Let's Wake Up!

Jeremiah 11:1-8; Jeremiah 11:14-20

I’m back on my soapbox about censoring the Bible. We only do it to the Old Testament, and it’s usually the result of squeamishness about the way the ancient Hebrews characterized natural consequences as punishments from God. I still get annoyed by it (the censoring, I mean). The O.T. reading leaves out verses 9-13 in Jeremiah 11. I’m fairly convinced of the futility of complaining about it. Still, it fits in with the logical error I noticed relative to the other two readings, so I’ll include my thoughts about it anyway.

Jeremiah is a Prophet. He believes that he was given the courage to speak the truth of God for a reason. (You see, I don’t think a prophet is a person who hears God’s voice, because I think we all hear God’s voice. No, a prophet is simply someone with the courage to speak up and say the things that no-one wants to hear. It doesn’t mean they are always right, but it does mean that they are willing to be unpopular.)

Anyway, here are the missing verses 9-13:  

^“Then Adonai said to me, “The men of Y’hudah and the people living in Yerushalayim have formed a conspiracy. ¹⁰ They have returned to the sins of their ancestors, who refused to hear my words, and they have gone after other gods to serve them. The house of Isra’el and the house of Y’hudah have broken my covenant which I made with their ancestors.” ¹¹ Therefore Adonai says, “I am going to bring on them a disaster which they will not be able to escape; and even if they cry to me, I will not listen to them. ¹² Then the cities of Y’hudah and the people living in Yerushalayim will go and cry to the gods to whom they are making offerings; but they will not save them at all in their time of trouble. ¹³ For you have as many gods, Y’hudah, as you have towns; and you have erected as many altars for sacrificing to that shameful thing, Ba‘al, as there are streets in Yerushalayim.”

All I have to say about this is that if we read the above as a description of natural consequences, it is undeniably true. If we make a secret deal to worship other gods because we think it will be profitable; if we break our family obligations out of greed or selfishness; then we have created a natural disaster in our inmost reality. If God is the Ultimate Reality then it follows naturally that if we ignore the Source of Everything in favor of our own distorted perceptions; if we conspire with one another to create a fiction that suits us; well then, predictably, not just inner calamities but real-time disasters will also visit us, because Reality doesn’t care in the least what lovely fantasies we might pursue. At the risk of being misunderstood, I’m going to go sideways with a rephrase of Jeremiah in light of the modern state of affairs (which in my view could benefit from a prophet or two).

“The people of the United States, and the politicians in Washington have formed a conspiracy. They have returned to the mistakes of their predecessors, who ignored the facts, and they have gone after the money— because what they really serve is their own profit. The House of Representatives and the Congress have broken their promise which was made years ago in the Constitution; a promise which ought to be held sacred. It doesn’t matter to Reality how much ignoring and denying human beings do, though, because disaster is coming and it’s already starting to happen. Nobody will escape, and it won’t matter how pitiful and desperate we become, or how terribly we suffer, Reality will not listen. Then, Representatives and Congress-people will try to fix things with money, but money will not save them from being willfully ignorant, and Reality will go right on being Reality. You have as many gods, America, as you have State Legislatures, and you have erected as many altars for sacrificing to that shameful thing, Money, as there are streets in Washington DC.”

Romans 6:1-11

So then, are we to say, “Let’s keep on sinning, so that there can be more grace”?  Heaven forbid! How can we, who have died to sin, still live in it? Don’t you know that those of us who have been immersed into the Messiah Yeshua have been immersed into his death? Through immersion into his death we were buried with him; so that just as, through the glory of the Father, the Messiah was raised from the dead, likewise we too might live a new life.

C. S. Lewis said somewhere that the wish to keep our cake and eat it too might very well be the root of all sin. Buddha said that it was the source of all suffering. Could sin and suffering actually be the same thing? That would make this quote a perfect description of victim mentality—

“Let’s keep on suffering, so that there can be more comforting, and we can keep on avoiding Reality.”

Think about it! Shall we be hypocrites, paying only lip service to the God we claim to love and serve in Christ? Shall we say, in one case, that the death we die in Christ is not a literal death but only a metaphorical one, and then turn around and say that our resurrection in the ‘last days’ is a literal physical resurrection in which we will all be reassembled from ashes, dust, and rotting bones? We just can’t have it both ways. We can’t say that our metaphorical death happened in the past, and our literal resurrection is going to happen sometime in the unhappened future. Well, we can say that, but it would be such a distortion of Reality, that the very angels in heaven would flinch and wince.

Nope, either we die now, and rise now, and live in the Now that encompasses all time from the Beginning to the End— the Now that Is What It Is— or we turn away and live in a pretend world in which our wishes can change Reality to suit us.

The thing is, God can’t live in that world, because it’s not real!

What Paul is saying is that we have a very clear-cut choice: We can live in the real world, trusting in God, and doing our best to be kind, friendly, honest, and reliable, or we can chase after fantasies that have nothing to do with Reality. We can’t rig the system. If we try, we just end up living a lie, and cutting ourselves off from the Reality of God, which results in terrible suffering.

John 8:33-47

“…..what do you mean by saying, ‘You will be set free’?”  Yeshua answered them, “Yes, indeed! I tell you that everyone who practices sin is a slave of sin.  Now a slave does not remain with a family forever, but a son does remain with it forever. So if the Son frees you, you will really be free!

Freedom IS Awakening;

Sin IS Suffering.

So, Let’s Wake Up!