In a recent speech, President Obama enunciated upon the Statue of Liberty. In so doing, the representative purpose of the monument was grossly distorted. In the oratory she was re-interpreted or re-defined as a veritable "statue of immigration" as opposed to being a "statue of liberty." The President reinforced this misguided emphasis by interpolating an excerpt from Emma Lazarus' poem The New Colossus (written in 1883).
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
His salient thrust, arguably, was to portray the Statue of Liberty (and thus America) as nothing more than a welcome mat to one and all around the world.
The Statue of Liberty, of course, commemorated the Declaration of Independence. This was a quintessential expression of liberty and freedom. The gift of the statue from the French was designed to represent the light of liberty and freedom moving outward into the rest of the world, not a resounding invitation to those interested in immigration. In fact, she was originally called Liberty Enlightening the World. She incontrovertibly stands as an icon of liberty and freedom, not immigration.
Rush Limbaugh's comments on this maleversation of the President are poignant, "The torch is not to light the way to the United States. It is to light the way to liberty to the rest of the world. Lady Liberty is carrying the light of liberty to the rest of the world. It is not a beacon for immigrants to get to this country because they're tired, they're poor, they're huddled, hungry, or thirsty. The President of the United States has joined the chorus of those who have purposely misrepresented the Statue of Liberty--making it out to be the statute of immigration, misrepresenting Emma Lazarus--and it's just an outrage how wantonly open the destruction and revision and redefinition of the great traditions and institutions that define this country is taking place now, at the hands of this regime." (Bold and italics mine)
Why is this worthy of note you may be inquiring. Well re-read the last sentence of what Limbaugh opines. He has given cadence to one of the most disastrous and dastardly practices of our day and time; REVISIONISM. As I alluded to above, the President was revising America's history in the obvious distortions and misrepresentations interspersed throughout his speech en toto. This is significant because of the implications of such concerted efforts. When you attempt to redefine or revise historical actualities you are aiming to redefine or revise the memory of those actualities. Those memories are what give the present meaning and purpose. The culture America enjoys and knows today is directly related to the historical consciousness of its people. In other words, those historical actualities are what mold and shape the culture of its environs. Revisionists, such as the President, are aiming to change the culture of America by redefining and revising its memory. The most effective way to change a culture or national milieu is to change its memory and in so doing its mind. The farther a people distance themselves from their history the farther they remove themselves from who they are. As Heraclitus asserted, "to not know what happened before you were born is to remain forever a child." National progress and maturation has ceased due to loss of memory. This effect is very much analogous to Alzheimer's disease.
This reminds me though of what has been more substantially forgotten within the borders of these United States. The memory of our Judeo-Christian moorings have receded into the most obscure corners of our nation's consciousness. The lions share of our countries foundational documents were forged within the fires of God's word, THE HOLY BIBLE. Yet, the name of God has been removed from our educational institutes, the Ten Commandments have been removed from our courthouses and the public domain so forth and so on. Much like Israel demanding a king in place of God who was their King, America has transposed Christ and His church with civil government which has led and is leading them astray.
This has resulted not from the success of secular society per se or the city of man (a distinction popularized by St. Augustin of Hippo). Instead it has resulted from a memory loss within Christendom. The warp and woof of a nation's culture reflects the culture of the church (the City of God), or lack there of. The church of our day is far removed from any sense of historic meaning. The historicity of Christianity along with its inextricable essential meaning has been divorced from present culture and consciousness so much so that the contemporary church has morphed into something foreign to her antecedent tradents. More pointedly, the church has lost its memory of historic scripture and its meaning in the same way America has lost its memory of her history, particularly her historic charters which were, as noted above, born from scriptural precedent and principle. This is evinced by the many exponents of America's revisionism who are presently postulating that the Constitution is more or less a living document (judicial activism et al) while the current President maintains that the Bill of Rights is a list of negatives. This is revisionism at its most abominable pinnacle. Again the culture reflects the church.
