April 17, 2012
Blessed
Two of my political colleagues speak freely and publically about their
relationship with the Lord and it’s not unusual to hear criticism of their
witness in letters to the editor, on the gossip circuit and behind their backs.
Fellow believers often resist running to their defense because they themselves
don’t want to become community targets. Jesus however offers support and
encouragement. “Blessed are you when
people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you
because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward
in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before
you.” (Matt 5:11-12 NIV)
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Gail;
-----What good would English be if you were the only one who spoke it? What good would knowing the earth was round do you if everyone believed it was flat? What good would hard work and responsibility do you if everyone believed comfort and prosperity were left on their door-step by some omnipotent milk-man. Actually, they would do you some good. At least you would have some terms to think in if only you knew English. Maybe you have not many important decisions to make based upon the roundness of the earth, but your appreciation of things proceeding from it, like night and day, would be deeper. Yet you are likely to be the only one around with a half-decent place to stay and a scrap to eat if you alone understood the correlation between hard work and sufficient supply.
-----Regardless, if I say “knowledge” most are liable to think "accurate and correct perceptions". And we tend to treat the term that carelessly. Knowledge is actually very complex and not too clean. The ordinary channels of knowledge to an individual are only two: empirical flow of information into the mind through the senses, and a mental processing of it within the mind. Oh yes, a third, far, far less ordinary channel exists through the spirit, like what God did for Nebuchdnezzar and Daniel, Pharaoh and Joseph, Mary and the other Joseph, and many, many prophets, and of course, like Satan will do within the anti-Christ, and like the Holy Spirit does deep in you. These three channels are not exactly floodgates accommodating a Nile-like surge of available knowledge to come flooding into an individual mind. Wish they were but glad they aren‘t, because knowledge is a thing shared by countless minds re-expressing it amongst each other in innumerable variations until twists and discolorations render it not entirely true, or even what is entirely not true. So, the trickle by which it enters the individual becomes useful to his vetting process, since knowledge is not necessarily true.
-----But knowledge is necessary, because it is a greatly extended form of language. It isn’t proper to just accept it’s terms, but it helps at least to allude to them. By several processes of social psychology, people come to be very conscientious about what they know, what “everyone” knows, and what are the differences. Sometimes the differences are perceived as beneficial to the knower, and sometimes the differences are anathematized in that on-wash of Nile-like knowledge flooding against them. Not appearing gullible to all the other knowers tends to become emotionally paramount to the individual. Avoiding ostracization from the general “knowledge” dialogue and remaining proficient in its terms becomes the goal.
-----To a few, though, truth is more important than knowledge. To them knowledge is a product and truth is a process. One anchored pillar does not stop the flood, yet it is supported against the flood by a known truth. It is the flood that breaks into eddies around it and becomes turbulent because of it. To those who love truth, the foundation of their pillars is paramount, the undeniable evidences, the written conclusions withstanding millennia of antagonistic floods, the realities shaped into life by believing a Truth instead of wallowing wherever the surges of mankind flow. All other talk chatter and scorn are just eddies that will pass with the flood.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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