May 13, 2011
Pass It On
I used to tire of religious and political emails that say pass-it-on, but lately they just make me mad and I hit the delete button. Instructions that I must send the email on to others conjures up all kinds of resistance such as, ‘I’m capable of making my own decisions…, you’re not my parent…, and don’t tell me what to do!’ As believers we do something similar to others. Rather than allowing the Spirit to motivate them, we’re often busy trying to tell people what there gift is and then we take it a step further and let them know when, where and how we think they should use their gift for the Lord. It’s no wonder that some in the faith get burned out and hit the delete button.
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Gail;
-----This object of your frustration is as old as faith itself. As soon as Eve’s teeth pierced the skin of that forbidden fruit, she replaced God as the librarian of conventional thinking. With that replacement the Master of Perfection backed out of mankind’s communication system. Not, of course, in the sense He would never speak to man again, or listen to him. If that were so we wouldn’t even know about Eve and Adam and their moment of great failure. God still listened to their concerns (prayers) and continued to communicate with His creatures (the Bible), so we do know about them. But the formulation of convention from the myriads of thoughts and feelings people pass around amongst themselves became several steps removed from God’s caring control so far that even His control is now thought of as some sort of tyrannical evil to our human freedom. Yet, without even a perception of tyranny, we individually lend that same control to certain other humans simply because their thoughts seem to be essentially similar to and a bit above our own. Then these others move systems of thought onto and off of the prominent library shelves from where the conforming citizenry seeks processed ideas for common mental indulgence. The patronage of these popular shelves of conventional thought fashions conventional faiths from the patrons’ intuitive natures such that the librarians can shape culture itself merely by placing attractive ideas where the sheep feed just as Jacob used striped sticks to make for himself a mottled herd.
-----The opportunity to fashion public faith leads to great treasure. To the self-centered person it salts the mine that is society with the precious mineral of his own interest. You see this constantly between the five-minute episodes of your favorite TV program, for example. But to the godly person the opportunity is for salting the mine with God’s gold. The godly person would much rather have God as the certain librarian but knows the brokenness of the present evil age is the preclusion of that possibility for now. So he knows he must himself salt the mine for God and does this by trying to keep God’s ideas at the forefront of the library shelves. It does look very much like the self-centered person salting the mine for himself. They both must use the same mechanism: moving systems of thought onto or off of the prominent shelves, placing the striped sticks before the feeding herd. Yet, in their different purposes night can be distinguished from day.
-----“Pass it on” commands seem like viruses of only self-centered purpose. But some are seeking to achieve a stirring of godly thought in the community. They just ignore what you’ve made obvious. God only needs stirring thought served by us for Him to effect the prominent shelves Himself by stirring amongst us from the sparks of those thoughts. He is capable of choosing the thought and making the stir without need of our tags.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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