On Your Own, Part 3

What happens when you make the rules on your own? The Stanley Brothers paint a bluegrass gospel picture of a better way.

So far, this series has focused on you post-modern types who want to live your best life now, and hang the consequences. If, in the process of living that life, you're cruel or selfish toward someone, you don't mean to be. You're just looking out for number one. Not cool, but then, you knew that.

I'd rather be talking to you folks again (and I will be at the end of this post, so stay tuned). I like you -- I love some of you -- and even without the Holy Spirit whispering in my ear, I believe there's hope for you. I believe you'll come around, and be happier and more at peace with yourselves for having done so (Come on, now! I'm rooting for you and praying for you every single day. Didn't know that, did you? You thought I was just waiting for you to be punished.)

Jesus offers that hope to everyone, even the people He's asked me to talk to today -- people who are intentionally cruel to others because they enjoy it. People who deliberately lie in order to "catch" others in mistakes, because they're hugely entertained by others' blunders -- engineered or otherwise. People who get a sick, even erotic, charge out of seeing others fail.

You peace-loving types think that's not possible, but as Henry Kissinger said, "Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac."

He was not talking about the power of the Holy Spirit.

Kissinger was talking about the same kind of vicious, worldly power that God talks about in this example of a cruel man from Ezekiel 18:14-18 (New King James Version), "If, however, he begets a son who sees all the sins which his father has done, and considers but does not do likewise; who has not eaten on the mountains, nor lifted his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel, nor defiled his neighbor’s wife; has not oppressed anyone, nor withheld a pledge, nor robbed by violence, but has given his bread to the hungry and covered the naked with clothing; who has withdrawn his hand from the poor and not received usury or increase, but has executed My judgments and walked in My statutes—he shall not die for the iniquity of his father; he shall surely live! As for his father, because he cruelly oppressed, robbed his brother by violence, and did what is not good among his people, behold, he shall die for his iniquity." (Emphasis mine)

There used to be a lot of people like you around. Before society got all empathetic (good) and passive-aggressive (not so much), your kind ruled the world. Today, the prevailing winds of culture have forced you to be two different people: Out in the world, you adopt a sociable, easygoing persona with just the right touch of contemporary irony. Behind closed doors, you rule with an iron fist and a vicious tongue. You alternate between extravagant meltdowns and marathon sulking, as you inflict the silent treatment on the so-called guilty party.

You have your weaker friends and family cowed into leaning on you and tattling on those you despise. You've spurned every second of grace that your Lord and Savior has extended to you, because you believe that love and mercy, goodness and kindness, are for spineless, permissive people too wimpy to take charge and whip lesser mortals into shape. Curiously enough, you don't have the guts or the maturity to confront people directly yet calmly when you have a problem with them.

The very Lord and Savior whose grace you've scorned and spat on is your Judge right this second, and He will be your Judge when we're all raised up on the last day. He says that as long as you rely on your own hate-filled style as a moral code, you are guilty of idolatry.

"I have spurned your calf, O Samaria. My anger burns against them. How long will they be incapable of innocence? For it is from Israel; a craftsman made it; it is not God. The calf of Samaria shall be broken to pieces. For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. The standing grain has no heads; it shall yield no flour; if it were to yield, strangers would devour it. Israel is swallowed up; already they are among the nations as a useless vessel." (Hosea 8:5-8) 

Your style is so over. You can't even function out in the world without pretending to be somebody else. God says that what goes around comes around and, pretty soon, it's going to knock you flat. You won't be able to pretend anymore, because everyone will be able to see the consequences of your behavior and who you really are.

Or, you could be like the good son of the cruel father, living the life that Jesus has called you to live.

Time for you po-mo types to wake up and listen now.

Like the good son in Ezekiel 18, some of you have consciously rejected your parents' style, whether it's deliberately or incidentally cruel. Please, please, please keep going in that direction, and keep seeking Jesus. Your courage, faith, mercy, and goodness will be rewarded. As Jesus says in Mark 10:29-30, "Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life."

For some of you, it's the other way around. You were blessed by God with two Godly parents who raised you right -- as right as two sinful people can, anyway. They probably did a good job -- maybe too good a job -- of keeping you "out of the world." As a result, you almost certainly suffered humiliation at the hands of people who mocked your sheltered life and unworldly way of being.

Hurts like crazy, doesn't it? I know: I was mocked for the same things. It was seldom deliberately cruel, when I think about it; most people just don't understand that kind of life. Still hurts, though.

As a result, you've adopted a tough, worldly style that has, unfortunately, spilled over into your morals and ethics. You've thrown the baby out with the bathwater, so under stress, you forget how to live as Jesus lived. You forget how He lived altogether, in fact. In those situations, if you think about your parents at all, you think about how they'd humiliate themselves, with their unsophisticated and socially awkward ways, in front of your worldly friends and colleagues. If you think about others at all, you may do it with deliberate cruelty that may leak out under stress.

Brothers and sisters, that's not who you're meant to be!

I am asking you, in all empathy and sympathy, to stop thinking and acting that way. I am asking you to dig deep and recover the parts of your raising that were good and Godly, even while you're imitating Paul as a hipster for Christ. I'm asking you to start living your dad's good example and your mother's wise guidance right now, for your own good, and to claim your real power. Proverbs 30:17 says, "The eye that mocks a father and scorns to obey a mother will be picked out by the ravens of the valley and eaten by the vultures."

Don't let that happen to you.

Solomon is talking about people like you who were raised right, if naively. Please, please, please turn around now and seek Jesus. If you do, you too will be rewarded the way Jesus describes in Mark 10:29-30. You've had enough hard lessons for one lifetime. This time, let someone else learn the hard lesson. This time, thanks to Jesus, you can be the wise one, the early adopter, the one who has the jump on everyone else.

Think about it. Think about how blessed we are and will be when we rely on Jesus' gentle instruction instead of human cruelty to keep us in line.

Feels good, doesn't it?

Here's those Stanley Brothers again with "Pass Me Not O Gentle Savior".