For exercise I walk in an
event center at the county fairgrounds and fairly often I encounter a county
deputy supervising inmates in orange jumpsuits who are working to set up, or
dismantle, the structures used at community events. I know the inmates are
incarcerated for an offense, but because I don’t know the nature of their
offense it is easy for me to say, “Good morning. How’s your day going? Nice day
today, isn’t it?” It occurs to me that if I actually knew what each man was sentenced
for he would no longer be just an inmate, he would become a thief, a sexual offender,
or an abuser in domestic violence. Something similar happens when believers
look at one another. Knowing that we are all sinners is not the same as knowing
the sinner’s sin. The idea of sinners wearing a generic orange jumpsuit sounds
more palatable to me than having other believers know we are hypocrites, liars
and adulterers. Paul said, “This righteousness from God comes through faith in
Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for
all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are
justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus”
(Ro 3:22-24 NIV).
1 comment:
Gail;
-----America’s attitude towards tradition has been destroyed. The attitude of those desiring total control over our cultural elements is completely futuristic. They will bring for us utopia! You can bet the farm on that. Anyway, they want your farm bet on it, because they know there‘s no utopia tomorrow, just the collection of all those lost bets. And with your farm, they’ll get you too,, because you can’t live without a farm.
-----They know none of it works unless everyone thinks generically. When a person delves into a topic, its elements can be disassembled. As individual elements, they can be analyzed for usefulness, worth, propriety, state of repair, etc., and then accepted, corrected, or rejected accordingly. But this can not be done when everything is dealt with generically. All of society’s minor details would then fall apart, as the details of your own life go askew. Like when the teeth are stripped off even one gear of a Swiss watch, it stops working. Details are important to proper mechanism, and love amongst people is proper mechanism.
-----This is why Jesus told us to seek first His Father’s kingdom and righteousness. A kingdom is a situation. We call this a nation, but still, the kingdom of America is everything of America’s situation. Even its relationships with such as North Korea are parts of the kingdom. God’s kingdom is everything of God’s situation, including its “over all” part. “Into everything” is part of “over all”. His kingdom will penetrate every detail of everything with righteousness. And every aspect will act and respond righteously.
-----For that we step out of ourselves to enter His kingdom. And entering His kingdom comes by righteousness. Christ has given us what of that we need to enter. But once there, we Americans think we can continue generically. Righteousness does not deal generically. It deals in specifics. And the more righteousness one desires to effect, the more specifically one must engage.
-----God does bid people to hide some of their specifics. But He also bids them to be open and honest about others. That we know the difference is not the point here. That dealing with one another righteously and advancing the kingdom within each other requires considering each other’s specifics is the point. When I go to the doctor with a cut needing stitches, he doesn’t just yank up my sleeve and put those stitches anywhere on my arm he first encounters. Nor do we always benefit one another from engaging generic knowledge. For stitches to close a cut, the doctor’s got to work specifically.
-----Maybe America would have less crime had we not exchanged the specifics of our present interrelationships for a generic march into tomorrow’s pipe-dream. At any rate, what’s coming is well and good for America. We’ve been called into His kingdom where specifics and generics are both important.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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