Iambic Pentameters - I got that.
(In Truth) I wanted to write this just under a month ago, but I was waiting to fully understand how I was gonna address this topic (I still don't really know, but I'll try my best.)
I believe that society has gone through an arc that spans about 3,000-ish years that has been guided by religion. Because of this there has been a span of various societies that are shaped by those religions and then the construct of those religions create their own trends or constructs, and to illustrate this i'll give a few examples.
After AD, most of the western world had a belief in God, whilst the middle east has stayed predominantly Muslim. Of recent times, the Gap between the growth of Christianity is in positive decline (it's still growing, but not as fast as some other counterparts, such as Islam and Atheism.) As of right now, I believe that the Christian population of the world is 31.5% at 2.2 Billion followers, Islam is 22.3% at 1.6 Billion followers and atheism or agnosticism sitting at 15.35% with about 1.1 Billion followers. for context, 6 years ago the percentage was 33%, so a 1.5% decline in the last 6 years. Now I understand that this is subjective, but if 1.5% of the population has "left"Christianity in the last 6 years, where in times past it has been dominative, what has happened in the mean time?
I believe the answer lies within two categories: first is to do with Job 13:15 "Though he slay me yet will i trust in him; but I will maintain mine own ways before him." Job in this instance is a great example of someone who rightfully decided to stick with God when the devil was trying to destroy his life. He lost his Children, his riches, everything, but refrained from cursing God. Even his wife told him that God had done all of these things to him and that he should curse God. The reason why so many of us summit to the temptation to curse God and call it quits when it may seem that he has abandoned us, is because of the half-truths that the devil presents us with, and this goes way back to the beginning with Adam and Eve. When Eve explains that God said that they would die if they eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the devil says in Genesis 3:4, “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
As a technicality, the serpent didn't seemingly really lie, as when they did eat the fruit, they where like an aspect of God - the Knowledge of Good and Evil. But what the devil was mis-selling to her was that they would become every aspect of God, in reference to the Omni-God (omnipotence, omnibenevolence etc.) - They could be god's within themselves and almost surpass god as human made god, and as they where then cast from the garden, we know that this is not the case.
The enemy is very good at propelling half-truths in our direction, and most of the time, they will address three main aspects of our world - Money, people, and Sex (Food may be a phantom 4th aspect.) This can be easily represented in moral decision questions, such as, if you saw someone drop £20, and you knew that they where wealthy enough that it would not affect them if you took it, would you? Most of us in that context in a hypothetical sense would return this money, but in reality would be swayed by a myriad of half-truths and false justifications that would lead us to take the money. It is in our nature to go for an easier route, and therefore when a shorter easier route leads to that rest or reward, we will take short cuts that have a short term gratification, rather than sticking to a loose path for the long term that leads to eternal paradise.
In the moral dilemma I presented with £20, the way many react is dependent most of the time on the subjectivity of your dispositional mental state of the time, your moral compass and your initial circumstances. if you are very well off, have a healthy moral compass and are happy, most likely you would return that money. But if you are not very well of, have a tendency to make ill-advised decisions and are unhappy at that particular moment, there is a larger margin for half-truths to be manifested. in the same way, if you are going through a hard time in your life, a different type of half-truths will manifest themselves, and therefore draw you further away from God, which is the first way people fall away from God.
The second way is related, and sometimes rises from the first way, and that has to do with Colossians 2: 8 - "Don’t let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from the spiritual powers of this world, rather than from Christ." If you read my First part of Breaking the Mould, you will understand the type of questions that arise sometimes from anger of a lack of God, sometimes because of genuine curiosity; The example I presented in that piece was "why does God create us to serve him?" These type of questions are fine to ask, as then knowledge is learnt if answered correctly, and through positive lens, but also with balance. The trap we sometimes fall into is trying to find a reason why what were asking reflects badly on Christianity or, worse, God, no doubt distancing ourselves from him. If questions like this are answered with all the possible variables, most often than not they do actually make sense, but the problem that we have is that our Societal structure is different and has evolved from the times of the Bible, and certain practices that don't make sense now, when evaluated to their time makes perfect sense. Now there are many things that I still don't understand, but I know that one, we don't need to have all the answers, and don't need all the answers straight away. Part of the beauty of the faith is that things are revealed in stages, and the same part of text can have several meanings, or apply to many different contexts.
