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| William F. Maddock |
St.
Louis can be a hard, cold place. The people here (the rich,
the elites) love to uphold and declare themselves to be the very
picture of a paragon—while the poor
die in the streets—and
their towers of stone and glass and steel wage war against the
consciences of men.
There
is no reprieve—and,
it seems, no reproach—for there
seems to be nothing that will reach whatever is left of that stone
cold thing they claim to be a heart. While men get shoved
around like so much verminous cattle they hide in their stone cold
towers from the consciences of men—and
there is no love that I see within their souls.
Indeed,
they remind me of the Pharisees of old, thinking themselves righteous
because they hold the whip, thinking themselves pure because there
are no scars of whips on them. They scorn, accuse, demean, belittle
and beslander those whom they see as polluting their precious little
view of life, while never seeing the poison that they themselves
spew. They would cross oceans to convert another to their way—and
then they make them twice the child of hell that they themselves
are.1
There
is, though, another power, one that they have no comprehension of
which to wield. It is a power that they can never understand, a power
that they will never accept for what it is, for they have rejected
the Truth and cannot discern their lies.
Despite
their best efforts, there is such a thing as the Law of
Non-contradiction.
You cannot be tolerant while at the same time being intolerant of
that with which you disagree. You cannot be generous while at the
same time working in such a way that the poor die in the streets
where you live. You cannot be a man of
Christian faith while at the same time refusing to do what Christ has
commanded to
be done.
“Away
from me, you workers of iniquity! I
never knew you!
2
For I was hungry and you gave me no food! I was thirsty and you gave
me no drink! I was a stranger and you did not invite me in; naked and
you threw no clothes around me; sick or in prison and you did not
visit me!”3
I
say,
to my shame, that when a ministering friend of mine forcefully
requested that I give to the poor I got angry with her—because I
thought I had nothing to give.
God
has otherwise educated me.
I,
therefore, did not get livid when my corporate vice-president brother
claimed financial inability as his reason for refusing to help me
keep my home. Since becoming a homeless man, he is the only member of
my immediate earthly family to even attempt to contact me, inquiring
as to how I was. Two of my other siblings had birthdays coming up, so
I waited until those were both well past before I replied, so that
they could not claim my reply as their gift.
When
I did reply I told my brother that the appropriate help he could give
me was to help the poor where he lives.
I
have not heard back from him in the years since.
Such
is the heart of the elite and the rich. They think of themselves as
such wonderfully good people—because
they cannot discern their lies.
The
rich man who refuses to help his own poor brother inquires as to the
condition of that brother and gets told by that brother that his
proper assistance would be to help the poor where he lives—and
he never replies back again.
Such
is the heart of those who think themselves good. So effectively
blinded are they that they cannot see their own wickedness. They
cannot discern their own lies.
I
have, however, mentioned a power that is beyond them—a
power that they cannot wield, for they have rejected it when they
rejected the Truth.
What,
therefore does the Scripture say?
“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.”4
When
they reject the Truth, living in their lies, they reject the One who
is
the Truth, and thereby cut themselves off from the very one who could
rescue them from the lies that, now, they are
blind to and cannot discern.
Beloved,
be not like them.
Do
not be sucked up, dismantled and devoured by the lies of this world,
as they have so willingly and blithely been, but be transformed by
the power of the Truth.5
The
Truth comes down to us from days of old through the teachings and
writings of those who have faithfully researched and examined the
writings and the lives of the Apostles, Prophets and Scribes of our
Lord and Savior and King, Jesus Christ. Having looked to Him in
faith, they now point us to His Light.
Out
of the darkness He beckons us to flee, to flee out of our night of
sin and into His glorious Light. He has made a path for us through
the wilderness; a straight path that leads to the cross of Christ. He
is the door, He is the gate,6
He is the Way, the Truth, the Life, and through Him we must go. There
is no other way for us to go to heaven but through Him.4
As it is written in the gospel accounts, alluding to a dream of
Jacob7
in the book of Genesis, Jesus Christ is the stairway to Heaven, and
there is no other.8
How,
though, does one demonstrate the presence of a genuine faith in Jesus
Christ? That really is not something to be worrying about and
strategizing over (for God, through you, will provide His own
testimony about you—and you will not be able to thwart it), except,
beloved, for this one thing: You are to be examining, or prosecuting,
yourself to see that you are indeed saved.9
So, you are not demonstrating yourself (which the hypocrites do in
seeking to be honored by men), but testing yourself, so that you
may know of the reality of your salvation.
In
our day and age the possibility of faking faith in Jesus Christ is
being demonstrated quite well by those who want to appear oh so
terribly egalitarian—while stomping all over the inherent rights of
others who live according to their own beliefs rather than the
beliefs that these wish to force upon them. Again, though, these have
rejected the Truth, and, therefore, cannot discern their own lies.
As
is abundantly clear from a simple, open minded perusal of the
Constitution of these United States, everyone
has the right, endowed by their Creator (in other words, not by other
people, but by that higher, unassailable authority), to actually
exercise the
beliefs to which they hold. Those
who seek to force their lifestyle on others frequently, and
conveniently, forget that immediately following the Establishment
Clause is the Prohibition Clause, which states with extraordinary and
abundant clarity that the free exercise of religion shall not be
prohibited. But they don’t see that because they reject the Truth.
Why
go on this little side excursion? It is, part and parcel, the same
thing. Those who shove people around as though they are nothing, who
treat people like cattle, caring not whether they live or die, who
scorn, accuse, demean, belittle and beslander, think themselves
better.
They
cannot discern their own lies.
Such
people believe that they are worth more, that because of that their
wishes (they might even mislabel them as “rights”) should quite
naturally supersede those of others, and that those others should,
therefore, be forced to follow the desires of those who think
themselves better. After all, compared to them, you are worthless
scum.
They
think that they are here for a purpose and you are just window
dressing. That is their view. And if you believe that they do not see
you that way, then you are foolish and deluded. That is their view:
that this is their world, it’s all about them, so you can either
bow down and obey them or leave.
Well,
no.
How
high do you think Mount Everest looks from 30 billion light years
away? That, metaphorically, is God’s view of us. So far is He above
us all that our petty little differences pale into non-sequiturism.
All are one10
in His sight, and even slaves have rights.11
Do you recall Jesus’ response when asked which is the greatest
commandment? Do you recall the one He called second? “You shall
love your fellowman as yourself.”12
And the word there translated as “love” is the Greek word
αγαπησεις,
which means that you sacrifice yourself
for the sake of. You don’t treat them as rightless refuse; you
don’t treat them as cattle to be herded about; you don’t treat
them as vermin. No. You treat them as more important than yourself.
You sacrifice yourself for their
sake—even if they be a
slave—because
even slaves have rights.11
The
irony here is that they want to portray an air of egalitarianism, but
egalitarianism means that all are equal. As I have written above,
they cannot discern their own lies.
God
has a law, and those who refuse even the most basic implementation of
it shall draw His ire, so do not stand with such people, lest that
ire also consume you.
What
is the foremost truth about the poor, the destitute, the
vermin-plagued, indeed the homeless? They are people,
and people have rights—rights
that you violate at the peril of your own soul.
That
simple assertion, “people have rights”, is a consequential one.
You don’t get to choose
whose rights you will honor and whose ignore. They are all people.
They are all equal—and
even the homeless have rights.
1Matthew
23:15
2Matthew
7:23
3Matthew
25:42-43
4John
14:6
5Romans
12:2
6John
10:7-9
7Genesis
28:12
8John
1:51
92
Timothy 2:15
10Galatians
3:28
11Colossians
4:1
12Matthew
22:39
