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| Let your speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each person. [Colossians 4:6]
Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear. [Ephesians 4:29]
In the age of the internets, acronyms are ubiquitous. Given the verses above, do you think it is appropriate for a Christian to use acronyms online that represent phrases with unwholesome meaning? Particularly disturbing to me recently is the common use of "FML." It's tossed on casually to the end of a statement about something going wrong... but does using the acronym make you feel like you haven't crossed a line that you would if you actually wrote out, "Fuck my life"? Is the latter undesirable where the former one is not?
Discuss. | | |
| From The Silver Chair:
Then came the Witch's voice, cooing softly like the voice of a wood-pigeon from the high elms in an old garden at three o'clock in the middle of a sleepy, summer afternoon; and it said:
"What is this sun that you all speak of? Do you mean anything by the word?"
"Yes, we jolly well do," said Scrubb.
"Can you tell me what it's like?" asked the Witch (thrum, thrum, thrum went the strings).
"Please it your Grace," said the Prince, very coldly and politely. "You see that lamp. It is round and yellow and gives light to the whole room; and hangeth moreover from the roof. Now that thing which we call the sun is like the lamp, only far greater and brighter. It giveth light to the whole Overworld and hangeth in the sky."
"Hangeth from what, my lord?" asked the Witch; and then, while they were all still thinking how to answer her, she added, with another of her soft, silver laughs. "You see? When you try to think out clearly what this sun must be, you cannot tell me. You can only tell me it is like the lamp. Your sun is a dream; and there is nothing in that dream that was not copied from the lamp. The lamp is the real thing; the sun is but a tale, a children's story."
"Yes, I see now," said Jill in a heavy, hopeless tone. "It must be so." And while she said this, it seemed to her to be very good sense.
Slowly and gravely the Witch repeated, "There is no sun." And they all said nothing. She repeated, in a softer and deeper voice. "There is no sun." After a pause, and after a struggle in their minds, all four of them said together. "You are right. There is no sun." It was such a relief to give in and say it.
"There never was a sun," said the Witch.
"No. There never was a sun," said the Prince, and the Marsh-wiggle, and the children.
For the last few minutes Jill had been feeling that there was something she must remember, at all costs. And now she did. But it was dreadfully hard to say it. She felt as if huge weights were laid on her lips. At last, with an effort that seemed to take all the good out of her, she said:
"There's Aslan."
"Aslan?" said the Witch, quickening ever so slightly the pace of her thrumming. "What a pretty name! What does it mean?"
"He is the great Lion who called us out of our own world," said Scrubb, "and sent us into this to find Prince Rilian."
"What is a lion?" asked the Witch.
"Oh hang it all!" said Scrubb. "Don't you know? How can we describe it to her? Have you ever seen a cat?"
"Surely," said the Queen. "I love cats."
"Well a lion is a little bit - only a little bit, mind you - like a huge cat - with a mane. At least, it's not like a horse's mane, you know, it's more like a judge's wig. And it's yellow. And terrifically strong."
The Witch shook her head. "I see," she said, "that we should do no better with your lion as you call it, than we did with your sun. You have seen lamps, and so you imagined a bigger and better lamp and called it the sun. You've seen cats, and now you want a bigger and better cat, and it's to be called a lion. Well, 'tis a pretty make-believe, though, to say truth, it would suit you all better if you were younger. And look how you can put nothing into your make-believe without copying it from the real world, this world of mine, which is the only world. But even you children are too old for such play. As for you, my lord Prince, that art a man full grown, fie upon you! Are you not ashamed of such toys? Come, all of you. Put away these childish tricks. I have work for you all in the real world. There is no Narnia, no Overworld, no sky, no sun, no Aslan. And now, to bed all. And let us begin a wiser life tomorrow. But first, to bed; to sleep; deep sleep, soft pillows, sleep without foolish dreams."
I cannot help wondering - if Eustace and Jill had been able to explain nuclear fusion, would they have been more convinced that there is such a thing as the sun? If they had recalled lectures on electrostatic forces and nuclear forces, hydrogen and helium, thermal radiation - would they have been more able to counter the Witch's dismissal of the sun as nothing more than a glorified lamp?
