October 01, 2013
Behind Curtain # 1
The CDC has recently put out a very graphic
anti-smoking media campaign called Tips From Former Smokers. In order to
educate the public to the hazards of cigarette smoking, former smokers tell
their stories and show the price they are now paying in the form of disfiguring
and debilitating cancer treatments. In promoting the powerful campaign one
supporter said, “These ads are pulling
back the curtain on smoking.” Scripture does something similar when it
exposes the consequences of sin and its effects on the lives of Biblical
characters. I contemplating whether there would be any impact on people today
if we believers were to pull the curtain back on our past sins and show the
price we are now paying.
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----I doubt it. Not so much because other people are just too complacent to see the connections between past actions and present consequences, but more so because the present consequences are mixed very thoroughly into a marinade of God’s forgiving blessings. When the Psalmist says, “For Thou dost bless the righteous, O LORD; Thou dost cover him with favor as with a shield,” do you really think that everything of the lives of His followers becomes peaches and cream always? Ask the Church at Smyrna, those fortunate believers who slinked through the treacherous second and third centuries, occasionally filling the bellies of lions in the arena or of bronze bulls over fires. Complications, tragedies, and humiliating deaths happen by nature in this place where rebellion against God‘s laws scampers unfettered. Let not the fact of broken life obscure the joy of its fixing, to which even death takes us instantly.
-----Oh, the sauce in which I marinade! The bowl in which we all who love Him soak! What can be more joyful and refreshing than the naked truth? And though a consequence has a certain and real physical discomfort, it is forever attached to its cause by the cord of truth.
-----Knowledge and understanding are the blessings of truth. I would have them by choice many times over rather than the drowsy complacence of physical comfort. For truth extends from one source alone. I crave knowing that source.
-----So what concrete dismissal of this life’s pain and suffering will such abstraction as “The Truth” bring for me? There is no physical escape from the many very real and harsh consequences every person endures, other than death alone. And that is the ultimate shield favoring me with His coverage. When consequences, happenstances, or pure O.D. rapscallions have overwhelmed us unto a step beyond the laws of biological physics, God merely reveals a bit more of His reality to us by that minor paradigm shift into eternal perfection we who are known by Him call death. It is the beginning of even greater truth.
-----To now, neither consequences nor its more evil buddies have so overwhelmed me. Yet, they knock against my consciousness with pain and discomfort. But pain and discomfort are, by the grace of God through Jesus Christ, merely causes for which I can choose the discovery of further truth as their effects. “Ha, ha, consequences! Even though my own stupidity called you forth into my reality, my Lord Jesus has kicked you in the pants and made you sit in the corner!” What non-complacent observer might not be impacted by such a sight?!
-----So, what about this marinade of truth serves the believer far beyond any point of rendering tickle from pain? Discernment! “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers…” (Psalms 1:1) Interesting that this message begins the Psalms. Knowing which counsel to not walk in, which ways not to stand in, and which seats not to sit upon necessitates knowing some truth. Truth has awareness; the some you have guides you to more. It discerns inconsistency. For example, those who simply must impugn tobacco as the epitome of evil itself because it kills some also bless murderous abortion and thunder lying insults at others who dare utter truths about the tiny, innocent lives robbed. Smoking is risky at best, subjecting some people to the same lung cancer which kills many non-smokers alike. Abortion kills people with certainty. Agreeing with the first while denying the second lacks consistency. Truth is not truth without consistency, that mental marinade refined from consequences.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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