

What is the secret of life?

James Taylor says that it is: “enjoying the passage of time”.

I’m a big fan of his…….and he is close……. but, Sorry James……”No Cigar!”

The great secret of life is that it’s eternal.

If you think about it, there are two possibilities. When we die, either the lights just go out………or we transition to something else. I believe that the great truths are written on our hearts. We are born with them. Our creator put them there to help us along. Love, hope, an understanding of beauty, an understanding of right and wrong, an odd sense that we are incomplete, and the sense that there is something after death.

According to a recent Roper poll, 80% of people believe in an afterlife.

You can call this wishful thinking, but can you think of anything else that 80% of people agree on?

Faced with eternal life, the brief 70 years that we spend on earth is the blink of an eye……it is nearly inconsequential. And yet we spend 99% of our time and effort managing this temporal life…….and less than 1% of our time managing our eternity. We tend to ignore eternity because we don’t like to think about death. We also ignore eternity because we believe that we have no knowledge of it and we believe that we have no control over it. Both of these things are untrue.

If you ask 100 people to describe eternity…… paradise, you will get just about the same thing from every one of them……. a field of grass with happy people enjoying nice weather…….familiar faces, lots of smiles. You get the same image from everyone you ask because this knowledge is written on all of our hearts…..put there by our creator. In a way, it is a beacon calling us home. So……..if you search your heart, you already know what paradise is like. But now……I ask you to look deeper. In your vision of paradise, everybody is happy……. everybody is nice. Where is all of the bad stuff? We don’t seem to have a hardwired vision of hell……but the absence of bad things in our vision of paradise suggests that the bad stuff must be somewhere else. It is a fair assumption that that place is bad……. probably very bad. In the Roper survey, 67% of people believe in hell. Frankly, I’m surprised that the number is that high.

We will spend essentially our entire existence in eternity. We will spend essentially our entire existence in a place that is either very nice or in a place that is very bad. We will spend essentially our entire existence in either paradise or hell.

Going back to the hardwiring in our hearts, nobody seems to believe that we can go back and forth between paradise and hell. If that were true, then the bad stuff would creep into paradise. When we die…….we go either to paradise…….or hell……. forever. The choice between paradise and hell is not random. God does not just toss a coin. The choice between paradise and hell hinges on how we handle our brief life in this temporal world.

Time for some honest reflection.

Think back over the last week……maybe two weeks if you are a saint. Call to mind something that you did, or said, or thought that was rotten. Do you see people doing that in your vision of paradise? Probably not. If you are honest, you are left with the nagging doubt that maybe you don’t belong in paradise.

So……what determines who goes to paradise……..what determines who goes to hell? There are two schools of thought.

I’m a good person.
I do some rotten things…….but not too many. I’m “good enough”. I’ve earned a place in paradise. In this school of thought, I usually damn the guy just a bit below me on the goodness scale to hell. After all, I don’t want him taking my parking spot. This is the most common belief among the people you meet.

I’m a broken person.
I have made mistakes…..done rotten things……..but my creator loves me. He has decided to let my rottenness slide. This is what God teaches in his instruction book. There is just one tiny catch……..you have to recognize God and accept his “get out of jail free card”.

So……..the secret of life?

It is eternal and you get to choose where you will spend it……..today.

What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

James, NIV

“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.
“The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’
“But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’
“He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’
“Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’
“‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’
“He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

Jesus, NIV

As a Christian, I operate under 2 foundational rules:

Love God
Love your neighbor

In other words:

Love a perfect being.
Love a lot of imperfect people.

Quite a contrast. It is also a bit ironic……..that because I love a perfect God, I am required to love a bunch of imperfect humans. But, hey, rules is rules……..and I don’t get to make them up.

BTW…….neither do you.

Loving God is pretty straightforward. Once you accept his existence, it is hard not to love and honor the guy who created you………your family……..and everything else.

Loving your neighbor……now that is a whole different kettle of fish. I don’t know about the people around you; but, the people around me are imperfect……… sometimes spectacularly so. Sometimes they mistreat me, sometimes they attack me. As a Christian and a conservative, it is hard to look through my Facebook timeline without being called, indirectly, a racist, a misogynist, a homophobe, and more. And that is from my friends!

When people treat you well, they are easy to love.

But what about when they treat you badly?

How do you love Antifa? How do you love the anarchists who are burning our cities? How do you love Planned Parenthood? How do you love the author who calls you a racist……because you are white? (Hard to miss the irony there.)

The first step is to concede that you too………are imperfect. We all like to believe that we are fundamentally good. We call up a picture of an angry guy in a hoodie smashing windows and we smuggly say to ourselves, “I’m better than him”. Fact is……you probably are, at least today. But on the cosmic scale of “goodness”…….on God’s scale of “goodness”……..there is really not much difference between the two of you. From God’s perspective…….. you, me, and the guy in the hoodie are all neck deep in the muck.

The second step follows closely. Because I too am imperfect, the guy in the hoodie and I are in about the same boat…….in the eyes of God. And isn’t that the perspective that really counts…… considering the eternal implications?

Finally, consider that God loves you…….and me…….and the guy in the hoodie. He loves us even though we are imperfect. He loves us even though we do things that offend him……things that hurt him……every single day.

It would be a massive act of hypocrisy for me to mistreat God and then accept his love while at the same time withholding my love from somebody who has mistreated me.

