October 14, 2015
Up a Tree
On the local level a controversial
article published online received very few comments, but generated well over
700 separate views on the first day of publication. It appears that many people
are interested in the topic, but they don’t weigh in because they don’t want
others to know they are interested. I’m reminded of Zacchaeus, who climb a sycamore
fig tree and peered through the leaves hoping to get a glimpse of Jesus.
Zacchaeus would never have revealed himself had the Lord not looked up and said
to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today” (Luke 19:5b NIV). So often
we believers are satisfied to simply peer through the leaves of a tree rather
than coming down and letting our position be known to others.
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----These last fifty years have been a great study in psychology. I was fortunate to have lived into my awareness enough before the world became animal house. In those days evil was controversial and there was a rather expected normality. Or at least you could openly admit to expecting some normality. It was disorderliness, disrespect, dissing our country, and such that was frowned upon. People knew babies were being torn apart in the womb with coat hangers, that sometimes the guys down the block weren’t just sharing an apartment, and the boy across the street was doing more than holding hands with the girl next door. But few actually approved of such things anymore than they approved of murder just because it gets done on an occasional basis. And they spoke openly about this disapproval because they knew their disapproval was widely shared. It was approval of evil that got you dissed. It held the public fever to a tolerable level.
-----You don’t give chimpanzees TV cameras, microphones, and journalist jobs. You don’t give skunks, snakes, arachnids, and parasites the big screen for portraying evil to the public as being a plate of Bon-Bons. When a bunch of creeps riot, you don’t want to watch a bunch of furtive chimpanzees tout their cause while snakes, skunks, and spiders go skulking before Congress to testify on the rioters’ behalf. No. If you want society to remain sane, you give the TV cameras and microphones to visibly mature and intelligent men and women who are sure to cast the rioters in the image of terrible-two year olds destroying their own romper rooms because they haven’t learned how to get along with others. You put folks of moral character onto the big screen portraying the beneficial affects of morality and ethics so that if you need some public icon with a known quantity of sanity to go persuade Congress into doing something smart, you’ll have some.
-----But no. The folks in position to put portrayals before the public eyes have since the late sixties filled our environment with a continuous decline into gut wagons, garbage pits, and toilet holes. Forget burning rivers, leaded gasoline, DDT, chlorofluorocarbons, litter along the highways, and plastic grocery bags in the ocean. These things foul up stuff. The real pollution, the pollution most deadly to man and mankind, is the pollution of the mind and the soul. While we’ve cried a Noah’s flood of tears over Joe smoking a cigarette at the bar, we’ve taught our little son, Johnny, that honking Sally’s horn a couple times a week is the way to be. And then we’ve turned an evil eye towards anyone daring an objection to correcting little Sally’s resultant plight with a trip to Planned Parenthood. How dare anyone call into question the moral or mental capacity of the chimps with the cameras and microphones! We‘ve let the animals so tear down the house until good is called evil and evil is called good, not only by the chimps and skunks, snakes, spiders, and parasites, but by so many friends and neighbors now, too, that it’s become a social risk to portray what’s right, let alone talk about it, or God forbid, expect a little of it.
-----I’m pretty sure I don’t care about their respect. I don’t really think I want their honor. I’ve got better folks to impress. I’ve got better things to portray, more intelligent things to say, more alive people to say them to, and a better place coming where propriety will be the designer fit. “Then those who feared the LORD spoke with one another; the LORD heeded and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before Him of those who feared the LORD and thought on His name.” (MalachI 3:16)
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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