Much like America in general, the church has been suffering from her own form of revisionism dating back to its theological inception within the Germanic revisionist schools vis a vis source criticism, form criticism, redaction criticism (redaktionsgeschichte). In as much as these traditions have some value to understanding and interpreting scripture they have contributed to an assault on Holy Writ that has devolved into post modern trends to handle scripture as a living document devoid of historically intrinsic meaning derived from those recorded actualities very much akin to the Barthian historisch. Subsequently, many church practitioners have taken a liberty to redefine and revise scriptural precedent to better suit their subjective and experiential preferences, comforts as well as conveniences.
The God of sacred scripture is the God of history as He sovereignly governs all things providentially. He divinely saw fit to inspire men within the context of historical actualities to transcribe truths that were later canonized by way of sovereign governance as an absolute charter for the church not subject to liberal revisionists and their sinful demagoguery.
Can there be any question why our politicians are intrepidly attempting to revise American history and her governing charters when the church has sordidly and contemptuously revised her history and her governing charter the HOLY BIBLE. When the church returns to scripture in purity and is governed by it, as Christ the King who is her head reigns, the repugnant efforts of "heathen kings" within our governments ranks to revise and redefine will collapse on their heads.
Recall the historical record of the kings of Israel. After Israel said, "appoint for us a king to judge us like all nations," thus rejecting God as king over them (I Sam. 8:6-7) a kingly caste emerged. King David ascended to the throne and was a man after God's own heart. Israel enjoyed peace and prosperity as a nation the likes of which they would never enjoy again to this date. However, when Solomon occupied the throne a trend began to precipitate. Each king in succession was to, "keep the charge of the Lord your God, walking in his ways and keeping his statutes, his commandments, his rules, and his testimonies, as it is written in the law of Moses," (this charge is interspersed throughout I Kings). As each king succeeded after Solomon, this charge became noticeably absent from memory. The "Book of Moses" or the "Book of the Law" eventually was lost and "heathen kings" of sorts, prevailed as Israel waned. (During this history Israel was divided into two: the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom, the temple was broken and Israel and Judah were in a state of disrepair. Their governing charter in the form of the Book of the Law had faded from memory.
However, during King Josiah's reign the Book of the Law was recovered and reform followed (II Kings 22-23:27). He re-established, "the words of the law that were written in the book," (II Kings 23:24). He did not seek to revise or redefine the book of the law. Instead he gathered all the elders of Israel and Judah, "and he read in their hearing all the words of the Book of the Covenant," (II Kings 23:2). Subsequently, "all the people joined in the covenant to walk after the Lord and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all their heart and all their soul to perform the words of the covenant that were written in the book," (II Kings 23:3).
The revisionism coursing through the citadels of American politics and government will fall only when the revisionism, both practical and theological, coursing through Christendom is jettisoned.
The church abroad needs to covenant "to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book." She needs to return to what Huldrych Zwingli described as a "bibliocracy" and then maybe, the Lord willing, America will return to the principles of the constitutional republic she was founded to be as opposed to the democratic populism that is increasingly espoused.
Credo ut Intelligam
Let's apply the principles of knowing and understanding from the previous post to the topic of anger. Anger is much like an explosive. It has to be treated and handled carefully with much discretion otherwise a simple spark can ignite a chain reaction that causes an unwarranted explosion leading invariably to many undesired effects, damages and casualites...And when the spark is lit it races towards the explosive source. BAM..... unless of course the initial spark is tamped out and handled skillfully. It is one thing to know that scripture gives allowance for such emotive inclinations and another to understand how to exercise it. Recently, the force of exigent circumstances thrust me into a place whereby I had to exercise thorough introspection in order to not lapse into sordid expressions of anger. In so doing, I gave considerable preponderance to the biblical conception of anger; which if misunderstood, can easily devolve into a resident evil. One that takes on the characteristics of a malignant tumor.
