A More Personal Note

August 19, 2006

Blessed be the Lord, for He has made marvelous His lovingkindness to me in a besieged city.

- Psalm 31:21

        I do not deny the fact that I am extraordinarily cynical. Cynicism in it truest form is merely giving the highest honor to truth in the face of horrific iniquity covered in the sweetest vanilla frosting. I don't think there is any question the virtue I admire the most is authenticity. Some have said this site is too penetrating, too "cognitive," which I imagine means I don't cut people enough of a break.

        The fact is that contrary to what the World says, Jesus didn't cut anybody a break, either. He truthfully highlighted their sin to the extent that we went so far as to shed His blood, taking that sin upon Himself so we could actually, authentically live. To shrug off whatever evil there is around is cold-hearted indeed, but to recklessly fail to comprehend its manifestations is foolhardy. I'm just addressing a bit of the latter here, and hope to do so as graciously as I can.

        I don't for a second claim to understand everything. But I do know some things. To say that we don't is to dishonor God who frequently says, "Here is something to know for certain." If you think I'm being brash to say "I know this thing for sure," then tell me where I'm wrong and give me a reason why. This site is all about testing the truth. I can't hide the fact that I long for engagement from people who desire to envelope every part of themselves with truth and grace.

       

        My favorite passage in the entire Bible is Psalm 131. It tells me that even if I don't know everything, even all of God's "wonderful matters," then He will still be with me, just as a mother is with her child. The phenomenal thing is that even so, Jesus very clearly says "Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know." Wow. That He'd share these things with me, simply by calling on Him. He also says that as I trust in Him, that I would "grasp how wide and long and high and deep is [His] love, and know this love that surpasses knowledge—that [I/we] may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." Furthermore He is "able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us." Within us! He's not just bopping about doing God-like things distantly and indifferently, but He's vibrantly doing marvelous things right in us. We get more wonderful matters by merely being with Him. (Verses here are from Jeremiah 33 and Ephesians 3. Check them out yourself!)

        This principle is so profound that I've named my blog "Wonderful Matters." It is an augmentation to this site in that I just have the standard blog takes on things in life all around. Much of it is highlighting the contrast between the World and the Kingdom, and because often I so cynically slice open the World's duplicity, one may be puzzled as to why these things are Wonderful Matters at all. The reason is simple. It is because in the face of it all we may genuinely rejoice that Jesus holds us in His mighty grip. That is the most wonderful matter of all.

        I must say that I want my desire for Him to be purely authentic, and being a Catholicist for as long as I'd been I know I can be fooled into believing things that I think are true but aren't. As much as I walk on the path out of Babylon I'm honored that God would be with me in that adventure. In this I can't neglect to point out that I am demonstrably passionate about the truth. When deception is particularly gruesome, I feel it a bit more acutely.

        I say this because a year ago I wrote the following, with the full intention of putting it in this site somewhere because it so boldly laid out my vision for what this endeavor was all about. I held it because I considered that it may have been a bit too stinging, but if it is truth then it is truth. I now include it here in this note because it is indeed a viscerally personal expression of how I feel at times, and much of the reason I do this website.

        I can't deny, however, that this site is intended to be a raking indictment of those who claim to be Jesus' best buddies, and then enter into pacts with the World that make them enemies of God. Much of Jesus' own ministry was spent issuing such indictments. It is those deceptive leaders that He addressed most severely—and in today's world they are doing just as much to make sons and daughters of hell.

        They work so hard at trying not to be Pharisees—but faced with losing congregants in mass exodus, they obstinately refuse to sever those contracts. Those pastors will say "We can’t tell them not to pay taxes [when they know nothing about taxes that the law doesn’t require], that’s like telling them to steal a stereo or drive 80 miles-per-hour on the sidewalk." They don’t get it. "We can't end our 501c3 status, we'd lose too much cool stuff."  How sad.

