IGNORANCE-MONGER

“The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” 2 Corinthians 10:5

          Would you just look at that again, please?  There is a strong kernel of truth hiding in the midst of this passage that up until now has escaped my attention.  There’s just so many important messages here that every time I think I have it all contained once and for all in my brain, I look again, and lo!  There is still something I had missed.

          [And right here I need to stop and make a confession.  (I know this is awful, but I am secretly hoping that somebody reading this will nod and know what I mean so I won’t have to feel like such a desperately lonely heathen in this regard.) Sometimes when someone starts talking about, or writing about, or teaching or preaching or singing about a certain scripture— one of those pet ones of mine that I have spent lots of time in— there is a haughtiness that swells up in my head.  I notice that this attitude always causes my mouth to tighten into a lopsided, sideways pose that is punctuated by a dimple on one side of my chin— and not the CUTE kind, but the KNOW-IT-ALL kind. I seem to believe in those moments that I am wasting my time listening because there is no way that I am going to learn anything here.  I have studied this thing out, and there is certainly nothing anybody can tell me about it that will be new. What a terrible confession to have to make, but I hope by making it, I will go some distance in disarming whatever this horrid thing is that sells me such a dastardly dangerous lie.]

          But this morning, I told my very own self this lie as I read this scripture again.  And again, as is usually true when I fall prey to this conceit, I was wrong. (How long you reckon it’ll take me to figure this out and quit this attitude?) I have always been so shot in the head with the message about taking our thoughts captive that I have missed it.  I think this is one of those examples of not being able to see the forest for the trees.

          The trees are all worth focusing on in this forest, and I am not sorry that I have done so.  However, I think maybe the forest here is really all about verse 5:  those “arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God.”  I think I have looked closely at the arguments and pretensions before, but I am not so sure that I have paid enough attention to the wording of what the arguments and pretensions are really trying to do to us. The arguments and lies we are trying to demolish are setting themselves up against our knowledge of God!

The Enemy who is sending out all this propaganda is not just trying to get us to bungle up a sacred relationship or slander someone’s honorable name or misuse our body and mind so that we give a leg up to evil. No. As infernal as all these deeds are that he might love watching us perform, He is up to something worse than even these. Our archenemy, Satan, has his hat set on destroying our knowledge of God.

          The scripture uses language to indicate that he is gathering weaponry to arm himself and his troops for all-out brutal warfare to wipe our minds’ slates clean of our knowledge of the God who will save us.

He wants us to be ignorant about what really matters. Satan wants to erase what we have learned about God

This is a stark way to end today’s thoughts, but maybe coming face-to-face with such an alarming truth will motivate us all to be vigilant to keep arming ourselves sufficiently to win the battle our enemy is waging against us.  After all, “The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world.  On the contrary, they have divine power…” !

CITIZEN ARRESTS

“The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world.  On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.  We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”  2 Corinthians 10:4-5

Every time I read this scripture, I eagerly jump on my horse. But the problem after I get up here is that I’m tempted to ride off in all directions at once.

 This is one of those scriptures that says so much that, as a teacher and a writer ( and a hyperactive one, at that), about twelve hundred words gather on the tip of my tongue and do fierce battle with one another over who is to break down the gates of my sealed lips first.  We might be stuck on this one for days.

Paul has just finished talking about how we are to live in this world in a manner contrary to the world’s standards.  He asserts that we are equipped with supernatural weapons to wage this unconventional war.  These weapons are strong enough to demolish our enemies… and the enemies he is focused on here are our thoughts.  He labels what our thinking can do to us “strongholds.”

You and I both know this is the truth.  We know, once we take it out and purposely look at it, that what Ralph Waldo Emerson said is the plain and simple, undeniable truth:  “Sow a thought, reap an action.  Sow an action, reap a habit.  Sow a habit, reap a character.  Sow a character; reap a destiny.”  Everything we have ever done, will ever do or become will start, or has already started, with a mere, seemingly innocuous thought. (Please stop reading for just a minute and think about that.)

