This Corrupt Generation

Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.

 - Acts 2

This is a really harsh thing for Peter to say. What might he be talking about? "Generation" is a pretty broad, sweeping term! But if I say anything about a "generation" I must be referring to traits that make a particular generation distinct. 

If we discuss The Greatest Generation, I must take the good:

• Defeat the Axis Powers
• Survive The Great Depression
• Build Post-War America into the greatest super power in history

With the bad:

• Racial segregation
• Pollution
• Harmful personal habits: drinking, smoking

And there will be a lot of moral practices that future generations will find repugnant.

The same would be true of the Baby Boomers, the Gen X-ers, the Civil War Generation. There is good and bad. But the person of God knows that there are distinctives in his or her generation, that have a great effect on him/her. You cannot escape the assumptions, for good or ill, of your generation. Its practices may become so ingrained that you can no longer see clearly enough to call evil evil, and good, good.

Generations will be evil, and not know it. They will be narcissistic, and not know it. They will be implementing reforms that, in fact, take society backward, without knowing it. When things go wrong, they will blame anyone, but themselves. A Generation is the worse form of stubborn, willful human. For, it has lots of support to stay down the wrong path.

By definition, setting yourself apart from your generation, will not be a popular thing to do. People will hate you. They will call you judgmental. They call you a "hater" because you do not accept their assumptions, nor their conclusions. 

What's Peter's compelling case for why one must be saved? Well, among all the good reasons, is a hard one: Save yourself from this corrupt generation. 

With Their Own Eyes

 . . . but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses. . . 

 ~ Acts 10

If I had to boil down the New Testament beginning with The Acts of the Apostles (that is, all of it except the four Gospels), it would have to be this:

"Jesus died, and lives again . . . and we saw Him."

The testimony is emphatic. To say "He is Risen," and "He's alive!" is one thing. But when it is replete with personal eye-witness testimonies: "I saw it with my own eyes. I sat down and ate with Him. I spoke to Him, and He to me. I touched Him, and He me," then it takes on a whole new meaning.

Read the Acts, and the Epistles, again, carefully. If the writers had not personally seen Jesus, alive, after He had died, then it all has pretty much no point.

The moral lessons would have no authority.

The promises (new life, our resurrection, eternal life, establishment of His eternal kingdom, abundant life, etc.) would be empty, and hollow.

The words of prophecy would be laughable.

The entire volume of the New Testament would be wasted time, for the writer, and the readers.

We put a lot of stock on believing the writers of the New Testament were reputable. And they put a lot on the line, in terms of their own reputations, and the well-being of their families. Had they not actually seen Him, and then turned around and insisted that they did, to others, then History would have to condemn them as at best fools, and at worst despicable liars. 

But they insisted that they saw Him, and they put it in writing. The time to debunk it was while they yet lived. But nobody . . . NOBODY . . . was able to stop the spread of their accounts.

The story is inescapable. And the bold proclamations of these plain, simple fishermen have become the foundation that built the great world religion that continues to stir things up, millennia later. 

Yes, The Creator Can Do This

The dead man came out . . . 

 - John 11

This is the moment that carries the entire narrative. What good is Lazarus' sickness and his death; of what value is Christ'a lingering to get there; of them completing a formal funeral for the dead man, and burying him? 

It all hinges on the dead man coming out, under his own power, breathing as he did so. His heart is now beating. He can feel the smooth and sharp rocks under his feet. His thoughts are activated. To him, the four or so days that have passed, since he was last conscious, are but an instant. One moment he's laying in bed, struggling to breathe. The next he's lying on a hard slab, with daylight coming through the entrance to the burial cave.

I read recently, a quote by Mark Twain, stating that the Bible is full of thousands of lies.

Is this one of them?

If there is no resurrection . . . if the Lord of all creation can't even re-activate a dead person, then what good is any of it?

This moment is one of the pinnacles of 66 Bible books. Is there a "Top five" most important and breathtaking scenes in the thousands of years of history contained in Scripture? This is one of them.

If the dead do not rise, then our hope is gone. Jesus proved everything when Lazarus was raised. 

The dramatic moment informs everything we have been pondering during this season of Lent. Sin, death, decay. We are but dust. We're nothing!!!

But because of the Resurrection. Because our Father, who is able to create everything, can (logically) also restore life to anything. Thanks to him, thanks to life after death, we have become everything. And we are . . . we're everything to our Lord, God, and Savior.

Flesh and Death

To set the mind on the flesh is death.

 - Romans 8

This makes lots of sense. Flesh ages and decays. We feed the flesh, or we die. The flesh is our natural preoccupation. We make excuses for our behavior, because of what the flesh compels us to do. The more we focus on the flesh, if past a healthy point just to stay alive, the more we feed every little urge or hunger. We can no longer distinguish between survival and just "feeling good." Many contemporary Christian devotionals, even, suggest that "sexuality" is on a par with water, food, and shelter, in a list of human needs.

