Disturbing Days |
Let's engage in some sanctified imagination. Imagine you, as a believer in Jesus, lived in the first century under the Roman dictatorship. Imagine that everything you had could be confiscated legally/illegally at any moment and you would have no legal recourse. Imagine you have no healthcare not to mention antibiotics, and you lived with many chronic medical and dental conditions and symptoms. Imagine how you would feel and how you would respond if one of your children was kidnapped by the government or beaten by street dwellers or raped with no legal consequences. Imagine if you had no voice in government or in most of society. Imagine you and your family had to be exposed to moral filth or homosexuality, transvestites, and all manner of perversion and were unable to get away from it and its pervasive influence in your life. Imagine you are ordered to affirm the gods of the state, and if you ever talked about Jesus or went to a gathering of Christians, you would be thrown in jail to either die slowly by being forgotten or die quickly in the arena for someone’s entertainment. Now, consider the challenging words of the New Testament. If someone slaps you on the cheek turn and give them the other cheek. Be patient, tender-hearted, kind to all men. Pray for Nero and pray for all government officials. Don’t lie. Do not steal. Give generously to others. Living in the corrupt first-century and living by the precepts of the Christian faith as described in the New Testament seem very incongruent, and yet that is what Jesus calls us to do. But I wonder if you can actually live that way in that kind of environment apart from the power and the filling of the Holy Spirit? Can you genuinely manifest the fruit of the Spirit in an authentic way apart from the power of the Spirit in your life? To ask the question is to answer it. Living in 21st century America, it’s not that difficult to pray for my government or be patient with bad drivers or move away from foul-mouthed people or turn the channel from something that I do not like. If someone tried to hurt my family, I would have no problem with a first strike and then calling the police. It is not that difficult paying taxes or obeying the moral commandments in the New Testament in my American 21st-century comfortable world. I can actually do it without the power of the Spirit because I’ve been accustomed to and benefitted from the influence of Christianity and its civic form of religion all of my life. However, this is a dangerous situation because it can deceive me into thinking that I am actually being spiritual when I am not. The flesh loves to take credit and act as a counterfeit. It is all too easy to fake it or live fraudulently without most people noticing. But God notices. To say we are living in troubling times is an understatement. To realize that times may become terrible does not sound that extreme. I am not a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I believe we need to prepare for the coming days. The best way to live this day in this world is to remember there is coming a future day and a future world. And as we live today, we must live under the power of the filling of the Holy Spirit to guide and control our attitudes and actions. Ethics and eschatology always go together in the Bible. And so, we need to have holy conduct with a heavenly outlook. Serving Him with you until He comes for us, Fred |