January 13, 2010
Inalienable Right
Even after we’ve become adults, many of us never lose that childlike need to explain ourselves. We feel if we have a good reason to shove little Johnny, come home past curfew, or disregard our employer’s directive then our actions are justified. As one who works hard to do things correctly, the skill of justification can almost feel like an inalienable right. Actually, making excuses is a really bad habit to get into. Somehow I don’t think the Lord will be overly impressed with any attempts to explain away our actions.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Gail;
-----The skill of justification actually is an inalienable right. Consider your own body, then consider that of anyone around you. They are distinct and separate physical entities. Each requires care and maintenance, feeding, clothing, and sheltering. Although you can feed, clothe, and shelter my body, you don’t. I do. And you do yours. This most basic fact verifies the individuality given each of us by God. The things we must do to maintain our physical lives are often not pretty, especially in regard to the feeding. I might just pop into Burger King for a Whopper having no more on my mind than a good tasting meal. Yet my experiences of netting and dressing fish, processing pork at a slaughterhouse, and penning cattle at a sale yard all remind me that I am about to ingest a piece of a beast which went through a miserable ordeal. I must have a justification for biting through that poor critter’s part. It is my right to have that justification, and I assure you, I like Whopper’s so much that I have well determined my justification.
-----The excuses arising from this skill of justification do not come from the right to have it. They come from the abuse of that right. The bona fide justification of the things we do rests not upon the single pillar of a right. For that recognizes only individuality. Rather it rests upon a tripod composed of rights, responsibilities, and acknowledgment of God. Mutuality is born through acknowledgment of God. The individual and God must co-exist and co-operate at all times from the most intimate level. God does not disrespect the individual, and the individual must not disrespect God. Although a certain confinement of the individual arises from respect for God, it is not a destructive confinement. It is a sheltering confinement. Responsibility is the product of that confinement. Thus mutuality is the natural compliment to that of individuality. These compliments form the most basic elements of human nature and must both participate in all our affairs. Therefore responsibility is to mutuality as rights are to individuality, and it is the third pillar required to securely support any justification we make for our actions and beliefs. The individual’s responsibility towards others (including God) must reflect God’s responsibility towards the individual - it is to shelter, not to destroy.
-----But we are all adult enough to know that not everyone is responsible. They may talk love and know by rote the principles of love, but they have no mutuality because they have no real respect for anyone but themselves. The second and third pillars of their tripods are only imaginary. But the first pillar is real. By their existence alone they have a right to try to justify their actions and positions. Those actions and positions for which they can only offer an imaginary justification can not actually be justified, and it is merely by chance that they produce justifiable ones. However, responsible folks will generally not have taken unjustifiable actions or held unjustifiable positions in the first place, because respect would have confined them. And in the cases where responsible folks have acted or held unjustifiably, they will not reach for justification, but rather will responsibly reach for confession, and will thereby preserve their right to justify what is justifiable.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
PS
-----I don’t mean only confession to others, or to the Lord. These have their important place. There is a lot that goes on inside the soul, thought and emotion, feelings and attitudes, and whatnot. Though memory is a big part of it, it is not the only part. It continually intersects forming perceptions of whatever is happening at the moment to create new thought and feelings and stuff. Just because the Lord Jesus has justified us before His Father by what He did does not mean that all this new stuff of the soul is going to form perfectly. It has its misshape too. So whatever is brewing up anew inside the soul needs to be either justified if it is truly justifiable, or it needs confessed to the soul if it is not. The reason is not about finding a line of defense for what we like to think, feel, or do. It is about holding the ever newly forming self to the line of God’s Word for the sake of our ever developing memory. Confession is very important as to how this new stuff will be later served up as memories, if it is. So, for the conscience to do its job well in both screening again memories as they come to mind and in screening the newly forming inner products of the soul, it must either justify what of them is justifiable, confess the error of what is not, or shelf for later examination what is unclear. I just didn’t want anyone to mistake me for meaning that we must run around all the time telling our brothers and sisters about every little old bad thing we have thought or done.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
Post a Comment