Christian Living
I was never very good with math in school. Looking back, I know that was my fault. Math is very precise. If, as you do your calculations, you leave out a step or carry the wrong zero, your product comes out wrong. You can get mad and throw your pencil across the room, as I did, when you think you’ve done everything right and still don’t get the right answer. But when you calm down and check it all out, you find an error in your judgment. Always. I could have blown my brains out in my anger that mathematical precision would not bend for what I knew to be right. The world would simply have been minus another fool and math would go on as it always has. Jesus might have said, “Ye do err, not knowing mathematical rules nor the precision of numbers.”
The Sadducees and Pharisees were always trying to trip Jesus up with some kind of lame hypothetical situation. From their point of view, given the scenario they would lay out, there were only a few possible answers, any of which would trap Jesus in a sticky situation where he could then easily be labeled liar, traitor or blasphemer. In their sinful delusion they thought (this is the delusion shared by all who are their own gods, in or out of the church) they could impose their view on reality simply because they agreed among themselves. In the false comfort of their implicit agreement, they believed they were right.
But as we know, in each case Jesus would easily sidestep their foolishness because He truly viewed all things as ruled by God. He had no conception of being able to rule anything with your own autonomous understanding. He began all His life equations with “man shall live by every word (Matt.4.4) that proceeds from the mouth of God.” The Sadducees and Pharisees always formulated life equations from the starting point that began with them in the position of God (inheriting from Adam the desire to know good and evil as they defined it); therefore their product always came out wrong. Jesus would always correct them by showing that their entire equation was wrong because the starting point was wrong, so it didn’t even make sense for them to expect a proper answer (except judgment). When they insisted on pushing their madness, He refused to answer or remained silent. (See Luke 20 or Jesus’ stance before Pilate)
With these things in mind consider how people often calculate life equations. There are still people who think a college degree translates into automatic employment. Their equation is easily disproved by the number of college grads without jobs in the areas of their training. They failed to take into consideration that what they trained for may not be in demand, or that even if it is they may have to go through a period of “paying their dues” before they’re considered employable.
This is an election year. People will be asked to vote and choose between one candidate and another. There are people who will not vote for Hillary Clinton but will vote for Barack Obama, and vice versa. But if you investigate you’ll see that you couldn’t squeeze a credit card between the policy positions of either candidate. Yet many will be voting thinking they will be getting different policies when the most they’ll be getting is different personalities.
If you check out the original equation on which America was established it was independent, decentralized states. No “federal government” or president was to preside over all the states except in a very limited way. If you had told people two hundred, even one hundred, years ago that a government authority was going to tax your property and require you to give your children up to a State controlled “education” system, they would have fought you over it. It’s why the Revolutionary War was fought. Little did they know what they fought to resist would become business as usual because nobody remembers the original equation. We’ve learned how to live with and love the wrong product from the faulty life equations we use. And since we all agree, we think we’re right.
The din of loud machinery, the rumble of many voices, makes us think that important things are going on. Maybe they are. You don’t know until you check it out. But we seem happy to leave that to others. A black man may be president. Yes, that is certainly something great to contemplate; certainly a history making event if it happens. But what happens if, in your joy of seeing a black man elected, you forget the part of the equation that would have told you what he’ll do. Just as it is said that a marriage can’t survive on love, a presidency can’t survive on historical novelty, charisma, promises, grand speeches or fake patriotism.
How often in this country have we endorsed a person or way of doing things that turned to dust after being put to the test? The “war on poverty” started in the 60’s. Who won it? Or did we pull out like Vietnam? No child left behind. Do you really believe that one? Global warming is the new call to arms. This from the same people who, in the 70’s, demanded that we fight against global cooling. In each case the original equations were never properly formulated. And in each case we do greatly err, not knowing, not even wanting to know, the power of anything except our own intractable and malignant arrogance.
What can the outcome possibly be without God reserving to Himself by sheer grace someone who won’t bow the knee to anyone but Him. You do the math.
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