The Key words in Colossians is not letting these philosophies"capture you" - Being scripturally aware that any question that you ask, or anyone else asks has a rational, but to be aware that God is the one to answer, not you. God doesn't expect us to know everything, as I said new meanings and cultural applications have been springing out of scripture for the last 2000 years, and it issn't stopping anytime soon. We as a church will never reach a point where we understand every possible cultural, theological, spiritual, realistic, practical aspect from the Bible. The most obvious reason why is because none of us existed then. Jesus' disciples saw his works at first hand, and still did not understand some of his teachings and parables. We have the hindsight of 2 millenia of scriptural revelation, church history, nation revival and so much more, and that puts us at the forefront of the faith. This doesn't diminish the works of the disciples, Abraham is no less great because of this hindsight, neither are any of the prophets. It just means that we have a different perspective of the same mission with God's prophetic hindsight, and that is to love God and follow his word. God obviously has vocations for all, some in ministry (such as myself I believe), some throughout there daily lives, but God has strategically placed vocation on all of our lives, and I believe the sooner we realise what that is, the greater potential we have pursuing the word of God. I think three are a few people who search for God's vocation on their life and don't realise that it is from right where they are - God has strategically placed them in a subjectively uncomfortable position and they think to themselves, unless God's punishing me I shouldn't be here in my life, I should be ministering to people who want to listen. Your template of God's plan on your life isn't God's template its yours. you've placed God in a box and because of that you yourself have limited what he is able to do in your life. I know this doesn't apply to everyone, but I think it does a-lot of people.
I think that the third reason (arguably as notable as the first two) is that quite a few people don't want to completely submit their lives to God or submit at all because of one the "Bureaucracy" that seems to surround Christianity on the whole, and because they believe " Well, I wanna do the things I wanna do, and fully submitting my life to some-one I can't see, to find out I was wrong all along? that's a waste of time, man." Our world today is so pessimistic, because pessimism correlates to profit in media. If the stock horribly crashes, we're much more likely to hear about it than if it dramatically rises in the same way; we as human beings statistically count losses twice as much as gain. Therefore if we hear about something wrong we are more likely to focus on it. Think about all the stories about famous people and their successes, and think of all the news stories about the downfall of famous people. Downfall makes headlines, which makes profit. I'd say that beside entertainment, Media is the way quite a-lot of us are affected, next to politics. Politics in honesty is the same story, and conglomerate catastrophe or problems is what politics is based around in order to thrive; if no-one ever questioned the leading party, we would live in an even more broken governmental system.
What i'm trying to saying here is that through the world and experiences, (for (sometimes) good reason) we think overtly negatively about every situation that comes into our minds. Now i'm not stupid or plainly ignorant, I know about catastrophes that go on in the world and has continued throughout all of human history, and in the same way, the Bible does not convey a perfect picture of the world. It does largely the opposite. All of the miracles that Jesus did, they arose out of problems they already had. In John 11 God raises Lazarus from the dead, but if any of you know the story, you will know that Mary complains to Jesus when he arrives, saying that If he had been there earlier, Lazarus would not have died. And do you want to know how Jesus felt? the shortest Verse in the Bible, John 11:35,"Jesus wept". There are many reasons why Jesus may be crying, But we know it's because of some sin he'd committed against Mary. Mary was speaking out of the guilt of Lazarus' death, Jesus new that, and I think this is why he wept, no because he agreed, but because that is how she felt. there's in an argument about the undermining of Jesus power as well, but I'll leave that to one side.That is how many people treat God today. " why didn't you help us, where you too busy to help us?" Even Jesus himself felt the same way on the cross but in a slightly different way. When Jesus was on the cross. in Matthew 27:45, it says - 46 About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli,[c] lemasabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”). Jesus wasn't complaining, he'd already submitted, but he felt God wasn't really responding to his suffering. He just wanted to know where he was. And I understand that that in itself is a complex image, God separating himself from Jesus who is also part and the same in the triune God.
