Words, Words, Words – Are You Dumb?

The couple upstairs was having another of their yelling matches.  Why did these morons have to do their fighting between the lovely hours of 1:00-3:00 a.m.?  Didn’t they care that I had to go to work in the morning, my wife likes to sleep during the night and that our newborn has ears that pick up high-pitched screams and yells through her ceiling?  I wanted to do the rash thing:  go upstairs, pound on their door, and then pound on the face of the man doing most of the yelling, the drunken bum.  Yeah – living in Chicago is such a blast for a young family – especially when Jack Daniels lives upstairs!

Words, words, words.  You know I speak too much.  Even on days that I blog and get out my creative juices as it were, I still gab too much.  Why is that?  It makes utterly no sense.  Is there something wrong with my brain?  Do I have a neurological disorder that makes me blather on like an idiot at times?  No.  I just forget the most basic of communication principles:

              TWO EARS, ONE MOUTH

God created us, created our bodies.  He gave us two ears and one mouth.  Most of us, myself definitely included, communicate in reverse to the created order.  Our two ears have atrophied while our one mouth is gargantuan and muscle-bound.  What is up with that?  Why do I talk so much and LISTEN so little?  It is precisely because I-AM-AN-IDIOT! I am all to often a self-centered, egotistical, my-way-or-the-highway arrogance peddler.  I, we, have forgotten what is right in front of our faces if/when we open our Bibles:

• John 13:  Jesus washes gross, dirty, fungusy feet
• Phil. 2:  the kenotic principle:  Jesus emptied himself of the voluntarily usage of his God-attributes.  He still had them; He still used them but solamente/only in conjunction with the Father and the Holy Spirit.
• II Chron. 34:27:  “Because your heart was responsive and you humbled yourself before God when you heard what he spoke against this place and its people, and because you humbled yourself before me and tore your robes and wept in my presence, I have heard you, declares the LORD.”

Why was Satan thrown out of heaven?  Pride.  What did the serpent use to tempt Adam and Eve?  Pride.  Why are we American church people/believers in Jesus/Christians so blasted impotent when it comes to impacting our American society, from sea to shining sea?  It is precisely because we enlightened American Christians are rugged individualists, pulling ourselves individually up by our boot straps, living out our Puritan forebears ideals of hard work, hard church, hard life.  Unfortunately, the Puritans, our founding fathers, the Quakers, the Mennonites, the Amish, etc. knew/know something we individualists have forgotten:  you don’t raise a barn by yourself.  You don’t help the people in your neighborhood by yourself.  You don’t impact your Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the utter most parts of the earth ALL BY YOUR INDIVIDUALISTIC SELF!

 

You impact your world by working together as a team, as a unit, as the body of Christ.  We American Christians have been sold a false bill of goods by most of our leadership, not all, but certainly by the vast majority.  Why is American going to “hell in a handbasket?”  Because we refuse to come together across denominational lines, put up with minor doctrinal, worship-style, ways of doing “Jesus stuff” irritants, and band together precisely to reach our nation and indeed our world for Jesus.  We are too stupid and arrogant to even try to do that.  Bottom line:  we really don’t love God or our neighbor.  We don’t.  If you think you do, then get off your lazy ass and start making a difference TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!