A Matter of Integrity
Living with Integrity
Who has not been caught in the web of the multi-tasking world we all now inhabit? It has become so pervasive that it almost seems strange for someone to only being doing one thing at a time. It seems so much more productive. However, if the truth were to be told, the operative word here is "seems." The reality is that multi-tasking has not exactly produced at the level we might expect.
But it is not just in our fragmented activities that we see the impact of thinking in multi-tasking sorts of ways. A similar way of thinking about life and reality as fragmented, divided, with different, sometimes opposing agendas, operating all at the same time, is something that has been with us from some of the earliest recorded moments in human history. In the ancient world, it manifested itself as "polytheism." While we might find few people today who would fit the description of a polytheist in terms of their religious views, still that fragmented way of viewing reality has persisted in other ways.
In the sermon this week, Pastor Ken reflects a bit on a world that may still think like polytheists in light of the passage in Deuteronomy 6 that reminds us that there is indeed only One God - and how that understanding has implications for how we live. If you would like to listen to the sermon again, or perhaps for the first time, you can watch it here.
Deuteronomy 6
NIV
These are the commands, decrees and laws the LORD your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, 2 so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the LORD your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life. 3 Hear, Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the LORD, the God of your ancestors, promised you.
4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is One. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
10 When the LORD your God brings you into the land he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you—a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, 11 houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant—then when you eat and are satisfied,12 be careful that you do not forget the LORD, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.