Priority Dysfunction ...

If all the world is a stage, then ‘distraction’ has to be the name of the play.  Time flies past you at speeds that cause you to take it for granted.  And while you occupy your mind and body with the trivial, the meaningful eludes you.  It is not that meaning is out of your grasp, it is too often simply out of your thoughts.  Maintaining a big picture set of priorities with all the distractions that bombard you for your attention is difficult.  The miniscule takes priority, the repetitive becomes preoccupation, and before you know it, your life is mundane, routine, and without any real purpose.  Christians are not immune to this phenomenon; in fact they are particular targets of it.

The easiest way to keep you from reaching your goals is simply to keep your mind focused elsewhere.  One of the chief reasons God setup a permanent time-out for humanity once each week was to try to help us get over our prioritization problems.  Consider for a moment the life of a parent.  A parent bares the responsibility for the care and feeding of a baby.  But demands on our finances, to succeed at our occupation, and maintain shelter for family can often keep a parent so preoccupied that the real needs of their child go un-met.  Of how much more value is the closeness felt between breast-feeding mother and infant, than formula-fed day care dropped-off baby.  Of how much more value is the tender words and touch of a father at bedtime and breakfast than the commuter who is awake long before, and at home long after the child is conscience.  Demands of survival are often so acute in today’s world that parents are choosing special moments to bond with their children – school plays, concerts, graduations, birthdays, holidays, etc..  There is simply no time to bond on a daily basis. 

Yet to discuss regret, a parent rarely regrets the missed promotion at work nearly as much as the time lost with toddlers.  First steps and first words are not the only milestones to be cherished.  What about first questions of the meaning of love, of life, and of purpose.  How do we impart values without investing our time?  Truth is we are imparting values like it or not; we pass on the tradition of hard-work, and lack of intimacy.  Time is of such critical importance, but we manage it as if it were an infinite resource.  We fail to recognize hard choices as such, thinking there is ample time in the future to meet everything we want to accomplish.  But before you know it, failing health, circumstance and fate, shorten the once thought long-term to an immediate here-and-now.  Regrets are inevitable when we fail to keep our priorities of what is truly important uppermost in our mind, our scheduling, and our attention.

God knew far better than we, that evil would work tirelessly to keep us distracted from what is truly important.  The intimacy God would have us experience, we are kept from simply by keeping us busy.  The intimacy of husband and wife, the intimacy of parent and child, the special bond between siblings, and of course the life-altering connection between man and his Savior God – all these relationships matter most in life.  They far outweigh the trivial pursuits so many of us call our lives.  They require time and attention to grow.  They need to be nurtured.  When you begin to realize this, you begin to understand why the concept of a ‘Sabbath’ is so important in our world.  A God created time-out for man.  Stop what we’re doing.  Stop thinking what we focus on.  Not because what we think about is wrong, but because what we focus on is robbing us of what is really important.  Until we separate ourselves from our routines and choose to focus elsewhere can we be free to see what our choices really are.

When Christ stated “the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath” He was trying to clear up the misconceptions of the day that man was obligated to ritualistic observance of the Sabbath.  The institution was created and ordained to help us push our reset button.  It is WE who need to break free from our self-imposed slavery to commercialism, materialism, and empty pursuits.  It is WE who so desperately need an institution like the Sabbath to give us a day of rest from the mind-numbing routines we enslave ourselves to.  It figures that the Creator of man who wrote the owners-manual would know best what man really needs to operate effectively.  We need a time-out or we being to break down, stress out, and find ourselves watching our lives pass us by.

Christians however sometimes misinterpret the true value and meaning of a Sabbath day.  They turn blessing into compulsion.  They turn an exercise in helping us reprioritize into a set of spiritual habits that are every bit as much a routine as the non-spiritual list of activities in our lives.  The Sabbath becomes a list of do’s and don’ts that could not possibly encompass the concept of ‘keeping’ the day holy.  No this is just the arrogance of man, combined with his ignorance and desire for blind structure instead of profound life-altering thinking that cannot be bound into a list.  How does one find his God and reconnect to Him through a set of arbitrary rules and lists designed to encapsulate morality without forethought to the values the lie behind it?  No, the Sabbath is about prioritization.  No singular activity can be evaluated in the light of the Sabbath the same way by all mankind.  Just as each human is an individual, each relationship with God will also have unique characteristics.  What one man finds as bringing peace and intimacy with his God, another may find no value in. 

