October 16, 2015
False Witnesses
Minutes of a meeting, once
they are approved, become an official record. I recently attended a meeting where
some of the trustees of the organization approve minutes of a previous meeting which
they had not attended. One woman said, “I can’t make a motion because I haven’t
even read the minutes.” All of the trustees voted to approve the minutes and in
essence their lackadaisical attitude qualifies as giving false testimony. The psalmist
said, “A truthful witness gives honest testimony, but a false witness tells
lies” (Proverbs 12:17 NIV).
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Gail;
-----I once heard the leader of a class on “Reading the Bible for All Its Worth” (the title of the book used) diminish Paul’s instruction on women veiling their heads because of the angels (I Cor 11:10) by criticizing Paul’s belief in angels. I could hardly believe what I was hearing as this leader explained, with a scent of criticism on his breath, that the first century Jewish world was consumed by belief in angels. Not so much his words, but the demeanor of his delivery and the mental trajectory of his carefully chosen words both aimed at the “kookiness” of these “mindless” first century “neo-barbarians” who lacked the good senses we have today of seeing by science that there are no angels, while also suggesting mystery about where they may have gotten those silly angel ideas. I would not be surprised to hear the same guy some other day talking, or maybe even teaching about the angels’ involvement in both history and our personal lives.
-----People are that inconsistent. I talk a lot about mental framework, because mental framework is what traps us into errors as it also reveals great discoveries of truth. It is those concepts, ideas, memories, imagery, attitudes, and emotional senses rather interrelating as a seemingly flexible unit moving around the barely perceptible boundaries of our consciousness by which our subconscious seeks to understand our conscious thought at the moment. Paul said we see dimly as in a mirror, and we sure do. As a result, many things too big to be seen in the mindset of one moment we must see a piece at a time as our life experiences occasionally cross their paths at different junctures. Not oddly, then, we hold sometimes several, somewhat differing mental frameworks regarding one matter.
-----Then, as that one matter crosses paths with other issues, the subconscious, rather in loose “collusion” with the outer bounds of consciousness downloads the appropriate mental framework. Like a backdrop veiling the rest of what is known, it teases the mind into perceiving it as a whole reality for the moment. This is how we get in the face of that beautiful bride who fills our heart with warmth when our arms wrap her up, but yell fury at her for breaching some idiotic principle which for the moment has come to seem like all reality. The mental framework of your arms crying out to be filled up with her joyful being is momentarily banished to some outer Siberian reaches of an opposite pole (the habitual allowance of which eventually will exacerbate into a clinical bipolar disorder.)
-----In fact, that’s all our mental disorders are: disorders. Mental orderliness starts with fruit of the Spirit: self-control even of the heart and mind.
-----Well, for Paul to have been crazed over angels, I suppose also Jesus was (Mat 13:41), probably Abraham, too (Gen 22:11), and Hagar, Lot, not to mention also Jacob, and Daniel, and Zechariah, where we meet two women having wings like storks (Chapter 5), and all the people of Israel at Bochim (Judges 2:4), and David, and 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians, just to name a smidgeon of a few. God’s Word’s full of them.
-----I don’t think Paul was crazed. I think people who take the Bible as the Word of God in one frame of mind, then, accuse it from another are crazed. Rom 3:4 says, “Let God be true though every man be false, as it is written, ‘That Thou mayest be justified in Thy Words, and prevail when Thou art judged.’” I assure you, if we made certain this one concept was held securely and ever present in the outer boundaries of our consciousness, we would shake in our boots at even the thought of disbelieving His Word, seeing the judgment of Him that our disbelief makes.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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