Almost every day, and some days more than once, arguments come parading across my mind.  They are devilish little creatures carrying big placards that display lies in vivid colors.  Sometimes they shout in red-faced ardor what they want me to buy or believe. They came to Jesus, too, in the wilderness right after he was baptized.  Their message was “Be a miracle-working savior!”  “Be a powerful savior!”  Now, undoubtedly Jesus was both of these things, but what the devil wanted was for Him to give up the long, winding road we needed Him to take and snatch hold of something less arduous, to cash in the greater purpose for the lesser.  Had He accepted the devil’s offer, we would have still been without hope.  He could not have been the perfect sacrificial Lamb of God had He made the deal with Satan.

 Satan wanted Jesus to bank on His ability to heal disease, bring back the dead, and provide food for thousands miraculously. Satan’s placards were all about promoting an agenda of instant gratification.  God’s plan for Jesus had nothing to do with anything instant or easy; God’s plan for Jesus was that He would grow up honoring His Father by resisting such urges toward shortcuts and self-gratification.

God’s vision for His Son was to show us dull earthlings, at great expense to Himself, how to live humbly, to serve others at our own expense, take up crosses that would feed the world more than temporary food, and heal them eternally, not just slap on some kind of flashy band aid.

 Our Savior used His weapons valiantly that day and all the others of His thirty- three years down here.  His weapons were God’s Word.

We are heirs to the same weapons Jesus used so well.  We, as His followers and bearers of His name, are challenged and commissioned to fight bravely against the same Enemy using this same mighty and unconquerable weaponry.

Satan is diligent to send out his placard-bearers.  When they march across our brains shouting their lies and trying to make their sinister deals; when they cavort maniacally with their shenanigans to get us to sell our Treasures for a mess of pottage, we need to do whatever it takes to snatch out our Weapons, God’s Truth, and fight.  He has armed us to the teeth.

HARD TO PLEASE AT EASTER

                                                                  MY BOY

Last night in an attempt to keep myself company, since my Larry is away from me for a while, I flipped through the channels until I came to a movie about Jesus.  This one was The Greatest Story Ever Told.  Remembering I had seen it years ago, but not recalling how I felt about it then, I gave it a shot. Right off the bat I didn’t like it.  The Jesus was all dreamy-like.  He floated when He walked; His white toga never got soiled; His voice sounded other-worldly; He even mounted the colt on Palm Sunday in a fakey, slow-motion fashion.  I berated myself at first and decided I should stick with it and quit being such a harsh judge of somebody’s noble efforts to share the Master with the world via mass media.  But finally I just couldn’t take another frame of it, so I went back to flipping.  

Next thing I knew, unsurprisingly, there He was again, this being the Easter season.  However, this time everything was different. This was Mel Gibson’s The Passion of Christ, which I had also seen a few years ago when it was first released. I definitely remembered how I had felt about this one, and for that very reason, I came within a hair’s breadth of not stopping and watching it again.

 I recalled being in the dark theater with a lot of other Christian friends, and how, at that time, I was so glad it was dark, and that the place was crowded with folks.  I wouldn’t have wanted anyone to see the ugliness of my grimacing face and clenching jaws.  I remembered my whole body being in an incredible sense of muscular tension, every nerve alert and on edge as I witnessed my Lord being flogged and otherwise tortured in a crueler fashion than I had ever envisioned when reading the gospel accounts all the previous years of my life. Whenever others have mentioned wanting to watch it again every Easter since that year, I have instantly bowed out.  

But last night  I was compelled stop and pay attention again, in spite of what my mind replayed for me so instantly.  The movie was already at the most terrible part: the flogging before the walk to Golgotha on the Via Dolorosa. My first emotional response was one I recall so vividly experiencing before: I imagined that He was my Ben, my boy!  (Any mother who witnesses what Mary goes through while watching her son in such bitter anguish must surely feel what I was feeling.)