Why is this a notable topic? Well scripture gives precedent for justifiable anger or righteous indignation of sorts. For instance, Paul writes the Ephesians, "Be angry and do not sin...," (Eph. 4:26). But how are we to understand this reference to anger especially taking into proper and sound consideration that five verses after that statement Paul promulgates, "let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you," (Eph. 4:31)? Moreover, scripture provides far more injunctions against anger germane to humanity than it does approbations of it, (cf. Matt. 5:21-22, Gal. 5:20, Col. 3:8, 3:21, Titus 1:7). This juxtaposition alone places far greater weight on the restraint of anger as oppossed to its free administration. The ostensible allowance of anger in Ephesians 4:26 should not and ought not be a proof text to validate anger as a christian virtue, par excellence; especially when the locus of attention is given by Christ and Paul to the purgation of anger by way of sanctification (Gal. 5:20, Eph. 4:31, Col. 3:8).
I am reminded of the fury of the Jewish discontent when Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath when they themselves circumcised on the Sabbath. Christ's retort exposed their anger and irrationality, "If on the Sabbath a man receives circumcision, so that the law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with me because on the Sabbath I made a man's whole body well? Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgement," (John 7:23-24). They knew the law as it related to the Sabbath but failed to adequately understand (also see Mark 2:23-28). Those of Jewish extract failed to reason with and understand what they too hastily came to be feverishly angry with and who they became cynically distraught at. The quick tempered and angry tend to react to circumstances and respond to superficial phenomena instead of taking the full scope of things into proper perspective. This is why Christ charged them with judging by appearances.
These vices embodied by Jesus' malcontents are natural, or rather unnatural characteristics of the nature of anger. The Greek word/s for anger used and referenced above derive from the root orge. Its connotations include but are not limited to: desire, violent passion, vengeance, wrath, provoking to enrage, exsasperated, irascible, hot tempered, et al. Notice how Paul's prohibitions pertaining to anger encompass many of those expressions. Indeed, where you find anger you will find a hotbed and groundswell of sin. Paul inextricably associates bitterness, wrath, clamor, slander, malice, enmity, strife, jealousy, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, obscene talk with ANGER, (Gal. 5:19-21, Eph. 4:31, Col. 3:8). He incontrovertibly identifies such soteriological and pneumatological malfeasance as "works of the flesh," (Gal. 5:19-21), grieving the Holy Spirit (Eph. 4:31), "earthly" and practices of the "old self," (Col. 3:5-11). This gives fresh creedence to Solomon's proverb, "Make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man, lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare," (Prov. 22:24, 25).
Consider Cain who, "was very angry" because the Lord "had regard for Abel's offering," (Gen. 4:3-16). The Lord addressed the teeming anger Cain was fostering and admonishes him to "rule over" the sin that was crouching at the door. For Cain to excercise governance over his emotions and to rule over them his reason had to be intact in order to excercise his will in accord with the Lord's directive. As the Puritan doctor Richard Baxter put it, "It is easier to control anger in its beginning. Keep an eye on the first stirrings of your wrath and make it obey you. Your will and reason have great power in the control of anger if you will only use them according to their nature. A spark is easier to quench than a flame, and a serpent is easier to crush before it hatches out." Evidently Cain's capactiy to reason was remiss as is substantiated by his inablity to internalize the Lord's admonition. He became blinded by sinful rage. And as biblical history records Cain was overtaken by his anger thus culminating in the murderous rampage of his brother whom, in fact, he was to be keeper of. His sinful passions guided his will instead of sound and godly reasoning, for the Lord graced Cain to rule over his anger by telling him to rule over it.
This type of curmudgeon (a bad tempered or surly person) points to the role pride plays in human expression's of anger. Because Abel's "offering" was favored over Cain's, Abel consequently became the object of Cain's wounded ego. Perhaps Cain perceived himself to be upstaged or conscripted to an inferior role. He was now in the shadow of his brother.
Members of Christ's church might not physically end someone's life like angry Cain did to Abel. Instead, that murderous act is perpetrated through insidious maledictions and slanderous aspersions. This is the anger Christ defined in His Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:21-23). This is the very thing the Pharisees and their ilk were culpable of doing when conniving against Jesus. They villified Him to His own people and through murderous language arranged for his actual murder.