Or, if they had recalled that the domestic cat and the lion both belong to the family Felidae, but one is Felis catus while the other is Panthera leo, and thus they are not the same at all, would they have found it easier to dispute the claim that a lion is just a large domestic cat?
I think we often fail to distinguish between the things of heaven and the things of earth because we do not understand enough about either to see clearly. When we don't take the time to learn the things we ought to know, it is easy for the enemy to muddle right and wrong, to make sin seem like righteousness, and to disguise pride and folly as justice and fair play. The things of earth seem no different than the things of heaven, and we wonder why we carry a cross when others around us seem to have no such burden.
How do we learn more? How do we understand more deeply? How do we see more clearly so that we can put aside the lies and lusts of this world and faithfully do the work which has been set out for us to do?
Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Ephesians 6:11-17 | | |
| From a previous post: "How much do I really believe that God's way is ultimately more satisfying than the world's?"
Not to be excessively indulgent in my own thoughts (which is something I tend to do... sometimes), but this is something that I've been thinking about... well, since March 2008, apparently. It goes something like this.
God promises that obedience to His commandments is blessed, both generally and in very specific instances (Deuteronomy 28:1-14, Psalm 24:4-5, Malachi 3:10, John 13:12-17, James 1:25, etc.). Obviously, we all disobey (Romans 3:23). So there is this constant struggle within a Christian, who on one hand is promised blessing poured out on a life lived in obedience, but on the other hand must also struggle against the ever-present lust of the world and the sinful desire of the flesh. How do we choose one or the other? When we are faced daily with the choice to flee or to indulge, to forgive or to be bitter, to love or to hate, to have compassion or to judge, to be humble or to be haughty, in those moments when we have to profess Christ or deny Him - the choice of obedience or sin comes down to a question of faith.
First, do you have faith enough to believe that God will bless you if you obey?
Second, do you have faith enough that God's blessing is worth having?
The first tends to be more of an intellectual exercise for me - I believe God is faithful to Himself, and having promised it, He will bring it to pass.
The second is a more unknown quantity. In some cases, as in Malachi 3:10, God very specifically tells us how we will be blessed for a particular kind of obedience. In other cases, as in James 1:25, we are simply promised... blessing.
I don't know about you, but when I am faced with temptation, vague and nebulous assurances of blessing are not concrete enough to find sure footing on. Being an engineer, I like things stated in quantitative and definite terms. If you obey, you will have a quantifiable increase in happiness; if you obey, your career will prosper; if you obey, your children will be safe. Of course, God generally gives us no such assurance, and often the ways in which I find myself blessed are somewhat unrelated to the act of obedience that brought them about (assuming the connection between the two is even that clear, which it rarely is). This is where I have come to understand the importance of faith.
I'm not talking about the faith to believe in God and the redemptive work of Christ on the cross. That has to do with salvation, which of course is of ultimate importance - but I think that Christians get stuck on that, to our loss. We think that faith is a one-dimensional thing, a one-time decision that has little to do with how we live our lives. We end up with people who profess Christ but are children of the devil, indulging the desire of the flesh, ignoring the Word of God, and wondering constantly in the back of their minds why Christianity isn't more exciting, more fulfilling.
The secular world calls all kinds of things "faith based" - initiatives, organizations, programs... there is this idea that faith is central to all that we do as Christians. What does that look like?
Faith looks like obedience.
Take the example of Abraham, the father of Israel, the one to whom righteousness was credited because of his faith. Sometimes I forget that as Abraham was taking Isaac up the mountain, when he was laying his only son on the altar, he didn't know how God would provide, how God would bless. We know the ending of the story now, but he didn't. All he knew was that God had promised him descendants through Isaac, and that God would be faithful to His promise. That faith was great enough to overcome the simple fact that a dead son produces no grandchildren, much less fathers a multitude.
That's what blows my mind - that Abraham had no idea how it was going to happen, he just believed that it would - because God said it would happen. It is much more difficult for me to obey in instances when the reward for obedience is not clear - and this is most often the case.
Another example is Moses. In the book of Exodus, God tells Moses to leave his flock of sheep and go to Egypt to bring the Israelites out of slavery. God said, "Certainly I will be with you, and this shall be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God at this mountain" (Exodus 3:12). As in, go do this, obey Me, and then after you have obeyed, taken on Pharaoh, risked your life, endured the scorn of the people you rescued, then at some point in the future you will finally receive confirmation that what you did, you were in fact supposed to do. And Moses went.