  As the diabolical cruelty escalated and left His blood in pools on the streets of Jerusalem, as His eyes swelled shut, and His body grew almost unrecognizable from the scourging, my body, too, was seized by such flooding emotions that I tensed and trembled and cried out to God, finally covering my eyes and shaking my head to remove my cowardly self from the harshness of this Reality that had delivered me from certain hell into Hope and Joy and Daughter-ship. Twenty-five minutes of this reality had worn me out.  My body shut down and fell in an exhausted sleep.  I awoke an hour later, feeling like a wimp, to the credits rolling.   

I went to bed thinking about the contrast of my two viewing experiences. I hadn’t been able to take seriously or respect the unbiblical “Jesus” who fell terrifically short the Son of Man who has experienced this life as a human;  and yet, I didn’t have the strength, the stomach, or the emotional fortitude to embrace the Whole Truth of the Jesus who did not fall short.

 I have read some history about crucifixion, and some medical reports, written by doctors, that aver that whatever can be depicted on screen, even the extremely graphic Mel Gibson film, will always necessarily be a watered –down version of the Real Thing Jesus suffered on our behalf.   

I am still shaken.  First thing this morning, a friend invited me to watch The Passion tonight.  I declined, recounting for her my experience, and she wisely reminded me that yes, the horrible Truth of “Good” Friday is gut-wrenching, but when we dare to look it right in the face, it makes our Resurrection Sunday communion ever the sweeter. Yes.

A blessed Resurrection Day to you all!

RETROSPECTIVE LEARNING

 [Any of you who were present recently at one of my speaking engagements will find these words familiar.  The next two blogs will be loose excerpts from the talks I have recently given in Belton and Center. I thought a couple of my points were blogworthy. Thanks for your patience and loyalty to keep showing up expecting something worthy of your time!]

“Get skillful and godly Wisdom, get understanding (discernment, comprehension, and interpretation); do not forget and do not turn back from the words of my mouth.”  Proverbs 4:5 (Amplified Bible)

Lately I have come to see some added dimensions to this scripture.  The ways we get understanding and discernment are not limited to reading other’s books, listening to other  people’s lessons or sermons, or even reading the Bible. Sometimes God, the Master Teacher, reaches us through our own memories. Come with me on a little journey as I describe some lessons God is teaching me as I work as an author.

I think I used to believe that learning happens first, and then the writing happens as a means of teaching or at least imparting what we have already learned.  (Now, translate “learning” loosely, please, because you and I both know that true learning doesn’t happen the first time a fact settles upon our brains uncontested.)  But after laboring for years with high school freshmen who swore to me that they had nothing whatsoever worth writing about in an essay, I came upon an exciting and inspiring quote by the celebrated author, E. M. Forster.  He quite enigmatically probed, “How can I know what I think until I see what I say?”  At the time, I thought it was a catchy quote and true in an oblique sort of way.  But now, after having completed the writing of my first novel (a novella, really), I really do know what he was talking about!  He wasn’t quipping or being cute at all; he we was commenting upon the same phenomenon that happened to me as I wrote Out of the Chute in Azalea Heights ( amazon.com- paperback and Kindle).

When the first time we ever latch onto a truth is when we see it roll out of our pen or onto the computer in front of us, it is indeed a strange phenomenon. It is so strange, in fact, that I must attribute it to the supernatural Spirit of God at work to afford in us something I can only call retrospective learning.

As I stamped those fifty-year-old images onto solid paper— images of my daddy’s fascination with the Cold War and the Birdman of Alcatraz; visual images of the Center, Texas Dairy Queen and the Rio Theater;  and, sharp, audible recollections of Brenda Lee and Johnny Horton (“I’m Sorry” and “North to Alaska”); memories of mysterious hidden staircases in the Shelby County Courthouse—I fell into a meatier experience than I ever could have dreamed.

What I believed would be nostalgic meandering began to evolve into more profound discovery.

*        In chronicling a simple concrete confession about a clandestine midnight moped adventure, I gleaned the weighty abstraction that it almost always takes longer than we thought it would for mental realization to make its trip down into the realm of physical actualization.

*     What I meant to be a light entertaining tale about a wild-eyed hater of ruffles and petticoats turned into a stark realization about something Jesus said.  Jesus said that the eye is the lamp of the body; if the eyes are bad, the darkness is terrible.  This means that much can be gained or lost simply by the way we see things…and much of how we see things is our choice.

