The End of the Culture War
Today is Good Friday. A lot of Catholicists were out in force engaged in a lot of religious show biz, but all I could think about was the number of people who were out there actually doing the thing Jesus did.
Self-sacrifice.
My meditations today were overwhelmed by that. I thought about the ways I could do it, but my showing was sadly quite piddly. This week is my spring break, and I mostly just spent the afternoon riding my bike on the local bike trail.
Along the way I passed a lumber yard, and in it were a dozen guys sawing and hammering. A bit further down I passed a construction site. There were another dozen guys there putting in the foundation for some large edifice. All of them...
Offering themselves this day to make sure people have buildings for something important.
There were about a dozen other people I saw or engaged who labored at something today. Sure they get paid.
When Jesus sacrificed Himself, when He died on that cross, He got paid.
He got paid with the love of those who wholly recognized what He did that day.
But the crazy thing is that He did it knowing full well that it was possible -- wow, that
No one would ever give a damn about it.
That is, He loved knowing no one may reciprocate.
He went to work on Good Friday to open the gate to God's love, forgiveness, salvation, and eternal life only because He loved, and knew He may not get a paycheck when it was all done.
He did it anyway.
And still, what meager paychecks He gets. Our woeful efforts at loving in return. Eeyuh. And it isn't as much how much we love Him, but how much we show His love to others.
I wanted to share something I'd been thinking was the core issue about that same-sex marriage thing that had been captivating the nation all week. As the week ends I see that the country doesn't want to get into it -- many are actually sharing how uncaptivated they want to be about it. I am just sensing how frightening they consider it all to them. I'm seeing reports that conservatives and Republicans, the political entities that would do the most to challenge this stuff in the law, are running a thousand miles away from it.
I'd thought the core issue is related to another of the claims the homosexualist supporters make. It is, following the theme of my post at the beginning of the week:
When they say "Homosexual couples can raise a child just as well as a heterosexual one can, sometimes better," they usually use terms like "gay" or "lesbian" to work over the culture to get them to buy into the normalcy of it all, but then also...
But then also...
How do you effectively answer that when it sure does seem that there are indeed instances of what seem like perfectly fine upbringings of children by homosexually-minded couples?
The issue there merely comes around to what those couples are doing with a key part of their beings: their sexuality. We just take it for granted that they're regularly doing homosexual things in bed at night. Why? How did so many of us just buy into the idea that what someone does with their sexuality is just no big deal?
What I'm getting at is that we'd have no objections at all if there were two brothers, or two sisters, both living in the same home, not sexually active with one another at all and otherwise very healthy mentally and emotionally -- no one would have the slightest objection to them taking care of young ones. But there is a serious and very well-justified concern about two individuals of the same sex rearing children while they are indeed brazenly abusing each other through their sexualities.
Yes, I know many will screech, "But homosexual activity is just not a bad thing!" And many others will reply, "Yes it is" but -- sadly, as I mentioned -- it seems so many of those many others just don't want to have anything to do with it.
This leads to the real core issue. It's not that those other things aren't important, they are. They are all a critical part of the core issue.
But that issue has to do with who exactly it is who is molding the thinking of whoever holds whatever beliefs there are about these things. I am convinced those who endorse and even celebrate homosexualism have been told to do so in so many ways by people sworn to get them to believe precisely what they believe, even to behave in precisely the ways they want them to behave. Those same forces are molding the thinking of those whose excoriation of homosexualists in the public square is understandably considered bullying.
All you've got is ::ouch:: the culture war raging full blast. A lot of World people over there, and a lot of other World people over there, all slobbering over what they could get for themselves. Fighting some more to the glee of those operatives, many of whom -- the more visible ones, the Obamas and the Francises and so forth -- can bound in to beam about how great they are at making everything all better again.
I was reading Scripture tonight and would you know it, my eyes fell on Psalm 128. What an amazing passage, especially related to all this. The very first verse is extraordinarily telling.
"Blessed is are all who fear the Lord, who walk in obedience to Him."
What follows are all the things that happen when a man does that. It is all about his family and how prosperous it is, and how that extends to the community and to the nation.
And yes, that family is headed by a man and his wife.
That's what the core issue is. No no no, it isn't even about men and women happily married.
It is about faith in Christ.
It is about having a vibrant trust in a God who gave His life to provide everything anyone could want. And then from that having a love for others, that same love that Christ has, that same love that those guys working in the hot sun on a Friday have for those who need a building made -- and that same love for those who do homosexual things and those who believe those things are perfectly okay.
And doing that love even when they can't understand what it is really about, and they keep doing it.
We can only do it by Him.
How many actually do that? Don't get me wrong, I actually do think there are quite a few.
But I can't help but still think that this Sunday, March 31st, is Easter, the celebration of Christ rising to guarantee that eternal life for those who accept His free gift of salvation. A celebration of something that is so profoundly moving that one cannot help but be doing everything he or she does in life for someone else, just as Jesus did.