Reading through Hebrews 11 brings this discussion to new clarity. Why did all these men and women act as they did? It was because they believed something about God and the work that He had to do. Most of them never even saw the fruit of their obedience (v. 13, 39-40), and yet they suffered all kinds of persecution and scorn for their faith. Forget being threatened with execution - my faith isn't even great enough to compel me to stand up for Christ when all that's at stake is my reputation. In the face of temptation, the thought of God's blessing is far away and the appeal of sin is real and near.
Sometimes, in a moment of guilt or courage, we take obedience for a test run. We stand up to temptation. And then we grow tired, because no man notices or praises our efforts. We don't wait to see, or sometimes we don't even bother looking for, the fulfillment of God's promise of blessing. We certainly don't have the vision to look forward to blessings to be received in heaven (Matthew 6:1-6). We decide it's nice that Jesus saved me, but now excuse me while I live my life as I see fit.
Faith. Faith is believing that God's way is better, that God will bless, and that God's blessing is worth having. Faith is trusting in God's blessing even when we don't know when it will come or what it will be. Faith is believing that a life lived in obedience will be blessed beyond what we can ask or imagine, simply because He is God and He is faithful to Himself and He knows what we need.
God, my flesh craves sin and disobedience. I believe that if I obey You, I will be blessed. Even though I do not know what this blessing will look like, when it will come, or if I will even recognize it, but I trust in Your promise and believe that Your way is better than my way. Give me the strength to be like Christ in this moment and the faith to believe. | | |
| Not so much because I just got engaged as much as because of the radio ads I keep hearing for and against Prop 8. For the unaware, if passed on Tuesday, Prop 8 would amend California's State Constitution to ban gay marriage. Obviously, conservative and religious groups are pretty keen on this idea. My progressive friends, not so much.
It's a little late for this, since the election is on Tuesday, but I figured it's never too late to throw thoughts out there for discussion. So.
Since the anti-Prop 8 side is aware that the term "gay marriage" is very volatile, they have cleverly disguised their ad campaign as an anti-discrimination effort rather than a pro-gay-marriage crusade. In fact, the most compelling advertisement I have heard basically involves a woman repeating, discrimination is wrong, you can't not give people civil rights, Prop 8 is not about marriage, it's about equality.
I disagree.
The family is the fundamental unit of society. From the family, you get communities, then towns, cities, states (or provinces, for my dear Canadian readers), and countries. The family is the start of education, of social interaction, and of discipline; the start of the family is one man and one woman. In other words, the traditional idea of marriage is very functional - it is the basic building block from which we get society.
Now the more radical elements of the gay community are demanding that marriage be open to two men or two women as well. Their argument is that marriage is about people who love each other, no matter who they are. Why should we have the right to get in the way of their love?
The problem is, if you are going to go down that path, you have to take this idea to its natural conclusion. If "marriage" really is just something between people who love each other, then you inevitably open the door to things that are, at the moment, still rather distasteful to our society - things like incest, polygamy, and pedophilia. If all that matters in marriage is love, and as a society we really have no say in the matter, why are these things not being championed?
I have no doubt that there are people in California radical enough to say yes, those things should be allowed also. I think that most of the population, however, would not be quite ready to accept these things. I just wish those who were sympathetic to the "civil rights" argument would recognize and be cautious about what we are ultimately condoning.
If incest, polygamy, and pedophilia are not okay, though, then there must be something more to marriage than love. I think it goes back to the idea of society being built on marriage - most of us have a gut feeling that a society built on incestuous and polygamous relationships would not be acceptable. This isn't discrimination or inequality - it's an unspoken agreement about what is and is not proper behavior for people to be engaging in. These kinds of unspoken agreements are what allow our society to function. Marriage is not a civil right that must be granted to any two (or more) people who love each other - as it is traditionally defined, it is at the very core of culture (pretty much every culture, not just ours).
If we start breaking apart and redefining the fundamental building block of our society, we shouldn't be surprised by the consequences that follow. | | |
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