September 30, 2010
Lepers
A side effect of leprosy is the loss of sensation at the nerve ends and the individual can’t feel pain. It seems strange to think that one should be grateful for pain, but from the lepers perspective the ability to feel anything would no doubt be a blessing. I toyed with the thought that a spiritual form of leprosy might be a hard and calloused heart that no longer feels, but I soon rejected the idea. You can catch leprosy, but you don’t catch a hard heart. “Blessed is the man who always fears the LORD, but he who hardens his heart falls into trouble.” (Proverbs 28:14 NIV)
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3 comments:
Gail;
-----There are certain social conditions from which a hard heart can be “caught”. Nazi Germany was a good example. Even though it is argued that most of the people did not know the Jews were being murdered in concentration camps, they did know the Jews were being forced from their homes, stripped of their property and businesses, and hauled off by train-loads like cattle. This was crime enough to sear the conscience of a barely decent man. Before the Jews incurred the ravages of this government sponsored heart disease, for almost a year they had put their own children into government box trucks to be hauled off and gassed to death. The parents full well knew what they were doing. But, of course, these weren’t the handsome and pretty little boys and girls being gassed by their own parents. The virile, healthy, strong children were needed to breed the master race. They were the weak, the malformed, and mentally handicapped ones who not only had to be removed from the gene pool, but were not even considered worthy of the food they ate.
-----However, the fact that this program did not survive out in the open for a year indicates that an individual’s own conscience is an immune system against socially spread spiritual leprosies. How strong must have been the collective sales pitch to convince a parent to lead his child down the sidewalk to the death truck in the street! Yet, as antibodies build up in the blood stream against a virus, thoughts and reflections built up against those box trucks out front, waiting in the street.
-----Now, I don’t know if leprosy starts as just a tingle in a finger. I’ve never had it. But a social heart disease does start as a bad idea in a good mind. History shows it. Jean Jacques Rousseau is considered by many to be the father of modern democracy. But the freedom we have enjoyed in America did not extend from the core principle of his idea. It abandoned that principle. For at the core of Rousseau’s thinking was the infallibility of the general will of the people and their ability to perfect themselves by abandoning their personal wills and submitting to it in mass. It was the virus of progressivism, deadly to godliness. For it is in the heart of a man where God is personally met by submission to His will. And it is not a coincidence that Rousseau’s virus did not rampantly spread until Charles Darwin invented the nerve gas for destroying man’s faith in his Creator.
-----We would never think of gassing our children in a box truck out front. We are too sensitive for that. But we do send them off to a box down the street we call “public school“. There faith in God is gassed with Darwin’s thinking and our children are injected with Rousseau’s progressivism. Then we wonder by what frame of mind people call upon the government rather than God for their provision. Thankfully, as you have pointed out, Gail, the ultimate strength of the immune system against the leprosy of a hard and calloused heart is within the individual’s responsibility. Though hard hearts abound all around, the one who calls upon the Lord will survive.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
Developing a hard heart is like a slow growing virus. It may start with taking offense at an off hand comment by someone..not necessarily meant to be offensive....or the child's behavior at church that is not corrected and he kind of ruins the event for the other kids.( our friend's excuse for not attending church) These types of things are what Satan uses to chip away at our testimonies. If we are not careful our testimonies are replaced with offenses and excuses, and pretty soon we have lost our way...just what Satan wants. If we can just endure to the end we will have eternal life which is the greatest gift of God.
Lisa;
----That is more than a great point; that is the second point of our new life in the Lord (the first, of course, being our call on His name for salvation.) This new life is about a soft heart, a heart that loves and cares and relates with those around us. Our whole psyche is a reflexive process in that events cause in it conditions which in turn shape events. If anger and spite and discontent with others harbor in our mental and emotional docks, our hearts not only trend into more callous, but the events in which we are shaping factors will be themselves shaped into more trouble. But if forgiveness lives in us as a frame of mind and a point of reference, even while a troubling event is occurring our heart will be shaping a godly solution. Indeed, the ultimate heart softening will happen on the day we fully step into His eternal kingdom. But until then, forgiveness is a basic and essential element of the salve which keeps our hearts soft and pliable.
Steve
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