The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings; they are given by one Shepherd.
- Ecclesiastes 12:11

In every situation, how we understand ourselves and what we are to be about in life is the deciding factor in how we live.

At just this moment, for example, as I’m writing these words, our household is in a tumult.

We’re preparing to move to somewhere (we don’t know where yet), and we have to be out of this home in two weeks. Auctioneers have arrived to carry away some old furniture and books, as well as a bit of this and that we’ve decided we no longer require. The tell-tale evidence of an impending move is everywhere – half-packed boxes of books, lists of things to do, pages and pages of possible homes, downloaded from the Internet.

The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings; they are given by one Shepherd.
-          Ecclesiastes 12:11

The age of everybody-knows-best
Have you seen the commercial which has a guy out in the street, consulting his insurance app to report an accident? His (blonde) friend asks what he’s doing, and when he explains, she says that she didn’t know that insurance company had such an app. “Where’d you hear that?” asks her friend. “On the Internet,” she replies. “They can’t put anything on the Internet that isn’t true.” “Where’d you hear that?” he asks skeptically. They answer together, “On the Internet.”

We should have expected as much. These days, when, in many people’s thinking, one person’s words are as true as anyone else’s, the Internet is the place for airing your opinions in blogs, replies, social media, and the like. Somehow just getting your view up on the web is validation that it must contain a measure of truth.

What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithfulness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means! Let God be true though every one were a liar…
-          Romans 3:3, 4

A new tack

It’s time for Christians to change course and take a new tack in matters of culture and public life.

I think we’ll all agree that a generation of alarmism, whining and complaining, blaming, condemning, political activism, and all manner of ad hominem nonsense  and hubris has not helped to advance the cause of the Kingdom of God. If anything, we have fallen further behind in bringing righteousness, peace, and joy to light than we were in the generation that preceded us.

He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female; and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his other and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh’?”
-          Matthew 19:4, 5

More is at stake in the debate over the nature of marriage than many believers seem to understand.

The ultimate issue here is not whether  America shall recognize “gay marriage.” That may or may not happen. But whether or not it does, Christians need to make sure they see the larger implications of this debate.

And he said, “The Jews have agreed to ask you to bring Paul down to the council tomorrow, as though they were going to inquire somewhat more closely about him. But do not be persuaded by them, for more than forty of their men are lying in ambush for him, who have bound themselves by an oath neither to eat nor drink till they have killed him.”
-  Acts 23:20, 21

What did it take for Paul’s nephew to share this bit of information with the Roman tribune? Surely he was known among the Jews as being a relative of the Apostle. Would they not suspect that he might have had something to do with fouling up their wicked plans?

After making purification of sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high…
-        Hebrews 3:3

Tom Waits has a wonderful song called, “What’s He Building in There?” in which he muses over the doings of a mysterious neighbor and the strange lights and sounds that emanate from behind his closed doors.

It’s a song about many things – curiosity, fear, and even wonder. The song has a kind of comedic undercurrent and resolves into nothing except the repeated line, “What’s he building in there?”