Christians need to guard against elevating their personal stock or value to such a level that whenever another fellow believer "actually" sins against them they magnify it to such a degree that it eclipses the fact that they have more seriously sinned against God (as King David acknowledged Psalm 41:4,51:4).
Again, Richard Baxter describes prideful anger poignantly, "A proud man considers things heinous or intolerable that are said or done against him. He that thinks lowly of himself sees things done or said against him as of little significance. He that magnifies himself sees offenses against him also magnified. Pride is a very impatient sin: There is no pleasing a proud person, without a great deal of wit, care, and diligence. You must take as much care around him as you do straw or gunpowder when you are holding a candle."
All in all, sinful anger signifies a lack of self control. When anger penetrates one's consciousness thereby superseding the ability to reason and think aright there is a reduction to an eradic, unstable and reactionary condition. This becomes a volatile state of affairs. Indeed hauntingly sordid and sinful. The preceding seems to evince that anger inordinately espouses an element of subjectivity that inevitably overtakes the rationale or mans reasoning capacity. The account of Moses and Aaron at the waters of Meribah illustrates this (Num. 20:10-13). They received explicit instructions from the Lord to "tell the rock...to yield its water." Yet, the peoples quarrelling provoked Moses who reacted by striking the rock twice in a fit of anger or frustration. His subjective element was not subject to the Lordship of God and consequently overcame him. Again, this underscores the assertion that anger within the human ranks more often than not signifies a lack of self control.
The issue of anger is of such gravity that it precludes such persons from ascension to clerical ranks. Paul proscribes any man who is, "arrogant or quick-tempered" from the bishopric,-episkopos, (cf. I Tim. 3:2,3).
So then what about Paul's statement about being angry and sinning not. Well the aforementioned enlarges upon that by way of negation. The next post will handle how to exercise justifiable anger in a more positive tone. I will also explore the expressions of God's anger recorded in Old Testament nomenclature in particular.
"Be not quick in your spirit to become angry, for anger lodges in the bosom of fools," (Eccl. 7:9).
Credo ut Intelligam
It might seem, at a prima facie level, that these two operations are very much synomous and interrelated to such an extent that there is seemingly not much of a distinction between the two. This would be a most grievious fallacy though and subsequently proves to be a pitfall for many a christian. To know something and to understand something, though they are indeed related, are as different as night and day. Albeit, both exercises are necessary for proper cognitve function it is nevertheless incumbent upon the christian exerting his or her christian mind to make the necessary contradistinction between the two. While they are intextricably bound to one another in the overall mental construct of the christian each represents an individually unique quality to the regenerated and sanctified mental process of sound reasoning.
To know something appertaining to truth in general (truth in particular within the confines of this blog) is to possess awareness of a fact, idea, formula, information and the like. This is more or less a static and/or mechanistic memory of something. Whereas to understand something is to possess a familiarity with any given "datum" or article of "knowledge" one has ascertained and how that "datum" or "knowledge" is to be applied and how it is to function.