What I'm trying to get at is in these situations Jesus, Fully God and Fully man has experienced as a man the same as all of us from both sides, both that feeling of abandonment from the cross, and the feeling that others think that he abandoned them with Mary. But he always responds with love and relationship. When Mary complains, scripture says : 41 So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.” Even Jesus addresses God the father, submitting to his authority and says I trust you. These people don't know what you are capable of, but I trust you and submit. He goes to his relationship with the father and consults his father before then Raising Lazarus from the dead. On the opposing side on the cross Jesus himself felt abandoned by God, and instead of fighting back, trying to perform a miracle to save himself as the people where saying to prove himself, he instead mutually submitted and obeyed God, because remember he could have saved himself, and that's what makes his sacrifice so profound. God knew that he had submitted to human authority through his baptism, and he had submitted to his authority through his 40 days in the wilderness, and could trust him to submit to him at his toughest moment in order that we might be saved. Jesus as a part of the triune God in these situations was probably the most viable out of all of us to just throw in the towel, and refuse to summit to authority, but even he decided to humble himself.
The example that Jesus set is a profound one, because it states against stereotypes, that God is always there, even when he doesn't seem to be. That is not, everything is going to be alright, but that God's plan will be fulfilled if you trust him. That doesn't mean that he doesn't care about you unless you serve him, it means ehe cannot have a relationship with him until you come to that realisation.
I think it's hard for us to see as christians how God has blessed people, because we are in the mind-frame of financial success. All of the biggest names to us seem to be led by other faiths, all the big media entertainers seem to govern platforms, and why? because as i said earlier the World is governed by three aspects, Money, people, and Sex. In the World there are no religious bounds to exploit any of these fields. Money can be manipulated, people can be manipulated, and so can explicit image, and you can be successful. I'm not saying that the world has no moral bounds, that's absurd, I just think that many of those things would in the world just make you a bad person, and no legal repercussions can come out of that. Mind you, there are many who rise to the top through sheer will, and sheer determination, and I understand that that is the majority of successful people, but even in that aspect, there are still aspects of living that are viable that would not be viable for me for example. People won't feel guilty on things they used to know was wrong because they've suppressed the guilt related to that event. One of the people I admire ( and I think he may be a christian anyway, as he said "God placed the best things in life on the other side of fear",) is Will Smith. He to me, even if he is a non-christian, is very much a positive cultural icon that in his later years has had the time of his life, and recently said that he wants to give back to the world, and that's what his dreams are. I think this is so profound that someone is able to be so positively influential. That shows what the world is capable of but not what it conglomerately represents. when Jesus prays for his disciples before he's arrested, in regards to his disciples he says this in John 17:14 - " I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world." As we are also his disciples, this means we are not of the world and the world hates christianity (and more profoundly Judaism as Jesus was jewish.) This means that we need to uphold our christian values regardless of the world. This doesn't mean that we hate the world, We are disciples and he calls us to be disciples of nations - You can't disciple people you hate; the word says in 2nd corinthians 6:14, " Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers." That doesn't mean condemn all believers so help me God, it just means that you should not be largely influenced by them, and that when you are supported by the backbone of God and other believers, you will be on a better path.
to wrap up, Do not be tricked or mistaken about the lifestyle of successful people, realise what success really means to you and enquire to God were he requires you, and if they are at a parallel, great, if not ask God to warm you heart towards it, or to help guide you on that path. Second, follow the word and stick to that straight and narrow, and surround yourself with God and a healthy church to saturate yourself in. And last of all going back to that Original point of half- truths, don't fall for lies and half-truths that the devil presents, because sometimes it won't be plainly obvious so ask for God's guidance to stand strong in faith.
I will leave two links, First is to a spoken word piece by Kirk Franklin, losing my religion from his album losing my religion, and the second one is a talk by Tim Ross, and there were so many profound messages that God revealed in under an hour, when I tell you I was hyped, major realisations blew my mind, strongly recommend.
Peace, and God bless.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kM_yX-GzrGY&feature=youtu.be
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