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For there are many words which increase futility. What then is the advantage to a man? Ecclesiastes 6:11 NASB
Futility – We are the most informed generation of human beings to ever walk the planet. We know quite a bit about quite a bit. But we know almost nothing about what really matters. Believing that we will find the soul-peace we so desperately desire by accumulating more information (about God, the Bible, the Church, ourselves or anything else) is a ploy of the yetzer ha’ra, convincing us that we can control and predict; we can exercise power over even the foibles of the yetzer ha’ra. It is a shell game. You lose!
“As civilization advances, the sense of wonder almost necessarily declines. Such decline is an alarming symptom of our state of mind. Mankind will not perish for want of information; but only for want of appreciation. The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living. What we lack is not a will to believe but a will to wonder.”[1]
Today I walked (rather than drive) three miles along a busy rode. As I walked, I noticed what God had done—and what we have done. In the ditch, next to discarded soda cans and plastic bags, were tiny purple flowers. Each one an exquisite masterpiece in design and function. Beautifully enhanced with graduated shades of nature’s kaleidoscope, one could only be in awe that God would take such care of these lilies of the field. While we throw our substitutes of functional expediency on top of His carpet of splendor.
We use religious words in the same way we use Styrofoam. Convenient, cheap containers for transporting ideas from one mind to another. “There would, indeed, be no greater comfort that to live in the security of foregone conclusions, if not for that gnawing concern which turns all conclusions into a shambles.”[2]
Heschel has articulated our need and the steps we must take to avoid the temptation of speaking solutions.
“Faith is not a product of our will. It occurs without intention, without will. Words expire when uttered, and faith is like the silence that draws lovers near, like a breath that shares the wind.”[3] We are “a parenthesis in the immense script of God’s eternal speech,”[4] and because it is God who is speaking, all of our verbal pretentions are interruptions to the majesty of His voice. There is only one response appropriate for us. Praise. “Unless we know how to praise Him, we cannot learn how to know Him.”[5] What we need desperately, the sense of belonging to the great symphony of God, can only be experienced in a state of awe. Today, Day 25, is “wonder day.” Hear with your eyes the harmonies of the spheres. Find that tiny purple flower that opens your way into the eternal. Praise Him, praise Him, praise Him. Today He allows you to utter speechless cries of joy. Today you are a part of the cosmic choir.
Topical Index: futility, Ecclesiastes 6:11, words, praise
[1] Abraham Heschel, Man Is Not Alone, p. 37.
[2] Ibid., p. 71.
[3] Ibid., p. 73.
[4] Ibid., p. 75
[5] Ibid., p. 74.
“Without faith it is impossible to please him” for, whatsoever is not of faith is sin”. But, here is the rub: I cannot generate even the first iota of faith! Without it I cannot even step out of sin into obedience; in fact, all my obedience is counted as filthy rags – as symbols of unfruitfulness and futility – without the faith that righteousness must have to operate in. Without faith, I cannot even see my sin, for that requires that I have faith that what the Law is showing me is true, but it also takes faith to repent, because I cannot turn around if I did not have faith in another Way. It takes faith to walk in that Way, too, because when I am not traveling on my own orders and following what I think must be so, I am having to exercise faith that Someone Else’s orders and will are best for me. That takes a lot of faith! Further, all the fruits of the Spirit can only occur in the presence of faith; faith is the only context in which they can bear fruit. “Love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance”: oh, how hard I tried to employ every one but to no avail, in my flesh! I learned the hard way that they are fruits, or, results, or even aftereffects, if you will, of the presence of the Holy Spirit in my life. If He is not free to employ each one in season, for His purposes, and in His Way (not mine!), they, in turn, will not bear the “peacable fruit of righteousness” in my life – none of them will do me, or anybody else, any good! I, then, have to have faith that the Holy Spirit will generate His fruit in my life, before I am going to quit trying to do that on my own. I am going to have to trust Him to reproduce His righteousness in me before I can hand over the reins of my attempts to obey.
I think some people can get confused about what faith is: they can think that faith is a mental assent to a set of doctrines, or even that faith is what we must ‘do’ to obtain salvation (“have faith in Jesus!); however, the Bible shows me that faith, properly understood, is about trust – but trust is exactly what I lack! Trust, in fact, is what breaks when I sin, or even when others sin against me; all sin destroys trust, but trust is what I am told I must have to obey! The first order of business, then, is to replace the trust it takes to do right. Now, just how do I do that?
