Toploftiness The Pathetic Assumptions Of Men
By Al Cronkrite The Covenant News ~ February 09, 2007
In a previous essay I mentioned that exposition provides the milk of the Gospel while execution is the meat.
In the Tenth Chapter of the Gospel of John, Jesus uses sheep in a parable. He claims to be the exclusive Good Shepard, the only true protector of the sheep, He says, “I am the Good Shepard; the Good Shepard lays down His life for the sheep, he who is a hireling, and not a shepard, who is not the owner of the sheep, beholds the wolf coming, and leaves the sheep, and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them.”
This familiar portion of Scripture is often used for a teaching on the vulnerability of sheep; how dumb they are, how they need to be protected, how they need to be cleaned, how they tend to go astray and get lost. The analogy Jesus made in the original text is often elaborated on with specific references to the similarities between the sheep and those who follow Jesus. It is an excellent teaching, pregnant with truth.
However, it is still milk.
The meaty approach to this parable would consider the need to remedy the sheep’s lack of knowledge by helping them to understand their proper function as Christians in a Democratic society. This knowledge would protect them from future danger. It would alert the sheep to breaches of God’s legal structure when they first occurred in society and in the political arena. It would teach the proper response to sin and alert the sheep to it when it first occurs.
Meat involves seeking God’s dominion over His creation and dominion is a function of law established by obedience. An instructive simile might be made between the wolf and the advent of humanistic government, or the One World Order, or Marxist influences in our nation, or phony Christians in high places, or deception through propaganda, or the anti-Christian nature of diversity or hundreds of other threats to God’s mandates. Sheep need to be led and when leaders fail to lead with significant information requiring specific action the sheep are being led by a hireling who does not love the sheep and fails to protect them.
Milk is a smooth liquid that is easy to consume and digest. It is food for babies. Meat is sinewy and sometimes tough. It offers a resistance to consumption that requires teeth. Babies cannot consume meat.
On Sunday, C-Span ran a scholarly discussions about religion. Reza Aslan, a brilliant Iranian scholar decorated with numerous degrees debated Sam Harris; a smart, spunky, in-your-face, Jewish atheist. Aslan’s mantra is pragmatic peaceful co-existence for the religions of the world. He vehemently supports a nonspecific “God” but would be uncomfortable with The Christ. Harris’s religious studies have culminated in rejection of all religions as divisive. As with all secular discussion of religion it was carried on as if the participants were positioned above the gods of all religions.
Now, dear reader, let me tell you why this type of discussion is pathetic! The participants are mere mortals. They have no ability to understand the infinite or to fathom the complexity of the Creation. They are, like those who corrected Job, full or words and ideas but without Wisdom and Understanding. Job may be an antediluvian script but it is as true today as it was in that ancient era. In Chapters 38 and 39 God questions Job. “Who is this that darkens counsel by word without knowledge? Now gird up your loins like a man, and I will ask you and you instruct Me! Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding. Who sets up measurements, since you know? Or who stretches the line on it? On what were its bases sunk? Or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?”
Following a long series of stultifying questions in the two preceding chapters, in Chapter 40 Job answers God, “Behold, I am insignificant; what can I reply to Thee? I lay my hand on my mouth”.
There, dear reader, is the answer. It was the answer in ancient times and it is still the answer today. It is a pathetic display when two of God’s sheep attempt to usurp the position of the Shepard, a position they were not created for and cannot fulfill. All of the brilliant words are of no use for without the Legal structure God lovingly provided for them, they will ultimately fight over their diverse opinions and one will either be murdered by or will become the servant of the other who then, instead of protecting his single sheep like the good Shepard, will exploit him to his own advantage.
Man was not created to govern himself and in spite of the intellectual brilliance often displayed in the media, he is pathetic when he tries. Without the overarching legal structure God gave to Moses the conduct of men and the structures they erect will be opinion based, and chaotic. The lack of order will result in forced obedience to the powerful, the dignity of men will be lost and only slavery will remain.
Do not be deceived by soft expositon. Howard Zinn was also on C-Span speaking to students at Brandeis University. Howard Zinn is a Communist who supports revolution with a sly smile, a soft voice, and a sizeable measure of truth. His description of the sins being committed by our present government was quite accurate but his solution would be pathetic.
How many of God’s sheep are regularly misled by the brilliance of Aslan and Harris and the winsome intelligence of Howard Zinn. It is easy to fall prey to the wiles of evil and lacking the proper protection from shepards many sheep are lost.
When Christian leaders allow church growth and a desire for peace to override the confrontational nature of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, they allow a fatal blight to overcome their ministry and the fruit God intends them to produce never ripens. Leadership in the service of Christ Jesus must involve an exclusive commitment to confronting God’s entire creation with the Gospel. When efforts are made to make preaching seeker friendly, the Christian message is badly distorted and the minions of evil become victorious.
Christians must be taught that God is not our servant but that we are His servants and our mission is to bring His dominion to His social order through obedience to His Legal structure; anything less is not the work of the Good Shepard but of hirelings.