The day after that is, indeed, April 1st. About those who shrug off what Jesus did for them, there is that other verse.
"The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God.'"
Self-sacrifice.
My meditations today were overwhelmed by that. I thought about the ways I could do it, but my showing was sadly quite piddly. This week is my spring break, and I mostly just spent the afternoon riding my bike on the local bike trail.
Along the way I passed a lumber yard, and in it were a dozen guys sawing and hammering. A bit further down I passed a construction site. There were another dozen guys there putting in the foundation for some large edifice. All of them...
Offering themselves this day to make sure people have buildings for something important.
There were about a dozen other people I saw or engaged who labored at something today. Sure they get paid.
When Jesus sacrificed Himself, when He died on that cross, He got paid.
He got paid with the love of those who wholly recognized what He did that day.
But the crazy thing is that He did it knowing full well that it was possible -- wow, that
No one would ever give a damn about it.
That is, He loved knowing no one may reciprocate.
He went to work on Good Friday to open the gate to God's love, forgiveness, salvation, and eternal life only because He loved, and knew He may not get a paycheck when it was all done.
He did it anyway.
And still, what meager paychecks He gets. Our woeful efforts at loving in return. Eeyuh. And it isn't as much how much we love Him, but how much we show His love to others.
I wanted to share something I'd been thinking was the core issue about that same-sex marriage thing that had been captivating the nation all week. As the week ends I see that the country doesn't want to get into it -- many are actually sharing how uncaptivated they want to be about it. I am just sensing how frightening they consider it all to them. I'm seeing reports that conservatives and Republicans, the political entities that would do the most to challenge this stuff in the law, are running a thousand miles away from it.
I'd thought the core issue is related to another of the claims the homosexualist supporters make. It is, following the theme of my post at the beginning of the week:
When they say "Homosexual couples can raise a child just as well as a heterosexual one can, sometimes better," they usually use terms like "gay" or "lesbian" to work over the culture to get them to buy into the normalcy of it all, but then also...
But then also...
How do you effectively answer that when it sure does seem that there are indeed instances of what seem like perfectly fine upbringings of children by homosexually-minded couples?
The issue there merely comes around to what those couples are doing with a key part of their beings: their sexuality. We just take it for granted that they're regularly doing homosexual things in bed at night. Why? How did so many of us just buy into the idea that what someone does with their sexuality is just no big deal?
What I'm getting at is that we'd have no objections at all if there were two brothers, or two sisters, both living in the same home, not sexually active with one another at all and otherwise very healthy mentally and emotionally -- no one would have the slightest objection to them taking care of young ones. But there is a serious and very well-justified concern about two individuals of the same sex rearing children while they are indeed brazenly abusing each other through their sexualities.
Yes, I know many will screech, "But homosexual activity is just not a bad thing!" And many others will reply, "Yes it is" but -- sadly, as I mentioned -- it seems so many of those many others just don't want to have anything to do with it.
This leads to the real core issue. It's not that those other things aren't important, they are. They are all a critical part of the core issue.
But that issue has to do with who exactly it is who is molding the thinking of whoever holds whatever beliefs there are about these things. I am convinced those who endorse and even celebrate homosexualism have been told to do so in so many ways by people sworn to get them to believe precisely what they believe, even to behave in precisely the ways they want them to behave. Those same forces are molding the thinking of those whose excoriation of homosexualists in the public square is understandably considered bullying.
All you've got is ::ouch:: the culture war raging full blast. A lot of World people over there, and a lot of other World people over there, all slobbering over what they could get for themselves. Fighting some more to the glee of those operatives, many of whom -- the more visible ones, the Obamas and the Francises and so forth -- can bound in to beam about how great they are at making everything all better again.
I was reading Scripture tonight and would you know it, my eyes fell on Psalm 128. What an amazing passage, especially related to all this. The very first verse is extraordinarily telling.
"Blessed is are all who fear the Lord, who walk in obedience to Him."
What follows are all the things that happen when a man does that. It is all about his family and how prosperous it is, and how that extends to the community and to the nation.
And yes, that family is headed by a man and his wife.
That's what the core issue is. No no no, it isn't even about men and women happily married.
It is about faith in Christ.
It is about having a vibrant trust in a God who gave His life to provide everything anyone could want. And then from that having a love for others, that same love that Christ has, that same love that those guys working in the hot sun on a Friday have for those who need a building made -- and that same love for those who do homosexual things and those who believe those things are perfectly okay.
And doing that love even when they can't understand what it is really about, and they keep doing it.
We can only do it by Him.
How many actually do that? Don't get me wrong, I actually do think there are quite a few.
But I can't help but still think that this Sunday, March 31st, is Easter, the celebration of Christ rising to guarantee that eternal life for those who accept His free gift of salvation. A celebration of something that is so profoundly moving that one cannot help but be doing everything he or she does in life for someone else, just as Jesus did.
The day after that is, indeed, April 1st. About those who shrug off what Jesus did for them, there is that other verse.
"The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God.'"
Comments
Post a Comment