*         I just meant to take my readers on a vicarious jaunt down a homemade zip line from the top of a pine tree, but on my journey down I sensed a loud philosophical voice proclaiming, “It behooves us to straighten the tender sapling before it grows into a crooked tree.”

*       While making a graphic confession of a short but shameful profession as a 10-year-old fountain-pen thief, I found this pointed lesson rising up to intercept the superficial narration I really intended: Never underestimate the dangers of visionary children who are hell-bent against monotony and safety.  Never challenge the old adage about idleness being the devil’s workshop.  No truer words were ever spoken!

*      Nor should we ever underestimate God’s fervent desire and creative ability to redeem His perdition-bound children, regardless of the children’s ages- whether 10 or 90-in amazing ways!  The Almighty finds a way even when all the natural resources are shaky or depleted.

IN ALL YOUR WAYS

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.  In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths.” – Proverbs 3:5-6

Recently our minister, Joe Keyes, reminded our congregation about some important lessons he had recently picked up from Andy Stanley, who wrote a book entitled, The Principle of the Path.  Now, I know Joe well enough to know that he did not just now learn these lessons but has likelier just recently been reminded of them via a new viewpoint, another’s lenses.  (And that in itself is a lesson worth writing about: it behooves us to keep studying the Word through other’s vantage points—even parts of the Word, like this one, that a practical, fleshly part of ourselves wants to talk us into thinking we know inside out, backwards and forwards, so what’s the use in sowing into tired soil whose nutrients are long depleted? Another time.  Not today.)

He says, “Direction, not intention, determines our destination.”  Yes, exactly!  I remember as an English teacher who made her kids write in journals every Monday posting this quote on the board for twenty minutes’ worth of fourteen- and fifteen-year-old contemplation:  “If you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know when you get there?”  

The key to reaching a particular destination is to stick closely to the map.  A lack of commitment to the map, a laissez faire attitude toward one’s map is the best way to waste a lot of expensive gasoline.  A successful road trip to someplace we have never been requires that we trust our map or GPS and then back up that faith with strict adherence to its recommendations.  Anything less is foolhardy.

The key to showing up where we want to arrive in the Kingdom, both here and in the life to come, is utter, total submission to the One Authority.  Once we have identified the True Authority, we can no longer dilly-dally around with inferior would-be substitutes; we have to ignore all competition with the Authority.  Sometimes, at least with me, that is easier said than done.   Sometimes I am not successful at just passively ignoring the other  voices by angling my head a little so that my earballs are out of the direct line of fire; I have to actively do battle with the competition.  I have to speak the Truth out loud or stamp its imprint solidly and concretely upon paper.  Sometimes God has even arranged it so that someone else appears before me who needs to hear the very Truth I need to remember right then.  I am obliged then to open my mouth and speak it for the sake of us both.  Now you may think this is hypocrisy, but I heartily disagree because when I hear myself say it, or when I see myself write it, I am suddenly convicted of this Truth and realize that I have been in a fuzzy state about it until just now.  Oftentimes with me it is just as E.M. Forster said:  “How can I know what I think until I see what I say?”  

I wonder if because I have such a sixty years worth of tendency to speak impulsively and to say way too many words, God just arranged a way to teach me as all that is happening.  He might have thought, “Huh— if she is going to persist in being this way, I’ll find a way to meet her where she is.  I’ll just hijack her words on the way out of her mouth and on the way out of her fingers so that by the time they hit the air or the paper, she gets what I have been trying to get her to see all this time! She will think, ‘I think that? I never had a clue!’”

“Trust”— Lean only on Him for true understanding.  Don’t let the world interpret your Truth.

“All— Not just in some, but in all of your ways—Sunday ways through Saturday night ways; alone times and social times— acknowledge His authority.

