Life Matters - March 20, 2024
This journey through time to eternity is indeed treacherous, is it not? Many are the ways in which our faith is tested, our purpose tried, our flesh tempted, our minds pressured to veer from the safe, sane, and narrow way leading to the bliss and glory we innately wish for. We have a sense of good, a knowing of right, a desire for truth, in short, a sense of eternity in our hearts. God has woven natural law into the complex tapestry of nature. And then underscored it all by instructing us to do unto others even as we want others to do to us. We innately know that instruction to be right and good, that if we all do so the whole of society will benefit, even ourselves, because “what goes around, comes around.”
The devil’s tactics, for his own nihilistic ends, have been the harnessing of natural law to carnal desires for the purpose of seeing mankind self-destruct. There is a word for that, it is called ‘’hate.’’ The devil hates all good things, all right things, and above all, he hates God. The devil hates God’s creation and that hate includes a hatred for the very natural law that he uses wherever he can. We read of that hatred manifesting itself in Sodom and Gomorrah, two cities whose names have become synonymous for wickedness when it goes beyond the laws of nature into the dark realm of unnatural wickedness.
Our understanding of natural law must always be tested and coincide with God’s Word, understood by His Spirit. God’s law of Holy Love overreaches all others, so we cannot say that if we want to feel unconditionally accepted in our sins that we should then unconditionally accept others in their sins. Much rather, we should first repent “removing the beam from our own eye” and then see how we can help the other. After all, we are on a treacherous journey. In the realm of life here, if we saw our neighbor’s child toddling onto a busy highway or their children playing close to vipers, love would spring us into action. The devil’s way is to first blind us to spiritual dangers and then to lull us into a state of sluggish lethargy.
Many expressions of Christianity have struggled against spiritual lethargy and built great institutions of learning for the purpose of steering their young students towards an accepted expression of Bible doctrine and understanding. Oxford University (begun in the 14th century) was established in England by the Anglican church: Harvard, (1643) whose original motto was “Veritas Christo et Ecclesia,” (Latin: Truth for Christ and the Church) was established by Puritans in Boston, Massachusetts, who in their own words were; “dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches when our present ministers shall lie in dust.” Yale, (1757) was established by Congregationalists (Jonathan Edwards) in New Haven, Connecticut: Brown, (1746) by Baptists in Providence, Rhode Island: Princeton, (1746) by Presbyterians in Princeton, New Jersey: Dartmouth, (1769) by mission-minded evangelists in Hanover, New Hampshire.
There have been many others too numerous to mention here, but the above are likely the most familiar names in higher learning. But rather than ‘’higher’’ learning, Harvard faculty, especially, have been sinking ever lower and Adam Barnes reported in August of 2021 that “Harvard University, which was founded to instruct clergymen in the colonial period, has had a humanist chaplain since 2005 and now has a new chief chaplain, (then) 44 year-old Greg Epstein who self identifies as an atheist.” Said Epstein to the New York Times, “There is a rising group of people who no longer identify with any religious tradition, but still experience a real need for conversation and support around what it means to be a good human and live a good life.’’ Epstein is, we trust ignorantly, talking natural law while denying the very God who wove natural law into His own creation. Is it not ironic that one so learned should be so unlearned? (1 Corinthians 3:19)
Perhaps the rampant unbelief in Salem, a town established by Puritans when they built First Church in 1634, is a ripple effect reaction to the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, during which time otherwise harmless citizens of Salem were accused of witchcraft, put on trial, condemned, and summarily executed for their spiritual “crimes.” Fourteen women and four men were killed by hanging them from a tree, spaced out over a period of many months and another man was gruesomely stoned to death. After a period of many more months, an outside committee investigated the “spiritual purging” of Salem and determined all 19 to have been innocent, based upon the lack of evidence, the only ‘’evidence’’ having been spectral. Spectral ‘’evidence’’ exploited by 2 conniving young girls, joined by others, and taken up by zealous but ignorant city officials. A motive has never been determined for the girls (they were never put on trial) but speculation history has it that they likely became entrapped in their own desire for self-protection and/or popularity as fear reigned in the courtroom. In another twist of irony, ‘’salem’’ (the English rendering for ‘’shalom’’ in Hebrew) means peace.
The journey is indeed treacherous. We need God and each other.
Life Matters!