Consider the sordid affair involving David and Bathsheba in II Samuel 11 and 12. King David commited adultery with Bathsheba and then sends her husband Uriah to his demise in battle. Now, David was a "man after God's own heart," and possessed an incisive knowledge of God's law. The king was fully aware of the facts surrounding the aforementioned sinful ordeal yet inexplicably failed to apply the facts he knew of God's law to his sin. It took the prophet Nathan to bring David to a position of understanding his actions. David failed to apply the knowledge of God's law/truth to his circumstances, decisions and actions. And by not applying (understanding) the knowledge he had, his reality reached an irrationalistic nadir. Nathan enabled the king to rightly perceive and reason with his immediate reality by way of understanding (applying) his knowledge. As John M. Frame puts it, "What had David learned at that point? He already knew God's law, and, in a sense, he already knew the facts. What he learned was an application-what the law said about him. Previously, he may have rationalized something like this: 'Kings of the earth have a right to take whatever women they want; and the commander-in-chief has the right to decide who fights on the front line. Therefore my relation with Bathsheba was not really adultery, and my order to Uriah was not really murder.' We all know how that works; we've done it ourselves. But what the Spirit did, through Nathan, was to take that rationalization away." This commentary underscores the reality that it is one thing to know something and it is another to understand that same thing. It takes understanding to translate the facts of scripture (the normative) into the facts of one's life (the empirical and inconstant). This understanding is refined whenever the christian is commited to incorporate or apply knowledge of Gods truths or biblical facts into their own plane of existence; by grace of course. This bespeaks noetic regeneration and noetic sanctification; or more simply put the perpetual reonovation and renewing of the mind aided by the Spirit of truth. When this is active the christian praxis is clearly and palpably changed. Whenever understanding of biblical knowledge is truly apprehended their will be new practical implements, so to speak, that crystallize or become actualized. Ones ability to discern situations, judge, pray, obey God's word, exercise christian love and charity, properly implement church discipline et cetera drastically develope and blossom. This of course is not a single act but a lifelong process of transformation.
This distinction of knowing and understanding is made by Christ in His discourse with two disciples on the road to Emmaus. "Then he said to them, 'These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.' Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures...," (Luke 24:44-45). "Minds" is the translation of the Greek nous. Nous means mind or intellect with the implication of understanding. Christ and the surrounding text affirms that these men had knowledge of the truths Christ previously spoke to them but it is evident they lacked understanding. Christ however opens their minds and so enables them to understand.
Of course the Pharisee's illustrate this truth. They knew the Penteteuch, the Torah, the Prophets yet they were unable and unwilling to understand those truths in conjunction with their immediate circumstances. Christ castigated them in one place by saying, "You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times," (Matt. 16:1-4). Christ's retort to Nicodemus is also quite revealing, "Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things," (John 3:10; cf.3:1-15).
It is inane to aqcuire an immeasurable treasure of knowledge without understanding how to spend that treasure. In so doing that treasure loses its value.
It is becoming increasingly idiosyncratic of the church in our day, at least in the west, that christians are satisfied with aqcuisition of an amalgamation of biblical facts without understanding how or why those facts compliment each other (if they do) and what those facts essentially mean. This in my opinion is why the church has lost a sense of her meaning and an underlying reason nominalism prevails within her borders. Knowledge has been stripped of understanding and truth of meaning.
Biblical wisdom is absent in Christendom. Wisdom encapsulates both knowledge and understanding within the bounds of biblical nomenclature, "for the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding," (Prov. 2:6). To the Hebrew mind wisdom involves both knowledge and its sibling understanding. Effort needs to be made by all christians to understand what they know for, "understanding is a well spring of life to him who has it," (Prov. 16:22).
Intergrating the knowledge of God's truths into the christian life vis a vis understanding is paramount. Paul expressed this when he prayed, "we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God," (Col. 1:9-10). Paul was praying this for the Colossians against the backdrop of a heresy that was gnostic in nature. The Gnostic doctrines advanced a dualism that divided the corporeal from the incorporeal or the mind from the body. For the christian there needs to be a coherent unity of being, whereby the knowledge of biblical truths resident within the mind finds an understanding expressed through the body in every sphere of existence.
In so doing we will learn to "see as" much like David above. The perception of his experiential facts changed when confronted with Nathan's comparative story which enabled David to move beyond his skewed "seeing." Though he knew God's law he was not defining his actions according to that law he had knowledge of. It took an interaction with what he knew from another source in order for him to rightly understand how to interpret his experience. Whenever we are continually applying biblical categories to our perception/s what we might have been "seeing" previously may be shown to be fallacious and thus enable us to "see as" it should be perceived according to biblical truth/s. (For more on this subject see Ludwig Wittgensteins' Philosophical Investigations, 1953.) The rudimentary maxim behind this is that human perception is fundamentally interpretive).
In so doing our reasoning, theology and interpretive matrix is subject to His Lordship.
Credo ut Intelligam
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
