Perception Is Not Reality

Perception can be fantasyland

My former boss used to love to say “Perception is reality”. All he meant by it, I think, is that it’s important in business to consider how our actions appear to others. That’s certainly a relevant concern when your income depends on your ability to convince people to buy stuff, but it’s not quite what the person who coined the phrase intended to convey.

The line has been attributed to eighties political strategist Lee Atwater. I dislike it thoroughly: communication is tough enough without deliberately eroding the meaning of words. Our general failure to apply our critical faculties to aphorisms like Atwater’s simply accelerates the disintegration of language into meaningless babble.

I’m not kidding. Hey, we’re talking about the nature of reality here.

That Wacky Old Testament (10)

The book of 2 Kings starts with a bang — or at least with fire from heaven, which is plenty eventful enough for most of us.

The prophet Elijah has just passed on another of his many messages from God, this one to the effect that the illness suffered by wicked King Ahaziah will surely result in his death. Ahaziah is understandably less than thrilled to receive this news. He sends a military unit of fifty men with their captain to bring Elijah back to Samaria, where he lies bedridden, presumably in hope of intimidating the prophet into foretelling a fate more to his taste.

The captain is insufficiently deferential to the prophet, who promptly calls down fire from heaven on him and on his soldiers.

Sovereignty in Action

Our Calvinist friends tell us God is sovereign, and I would be the last to disagree with them. Of course, we define “sovereignty” a little differently.

I think it’s possible to believe that God is King of Everything without believing he personally ordains every act that takes place within his kingdom. John Calvin, on the other hand, was convinced that “all events whatsoever are governed by the secret counsel of God” and that “nothing happens without his counsel”. Words like counsel and government imply not just knowledge but personal direction.

But if God is behind every single event that takes place in the universe, then why do the scriptures constantly single out certain events to assure us that it was God who did them? I mean, he does EVERYTHING, right?

Media and the Gospel

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The Best Move

One of Satan’s most effective and longstanding cons is getting people moving when they really ought to stand still. He did it with Eve, didn’t he? That tree in the middle of the garden was good for food, and it was a delight to the eyes, and to be desired to make one wise.

Thing is, it was just as good for food the day before. It was just as delightful to the eyes three weeks before that. The wisdom it conferred would be the same yesterday, today or tomorrow. There was exactly zero urgency about having a bite of its fruit right then. None whatsoever. Nobody was going to starve, and that exceptionally desirable tree was not going anywhere.

Playing Word Games

Keeping laws cannot save us, as we were reminded earlier this week. God gave his law to Israel for the purpose of demonstrating to mankind our total inability to consistently abide by whatever rules we might make for ourselves, not so that we could accumulate sufficient spiritual brownie points to inspire St. Peter to open the gate of heaven just a crack and let us squeak through.

That being understood, laws still serve a very useful purpose. They cannot by themselves reclaim a single lost human heart, but a society in which the majority of citizens recognize and respect the rule of law will do notably better over the long term than a society that operates only on the principle of the will to power.

We are currently observing the abandonment of the rule of law south of the (Canadian) border.

Too Hot to Handle: Forgive Us, But …

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That Wacky Old Testament (9)

“The law of the Lord is perfect ...”

Not only perfect, but more desirable than gold and sweeter than a honeycomb. So says the word of God, and I believe it. But perhaps we ought to ask ourselves exactly what the Psalmist intended to convey with the word “perfect”. Because when people today examine what the law of Moses says on the subject of slavery, or the role of women, or animal sacrifices, they seem to find an awful lot to quibble about.

They would argue — quite forcefully, I might add — that the law of the Lord is far from perfect. Primitive, even.

Marry or Burn

I have a dear friend (he’s in heaven now) who spent his entire life waiting for the right woman to come along. Shortly before his death in his early sixties he was still doing it. Needless to say, she never appeared.

Mind you, the “right woman” was youthful, spiritual, fit, stunningly attractive AND willing to marry a much older, sedentary, admittedly peculiar man who didn’t bring home a whole lot of money even in the best years of his life and usually drove vehicles ten years past their prime.

You can see the problem. He was a great guy and he loved the Lord, but his fantasy just wasn’t happening, and everyone knew it except him.

Faith, Inc.

“But whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith. For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.”

A while back, I read a piece written by a fellow believer on the subject of finding peace in the quest to live one’s life in the will of God. I’d link to it but it has not yet been published. A major theme of his paper was that both the peace of God and the will of God are often found corporately rather than individually; that it was not intended that we live our Christian lives in isolation from other believers, but rather that we discover God’s will together through submission to one another and to him.

Corporate, eh? Interesting idea, and almost surely not one prompted by the spirit of the age in which we currently live.

Sound and Silence (or Banishing the Banshee)

I have a neighbour that screams like a banshee — or at least she used to. She doesn’t anymore, and herein lies a tale.

Like many families, we live in a semi-detached house with nothing more than a cinder-block partition and a little ancient insulation separating us from our neighbours. You can’t hear everything that occurs on the other side of the party wall, but you can hear plenty, especially when voices are raised.

We heard plenty. Regularly. Our neighbour made sure of it.

The Confidence to Command

“Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things [what you will eat, what you will drink, what you will put on] will be added to you.”

“If we have food and clothing, with these we will be content.”

Joel Osteen notwithstanding, there is no scriptural correlation between earthly prosperity and living according to the will of God. None. Bet the house on it — if you can afford one.

Better, if you’re just starting out in the service of God, bet your next fifty years or so.

Tolerance and Relativism

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Too Hot to Handle: The Fat Lady Sings

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A Fate Worse Than Death

You’re sick, and you’re wondering why.

Agnostics and Christians alike will tell you the genetic draw you got at conception is a relevant factor, and both would agree that the way you’ve lived your life to date matters too. Years of less-than-optimal lifestyle habits have a way of catching up with you: not just substance abuse, but sleep deficits, insufficient exercise, poor diet and even shift work all may contribute to chronic problems in later life. And Christians and the unsaved alike experience stress, though we probably handle it differently.

Perfectly Sensible

It all seemed to add up just fine ...

Great sins are committed for perfectly sensible reasons.

Absalom murdered his half-brother for raping his sister. His father knew about the rape and had done nothing about it. What was he supposed to do? If he failed to act, justice would never have been served.

King Jeroboam brought idolatry back to Israel. He reasoned it was better than having the people turn on him and kill him. Who blames a man for preferring life to death?

In each case the motives were at very least understandable. It was the methodology that got them in trouble.

Inbox: Message and Motive

“All your goats are belong to us!”

An anonymous reader takes issue with an older post on the error of universalism:

“Why so angry?”

Good question. It was April 2014 when I wrote that one as part of our “Heavenly Myths” series. I’ve lived ten lives since then, it seems to me. I couldn’t remember how I was feeling at the time if my life depended on it. Maybe I was a bit ticked about something.

So I went back and read the post and … nope, not even close.

Bedsheets, Breeches and Bema

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The Millennial Kingdom and the Blame Game

What do these statements have in common?

“hollywood is to blame, so is tv”

— AllergicToEggs

“The devil made me do it”

— Flip Wilson     

Well, yes, they are both examples of the blame game we all play regularly.

That Wacky Old Testament (8)

You know, if you’re going to mock the Old Testament, it really helps to get your ducks in a row first.

It’s Internet Meme-Debunking Saturday again, folks, and Ivana Wynn at Ranker has provided us with yet another soft target: a list of her “Top 20 Bible Passages to Use Against Fundamentalists”, including this gem at #6, “No Bastards May Enter the Church”.

I love it when they make it easy for me.