truth

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Do as I Say…

Funny how this seeking for a higher meaning works, just when you think you’ve got something figured out, your turn your perspective a fraction of a degree, and suddenly it’s a whole new landscape.  There are certain verses that seem to return again and again, to show you that what you thought you knew was, in reality, only a small sampling of a greater truth, a greater equation, and that’s why I’ve landed back on Isaiah 29:13, which states, “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me,”  It’s not just about being estranged from God, but also about duplicity; about our persistent habit of commingling words and actions, our false logic of substitution in which we assume our words and actions are interchangeable, and our expectation that others do what we cannot ourselves do.

We can say all the right things in flowery prose and elegant verse. We can talk our fool heads off about what is right, what is fair, what we think others should do, or be willing to do. We can be as socially acceptable and politically correct as the best little soldier out there, but the true test of where we live is in the heart, and while we can say anything, and oft times we actually do, our actions are the reflection of our thoughts and beliefs. The heart is where action resides. If we say we are against bullying, but bully others in order to prove they are bullies, then we become what we call, we use our lips to prove our “rightness” while showing what lives in our hearts: a bully. We can talk of peace and cooperation, we can take others to task for what they say or don’t say, but if our actions don’t back up our lips, we are nothing but liars, hypocrites.  We can talk a big game, but when it comes right down to it, our hearts reveal our true intent, our true thoughts and feelings, our true core beliefs, and how we act speaks to what is in our hearts.

Words and actions are not the same; they do not bear the same weight. While words can be illuminating, clarifying, and insightful, they can also be deceiving, misguided and false. Actions on the other hand, are like a mirror; they merely reveal and reflect who we are in our heart of hearts.

“Do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others.” (Matthew 6:5)

~SLM

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Sticks and Stones: The Wisdom of Minding Your Mouth

Sticks and stones may break my bones…but do we really believe names can’t hurt us? Our words, the things we say, can affect our lives in ways we can never imagine. Regardless of what the old adage claims, broken bones, though they be painful, eventually heal. But, careless or misplaced words, whether single syllabled or compound, are another story altogether. They can leave deep and life-long wounds, and as we are reminded in James 3:5-6 (MSG), “A word out of your mouth may seem of no account, but it can accomplish nearly anything – or destroy it. It only takes a spark, remember, to set off a forest fire.” Once the [word] genie is out, there’s no going back, you can’t recall it like a bad tweet, once it hits the air, the damage is done. Words are powerful tools that can open doors or lock them, unite nations or divide them, build up and encourage or tear down and destroy. “By our speech, we can ruin the world, turn harmony to chaos, throw mud on a reputation, send the whole world up in smoke, and go up in smoke with it, smoke right from the pit of hell,” James continues.

Minding your mouth is a pretty big thing, when it comes to living a wisdom-filled life. In fact, shooting off our mouths is one of the biggest failings of humanity. We’re in love with idle talk and especially our own opinions. We prattle on and on without much thought about what we say, as if our words have no real meaning, and are only background noise that is easily dismissed.  We fail to see that the freeness with which we spew our every random thought, with which we are so righteous about having the “right” to say, is not always right. Instead, we throw it out there without consideration, getting so caught up in our “right to free speech” that we forget our words are alive, they have impact, force.

The unguarded tongue is more dangerous than any suicide bomber could ever be. While he may cause us physical pain, loss and suffering, an explosion of words can do far worse damage, it can break our spirit, can set us on a downward spiral of degradation and despair that only God can help and heal. “Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips,” says the Psalmist in Psalm 141:3, and rightly so, since it’s what we say that saves or convicts us, that matters most. “For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” Matthew 12:37

~SLM

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Who Is To Blame, Anyway?

Here’s what’s been stuck in my head for the last several weeks: 1 John 1:8 which states “If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the Truth is not in us.”  We say these words as often as we recite liturgy, yet we seldom take time to analyze them, to really understand what they mean, what we say by reciting them.

