October 12, 2009
Native Tongue
Roland McCook, great-great grandson of Chief Ouray, was one of the guest speakers for the 10th year celebration of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison becoming a National Park. Overlooking the majesty of the canyon Mr. McCook opened the event with a ceremonial blessing…in his native tongue. I probably should have spent those moments praying to the Lord in English, but I didn’t. Instead I just stood there listening to the beautiful language and not understanding a word of it. When the blessing ended I wondered, ‘What exactly did we just pray about?’ While my situation was an intellectual problem of not understanding the language, we all have the responsibility of hearing spiritual language. Either we understand the spiritual truth of Jesus, or we listen to the devil ...“When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” (John 8:44b NIV)
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Gail;
-----Well said! I knew nothing of Roland McCook other than his name until you informed us he was Chief Ouray’s great-great grandson. So I now know that, too. Maybe he tried to give the most spiritually truthful prayer to the most spiritually truthful God in the name of His greatest sacrifice for mankind, but even if so, he missed the basic point of spiritual truth - humility. For he chose a line of communication understandable to few more than himself and God, deliberately ignoring the overwhelming majority of his listeners. If this were the most of his errors, it is still a significant error. “Otherwise, if you bless with the Spirit, how can anyone in the position of an outsider say the ’Amen’ to your thanksgiving when he does not know what you are saying.“ (I Corinthians 14:16)
-----But I fear granting him that much would be granting him too much. I admit what I am about to say is said only from speculation, but I calculate the chances of my suspicion being correct are greater than not. I suspect his praying in his native language was to simply elevate the meaning of his small, partisan cross section of our community and attach it to the great and wonderful, wild outdoors that belongs to us all. For those of his chosen language worshipped God through their understanding of nature like the mentality being foisted upon our once Christian culture now elevates the meaning of nature above that of the Word. So I speculate the sanctimonious glorification of an unattended wilderness was for the pompous purpose of celebrating this vast expanse of land left without man’s obediently subduing it. God told us to do more than just be fruitful and multiply. He told us to fill the earth, subdue it, and have dominion over every living thing in it. The pagan nature worship of extreme environmentalism is basically a branch of rebellion against God and His written Word. They not only subject man to the demands of “untouched” wilderness habitat, subduing his obedience of multiplying and filling the earth, but they set the plight of the animals into a dominant, regulating position over man, going so far as to call for a limitation upon man’s multiplication. Their every point is in contradiction to the Bible and God’s command. Nullification of His Word is paramount to their mentality so they can set up some god in His place.
-----Although McCook’s gesture sounds more smiley, I see it holding hands with Ahmadinajad’s recent prayer to the United Nations. This too was offered in a setting of rebellion to God. God’s defiance of global unification is apparent in His defeat of man’s collectivism at the Tower of Babel, in His defeat of every global seeking empire since then, and in the prophecies of His victory over the final government He will soon allow to become global. Yet, there in the court of leaders who seek this final global government, Ahmadinajad prayed to the god of his imagination for the rise of a bloodthirsty tyrant to lead the world into a tumultuous chaos that will press all but Christ’s own to call out for unity around his substitute god. The only difference was that Ahmadinajad’s pompous blurtation was translated into all the major languages so the meaning of his words could add to the meaning of his gesture.
-----Thanks be to God, His intention is that we who love Him and His truth should not permanently fall prey to the miserable ends of such prating fools. Further thanks that His arms are open wide to whomever does not desire to be a prating fool. And final thanks be to God for the final end put to prating foolishness, so those who love truth will enjoy truth for eternity. And yes, I am courageous enough to communicate this thanks in a language most people will be able to read and understand. Else I would say it in a different one.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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