August 24, 2009
911
A woman in distress called 911 because she was locked inside her car. “Everything on my car is electrical and nothing’s working”, she told the operator, “It’s getting hot in here and I’m not feeling well.” Calmly the operator said, “Ma’am, do you have a lock on your door and have you tried pulling it up?” Problem solved…the captive was set free. I can so identify. The Spirit often answers ‘end-of-my-rope’ prayers with a similar, ‘have you tried pulling up on the lock?’
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Gail;
-----You give us a fine anecdote about the destructiveness of dependency. The automatic door locks, anti-skid brakes, and other miscellaneous gadgetry of today’s vehicles continuously think for us and take care of duties that were once the responsibility of the driver. Many of the pre-1930’s vehicles were even equipped with a lever for advancing or retarding the spark timing. Most drivers of those days understood what spark timing was and how to use it. Today, we don’t even know or think about it, since it became automated eighty years ago. Likewise, most drivers today don’t understand the anti-skid brake, or why it works like it does. Your anecdote demonstrates how easy it is to become detached from simple concepts, such as operating the pull stem of a door lock, since they are always done for you.
-----The conservatives, the Christians, and the Progressives alike try to encourage social mutuality. They all understand it as empathy and sharing. But Progressives deny both the existence of God in it and the possibility of social concern becoming a trait of the individual’s human character. Many Christians, though not denying the existence of God, also deny its individual possibility. Therefore, the government or the church are pressed into the role of making mutual interaction as automatic for the individual as is the contemporary vehicle’s automated door lock. Tax dollars and tithes are both sought on the basis that they represent the individual’s effort to fulfill his or her obligation of mutual concern for others. When society wide, the individual reaches agreement with this concept, his knowledge and understanding about unlocking the innermost doors of the heart’s generosity toward his own neighbor is lost. Not only has his generosity become dependent upon an organization, but his neighbor in need has also come to look toward the same. Then the personal interactions of looking toward each other become a lost art.
-----From early in my relationship with the Lord I noticed that the Word’s encouragement to godly living and attitudes was couched in terms of, “You do this…you do that…you don’t do the other,” etc. I could not find in its terminology the predominant encouragement on the lips of my brothers and sisters to, “let God love through you, let God be generous through you, let God this through you, let God that through you, etc.” I understood what my brethren meant - in ourselves we are nothing, and the work of the Holy Spirit in us is everything. But I also understood that the Holy Spirit’s work was to bring us to be ever more responsible, understanding, and knowledgeable individuals, rather than relegating everyone to passively ride a public cart made the focus of our generosity and drawn by some ethereal force. When we rise up on our own two legs and walk ourselves to the goals of mutuality and self sufficiency, not only are the legs strengthened by exercise, but our knowledge and understanding are increased by the individual maintenance of generosity and godliness. Then the integrity of society itself becomes stronger in numerous well exercised individuals, rather than limited to the strength of one vulnerable cart upon which everyone would otherwise ride.
-----I rue the deleterious effects of today’s automated life: the deterioration of the knowledge about things’ workings and about how individual responsibility cooperates with mutuality. So, regardless of the pressures of the taxman and the church’s tithe goading, I try to understand my responsibilities clearly, even in the face of the plump, inviting udders offered to us. For I know my familiarity with the functioning of the inner heart‘s door locks and my dependency upon God to teach it are at stake in the matter.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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