The guidelines God gave were to help us bring home the point of prioritizing our lives properly.  First, God should be our number one priority – everything else, everything good, flows from the first thing we focus on.  Second we need to abstain from our career and commercial pursuits (i.e. our work).  We need to remember that our careers are NOT our lives, only a component of our lives.  Thirdly, we need to refrain from requiring others to work for us.  We must not be selfish in our time away from work, forcing others to take up our burdens, but we must allow them to share in the time away from routine.  Even our animals, or anything in our domain, should be allowed a break from the routine.  Lastly God reminds us that He is our creator, and this knowledge should help us understand that this time-out is for our benefit.

Following these guidelines and understanding the intense need we all have to reset our priorities makes the Sabbath an infinitely valuable tool in regaining meaning in our lives and steering clear of regrets.  Should we make the choice to come away from the world and give our minds the freedom to dwell elsewhere we can begin to live at a level we never thought possible. 

Christians must avoid the temptation to treat religious goals as weekly habits that occupy our times and schedules with the regularity of a Swiss watch.  Church service with a planned routine, followed by a meal, followed by a nap, followed by an evening meeting sound familiar?  Many Christians believe this is ‘keeping the Sabbath’, but is it?  Are we truly forcing our minds to break free from routine, or are we simply altering the content of our routines?  Routine limits creative thinking.  Routine can easily become forgettable, non-memorable, meaningless.  Christians develop an unhealthy dependency on their pastor to ‘feed’ them on a weekly basis.  Rather than being forced to confront God on their own, they seek anonymity within a congregation.  Rather than ponder the deeper meanings God wants to share with them personally, they seek to hear whatever the pastor has to say – after which they can feel good about criticizing his content and delivery.  Is this routine actually helping them, or just helping them pass the time.  Push the reset button folks.  Start thinking in non-conventional ways, the way the Sabbath was intended.

If we are to live without regret, we must learn to accept what God wishes for us.  We must learn to accept the happiness He wants to give us.  We must learn to prioritize what is truly important, and keep it there.  We must regularly check ourselves and insure our priorities have not been altered.  We must break free of the distractions of the stage we live within, and find the freedom only our God can bring …

Unto Caesar ...

There is a debate in this country regarding the separation of church and state.  Surprisingly the debate is not over the particulars regarding the state encroaching on the rights of a minority religious viewpoint; rather, it is over whether this nation should choose to remain with the powers of church and state separate at all.  Christians at large, believe their rights are trampled on when prayer is eliminated in public schools, or statues of the ten commandments are ordered removed from public courthouses.  Are they right?

We have been called a Christian nation.  Muslims around the world view us this way simply because the overwhelming number of religious people in the U.S. claim Christianity as their basic religion.  Though next in line would be Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu faiths respectively.  Atheists and agnostics make up only a small percentage of the nation.  Occult and Satanist religions even smaller than that (though occult is defined in the eye of the beholder).  So even though Christians make up the majority of the population to date, they are not the fastest growing belief system in the U.S..  Muslims hold this distinction.  It might be better to call us a nation of faith or beliefs than a truly Christian nation.

Going back to our beginning we find that our founding fathers were largely Christian believers.  They applied Christian thinking and morality to the nation’s first set of founding principles and laws.  They publicly talked about their devotion in speeches to both private and public audiences.  In essence, religious speech was not uncommon in governmental bodies as the nation first began to define itself.  They prayed in Congress, put chaplains in the military. and were unabashed about speaking publicly about their faith.  They were not perfect, nor are we, but they did believe.

However with the inquisition a not so far away phenomenon; and having recently emerged from the dark ages, our founding fathers did see the wisdom of allowing for the freedom of religion, by keeping the state out it.  When religious and political power were united (as they were first in Rome, then in England) great persecution arose in the name of God (but more accurately for the greed of gold).  Many died for no other reason than a differing faith or belief system, their wealth forfeited to either state or church or both.

