Post date: May 27, 2014 3:33:45 PM
I have a question, and I want you to ponder it in all seriousness.
Many have been the battles and debates and wars fought over and slanders committed against Truth in our society. Many are those who cast aspersions at and against any who make Truth claims, all the while never once considering that their insults of Truth claims are, in fact, themselves Truth claims as well, for they are making a claim of fact (that is, of Truth) regarding those claims that they seek to attack and destroy. One wonders how they manage to live with themselves, routinely following such infantile fallacies of logic in their daily thinking.
It is almost becoming routine for me to face down such self-proclaimed pundits these days. They all seem to propagate from the same university that seems to specialize in degrees that could be titled Master of Thought Avoidance. Some would, no doubt, qualify for PhD’s in this curriculum of pseudo-intellectual mental gymnastic suicide.
I have actually seen people propose that the fundamental basis of the universe is mathematics while steadfastly arguing against the idea of an intelligence being behind it all. It seems that they’ve never been made to face the reality that mathematics requires an intelligence in order that it have any existence at all. You could be forgiven for wondering what in the world gets taught in what passes for schools these days.
The utter and complete confusion that now blankets society as a whole should be no surprise to anyone who has made even the least attempt to engage the pseudo-intellectual juggernauts that so pollute the media these days with their utterly vacuous tripefests that pass for wisdom today.
It is, indeed, a mystery where they ever got the notion that such sheer, utter, unmitigated nonsense could ever pass for intelligence. The Mad Hatter rules the day and has swallowed the key that locks the door to true wisdom and intellectual integrity.
We, though, must also consider ourselves, to be sure that we do not also misstep into the slough of despond that so dominates the thought processes of the world at large. We must remember our own rescue from our own sin before we face down theirs so that we do not fall into self-righteous condemnation of those who may yet be our unborn brethren in the faith. Sin and wickedness and evil must, yes, be confronted, but not so as to destroy those who suffer the bondage to their own debauchery, perversion, and sin.
We must, rather, strive to point them to the way of Light, the way of righteousness, the way of Truth, the way of mercy, the way of grace, the way of peace—in fact the way of Christ, for it is only in the Light of Christ that anyone is ever delivered from their earned fate of an eternity in hell.
“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Remember that. We have not earned heaven. No one earns heaven. We have all earned an eternity in hell. We all deserve hellfire and damnation for all eternity. God never sends anyone to hell. He doesn’t have to. Without exception we are all, every one of us, insistently strutting along the path to the pit of eternity, burning in the flames and fires of the sufferings that we have brought on ourselves. God doesn’t do that to us. We do that to ourselves.
God chooses whom He chooses to spend eternity with Him because before ancient days, in eternity past, He set His heart on that one, that He would see that one saved—against the very nature of the fabric of our lives. Jesus has said it Himself, “You did not choose Me, but I chose You.”
If you never question and wonder why in the world God would choose someone like you, then your mind must have undergone a curiectomy, for, if you have never once pondered that, then there is no curiosity in you at all. It is a wonderment to know your sin, indeed the full extent of it—yet still know that you know that you know that you know that you know that you are chosen.
My Dear Reader, question that!
I am not saying that He will answer. But in your meditations and your ponderings, as you face what you once were, you will come to fathom the tidal pools of the oceans of His grace.
You cannot get there, though, without going over what you once were. More than once I have said that I live in Isaiah 6, because it keeps me in a proper perspective of the grace of God for me in my life.
I spent 20 years in the cesspool that is atheism. Sin and debauchery were the order of my heart; they were the itinerary of my day, and the goal of my life.
It should be obvious, then, that I do not proceed from a self-delusion of righteousness.
I know from whence I come. I know what I was, I know what I am, and I still wonder what I shall be made to be.
This, however, I do know: I am no longer what I used to be. God has made a change in me. Christ has set His Light in me. The Spirit has enfolded me. I am no longer what I used to be.
I was born in sin, an object of wrath, indeed of the Lord’s wrath; a justifiable target for His fury and anger and condemnation and destruction and judgment. But I am no longer that as which I was born.
God has made a change; indeed a change that has altered the course of my destiny and has rescued me from the bondage in which I reveled and labored and suffered. I no longer serve those demons that had enchained me. No longer am I their thrall. I am free. For God has made me free.
God has made me free indeed. God has made me free indeed, and while I do still struggle against them, and do sometimes fall, I am no longer slave to them, for God has made me free.
It is not a freedom that I knew. It is not a freedom that I sought. It is not a freedom that I fashioned. It is not a freedom that I earned. It is not a freedom that I deserve. God has made me what I am and shall make me what I am to be. The freedom that I now enjoy is not a freedom found of me. It is a gift of God, for God has set me free.
Of those who have been biologically sired through a biological father there is no one who has not been born with sin entrenched within them, burgeoning and growing and enchaining them and absolutely guaranteeing a future penchant toward willful and wanton sin, debauchery and utter spiritual rebellion in their hearts and in their lives.
Not even one.
In that manner I am no different from anyone else.
I have already recounted my own history. Let us now begin to consider yours.
You have also been born in the manner recounted above, with sin flourishing in your heart. It does not matter the sin of which you speak, which you seek to justify and defend the partaking of in your life. It is sin, and it makes you deserving of hellfire and damnation.
The fact that you seek to justify and defend it means that you, too, are insistently strutting along the path to the pit of eternity, burning in the flames and fires of the sufferings that you have brought on yourself.
God has not done that to you.
You have done it to yourself.
Self-righteousness and self-defense before God have no place in this existence, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
There is no one who can offer up a proper defense before Him, so stop wasting your time in your foolish, silly, nonsensical, misguided efforts and start pondering the question.
When you honestly and forthrightly consider all that you have done there is no way for you to consider yourself to be better than even the very worst of anyone else in this sorry and pitiful and sin-drenched world.
I will not even bother to engage the utter vacuity of thinking oneself better than God, for that is the non-sequitur of all non-sequiturs and does not even deserve consideration for the slightest sliver of a hint of a moment, and I will not so honor it.
I will not even ask you to reveal what your particular sin is (after all, I have not revealed the particulars of mine to you), but will simply leave you with the question that should already be burning in your conscience and in your heart, given the facts that I have already brought forth.
Where do you get off thinking yourself to be better than me?