To restore my function in creation, which is to enjoy all that I have been given (for my pleasure is His, as any lover will testify, and I was literally created for His pleasure – Rev. 4:11), I have to be able to walk in each instant with full wonder: I must take each breath, and think each thought – make each decision – and initiate each action in the blindness to Self that the “substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not yet seen” must have to operate in. My pleasure is the reason of that entire creation, and my pleasure, then, is how I reflect that creation back properly to Him. Each instant of unmitigated wonder is true service; is true worship of my Creator, for that pleasure honors why that creation exists. However, I must be free before I can enjoy it. This is the freedom that only trust can know, but it is a freedom that bondage to Self can never know. Therefore, I must ignore the service of Self to serve Him, but that entails that I “walk by faith, and not by sight”. If I do not have the freedom of choices that faith returns to me, however, I also do not have the simultaneous freedom of the pleasure that that choice entails, for pleasure is only possible when I perceive that there is no other reason: no mitigating factors for it other than that I happen to like what is in front of me. I cannot enjoy something that I suspect does not have my best interests at heart. I find that I do not wonder at the universe because I do not, in fact, trust it!
A child learns early to be suspicious of pleasure that ensnares with covert motives. How often do we bribe our infants with the distracting toy, when we perhaps should have respected his or her unhappiness as a symptom of a need – and then we wonder why that child grew up unable to recognize his or her needs, but instead employs the distraction of loaded pleasure – pleasure that comes packaged with a covert reason to exist! “Simple pleasures”, it seems, are pleasures that we have not corrupted with the sin of distraction from our true condition. This is simply impossible to find in the flesh, for the flesh always has an ulterior motive! And why is that? Because the flesh just doesn’t trust anyone or anything! Pleasure then, in the original sense of creation, is impossible to attain in the flesh, because it appears that even pleasure for its own sake requires faith!
So how do I get that mythical golden ball back? How do I get back to the place of full and unreserved trust? I want my mojo back! To walk in wonder is to walk in trust. “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” I have to get back to the vulnerability of childhood: back to that place where my identity was inseparable from that of my parents; back to that aching place where my every moment was couched in the pleasure (or displeasure) of my parents. I have to be born again to another Father; this time, however, to One that I can fully trust! Halleluah! This is where the real fun starts! In the service of the kingdom of Self, the only dubious pleasure is me(!), but when I am born again into the kingdom of my heavenly Father, I get the entire universe as my playpen: every pleasure in it is mine, and He “withholds no good thing” from me.
I appreciate your intensity, but it seems to me that you are walking down the Augustinian-Lutheran road of total depravity, the idea that nothing that I can do makes any difference UNTIL God does it through me. This is an old, but mistaken, Christian version of Plato’s dichotomy. You CAN obey. You can choose to obey even if you don’t want to. You can choose to act on the basis of God’s word even if you do not believe it to be true. And when you do, you demonstrate “faith” because faith is not a noun. It is a verb. It is what you do even if your motives are not always aligned with the Spirit. In fact, the more you do what is “faithful,” the more you discover that you are comfortable with doing this. So you don’t need a magical inpouring of the Spirit. You need to DO WHAT IS RIGHT and let the chips fall where they may. Give up Plato, Augustine, Luther and Calvin and realize that you were made to choose–and that is enough.
Thank you for that. Yes, the choosing is always mine to do. I can ALWAYS choose. The question of WHY I am able to do that still remains, I think. Is it because of my own self worth (yes, I believe that there is such a thing) that enables me to choose, or is it grace that continually clears my runway? No, I am not depraved. That was a lie from hell. No, I am not defective from the factory; that is an accusation against my Creator! No, sin is not inherent; sin is not who I am. I have come to a firm understanding that sin is an alien, added phenomenon. Sin, in fact, is who I am NOT. But, at the end of that day, if I conclude that my choice is because I have something to bring, I believe that is still not correct. The reason is because the next choice is what I have been blocked from by my last choices, to the extent that the last choices were wrong. If all my last choices were wrong, my next choice has no platform to spring from: in other words, I am bound in sin.
