Wednesday, September 4, 2019

The Struggle Between Good and Evil

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©
[2] Romans 3:23, Romans 5:12
[3] Matthew 13:15, Jeremiah 17:9

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