My local newspaper
is consistently making publishing errors — typos, erroneous information, misspelled
names and misquotes. My first reaction was one of sloppiness and lack of
proofreading. However, as it continues I now see the issues as a blatant
disrespect for their readership. If these journalists were writing for a
prominent national publication their submissions would be the best they could
offer, polished to perfection. On the religious landscape believers too can be
guilty of offering less than our best, whether to one another, or to God. Paul
reminds us, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman
who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth” (2
Tim 2:15 NIV).
3 comments:
Oops Steve,
I accidentally deleted your comment so I did a cut and paste.
Gail
Steve Corey has left a new comment on your post "Be Unashamed":
Gail;
-----Let God be true, although all men be false. That’s no excuse. But it is telling of what we have to work with inside ourselves and amongst others. Romans 3:4 doesn’t mean all men are completely false. It means that no man is completely true. Every person has errors of several types to various degrees. We all fall short. Again, that’s no excuse, but it sets the climate in which we work. And people tend to acclimate quite well to subtle conditions.
-----”Prove me, O LORD, and try me; test my heart and my mind.” (Ps 26:2) Wouldn’t this be a nice condition to have as a part of our working climate. But since there is a wall of separation between church and state, we don’t get to popularize it. Oh yes. I forgot! That wall of separation comes from a letter written to a pastor of a church who was worried the government might begin stifling their worship, in a loose manor of speaking. The coining of the expression was about protecting religion from governmental tyranny. Oops. Do we have that wrong today? Have we really been allowing the Lord to test our minds? Do we ever pray like my five year old granddaughter, Sadie, did, “God in heaven, thank you for information. Amen?” Of course not! Therefore we are ninety days away from the joy of shouting in unison, “Hail Hillary!” because we’ve not, as a culture, invited the Lord to test our minds with information. We would rather run on rhetoric, otherwise we all might think, “I hate the company of evildoers, and I will not sit with the wicked.” (Ps 26:5)
-----But who’s to say who’s evildoers and who’s wicked? Oh, the blissful reasoning of the common fool! -all their beliefs being made of unanswered, rhetorical questions. No wonder there is no invitation to God for testing the minds of this godless culture now eating God’s people like bread. It is the humble who are interested in knowing their own errors, for the humble know something better will become of them for having learned. “He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way.” (Ps 25:9) Maybe the humble are to say. Maybe the humble should be more heard. Between 1913 and 1928, Ernst Sellin (who uncovered Jericho’s collapsed wall) excavated the great Migdol Shechem (the Temple of Baal Berith which the rabid Islamists blew up last year) and found there a giant, erected monolith. He immediately identified it as the covenant stone set up by Joshua. “He was sacked in 1928 for his overly ’biblical’ views and a lack of archeological technique, replaced by a much more experienced archeologist named Gabriel Welter. Sellin’s successor wanted nothing to do with any wild claims about connections with the Bible and promptly threw the standing stone down the slope of an excavation dump, smashing it into half in the process. After two disastrous seasons of excavations…the German Archeological Institute reluctantly reappointed Sellin as Field Director in 1933.” (David Rohl. The Exodus: Myth or History? This book is a must read!) Today, astronomical information has come to light (pardon the pun) which demands corrections to currently accepted ancient Middle Eastern chronologies, placing this temple and stone exactly into Joshua’s day (Jericho's fallen walls, too) at the place where the Bible says he erected it! “God in heaven, thank you for information! Amen!” Today, the stone stands again, but its missing half monumentalizes the ignorance of fools who do not invite the testing of their own minds. “The friendship of the LORD is for those who fear him, and he makes known to them his covenant.” (Ps 25:14)
Love you all,
Steve Corey
And then they expect us to accept their lack of excellence because we are brothers and sisters.
Grace and peace.
Pumice;
-----They do. Everyone knows family “is supposed to circle the wagons.” I kind of cringe at some of Psalms’ and Proverbs’ language about not sitting with the wicked and the evil doers. But when we are in love with a God as Holy as Jesus and His Father, evil becomes a very subtle thing. Not sitting with one another in each other’s mistakes, no matter how insignificant they are, sends an important message to everyone’s expectations. Once what we expect of each other gets messed up by covering for one another, the culture follows, and then it becomes harder for the individuals therein to see and hear straight for knowing what is their spiritual condition. The “free pass” from the relatives is a destructive bias, a little big evil.
Love you,
Steve
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