Christian Living
A couple of headlines from the past several days…
JACKSON, Miss. - A state lawmaker wants to ban restaurants from serving food to obese customers - but please, don't be offended.
COCKEYSVILLE, Md. - A 15-year-old boy was charged with murder Sunday in the shooting deaths of his parents and two younger brothers in their suburban Baltimore home.
Now, though you might not think so, there’s a connection here.
Proverbs 8:36 - But he that sins against me wrongs his own soul: all they that hate me love death.
I just used this scripture recently in another commentary. The reason I’m doing so again is that I find it so central to current attitudes. So, how does this love of death manifest itself and how is it reflected in the two seemingly different situations above?
He that is not with me is against me. He who doesn't gather with me scatters… (Luke 11:23)
According to Christ there are only two positions with no middle ground. The lawmaker didn’t kill anyone. But his desire to regulate and control according to his personal preference is the primary characteristic of fallen man, to be as God and determine for himself what constitutes good or evil. He dispenses the effects of death through regulation. But since he does it the same way money is taken from our paychecks for taxes without us seeing it, we don’t pay attention to what he does unless it creates an obvious problem. He gives us death in small spoonfuls like Castor oil that we can manage.
While it still makes us shake our heads, it no longer surprises us to read of one member of the family killing the rest. Fathers shooting all the children or throwing them off bridges (as recently happened), mothers drowning babies in the bathtub, teenagers exploding and killing all with the shrapnel of extreme selfishness. I remember my sister used to have two hamsters in a cage. The female would get pregnant and have babies. The next day we would look in the cage only to see little feet and legs lying around the cage. This happened a number of times. It is a picture of man acting out Proverbs 8:36.
One person kills another in anger. Another passes a law that takes no life but chokes life in ways not immediately discernable, sending out invisible waves of death into society that aren’t noticed until they accumulate over the weary years. There is a difference between the teenager and the lawmaker only in degree, not in kind
Columbine High School, the Virginia Tech massacre, serial killers… these are the events we recognize where death hits everyone between the eyes and nobody has to wonder what happened. It confronts us in all its unmistakable horror. But a law or regulation is quietly passed. We don’t even know anything about it. It’s buried in pages of statutes in a law library and we are as unconscious of it as we are of walking over bones hiding under the earth. Yet, in due time, its cumulative effect joins that of other death ripples that never made a big enough splash on our consciousness by themselves. Then it is too late to stop the tsunami created by people we elected.
Jesus said that unless we see signs and wonders we won’t believe. Along that same line, unless we see an obvious killing we won’t believe that silent killing over time via laws and regulations is real. By the time we realize our selective blindness, the tsunami is upon us.
What can be done? Not much in the short run. The problem didn’t occur overnight and neither will the solution. Yet, we have to start somewhere. When I was younger and didn’t have any maturity regarding money, I was ready to spend whatever came into my hand with little regard for the future. Then, when I was broke, I whined about it. Over time I learned that if I didn’t regulate my money according to the rules of financial life I’d always be whining.
Likewise there are rules of life and death. Just because death may not happen immediately in every case is no reason to ignore it. You can ignore a bad diet in your youth but you’ll pay for it when you get older. No, I don’t follow those rules as well as I should. But I do consciously aim for them. I emphasize consciously because we let so much go by unconsciously until it confronts us at a later date and becomes too powerful to ignore. It should not be a choice of death by spoonfuls or death by tsunami.
There are those who appear to be more powerful because they are loud and because they have the microphone and the spotlight. They call attention to themselves and magnify themselves far beyond their actual importance like the shadows of midgets projected on a wall as giants. Life does not call attention to itself. It is content to sprout from a lone seed in a crack on a melting glacier that no eye even sees. It was content to raise a Man from a grave one day many years ago. And in all that power of Life, He was content to show up as a fellow traveler on the road or a Man just cooking breakfast on the beach.
So despite death’s loudness in dominating headlines and leaving a trail of destruction and waste that boggles the mind, it cannot overcome one quiet fact.
Yet where sin abounded, grace did much more abound… (Rom. 5:20)
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Every now and then I read an article that is like a "steel fist in a velvet glove." This is one of them. The two types of death, so called, may be a subject for debate, but whatever differences in perspective may arise from such a conversation; all our views, perspectives and opinions cannot but bow to the verse you ended this piece with. Excellent.
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