Here is the hair-splitting spot where Luther stumbled, I think, and here it is that the baby can get switched in the cradle, because it did with me, even though I knew that Luther was wrong about original sin all along. If we cannot have a true conversation (thank you! we can!) about this exact place, I think we are still going to let ourselves get divided with a dichotomy that, once again, I do not believe exists. Our language is terribly polluted, and it allows the lies to masquerade as truth, and I got snowed for a very long time in this place. Yes, I always had a choice. The problem kept being that, to the extent that I was fractured from relationship already, I had only the platform of disaster to attempt further relationship from. That may not make a whole lot of sense to a bunch of people who have always had a working relationship with G-d, or at least do now. The reason being, there is a bottom of trust that has always functioned, or at least is currently functioning: you knew no matter what, you could just repent and start over. Why does that work? I think it is because from that place, the trust still exists that makes it possible to repent. When that is the case, at no time do you HAVE to fall for the lie that you have no worth, because it is obvious that you do. Case closed, Luther loses.
The platform I think Luther was having to work from was the one he had been given, and that was the assertion that if grace was necessary, we must be depraved; in fact, I am quite sure he probably started out from the other end: he believed he was depraved, and then he found grace, but because he thought he was depraved, he figured that grace was about his depravity. I am begging you not to fall for that, too, or else you can still end up in his ditch; which is to say you can still find yourself suffering from the fallout of a dialectic that does not exist. If you go all the way back to the real origin of the problem, you may find, as I did, that this is a one very nasty setup, designed, as all these dialectics seem to be, to separate us from either good thing that happens to lie on either side. When we fall for the argument, we have already lost, in other words.
I do not believe I am arguing with you. In other words, I agree with you that we are always free to choose, but I believe that, to the extent that sin binds me, not all choices are available to me. If I have made the correct choices to make a lot of money, say (I am not going to beat the point about how much has to be going for me that I did NOT provide, to make that possible, which can be proved by how little it can take that I, once again, can not control, to take me down again) I have a corresponding freedom of choice that reflects that. I can even find myself sneering at the bum in the ditch for not choosing to stay in a hotel, at least, and to wear some better clothes and go to work like me. I enjoy a freedom of choice that he does not. He can choose to do what I said for him to do all day long, but without money (freedom) those choices are meaningless. There, in fact, remains only one choice left for him, and that is to yelp for help. When Yeshua started to preach, He preached only one thing, and that was repentance. Repentance, in fact, is the only choice available to those who are in that ditch. But when we believe that grace is about depravity, then we can think that repentance, which is dependent upon that grace, is also about depravity.
Are you saying that we do not need to repent for doing wrong before we choose to do right? Are you saying that all it takes to quit doing wrong is to start doing right? Are you trying to find a way to bypass the depravity/grace dialectic by asserting that repentance, which is clearly dependent upon grace, must be avoided if I am to believe that choice springs from a place of my worth? If so, then would that not mean you believe that if you need grace, you must be depraved? Please forgive me if I am wrong, and I still am not hearing you!
No, I am NOT agreeing with Luther that I am depraved! But I still think I need grace. At this point, I would truly like to ask you where you think repentance fits into this equation. Fair enough?
Hi laurita,
It seems to me that grace is there whether you repent or not. Grace resides on the path of righteousness, being able to teshuvah, to get back on the righteous path after one has veered from it. Life resides in the way, walking in and doing torah, as Yeshua did.
It seems you might be tangling the words up a bit. I understand the framework you are coming from as, I, too, did. Now, I see it to be much simpler. We can choose, this day, and every day either life or death. Life encompasses us when we walk in the instructions of life, that is, what is delineated in torah. Or we can, at any given moment, choose death, that is anything out side of or opposed to living or doing torah. Simple. We don’t earn it, YHWH freely makes it available to us, but it is only realized through our faith. Life is offered to us. We are saved to life, the way, the path of righteousness by his choice of making it available. It is available by faith. Our faith IS the doing of torah, where life and salvation resides. Anything other than life in torah is death. That is why Adam and Havvah died when they rejected a particular instruction of YHWH yet still walked around in an animated body. They walked around yet resided in death. That is, YHWH’s definition of death.
