May 11, 2016

At a Loss

For years now there have been lawsuits and community upheaval involving the county, the airport fixed base operator (FBO), and the political pot-stirrers.  It was just reported in the media that the FBO has been sold, which in effect eliminates the catalyst for all the angst. I now have this image of the pot-stirrers being at a loss without a cause. In some respects, the disciples found themselves at a similar loss when Jesus was crucified. On the third day after the crucifixion Jesus appeared to two disciples on the road to Emmaus and walked with them. The men were downcast and explained about Jesus of Nazareth, “He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel” (Luke 24:19-21a NIV).

1 comment:

Steve Corey said...

Gail;

-----We all know the surface of the idea that none of us really knows very much of everything there is to know. Ponder what it would take to learn what everyone else knows. You would need to study intensely every moment of the history of every person alive. And you would need to do this quickly, because after having studied it enough to know it like you know your own personal experience, then you will need to study how that person has integrated all of the intellectual and emotional meanings of that history into the information he has learned about the things around him. Each person knows far more by this self awareness integrated with the information he’s learned than he knows of simple, raw data about facts. (Thus bias.) Regardless, if you were to study to know everything humanity knows, you would need also to learn all of the raw data about the factual being of every piece of the world every person has ever observed. And you would need to know that data stripped of everyone’s personal biases.
-----There’s seven billion people in the world. Given a ninety year life-span in order to learn all their histories, you will get one-half second each for your study time. Oops. That doesn’t leave any time to learn the world’s raw data. And we think we are so smart! Yet we each must know something in order to carry on. Getting the stuff we know we need requires interacting with others who neither know exactly as we do about what is needed, nor about exactly how to interact with each other. But do we make any leeway for differences between our perspectives out of shear respect for the fact that “another person is as much a person as am I”? Well, of course not! What does that mean to anything? I know what I know, and what I know is right! Right. We call this a lightning rod. Stand back! God will use it in His own timing.
-----But this is the way people act, though they will admit they do not know everything. The FBO got sold. Oh Boy! That will end the problem. Or will it? The FBO is like a shiny button in a chicken yard. The scuffle between the chickens is far less about which chicken has the button than it is about the button itself. The chicken with the button is merely the next beast exerting his will upon the button, which means it is not “me exerting my will upon the button” when you‘ve got it. Therefore the scuffle.
-----The mind the Bible tells us to have among one another is a counting of others as better than ourselves and a consideration of everyone’s interests equally with our own. It says this mind is ours in Christ. We can not know everything there is to know. We can not answer every problem there is to answer. We can hardly answer a few of our own problems. But we can do the process of consideration. It is talking (Mal 3:16.) It is empathizing (Phil 2:4.) It is sympathizing (I Cor 12:26.) It is doing everything with the ambition to benefit everyone effected by what we do (I Cor 10:33-11:1; I Cor 14:26b; Rom 15:2; I Pet 5:5b; and Col 3:17) Even so, there inevitably comes along a group of church “leaders” who treat the church like a shiny button instead of simply living godliness into it by example (I Peter 5:1-3.)

Love you all,
Steve Corey