April 27, 2015
Standards
I attended a meeting where a
group of homeowners opposed a company that wants to build a gravel pit. One of
the biggest issues addressed was the state highway ingress and egress, and one
woman said, “Colorado Department of Transportation standards for safety are not
the same as ours.” As I listened to more than 25 speakers representing the environmentally
focused homeowners I began to realize that their “standards,” everything from
air pollution to endangered species, were higher than all federal, state and county
regulations. I suspect people of faith are guilty of the same attitude. God
gave us his standard in Scripture and then we, as individuals or denominations,
come along with what we believe to be a higher standard. When some Pharisees
wanted to impose circumcision on the Gentiles Peter said, “Now then, why do you
try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we
nor our fathers have been able to bear? No! We believe it
is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are” (Acts
15:10-11 NIV).
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----Your cross application couldn’t be better; the illustration couldn’t be clearer. The residents around the area of the proposed gravel pit reach for anything and everything which can make weight upon their own argument. We’ve so covered up the scriptural ways our forbears dealt with their problems that the obfuscating muddle of a few foolish generations has all but suffocated it.
-----I remember when I was a child there were standards of neighborliness structured around a general standard of love for country and fellow American. Everyone understands the nature of standards are not to cure either civil or cultural ills, but they do stake both civil and cultural well-being around a generally better defined concept of goodness than otherwise. The facts that we’ve never had to search very hard to find either lawyers or courthouses testify to standard’s failure to produce perfection. Maybe our forbears failed to more directly legislate according to the Word of God‘s social principles, but their at-least-somewhat reverent attitudes towards them surfaced in courtroom and on the street alike, back in those days when God was given a higher office of public respect than were given Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.
-----I’m not saying it was heaven on earth. Nor am I saying we should repeat their processes. But I am saying that we should have built upon those past efforts rather than impugn any and all public respect shown for the Word and the Lord. Improvement is the product of driving towards what makes for good, hauling along what has been found in the past to produce good. That such good has not overwhelmed us in abundance is no reason to throw out the advances the past made into it. If society had done with the rest of mankind’s advances what it did to those advances made towards good, we’d walk everywhere because cars wreck, sleep in the snow because houses burn down, and starve to death because food spoils. But no! The perspective upon moderation such things show could not overcome the drug elevated selfishness of the Baby Boomers. In that such a perfection had not been attained was their excuse to throw out any perception of commonality and say good was whatever the individual soul wanted to think it was. How could a Christian society ever go along with this attitude so well fleshing out Satan’s proposal to Eve: you will be like God?
-----Today, everything is a giant fight because everyone has their own set of standards, like snipping little gods with no ambition to think about their neighbors’ interests whatsoever. And if we are ever shocked by the sight of a little concern for neighbors, it never seems to strike anyone that a business also is a neighbor, being the source of livelihood for neighbors. The old standard I learned began with a concept that everyone had to sacrifice a little in order for all of us to function as a community. From there the focus should be upon what are those sacrifices which will effect a sociable amount of good, rather than whatever is an argument I can drag into the fray that will make it all go my way.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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