…and He will make the best path known to us.  Solomon started well, but somewhere along the way, his “trust” became wobbly and his “all” became “some.”  A few hundred foreign wives in order to kowtow to political correctness, and bam!  He was somewhere he never intended to be.  He had leaned upon something other than God. Read Ecclesiastes to hear and feel his regret. Read 1 Kings 11 to see the far-reaching disaster to Israel’s moral fiber because of her once wise, but finally misguided, king.

I once heard somebody say that it is true that experience probably really is the best teacher, but it’s just plain stupid, with all the roadkill along the highways, to insist upon walking in front of an eighteen-wheeler.  Let us try to learn from Solomon’s experience.

OOPS!

Dear Friends,
This is just a note of apology.  I have heard that some of you received yesterday's post twice-- once last week and then again yesterday.  Yesterday when I was checking on something from my blog site, the post I thought I sent last week was marked only as having been written in draft form rather than actually being published, so I published it.  However, Larry said he DID already receive it last week.  I really don't know what's going on, but I'm sorry if I wasted your time yesterday by sending you an old, stale post. 

Thanks to all of you for your faithful following.

Love,
Jan

WAITING- A WOULD-BE POEM

For years a poem has been residing restlessly on the tip of my tongue.  Now, that is an odd thing for one like me, whose tongue has trouble holding onto anything that gets near it!  But for some reason, this poem, unlike hundreds of others that have spewed out ink all over white pages, just stays there in progress, unformed and waiting.  I don’t believe it is that I am not ready to say the thing or that the thing I want to say is not clearly established in my mind.  It just has never jelled into poetry yet.  It has occurred to me recently that this is no excuse for not saying it.  So here is the poem, in less than poetic delivery, that has been sitting on my back burner for so long.

Lord, we are all just waiting.  We act like we are busy with important things down here, but what we are really the busiest with is the waiting.  We want you to come back.  I know you expect us to be about the business of getting others ready for you, and I sure hope I am doing that.  I pray every morning to be vigilant about my opportunities for the day ahead, to be ready for “Yes” when the question comes up, and to resist “No” when I get goal-oriented about my own agenda.  But, God, honestly, so much of the time, I notice that what I am really doing is throwing myself into diversions, casting my energy toward some kind of distraction to make me not sigh that You’re still not back. 

Here we are down here planning meals, doing the laundry, doing spring cleaning, organizing our desk drawers.  We are going learning to use our new cameras, building tree houses, taking hikes, playing golf and bridge, and vacuuming our floors.  We are moving out of old houses into new ones, and buying new cars, and looking for the right college.  We are crocheting afghans and subscribing to magazines, learning to make perfect piecrust, and teaching our grandchildren to pitch washers and catch fish.  We plan, we go, we do… but mostly, we know that we are waiting.  We look upon the world you have left us in and glean its treasures and exult in its pleasures, but we yawn at night when we climb into bed knowing that it was a  fragment of only relative finery, a titillating diversion, a consolation prize while we wait for Life to begin.

Oh, it’s not that we don’t enjoy ourselves, Lord, and I certainly don’t mean to sound ungrateful for brown eggs discovered under red chickens and a largemouth bass wriggling and tugging but losing the battle on the end of my line. None of that elegance is lost on me.  All the ways you have given me to be re-created are utterly delightful in light of the frame of fallen-ness that seeks to swallow me whole.   The Prince of this World, the Enemy, prowls these parts, no matter where we find ourselves on this fragile orb. So, that we have such pleasures as reading a good book and listening to rapturous music, touching babies’ faces, and smelling paperwhites that make surprise visits out of the bleak, cold January brownness is no insignificant offering.  We accept them with humble gratitude and stuff our pockets full of them for rainy days ahead.

But all the while, we are really just finding something to do, some way to get by, ways to forget we are still on this side until You show up and we get to go Home. 

Am I doing it wrong?  Did You want me to put this down in some concrete, tangible form so that I would see something wrong in my viewpoint?  If I were really being used up for the right purposes, would I be less than eager for Your return, knowing every night when I finally lie down for a few hours, that there is still so much yet to be done?

 Instead of a would-be poem from me to You, is this really a letter from You to me?  Could the reason that I have never written the poem be that I am ashamed?