time is not my friend…it’s not yours either

“We must now define what it means to be Christian because the hypocrisy
of some can be confusing to a watching world.”
David Fiorazo

Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God?
Or am I trying to please people?
If I were still trying to please people,
I would not be a servant of Christ.
Galatians 1:10

(the fishing seems slim / Rosemary Beach / Julie Cook / 2018)

Piggybacking on yesterday’s post regarding David Fiorazo’s book The Cost of our Silence,
I’ll admit that my reading of this book of his will be a slow go—because time is not my friend.
Not that it is a friend to any of us.

For time is of the essence.
But it is rapidly waning.

Time being a central theme I’ve now been sounding for nearly four years.
Ever since a trip to Ireland and a Divine revelation.

And yet it remains…not a friend.

Not a friend to our lives as in it eats up what we call our own.
And it is equally destructive to our Spiritual lives.
As in it’s running out…time is running out…
but who wants to hear about that…
because that would mean we’d need to get up, get out, remove ourselves
from our comfort zones and really get ourselves busy.

And as Spiritual Beings, the idea that our time is growing more and more limited
by the day, is, well…something that should have us all gearing up to get to work.

Here are a few more thoughts from our friend and author David Fiorazo’s introduction from his
book The Cost of our Silence.
A little more food for thought.
More of the impetus for our getting up and getting going before our time runs out.

America has more Chrisitan churches and more resources than ever before–
more than any other country in the world–
so why do we look less and less like a Christian nation every day?
We have more Bibles, seminaries, Chrisitan music, and Christian entertainment than ever before.
We have the fanciest churches, the finest Christian colleges, countless ministries and no profits,
and we have an abundance of Christian radio, television, and Christin bookstores across the country.
Now consider the swindling amount of Christian influence in our culture today.
Something is drastically wrong.

Christians in America are facing indoctrination from a multitude of directions.
Schools instruct our children in evolution, environmentalism, and earth worships.
Later they learn about Freudian psychology, social justice, and homosexuality.
We are deluged with secular entertainment, promiscuity, and promotion of the abortion business.
Society is inundated with Marxism, socialism, and secularism.
Our lives are bombarded with atheism, witchcraft, false religions, and liberalism.
Even in some church denominations, liberals (some may refer to them as religious
“progressives” or the “Christian Left”) have gained power and introduced theological
heresies including New Age philosophies.

“If we are serious about our faith, others will know.”

“We as Bible-believing evangelical Christians are locked in a battle.
This is not a friendly gentleman’s discussion.
It is a life and death conflict between the spiritual hosts of wickedness and
those who claim the name of Christ.”
Francis Schaeffer

So what name are we claiming because we don’t have much more time remaining to be deciding…

But the one who endures to the end will be saved.
Matthew 24:13

absolute

“In passing we should note this curious mark of our age:
The only absolute allowed is the absolute insistence that there is no absolute”
Francis A. Schaeffer

(the upside down gills of a spent mushroom / Julie Cook / 2017)

Death…
the one true absolute…
and yet,
there are those who would even argue the definitive nature of death….

What is it about man and absolutes??

On the one hand man riles against those who espouse in absolutes…
“be damned you fools” he will shout, “for I will not live by such pronouncements…”

While on the other hand he will test and retest in order to hold triumphantly
a handful of litmus papers of absolute proof…
that being the definitive definer…
as he will now forever hold those stained papers sacred.

Thou, oh ancient man, shall have no other gods but the Lord your God…

Absolute…

Yet man hordes a thousand other gods.
Clinging and clutching tightly to the fading fancies of his whims.

Thou shall take one woman as your wife and have no others besides her…

Absolute…

Yet man will alter and amend each law and sacrament in order to appease his current
fickled and twisted lust.

Thou shall honor and cherish your wife just as Christ honors and cherishes his own bride…

Absolute.

Yet man will opt not to have and to hold until death do part as he will grow weary
and seek that which is constantly fresh and new as he opts for the easier throwaway
mindset of the fleeting.

Thou shall cherish and love life and thou shall honor and love one unto another just
as you would wish to be cherished, honored and loved.

Absolute

Yet man will prefer to fight, hurt, murder, slander, defile, maim and destroy not
only others, but himself as well, as life and the living have lost all holiness…

For man has proclaimed himself his own god…

And thus it is man who extols that which is right and that which is wrong.

