How Did it Start For You? Hebrews 1c thru 2a

Let me preface these comments with a hope that they do not apply to you! I'm talking about the tendency of society to drift into disorder and chaos, if left alone. Is this not what Science has concluded?

I just completed the book, The Road, by Cormac McArthy. It describes a world with no hope, no authority, no order. Gradually, the people lost their sense of humanity and compassion. They became more like animals. It's sad to think of the human race with such intelligence combined with so little moral bearing. We're too smart for our own good. If we think we can get away with it, we would do anything.

Enter God's plan. God knew this about us. There's a fine balance between intelligence, free-will, nobility, and purity, that God wants to strike with us. With intelligence comes judgment, the ability to choose right from wrong. The intelligence brings self-awareness. The smarter we are, the more aware of ourselves we become. There is a sickening juxtaposition of smarts and wisdom, where they paradoxically end up at odds with each other. We are self-aware, and it makes us self-ish. We feed our minds, and it feeds our egos.

So we had the severity of the Law in the Old Testament. We had rigid rules, to drive us back into growing up into spiritual beings . . . people that could love unselfishly. God's amazing plan would have us be intelligent and loving. This is a delicate blend that only an all-powerful and all-wise God could pull off!

Now, I look about myself today: Sexual looseness. Divorce. Hideous crimes on TV. Lying politicians. Kids that have seen it all on their cell phones, Cable TV, and the Internet. Babies born out of wedlock. Filty language is now the norm. Basic courtesies and etiquette are out the door. People that have not learned to sharpen one another. Harmful, nervous habits that eat away at people souls. Self-mutilation.

Interestingly, the decay in society today goes back to multiples of decisions made by individuals, that harm themselves first! These decisions harm others, when they see that someone they trust can make a bad choice, and nothing bad happens. There is an allure to wrongdoing that captivates humanity. We will do anything, if we can get away with it!

Unchecked, uncontrolled, un-stopped decline into a world we never could have dreamed would come around in our lifetimes!

A church that folded, (or actually, many). Believers that are today alienated from one another. People that once were like family, now focused more on possessions, money, and being "cool." Seeking the upper hand over others. A descent into chaos masked by people just getting for themselves, "what I've got coming to me." Children with more steps and halves than they can keep track of! A disintegration of family; true family; real family; the best form of family.

So how did your world get to where it is today? How did it start with you?

I remember a divorce that happened years ago. It happened to a young ministerial couple that was very effective with youth, and full of promise. It was a sad, devastating situation. It started with the young wife having an affair. The divorce was ugly. The two respective families separated totally, and years later still have not reconciled.

But the families had to accept it and "move on." The story had a tragic outcome, but it did not stop others from wanting to follow that example. Other family members and friends got divorced. Unmarried people began living together. Children were born out of wedlock. A rippling effect spread, and broke up families and churches.

I go back to that one divorce, that a young couple got away with. It became easier for the rest of us to push the boundaries.

Therefore we must pay more attention to what we have been told, or we could drift off course.

The writer of Hebrews knew what he was talking about. The statement is powerful, and to me prophetic. It's a warning, a prediction, a sage piece of advice.

We don't lurch suddenly ninety degrees from our walk with Christ. We drift.

Pay more attention to what we have been told. Friends, you've got to read your Bible, and discuss it!

I am in the final year of a decade-long Bible study. During that decade I experienced my own divorce. I would not recommend it to anybody. These other divorces only paved the way for other marriages like mine. It gets easier. We ignore what the Bible says about divorce and marriage.

We drift, and we hardly notice it.

I don't know how we take back the territory we lost in the culture war. It's hard to imagine us drifting back into righeousness. I fear that the only thing that works is to be shocked back into it. We must hold the Word of God before the world, like a light.

But first of all, by all means, stop the drift!

Can't Have One Without the Other: Hebrews 1b

Let me take some liberties here, and suggest a helpful distinction between the conservatives and liberals, in the U.S. today. How timely, too, with us in the midst of a heated debate over health care.

On one hand, you can boil everything about the liberals down to the word: "justice." They love to talk about equality and fairness. They take the Declaration of Independence concepts "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and apply them to the idea that the rich should not be the only ones that get to do this! How can you pursue happiness without some money? And there are way too many wealthy people with ill-gotten gains; does this not strengthen their case that they should have access to some of America's bounty?

The Constitution defines the role of government, among other things, as to ensure the "welfare" of the American people. On this alone hangs their point that everything they have promoted has been constitutional. And, truth be known, they have a point.