Jack Miles, in his two masterpieces "God - A Biography" and "Christ - A Crisis in the Life of God" suggests that the fact that we are sexual is proof that we are mortal. God cannot be a sexual being, for He does not die. How interesting! (But too big a topic to investigate here!)

But here in Romans, Paul makes essentially the same claim. The urges of the flesh, the hungers and the drives, are equivalent to death itself. This is why fasting from food is such a healthy spiritual practice. We want to live - it is our most primal, and eternal, motivator! But any time we feed more of our hungers than it takes to live, we are living according to the flesh. And this takes us away from God.

Christ went to the Cross, which was the ultimate denial of the flesh. His steps to cavalry were motivated by a desire not to live. He started His walk by fasting for 40 days and 40 nights. And He ended it by willingly offering up His own life. When He had breathed His last, they even pierced his side, so that what was left of the food and drink He had ingested, could empty out along with His blood.

In the end He had nothing at all, of this world, left.

The paradox is that life comes from a denial of the very things that make us feel good, and that even enable us to live on to the next day. When you deny the flesh, you are establishing your dominance over it.

And one cannot be holy if one cannot control one's hungers.

God: Notice Me! (Are you sure that's what you want?)

If you, LORD, were to note what is done amiss, O Lord, who could stand?

- Psalm 130

The implication of this verse . . . what it truly means, is something quite groundbreaking.

In the Hebrew, whatever was translated into "to note" must have meant something different than what we would think. If I "note" something, it means that I pay some attention to it, although in passing.

But think of the deeper meaning of "to note." It is more than just seeing or observing something. If you really "note" it, you will move the observation into your conscious thinking. You will store it away in memory. You will write it down and file it away. You might end up taking some action on it.

The Psalmist talks about God "noting," or "taking notice of," or "noticing." In the South, where my first child was born, her Southern side of the family were very keen on "noticing" a baby. Your toddler would crawl up to you while you were reading or watching TV. If you didn't look up, a nearby adult would say, whimsically: "Daddy - notice me!" 

If God were to make a conscious effort in observing us, and what we are doing wrong . . . if He really noticed . . . and jotted down some thoughts . . . if He stopped what He was doing to take care of us (i.e., like a mobster would "take care" of a rival gang member) . . then we would be in big trouble. We could not stand. He would sweep our feet out from under us and drive us to our knees. He would force us to look at the pain we have caused. He would show us how our selfish decisions have set the advancement of humanity, and of His kingdom, so far back that only His direct involvement (the Return of Christ) can make things right.

"Why would a loving God allow such evil to exist?" Why, indeed? If He took even a moment to notice us; to notice me, and to notice you . . . all of you, and all of us . . . then every hard and wicked thing we have done would be illuminated. We would see a dark side of ourselves that we didn't know was there. And the people that are the first to ask "Why would a loving God . . . " would be perhaps the first to see their own contributions to the world and its numerous messes.

Maybe it's not so smart to ask God to turn around and notice us; to pay attention to us. Is that what you really want?

Thank again.

My Bucket List Item

I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people . . . 

 - Ezekiel 37

We have a "Culture of Life" in our generation, and it's a problem.

Everything is all about "quality of life." 

"You only live once."

"Life is short, and you have to go for the gusto."

We spend hours at the gym. We save up tens of thousands of dollars for retirement. We scour the ingredients of everything we eat, to make sure it's sufficiently "organic." 

And stuff like this in moderation isn't bad.

We skip church and spiritual growth because we need time in our gardens (hobbies, reading, home projects, etc.) We work extra hours to get ahead of our peers. We make sure to go to DisneyWorld once a year. 

Stuff like this is close to the edge.

We end our marriages because "I deserve more." We put our aging parents in homes because we're too busy to care for them. We travel all over the place for our jobs, and miss our kids' high school years. We spend precious dollars on tattoos, plastic surgery and other self-indulgences.

Now . . . that's bad.

But it's for "quality of life." Don't you deserve more than the hand you have been dealt?

We worship life. We worship this life as if there really isn't more to it!

If you're a Christian, a believer, then let me recommend some prayerful reconsideration of this philosophy.

When you believe your God will truly raise up your dead, lifeless, dry, decaying bones, back to life, one day . . . then really what else matters? We'd swim the Atlantic Ocean, if we knew at the end of it was eternal life for us. So what's so inaccessible about simple belief?

Yes, time is short. Our life now, this life, is about building God's Kingdom. Our one task, our sole objective, is to become witnesses to the event shown on the video, and to invite others to share in it as well.

I am not saying we should give up things that add quality to our life. If you are responsible for a spouse, parents, and/or children, of course providing security, safety, and fun; and urging excellence in school and career, is essential to assuring that all of them make it to Resurrection Day.

But there is a balance. Our 80 years here are not all there is. We need to start acting like our life here today is only about getting into the next life. And once you're there, you'll have forever to complete your bucket list!