June 06, 2014

Suffocating

There is a disturbing story of a teenage couple killing the man’s grandparents so he could get an inheritance. Aside from the tragedy, the thought process of the 18 and 19 year-olds is dumbfounding. Their plan was to suffocate the 70 year old grandparents with pillows as they slept, but the teens were caught off guard when these older folks fought back. Apparently the kids thought the 70 year-olds would just lay there and take it. That same view of the older generation is prevalent in the church. Rather than starting their own churches, the younger generation makes it perfectly clear that they want, before their time, to inherit and have ownership of established churches.  Unfortunately some of us older Christian simply lay there and take it.

1 comment:

Steve Corey said...

Gail;

-----I broke countless things in my life before I realized strength is less often a solution than is wisdom. God played a mean trick upon us by giving children into the influence of the parents’ strong, foolish years lived before their wising up with the graying of age. So, from generation to generation the foolhardiness of youth is handed down. We now stand at an age in history where wisdom seems universally abandoned, as brats barbarize civilization by their unfettered ignorance. Either their eyes cannot see lies, or their hearts do not care. But eventually serving self because strength can will catch them in a trap with only a piece of bait left.
-----Knowing all of the solutions is not the beauty of gray. Knowing all of the solutions is not a possibility of life. So the struggle to be the leader, the knower, the teller of others what to do and to think and to express is the breaking and fracturing of the body. I think most everyone who comes to the Lord realizes they’ve come to do what’s right. Most everyone’s mind naturally seeks whatever perspective shows itself as being right. Since what one mind knows seems rather universal to itself, the need to project its view of right onto others almost becomes a mission, because, well, it’s right! Right? Yet the body is not made of such sameness of solution.
-----When a person lives several more years with his search for the truth guided by fear of the Lord, he begins to realize that what he knows isn’t at all universal. It’s just his small sampling of life having no more fit in life than merely its own part of it. That doesn’t mean there is no right. It means God expresses what’s right, yet we each learn only a piece of it.
-----Paul discusses how the body is made at I Corinthians 12. First is a unity of sameness, not in function, but of purpose, “…no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.” (vs. 3) And that is our most general sense of purpose, to bear witness that Jesus is Lord in all we do and are. It permeates every part of the body such that no other part must be like me to be right. Nor will a part of it not bear witness. Since it can only be a part through the same Holy Spirit making all the rest to be parts, I can relinquish my need for everyone to be a bony elbow like me because anyone who might be an elbow is an elbow like the Lord’s elbow. That frees my mind to be a better elbow than I’ve been. And the rest can be knees like the Lord’s knees, noses like the Lord’s nose, feet like the Lord’s feet, rather than needing to be so much the same.
-----When the body is driven to unity of function by spiritual bullies and bratty elders it looses its purpose. Knees cannot be knees, feet cannot be feet, fingers cannot be fingers where only elbows are allowed to function. The glory of white hair sees the purpose of witness served by all of the members of His body each doing the right it is while leaving the rest to do the right they are. The Holy Spirit leads the resulting service to only where He can know needs to be. Only He can know the delicate fit all of the intricacies of the body’s members can make. Headstrong brats know only the couple intricacies they are and bust up testimony by trying to force others to be them, too.


Love you all,
Steve Corey