Thursday, September 5, 2019
Oh, the joys of those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or stand around with sinners, or join in with mockers. But they delight in the law of the Lord, meditating on it day and night. They are like trees planted along the riverbank, bearing fruit each season. Their leaves never wither, and they prosper in all they do. But not the wicked! They are like worthless chaff, scattered by the wind. They will be condemned at the time of judgment. Sinners will have no place among the godly. For the Lord watches over the path of the godly, but the path of the wicked leads to destruction. Psalm 1:1-6
Just like following a beam of
light from earth all the way back to the sun, if you follow the anger beam back
to its’ source, you will discover angry apocryphal arrogance. The first Psalm is a study in the effects of
what went wrong in humankind. For anyone
who has ever wondered from whence sprung all the anger, violence, and lack of
decency in our world, it is the outcropping of the seeds of sin; when we fail
to obey God, the only other choice is to embrace being the enemy of God, and
that requires anger and death.
It seems ludicrous that anyone
would choose death and decay over life and love, but it doesn’t happen
overnight. In angry apocryphal arrogance,
the apocryphal or mythical part is how we got where we
are; it is the steady beam of fading light away from God’s presence. It is what happens when people begin the turn
away from God to self. On a cosmic scale, there is not a single human
who hasn’t experienced that[2]. On a personal level it is played out very
young. The first time a child realizes
the one holding him back from grabbing something he wants, the seeds of
rebellion and sin begin to sprout. That
creates an anger and resolve to have that toy, or hissing snake, no matter the
cost.
The Psalmist traces the
behavior and fate of those who (eventually) choose godliness over
selfishness. The good prosper; evil
dies. This is seen in the psyche of the
child that is grasping the forbidden object for the first time. Instead of intense and growing satisfaction
at having what was heretofore taboo, there is a growing sense of guilt and
shame at having defiled the relationship between child and parent. As a child you did feel that thing inside
about disappointing Mom and Dad, didn’t you?
The antidote we humans seem to
prefer is to begin (and keep on) telling ourselves some version of a fairy tale
that we’re ok, when evidence to the contrary keeps building up. Over the course of time we begin to believe
the lie and mock the truth. This is the
progression of sin…we entertain sin, begin to listen to its advice, and finally
adopt it as righteousness. Our childhood
angst over this hard-wired guilt is turned into self-righteousness, and, in a
frantic (but futile) attempt to gain a foothold of respectability, we repeat
the lie so often that I’m OK; you’re OK, we wind up
validating a searing of our conscience.
As Scripture states it, we earn ourselves a hardened heart[3],
but whistle in the dark about how good we really are!
News bulletin: That didn’t work in Noah’s day when the raindrops
began falling!
For You Today
The world’s culture all around
you will sneer at the goodness God wants to create in your life. Mocking is a natural response to anything
Godly. What God-followers do is listen
to the Holy Spirit who prods us to reject this world and be transformed by God’s
light. Darkness and Light are locked in
an eternal struggle; and we must choose how we will walk every day, covered in
God’s light, or stumbling in evil’s darkness.
You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.
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[1]
Title Image: Courtesy of Pixabay.com Unless
otherwise noted, Scripture used from The
New Living Translation©
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