        It's not that they don't understand, it's that they don't want to. Jesus is right there to heal their blindness, yet when they are asked "What do you want?" their mouths say "I'm serving God!" but their hearts say "I want to stay blind because I can’t leave my little comfort patch here where Cain says nice things to me."

        Never mind that they don't want people truly assured of their place in heaven, that they don't have people truly engaged in vibrant abiding relationships with one another, that they don't want people who are emotionally ripped / physically disabled / demonically possessed to be free and healed. They'll say, "Yes, we do!"

        Nah. No they don't.

        If they did they'd let Jesus stop them from being blind. But Jesus won't heal those who don't want it. So exactly as He said, what you've got is a bunch of blind people leading blind people. What makes it particularly wretched is that they're all pretending to see.

        Why am I so impassioned about this?

        It is because I envision someone like K.M. healed [I had written her name out originally, but for these purposes I just feel more comfortable with this reference. It'll simply be enigmatic at this point.] …and I just so would love to see her live who she is fully and beautifully as God intended her to live—without that disability.

       I've thought, really, am I stepping on what God is doing and what the M.'s love about her, being so disabled and loving to get that one kind of toy over and over again after she crushes each one.

       Nah, how lame is that. This is like the cochlear implant bozoness, you remember, the idea that some deaf "advocates" put forth that cochlear implants just keep people from their "natural deafness" or something. [A cochlear implant was invented a number of years ago to fix hearing impairment originating in the inner ear. Shortly thereafter I saw a news feature with these "advocates" that just made my blood boil.]

        I wrestle with this question: Is it best just to let it go—go with what we got, we all die anyway and before that, life's a struggle no matter how much you believe in God?

        Thing is, we do all kinds of things to abate the struggle. Why not respecting 861? Being 501c3-free? Living and working unincorporated? All the rest of fully trusting in our Father?

        Before Stephen was stoned, what did he do?

        He lit into those who named the name of God and yet deceptively drew people away from Him.

        Really then, for us to enjoy wonderful matters, we must get out of the putrid ones. But the "we must get out" does not imply that we can do a single thing to do that. The only thing we can do is simply, plainly, humbly say to the One who can get us out, "Please. Get me out. Thanks." Then He does everything.

        Unless we say it this way: "Please. Get me out. Except let me take this particularly lovely piece of World sewage with me. Thanks."

 

        What do you expect God to say?

 

        So, yeah, maybe I have expectations that are too high. Maybe I do want to be around people who, if they haven't already abandoned their sewage, are authentically asking God to do so. Too often I feel like Jeremiah, who in chapter nine writes about wanting to cry, about being so affected by the adultery around him that he longs to retreat to a place where people are vibrantly authentic and richly understanding.

        This place can't be digital—for some will say the de-Catholicized church is only on-line right now, through Internet sites, blogs, chatrooms, email and newsgroup exchanges. To resign ourselves to such engagement is quite depressing. No, those people in the "lodging place" are there physically, they are the "flesh and bones" of Jesus as Paul writes in Ephesians 5. Yes, this place may be "remote," to get away and to rest and—in fellowship with others—to keep from being corrupted by the World. With His resolve, however, we must not stay there. Remember, it is a lodge in the desert.

        We must be out about in the city, as Jeremiah faithfully was, not to plant ourselves in the middle of the public square to boast about how upright and spiffy we are. There are plenty of those churches out there and they drive people away by the droves (501c3 entities are contracted as ministers of condemnation). Rather, we must be in the midst of Babylon to be available as reconcilers, and to utilize all the wisdom and insight God gave Daniel when he was there.

        My reading of Scripture tells me the Kingdom is here. No, it is not in the subdivisions of the World as so many religionist operatives declare it is when someone says "The Kingdom is here." Those who long to have their sight back can see it. Yes, those who tend it have work to do, and must bear much. But God is God. He is not only Sovereign but our Father. I can only think in all this,

 

        My Lord, what You would do if we just asked You...

 

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This page was originally posted by David Beck at yourownjesus.net on August 19, 2006