March 03, 2011
Expert Witness
This week I’ve been attending portions of a trial that has to do with a six year-long community ordeal. One of those called to the stand was accepted as an expert witness because of his long work history with the FAA. Unlike other witnesses who might often say, ‘I don’t know or I can’t recall’, an expert knows his topic so well that he can answer any question that’s asked. I can picture the confidence of the experts in the law as they encountered the Lord. Jesus asked, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?” But they remained silent. “If one of you had a son or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull him out?” And they had nothing to say. (Luke 14:3-6 NIV). Apparently an expert is in the eye of the beholder.
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Gail;
-----Your last statement carries a lot of truth. In the pure sense of the term, nobody is an expert on anything, not even their own selves. But relevant to a particular situation, we are all experts on something. Part of humility is recognizing the boundaries of your expertise and abiding within them. Had the Pharisees been humble, they would have recognized the apparent conflict between the Law’s call for impeccable obedience and its spirit of love. They would have noted that a perfect law does not fit a flawed world. Therefore its particulars would sometimes have to surrender to its general principle of love for it to operate upon a contradictory situation. So, they would have had to surrender their expertise of its detail to an intuition of its whole to know the answer Jesus held. But they did not have that intuition about love, because they insisted upon expertise regardless of boundaries.
-----The fundamental battlefront between good and evil, love and hatred, maintenance and destruction is this very line between humility and arrogance. Love is a simple thing. It is not a touchy-heart feeling such that we should be bewildered at loving an enemy or some bloke we passed on the street for the first time and will never see again. It is doing good to the bloke - doing what builds him up instead of tears him down - if you know what that is and have the opportunity. But if you neither know it or have the opportunity, it is still hoping and wanting for him what is good and upbuilding to him. Humility will decide between a doing and a wanting. So, humility is a fundamental part of love.
-----Now we can pinpoint what poison has entered the root of America, and to a lesser degree, the fellowship of the church. The political left is of a mind that a solution can be reasoned for every problem - a law for every situation. They view their solutions as approaching perfection, and they think they will perfect the people. That is the old Pharisaical mistake of trying to fit perfection upon imperfection. Many church leaders make the same mistake regarding refined doctrine and church policy. Both fail to understand that the mind of one man, or even the minds of a few, can not reason the effects of all the people’s particular situations. They then do battle with people who merely are trying to make the most of their own situations by the best of their own abilities. Instead of merely wanting that most for them and doing only what makes it possible for them to effect their best themselves, they design what they reason to be a general best and demand everyone’s surrender to it. I call these people “Nicolaitans”, because that name from Revelation is a combination of Greek words meaning “people conquerors”. Their solutions may be well intended from the scope of their limited expertise, but they conquer others having different or better expertise. That destroys and tears down what those others are and can do. If they resist they are actually hated for opposing the solutions. And that is pure evil. It is a beast born of arrogance. “So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all men, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.” (Gal 6:10) “But we exhort you, brethren, to do so more and more, to aspire to live quietly, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we charged you; so that you may command the respect of outsiders, and be dependent on nobody.” (I Thes 4:10-12)
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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