And since he is never satisfied with his choices for very long,
he will just as quickly turn each proclamation upside down,
in order to suit the latest craving or longing…
because nothing remains scared,
nothing remains holy
and nothing remains true…

for the only absolute in the mind of man is that there are no absolutes….

Then I saw another angel flying in midheaven,
with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on earth,
to every nation and tribe and tongue and people;
and he said with a loud voice,
“Fear God and give him glory, for the hour of his judgment has come;
and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the fountains of water.”
Revelation 14:6-7

who becomes the enemy?

“If we as Christians do not speak out as authoritative governments grow…
eventually we or our children will be the enemy of the society and the state.
No truly authoritarian government can tolerate those who have a real absolute by which to judge its arbitrary absolutes”
(Francis Schaeffer
How Should We Then Live, 1976)

(gulls, Santa Rosa Beach, FL / Julie Cook / 2016

While we’ve been busying ourselves with life,
resting in the falsehoods of our comfort…
With steely precision, an insidious force has been set in motion,
casting forth a lie of epic proportion…

It is a growing and troubling lie…a lie now readily held as truth…
Held and spread by those who now claim that you and I, who call ourselves Christian,
are the true enemy of the people.

The world cannot abide by any absolute other than its own fickled whims and wants.
It is the ego of both pride and carnal knowledge that cannot tolerate the Holy Absolute.
That same Holy Absolute to which both you and I hold fast.

And so it now appears that the enemy is closer than we may care to imagine…

“Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies.
At the end all his disciples deserted him.
On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers.
For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God.
So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes.
There is his commission, his work.
‘The kingdom is to be in the midst of your enemies.
And he who will not suffer this does not want to be of the Kingdom of Christ;
he wants to be among friends, to sit among roses and lilies,
not with the bad people but the devout people.
O you blasphemers and betrayers of Christ!
If Christ had done what you are doing who would ever have been spared’ (Luther).”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

What is truth

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
― Flannery O’Connor

(Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah, Georgia / Julie Cook / 2016)

Truth…
an explanation or reflection of fact
The definitiveness of reality
No maybes, no what ifs, no possibilities
Only black and white
Clear cut
It is what it is….
Nothing more, nothing less.

Yet not all facts, not all reality, not all what it is, is… are welcomed.
Truth can be difficult, even painful.
It can be hard and humbling.
There are those who wish to distort, alter, change Truth…
Making it, the Truth, little and their own.

The Word of Truth was eventually made flesh
The flesh lived in the Word of Truth
There would be, could be, no denying Life as Truth.

Yet the Truth was perceived as difficult and hard…
It was disliked and greatly resented.

However Truth is Truth…
It has a way of exposing all that is veiled in false reality
Those steeped in the falsehood of deceit and the selfishness of half truths, fought the living Truth.
It was decided that Truth had to be destroyed.
Truth was quickly and readily betrayed.

The Truth, in the life lived, was uncomfortable, it was despised and even rejected.
How is Truth, that which is, the reality of fact, to be rejected and ignored?
How can facts and reality, all of what is, is…simply be dismissed and denied?
How can Truth, which is the black and white of plain sight, be disfigured, misconstrued or perverted?

There were lies and distortion, twists and bends.
Attempts to disprove the embodiment of Truth…

However all the lies, all the altering, all the denying, all the twists and the bends failed.
Truth persisted.
It was not to be denied.

The Life of Truth was then thought to be the key.
Silence the Life, silence the Truth…
The Life of Truth would have to be destroyed.
For if there is no Life, there is no Truth.

Yet the Truth would not, could not be silenced.
Truth could not, would not be easily nor neatly disposed of in Death.
For Truth has a way of persisting, remaining even triumphing over Death itself.

There continues to this day, those who labor to deny, to alter, to change, to warp,
to rewrite and to bend the Truth….
Preferring to live the lies, the half truths and the falsehoods of distortion, deceit and selfishness.

Yet Truth has a way of persisting, even outlasting all that which is not of Truth itself.
It outlasts all the lies, the distortions, the selfishness, the bending, the rewriting and the altering…
For in the end, that which is reality, black and white, plain and simple…
that which is of the Truth of the Word and of the Life lived through the Truth…
will be the only thing to endure….
Not even Death can deny the Truth…

“Today not only in philosophy but in politics, government, and individual morality, our generation sees solutions in terms of synthesis and not absolutes. When this happens, truth, as people have always thought of truth, has died.”
Francis Schaeffer