When we refuse to admit that we are sinners, we are basically saying that we are blameless, and we can do this in a myriad of ways. We can reject our own guilt, we can deny that we are wrong in our thinking or our actions, or we can hold ourselves guiltless for the events of our lives. If we claim to be blameless, that an action we take, or even the result our actions, the reaction, is not our fault, then what we really claim is that we are without sin. It’s a splendid falsehood, making excuses for our behavior, claiming that we can’t help ourselves, but to act in a certain manner, in irrational and self-obsessive ways, figuring that if we lie to ourselves enough times, the lie will become truth. It’s so easy to make excuses, to lead ourselves astray, to give ourselves a “get out of jail free” card by twisting our perception; by looking at it wrongly and telling ourselves that we are justified in our delusions, because the situation was fostered upon us rather than created by us, or the result of what we have done.

Holding ourselves blameless is the ultimate avoidance of responsibility, of saying that we are not the liar, the cheater, the deceiver, the thief; we are instead the victim or our behavior, not the perpetrator of it.  So, who is to blame, anyway? If it’s not us, who? 1 John 1:10 tells us this: “if we say (claim) we have not sinned, we contradict His Word and make Him out to be false and a liar.” And, for this reason, we cannot have the truth in us, because we must accept responsibility for what we say to and how we treat each other, if we intend to lead truthful and authentic lives.

~SLM

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Our Way

Sometimes everything in life seems to be such a fight, a struggle, when nothing seems to go the way you’ve planned it, and obstacles start flying toward you faster than you can duck. When the shit hits the fan, it’s so easy to get off course, get depressed, and wonder just what the hell God is trying to say. It’s funny how we automatically assume that God wants to thwart our plans, to knock us down and show us His displeasure, but is this really God’s way, or is it our way of looking at it?

In Mark 8:34-36, Christ tells us, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. 36 What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?”  And, it occurs to me (in the midst of my own struggles) that maybe the obstacles, the road blocks, are really God’s way of checking our faith, of testing our resolve to play it out in God’s time and in God’s way, giving us the chance to lay down our selfish desires and follow.

~SLM

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The Whole Truth

Any quest for wisdom, sooner or later, has to address truth, a concept which seems rather elusive in our modern society. It seems funny to me how we think about truth in the “information” age.  Our pop culture sends us many mixed messages, messages that mutate with every new “cool” thing or errant thought, giving us the impression that truth is mutable, a relative notion, an ever changing moving target, evolving over time into what we want it to be.

What is truth and how do we come to it? The Merriam-Webster’s defines truth as: the real facts about something: the things that are true. The noun form of the word true, it means agreeing with the facts, not false, real or genuine. In actuality, truth is the real facts, and as such, the whole truth is all the facts, while half-truths are just certain facts.

When we say things like “that might be true for you, but it’s not true for me,” we are really saying that the facts aren’t realities for us. The facts are the facts, and if we say they aren’t valid for us, we are simply saying that we cannot accept the truth, we are deceiving ourselves. Likewise when someone says, “the truth lies somewhere in the middle, ” it presupposes that neither party is in possession of all the facts, therefore all parties are lying, and it occurs to me that only a liar would presume  everyone is lying as a way to muddy the waters, to deflect guilt, to convince others to share in their lie. And, when we say “there are many paths up the mountain” in an effort to accept all ideologies as equal, we delude ourselves with a half-truth. For while it is, indeed, true that there are many paths which can taken, not all paths lead in the same direction, nor do they all lead to the summit, and most are frankly dead-ends.

The X-Files had it right – the truth is out there, and it is our job to seek it out diligently, consciously, setting our delusional and corrupt egos aside so that we may hear the voice of Truth, recognize it, and as difficult as it may be, accept it, willingly, fully and without adulteration. The whole truth is easy to find, but hard to come by. It’s not relative or variable, it isn’t good for some, but not for others, it doesn’t lead down wayward paths, and it does not change – it is what it is. We are what changes, not the truth; we change in regards to how we see it, how we react to it, how we understand and accept it.