So our nation became founded on Christian attitudes and prevailing morality, but chose to make the distinction between the church and the state.  In point of fact we were the first country to make such an issue of this.  But we were not the first advocate of it.  Christ Himself, while here on earth, answered one of those meant-to-trip-you-up questions by saying … “render unto to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.”  This was the first admonition to separate how we think about government and religion, and was ironically proposed from within Christianity.  Christ Himself laid out for us our proper priorities.  Money was to go to the government, and our hearts were to belong to God.  Oh that we could learn that lesson, rather than so often reversing it.

A study of Biblical prophesy talks a great deal about the Beast, and his image.  Many characteristics of the Beast are articulated throughout scripture, but the most compelling trait was his desire to control the conscience of men on pain of death.  The Beast (an enemy of the church throughout scripture) tried to make men think a certain way.  He wants and demands worship and adoration.  And according to the scripture, a great many people follow after the Beast and his image.  Why is this important?

Because scripture also refers to a new nation that rises up in the world and helps the church.  That new nation is us.  Our country arises across the sea and restores freedom for religion to the world.  Those that believe can live here free from persecution, inquisition, and death.  The church is free to grow here at least for a while.  But alas, we do not remain true to our values according the same sets of prophesy.  Eventually we begin to speak just like the Beast.  Note this does not mean we are forsaking religion, rather the contrary, it means we are uniting with it to compel the conscience of man.  Sound familiar?

It is NOT a gradual slide into liberalism, or atheism, that causes us to become like the Beast.  It is the unification of religion and political power that attempt to control the will.  Christ never compelled anyone to follow Him.  He authored freedom of choice for all creation, even when that creation made the wrong choice back in the garden.  There was no forced will then, and there is no forced will now.  There is an offer extended to man, but nothing to force him to accept it.  Satan on the other hand, is all too happy to enforce his will on your mind, heart, body, and soul.  The very nature of evil is to corrupt and control the mind of man.  And so like its author, the Beast begins to speak like Satan.  Uniting the spiritual with the political under the name of “good” but with every action resulting in pure “evil”.

And worst of all, Christians are driving the truck.  It is the siren call of Christians who want to reclaim our nation’s morality that are responsible for speaking like the Beast and the Dragon that preceded him.  What is it they say about good intentions paving the way to … hell.  And this is the road we are on today.  Republicans, though wounded by the results of the last election have not softened their positions on social tolerance in any way.  Rather they believe they lost because of their LACK of firmness to their values.  Today’s Republican party is emerging from defeat even farther to the right, than to the center.  It’s most popular spokes people prove this point again and again.

Ironically it is not the entire Republican agenda that is a problem.  Fiscal responsibility, small government, strong defense, wide personal freedoms, and local oversight are excellent principles upon which to build a political party.  But mix in extra helpings of hate posing as religious fundamentalism, and you excite a base to take “mob” action, rather than deliberate tolerance.  Homosexuals and abortionists are no more enemies of Christ than are adulterers and gossip mongers.  There is no compelling spiritual reason to single out a particular set of evil for a zero-tolerance policy when this is not universally applied to every other set of bad behavior.  It is the devil’s work to try to legislate morality.

It is not the duty of the Christian to try to stamp out sin in the world.  It is the duty of the Christian to love his enemies, do good to those who hate you, pray for those who persecute you.  In short, it is the duty of Christians to love.  There is no mention of sin in our list of responsibilities.  Those that wish to call sin by its proper name often use this language to hide their true meaning – they wish to call other people sinners, or hold people accountable publicly for their sins.  To truly call sin by its right name would involve only defining it as it truly is – PAIN.  All sin is inextricably linked to pain, whether felt immediately or over a longer term.  To point out the destructive nature of sin, without accusing anyone else or condemning anyone else, is to truly define sin.  Condemnation has never been our responsibility, nor has it ever saved anyone.  Whereas love has done more, and accomplished more than you could possible ever fully define.

Rather than spending our energies in trying to legislate sin out of the world, and God back into our nation.  Why don’t we exert the same energy in submitting our prideful will to God’s control and learn how to truly love each other as well as those who disagree with us and our beliefs.  There is still time to redefine Christian values from out of the mouth of the Beast and back to the source of all love.  Let us learn to emulate our humble leader, who though He was God on earth, He was servant to us all ...