Repentance is merely, but effectively, simply avoiding or terminating those things opposed to torah and doing those things commanded by torah. The simple action of doing torah from a position of not doing it constitutes our repentance. There is no conjuring up some mystical ethereal essence of some thing and call it faith as if it is an item that we can collect and redeem when needed. Faith is simply doing torah. It is visible actions, something others can witness. When people in Yeshua’s world demonstrated actions that reflected torah obedience, things and actions they could actually be seen, people equated it to their faith. It makes James 2:18 much clearer where he says, “But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.” James says, “SHOW me your faith.” You can’t see a desire in your brain or heart. You CAN see simple torah obedience. If you want to know of someone’s faith, all you need to do is OBSERVE what they DO, not necessarily what they SAY or BELIEVE. They demonstrated via their actions that which is commanded in torah. His life instructions played out in our lives constitutes faith. It’s not a mind thing, it’s a doing thing, an action thing. You want more faith and to be on the receiving end of his grace? DO his instructions. Nothing magical about it. It is very practical, very doable, and very life-like. It’s real things, not good intentions or thoughts or beliefs.
His instructions are presented in torah. There they are. Do them. In their doing is life. When you do them you are a faithful and righteous servant, lover of your creator. Your torah obedient actions are visible proof of his grace and his glory as you experience real life.
Hope that made some sense.
“Praise Him, praise Him, praise Him. Today He allows you to utter speechless cries of joy. Today you are a part of the cosmic choir.”
Glory! Glory! Glory! To Him who is All in All in All! Who is Above All – Understands All – and Loves in Complete Purity and Joy! Holy and Gracious is He! Full of Majesty Unequaled – Beyond our understanding and Faithful in every way! Glorious and Holy is He!
Hi Laurita – I’m a day late here..but may I add my thoughts? You said, “When Yeshua started to preach, He preached only one thing, and that was repentance. Repentance, in fact, is the only choice available to those who are in that ditch. But when we believe that grace is about depravity, then we can think that repentance, which is dependent upon that grace, is also about depravity.” Actually, Yeshua’s cousin, John, prepared the way for Him by preaching repentance. Yeshua’s message began when He was still in the womb and it was a message of God’s whole and complete Love for His creation and a freedom He would purchase for them at His own expense. The brain is a wonderful thing…where would we be without it?! : ) However, the brain is flesh and subject to confusion and misinformation. David understood it had to do with more than just what he could understand and follow logically. He understood that before we could use our brains to make a choice – God knew us. He knows the snares in the bloodlines that met within our bodies and how they would influence and either bind us in confusion or draw us to Him like a magnet. He knows before we sit or stand or what the next word will be out of our mouths before our brain can even form it…and there is not a single place we can go that He will not choose to be with us…even when we don’t know He is there. Sometimes He is there rejoicing over us and sometimes He is there weeping over us. He knew every decision we would have to make every snare that would trip us up and every joy He wanted us to have. It would be great if we could make the “jump” from bondage/uncertainty to freedom/certainty in an instant but we can’t…..it’s a process. Having the knowledge of His Word so that we can synchronize our progress with what His Word says is obviously huge. However, I know that I know….as I have gotten to know Him….if there is a human who has never had the opportunity to read that written word but in whose heart has always had a deep desire to know the One who they just somehow believe in their heart…created the earth-He would RUN to embrace them…ignorance and all. Our relationship with Him is based on our heart’s desire not on the rules written down to help us understand right from wrong. You can understand those backwards and forwards and if your heart’s desire is still yourself or ad nauseum…..you will still never know Him. How does He feel about that? He weeps. He’s ready to embrace anyone the moment they change their mind (which is actually the meaning of the word repentance). That’s why He is prepared to help us “unsnag” ourselves from the things that so easily deceive us….and that is a process..sometimes a very long, hard process and sometimes not. Some of it depends on the snags in our bloodlines. Over time I’ve looked hard and long at the lives of my family before me..not judgmentally but honestly. I’ve specifically asked my Father to cleanse my bloodline going forward of any curse or bondage the enemy successfully planted there in generations past. Even science proves addictions and chaos in previous generations can affect generations going forward. I don’t want to be a victim of the past I want to be free to be the person He created me to be today. It is a process and He knows that way better than we think He does. “Keep running with endurance in the contest set before us…looking away (from our failures/my note) to the Initiator and Completer of that trusting, Yeshua, who, in exchange for obtaining the joy set before Him (you are that joy Laurita) endured execution on a stake as a criminal, scorning the shame, and has sat down at the right Hand of the Throne of God.” Hebrews 12. SO – LET’S DO THIS! He has made the way – don’t worry over the ifs ands and buts – that’s static. Choose to love and trust Him above all things and He will lead you out of the static into His wonderful peace. Falling down is part of the process of learning to walk-He knows that better than we do…He just doesn’t want us to give up.