Musing
upon things can be a most beneficial way of arriving at solutions,
but
in order for this to be the case you have to be willing to face
solutions that you do not like, or the exercise becomes little more
than a braying after the wind.
This
is a dangerous thing, because even the simple act of having written
that foregoing sentence can become an invitation to those who think
too highly of their intellectual prowess, for we, also, should not
think too highly of our own. There is a danger, you see, of
forgetting the dimly lit hallways of our own intellectual past,
before we knew the One who is the Way and the Truth and the Life. We
did not form our own mental acuity because we did not form our own
mental being.
In
today’s society there is a most annoying tendency to think that no
one should ever receive anything unless they have paid for it. The
next time you run into someone who supports that silly notion, ask
them this question: “Whom did you pay in order to receive life, and
where is your receipt?” We did not form our own mental acuity
because we did not form our own mental being. It is not something
that we earned; it was freely given.
In
the same manner, we should not lord it over those who have been
gifted differently than we have, for their gifts will put us to
shame. Each of us has been made for a purpose, and that purpose does
not include flapping our arms about and crying out “Hey! Look at
me!”
Many
years ago there was an advertising campaign for a large financial
corporation that always concluded with a line about how they got
where they were, “We earned it!”
That’s
how society wants us all to be, wants every aspect of existence to
be, that you work endlessly—for
something that will blow away in the wind, like so much chaff from
the threshing floor, when your time comes. Fiddlesticks! The world
wants to keep you a slave, so it demands that you work and work and
work and work… until you cannot work
anymore. And then, the system that held riches and glory out before
you like an apple held out in front of a reluctant horse, will throw
you aside, onto the trash heap of history, never once giving you
anything at all like what you were promised—all
the happiness, all the joy, all the relaxation of the ultimate
carefree life—but leaves you broken and in pain and anguish, and
caring nothing at all about the life that has been destroyed by the
Satanic deceptions that so ensnare the weak-minded among us.
Am
I saying that the world owes you a living? No. But it does owe you
the Truth. The problem there, though,
is that the world at large wouldn’t know the Truth if it came up
and slapped them in the face. There is
a quote that I like to use, and you see it every month in the
masthead of this newsletter. “When a person has—whether
they knew it or not—already
rejected the Truth, by what means do they discern a lie?”
You
see, my friend, the world at large has already rejected the Truth,
and is willingly and wantonly living a lie—and
a most profligate one, indeed. The
Truth has been openly proclaimed before them for well nigh these
2,000 years. As it is written, “I
AM the Way and the Truth and the Life; not even one even turns in the
general direction of the Father if not in Me!”
He
stood before Pilate when the
question was uttered,
“What is Truth?”
The
fact that He
stayed silent upon the utterance of that question is a damning thing!
There
He stood, and, the question asked, said nothing in response. Was He
condemning the questioner, or was the questioner condemned already?
After all, it is written, “He
who does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed
in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”
There
is no other fact that matters nearly so much as the identity of the
Truth. Muse upon it all you like, the
fact remains the same, because
the Truth cannot change, but is ever
and always the Truth.
Think
about it.
Really.
Think
about it.
If
the Truth were able to change, then what is it when it is not the
Truth? What was it before it was the Truth and what will it be after?
That
which chameliates in order to fit what people think is a deception
and a lie. It is designed to deceive and not to enlighten; to darken
and enslave and not to free.
If
the Truth can chameliate so that it is true one moment and false the
next, then upon what do you base the living of your life for the sake
of reliability and safety? That traffic signal ahead, is it green or
not? The railroad crossing, is the gate opened or closed? What is
Truth? Is that big rig, loaded for bear and flying along and bearing
down on you, there or not? Is the train imminent to the crossing or
not?
What
is Truth?
Spare
me the idiocy that claims that Truth can change; that it can be one
thing for one person while being the direct opposite for another. The
Truth does not chameliate!
Disguises
do that—not the Truth!
Disguises
are there to deceive, not to enlighten. They
work to
make things appear bigger than they are, or to not be where they are,
or even to not be what they are, perhaps
in order to shield from observation in a wicked place, but they
are there to perpetrate a lie so that the Truth be not known to the
observer.
The
Truth does not deceive, but simply speaks that which is True.
The
Truth does not care whether you like it or not, but simply presents
accurately that which is true. The one who would decry the Truth as
being painful or uncompassionate is the person who would blame a
light bulb for the contents of a closet when
they should clean the closet and leave the bulb in peace to do its
job.
One
of the many Truths of life is that we did not make ourselves, but
were made. That which begins to exist has a beginning and was caused
to begin. It was caused to begin by something other than itself
because, before it existed it did not exist in order to be the cause
of itself. It is, therefore, disqualified from causing itself.
This
is simple, basic, and ordinary logic, and yet, there are so many who
will wail and moan and gnash their teeth at the sound of it because
it is not what they want to hear.
Such
people are braying after the wind. They are so deceived by the
concept that they have rights; that they can earn. Surely, in the
economic sense this is possible, but not in the righteous sense, “for
there is no one righteous, not even one, no
one that understands, no one seeking after God. All have turned aside
and become useless; no one does good; there is not even one.”
People
will even bray against that. But if their complaint is well founded,
what, then, is the source of the saying, “I’m not perfect; I’m
only human”?
“All
have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
This is the light bulb in the closet, and it is on, and you cannot
turn it off. But here’s the real problem: you also cannot clean
that closet. It is there, unalterably, as a testimony against you.
But
God (Oh! How I love that phrase: But God)!
But
God, who is
the Truth, has provided the Way; a way that you cannot pay for, and
that you cannot earn. It is a way that is gifted to you so that you
may live the Life that you have not earned, but to which you are
called.
It
is a calling upon which to act and to muse.