The conservatives, on the other hand, are adamant about punishing crime. And they put a lot of stock into the need for people to choose lifestyles that align with traditional values. You cannot have freedom, where people push the limits too much on what is ethical or moral. The conservatives hold that the pursuit of happiness must be attended by a check on our own behaviors. We must act unselfishly, spiritually even - and we must not slide into lifestyles and behaviors that have been deemed immoral for hundreds of generations! They warn us: go down that path, and you will lose your freedom! Freedom comes with a price! And a free people must also be a virtuous people.

It is hard to argue against their points, as well.

But God wants it both ways. He wants justice, with purity. He wants fairness, with self-controlled behavior. He seems to be urging us to go for the highest standards of behavior (did not the Sermon on the Mount make this clear?) Not only pure behaviors, but pure thoughts as well!

If we check our appetites, control our passions, choose the spiritual over the fleshly, deny the satisfaction of our basic impulses and delay gratification; then He is faithful to even out the playing field for us. Yes, he'll bless us indeed! But we too have a responsibility to act as holy vessels well-prepared to commune with a holy and loving Creator.

You always loved justice and hated lawlessness.

The Old Testament taught us this lesson, over and over again. God loves us, and wants us to have a fair and equitable community. He wants love to prevail. There should be no advantage of one person over the other. Even the aliens in our midst, are to be treated as royalty!

But this just society is also a clean one. The people within are self-controlled, aspiring to be as pure as the angels. We have a role-model, who is Christ the Lord. He put others before Himself. The completely selfless person has no room for giving in to selfish passions.

Becoming Family: Titus 3 thru Hebrews 1a

There are probably some practical reasons why the early church met in people's homes. Perhaps it was to help stay under the radar screen of the Roman armies, let alone the Scribes and Pharisees! They did not yet have any kind of budget. All the money raised was used to feed widows, orphans, and to pay for missionary journeys.

It was not yet the era of the medieval gothic cathedral. There was no such thing as spires, steeples, vestries, narthexes, and vestibules. The idea of an "altar" in the church, had not caught on.

No parking lot, no organ, no praise band area, no Sunday School booklets. No payroll, no hospital visitation, no paid clergy, no youth leader.

They pretty much were forced to meet in people's homes.

And I think that's a good thing. It's good that God chose this period in history to begin His Church. For here was the perfect time and place, to lock into place the radical notion that a religious experience can happen anywhere, most notably in a person's home.

To Philemon . . . and the group that meets at your house.

Paul addressed this letter to a Church, a group of believers that met in the home of the man named Philemon.

In the midst of our vast modern culture of global churches and missions; in a time when people expect the Church to be a sanctuary where they can get away; in an era when the home itself is a place of fear and dread on the part of way too many people - God calls us back to the idea of the Church as Home.

In our homes, let us worship Christ. And in our Church, let us act more like we are at home with one another. Your Christian fellow-believer is your brother and sister. Now what does it mean to be a brother, or a sister? Do you treat them as such?

You Deserve to be Treated With Respect: Second Timothy 3 thru Titus 2

We know that the Christian is supposed to be humble. We know that others will try to break us, to get us to renounce our faith. They will do everything from teasing, to avoidance, to gossiping, and all the way up to emotional and even physical abuse, to get us to lose our cool so that we lash out to someone else with angry words.

They would love to get one of us drunk, or to hear us gossip, slander someone else, tell a lie, rebuke our parents.

There is a virginity that has nothing to do with sex. The world and all its non-virgins have as a primary goal, to fill its ranks with as many former virgins as possible. Whatever guilt exists within the hearts of the formerly chaste, is temporarily mitigated by erasing the purity of others.

We are a fallen race. There is no argument here. Look around you! We all have problems . . . even the best of us! There is a problem on earth, and within humanity, and we see its results in sin and death.

We are lowly, and low. And it is our constant tendency to keep others down in the ditch with us! It's too hard to climb out, yet it gets lonely down there, if people start climbing out of the pit by clinging to the Cross.

So we tear down others. We put them down. We tease. We gossip. We stir the pot with words and deeds that divide us from one another. We join political parties. We define ourselves by what we are not (I'm not one of them!), versus what we are (children of God).

Don't let anyone look down on you.

Listen to Paul. We are not doormats.

I look at my life, and wonder how I have ended up so close to where I started. What happened to the potential? The gifts? The talents? Where is the evidence that God provides handsomely for His own?

In my case, it is a weird need to be liked by everybody. But the end result has been that fewer and fewer people respect someone like that. You let people put you down, because you want to be nice. But that just empowers them more. We become doormats that people think they can push around.

And it is hard to follow God's plan when you're a doormat.

Expect, no demand, respect from others. Be kind to them. Love them. But make sure they know that you are a child of God with dignity.