“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”    John 8:32

~SLM

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Proverbs 8:22-36 Let Those Who Have Eyes See

Wisdom’s words in Proverbs 8:22-31 are strikingly similar to the language the gospel of John uses to describe Christ. John 1:1-4 states that the Word was with God from the beginning, and that nothing came into being apart from him. Similarly, this section of Proverbs describes how Wisdom was with God before the earth began. The Lord possessed Wisdom at the beginning of his work, as in acquired or held; creation requires wisdom in the first place in order that it (creation) may be generated, formed, constructed. Wrap your head around that conundrum!

But wait, there’s more…Consider this:

The word was formed before all creation, and the word was with God. Wisdom was also with God. The word is wisdom and Christ is the word, hence wisdom is Christ. Wisdom is also the spirit, so Christ is the manifestation of wisdom – wisdom incarnate – and wisdom is God’s delight and rejoices before Him, praising His creation.

It’s interesting how themes are repeated and expounded upon in scripture, like puzzle pieces that fit together in only the proper sequence, exposing ever more profound turns of how wisdom works.

When God opens your eyes to his truth, He shows it to you wherever you look: His wisdom awaits your notice, and once we have eyes to see, we always see.

~SLM

A note on connecting the dots…

Normally, I use a New Inductive Study Bible that my mom got me at a garage sale, complete with lots of hand written notes in the margins, or my New International Version, which is easy to read, and I also use biblos.com and biblegateway.com, as well as aish.com, when studying for my posts, but when It’s time to write a prayer, I go to the Lutheran Study Bible my sister got me. This bible is humongous, it’s part scripture and part foot note, there are lots of footnotes, and not including the concordance, it sports 2244 pages.  So this morning, I pulled out the big book, and as is my habit, started reading the footnotes for chapter 8. At nearly the end of the chapter was a commentary entitled “Christ as Wisdom” that discussed the very ideas that I had expressed in this posting. I was amazed to see that others have also connected the same dots that I had…talk about once we see, we always see!  Synchronicity.

SLM 5/23/13

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Proverbs 7 A Prayer Against Temptation

Heavenly Father, creator of the seeds of wisdom, root your word in my heart that I may grow in truth and light.  Lead me away from the enticements of the temptress, and keep me safe from her carefully placed snares.  Help me to keep company with your wisdom as I would a sister or a trusted friend, and show me Your will that I may know Your way. Amen

~SLM

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Proverbs 1:20-33 When Wisdom Speaks…

This portion of Proverbs 1 conjures up such mental images for me. I’m reminded of the scene in The Matrix, where Neo wants to run, and Trinity opens the car door and tells him he’s free to go. The camera pans toward the open door, and a long dark road can be seen through the pouring rain. As they both look toward the deserted road, Trinity says, “is this what you really want Neo? You’ve been down that road before, and we both know where it ends.”

Even though the scene in the movie is a dark and deserted street, I see a correlation with the description in verses 20-23. I can just see wisdom standing at the end of a bustling street, shouting for all she’s worth…”listen, listen to me.  Don’t do it, don’t go there, you won’t like the result! Turn back now, while there’s still time! Listen, LISTEN!”  And, as the people all rush past her, they look at her as if she’s totally lost her mind and her insanity is a contagious disease that they might contract by being near her.  But later, when all of her predictions have been realized, they lament their predicament, and ask where she was when they needed her, why was she not there to help them? Both of these scenes are about choices, about listening to that inner voice that wants to “pour its heart out and make its thoughts known.” Wisdom was there all along, they just didn’t recognize her as they rushed past with a disgusted look on their faces, and they never took the time to stop, to seek, or to listen.

So this is what I think the riddle means: When seeking wisdom it’s so important to stop, to consider, and to listen.  Seek the counsel of God, of your parents, your trusted friends. So many times we rush head-long into situations, never considering the consequences of our actions, and when it all turns out wrong, we’re ready to blame anybody, everybody, but ourselves. We wonder why Wisdom (or God), seems to have abandoned us, and in reality, we never sought her out, or if we did, we didn’t heed her direction.

The chapter ends with “but he who listens to me will dwell in safety, untouched by the terror of misfortune.”  Such truth these words speak. To live a “wise” life, we must seek wise counsel, be still and listen, hear what Wisdom (AKA God) has to say about it, and do not turn from the truth because it presents itself in a form that we may not recognize.

~SLM