So, I have to find a way to love the guy who spit in my face. I have to find a way to love Planned Parenthood, I have to find a way to love the guy from Antifa……because God loves me…….in spite of my imperfections.

And that………..is not going to be easy.

I’m a woodworker. My project today is a very complicated table. It is at the very limits of my skill set…….and I have been stalling……..because I’m afraid I’ll mess up. But, it’s been paid for and I have a deadline. So I will start by sawing the boards that I will need to the exact size required. I can do that……. today.

As far as loving the guy in the hoodie is concerned, I can start by realizing that he and I have some things……..possibly some imperfections……in common. He and I are brothers……..I can do that……….today. Tomorrow, maybe I can try to understand him……….even if we disagree.

Lord, please give peace………….to the guy in the hoodie.

 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

Jesus, NIV

“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,  bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also.”

Jesus, NIV

But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.

Jesus, NIV

I watch what is going on in our cities.

Bad cops killing helpless black men.
Antifa terrorists and anarchists financed by Soros, destroying our cities.
A dishonest news media (yes……all of them……..even your favorite) selling a political agenda………. selling hate.

It is scary……but mostly I find it profoundly saddening. How did we get here? And……..more importantly……..how do we get out? How do we save our society? How do we heal our critically ill culture?

How we got here is very complicated. I don’t want to oversimplify; but, I think that a huge part of the problem is that we have listened to media sources that have polarized us. They have been telling us that the other guy…….the guy with other ideas is evil. We listen, because the same media source that tells us that the other guy is evil……….is also telling us that we are noble. Since we are noble and the other guy is evil, anything that we do…….anything that we say……any hate filled post that we share……..is justified.

We have reached the point where we honestly believe that using hate to fight hate is noble.

It is not. This bears repeating.

USING HATE TO FIGHT HATE IS NOT NOBLE.

It just makes you one more “hater”.

I have always believed that there is a core segment of the American people who are good, wise people. These are the people who made us a great nation……..a source of good in the world. I fear that this segment is smaller than it was when I was young. But, I also believe that it is still big enough. I am not talking about the cop with his knee on a man’s neck. I am not talking about the professional rioter burning a small business. I am not talking about the “talking heads” pandering hate to the left and to the right. I am talking about the 67 year old lady taking care of her granddaughter….the salvation army bell ringer……the church that takes food to a local trailer park.

You will not see these people on the evening news.

So how do we heal out culture? We do it by growing the core of good wise Americans. The key to doing this is the heart of the New Testament. Love your neighbor. When we do this we show our neighbor his value…….and our own. Possibly even more importantly, we show the bystanders around us the heart of God. We will not make the 6 o’clock news. We will not silence the “talking heads”. But, we can move the needle just a little bit at a time……with love. It will take a lot of us. It will take thousands of us loving our neighbor to undo the damage that one member of antifa can do in an evening. The good news? There are millions of us!

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy, instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”
“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’There is no commandment greater than these.”

Jesus, NIV

OK…….I know that sounds crazy.

But, if you consider how we make decisions, the fact is that we act like we are…….. smarter than God that is. Some of us reject God altogether. This, by definition, means that we are smarter. But, even among believers, Christians, a great many of us give our choices, our decisions, our appetites priority over the teachings of God. When we do that, we are saying, in effect, that we know better than God. We pick through the Bible. We follow the teachings that we like………that don’t restrict our appetites. We reject any teaching that we disagree with. We reject any teaching that interferes with our appetites. Why?…… because we think that we are smarter than God.

Premarital sex is an example:

God teaches us that sex is for husbands and wives…… that sex before or outside of marriage between a man and a woman is wrong. Yet, among young people, premarital sex is the norm. Even among older people, extramarital sex is not uncommon. The result is sexually transmitted disease, unwanted pregnancy, abortion, divorce and more. The evidence is pretty clear………premarital sex and extramarital sex don’t work. They may be fun over the short term……..but in the long run, when I Iook back over 60 years, they are not good for us…… as individuals and as a society. The fact that we accept extramarital sex as normal behavior indicates that we rate our risk/reward assessment above God’s. In word, we are saying that we are smarter than God.

There are many more examples:

Should we copy somebody else’s work at school?
God says no……..we say “I need good grades…….everybody else is doing it and I have to keep up”.

Should we fudge on our tax return?
God says no….we say “the chance of an audit is small”.

Should we use the copier at work for personal use?
God says no…….we say “it’s only a few cents”

Should we have an abortion?
God says no…….we say “but this child will interfere with my plans”

Should we disobey our parents?
God says no……we say “they are old and narrow minded”

Should we work on Sunday?
God says no……. we say “but I need to catch up”

In the Bible, God gives us lot of good advice and some rules. This advice isn’t there to ruin all of our fun…… it’s there for our protection. It is there to lead us to long term joy.
But, we often ignore this advice……. Why? It’s really pretty simple…….we believe that we have a better plan……. even though the evidence around us indicates otherwise.

In a word…….by our behavior, we are saying that we are smarter than God…………….and we do this every day.

There is only one problem.

We aren’t smarter than God………and we suffer because our hubris leads us into bad choices.

We aren’t smarter than God………our choices may lead us to short term pleasure, but God has a better idea…….an idea that leads us to long term joy.

“There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death.”

Solomon, NIV

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”

Solomon, NIV