Adjusting The Future Today

It is amazing for someone like me to take in all the changes that have occurred in my lifetime.  I remember when folks first started getting TV's in their homes.  Honestly, I can remember some who didn't have indoor bathrooms.  I remember sitting on my front porch in town with a dirt road for a street and watching as an old man named "Will"  rode slowly down the street in his wagon powered by a mule with a big plow sticking up out of the wagon.  He was trying to find someone who might hire him to plow their garden.  I remember life in the hot muggy South without air conditioning in their homes much less their cars.  I remember picking up the phone and a living person would ask, "number please?"  I remember how I felt our family had arrived when we bought a car that didn't have a clutch to change gears.  I remember the race to the moon and then watching with the rest of the world as man stepped out of his safe space craft and touched the mysterious lunar surface for the first time.  Yes, I remember when computers were talked about as something that would change our world one day!  It was also a day of order and decorum.  There were things that were right and things that were wrong.  If you stepped outside the lines you were corrected.  I remember a world where neighbors loved you like Grandparents.  They might invite you on the porch for some homemade "tea cakes".  If they saw you doing something really wrong, they also might spank you and tell your parents later!  I know that sounds crazy but it happened.  In the middle of this perfect sounding world, which it wasn't, there was a penalty for our wrongs.  It was a time when the Bible set the standard for living.  Everyone knew it, even those who didn't confess to being a believer.  There was a atmosphere of right and wrong.  We all knew the difference.  Of course we still did wrong but when we were caught we knew we were getting what we needed in the form of punishment.  It made things, well, righteous.

Today it is hard to find order, right and wrong and a culture of righteousness.  It is frustrating to one who was shaped by an imperfect but yet  righteous order of things.  We don't like the lines being moved.  That may be why the Bible talks about "not moving the ancient boundary markers of your forefathers."  It is easy to loose your moorings for someone like me if we don't really remain focused.  But then I think, "what about those who never knew a solid mooring in the first place?" Thank God we still have the steadfastness of the Church!  That grand old institution established by Jesus to be remain forever a place of Refuge from the storms and shifting sands of decaying cultures.  It is a place where right will always be right and wrong will always be wrong and while God is all loving, His Word promises correction and discipline.  REALLY?!  REALLY?!  There has never been a time in history when so many were comfortable destroying foundations and moving around the boundary stones of thousands of years without an apparent twinge of guilt.  How is this possible?  They don't know they are doing wrong.  They have eaten at the tables of purveyors of the artificial.  It is a diet so close to Truth that it challenges even the most serious disciple.  The problem is not that it is not truth but it is not a balanced truth.  It cries out of the mercy, love and grace of God without a shred of the confrontation over wrong or punishment.  Yes, there is a place for correction in the pulpit.  As a matter of fact if confrontation and correction is absent from our pulpits, where will it be found?

I will end with this story of my Father taking me to my room with an oak switch in his hand.  He sat me down and explained what I had done wrong and then uttered those words, "this is going to hurt me more than it will hurt you."  Was that moment with the "rod of correction"wrong or bad for me?  Absolutely not!  It is impossible to assay the full value of such a confrontation of right and wrong.  In most homes this ancient practice is now obsolete.  Let's not let the Church, the last bastion of righteousness become powerless by our lack of the practice of righteousness.  May we go back to The Book for a fresh look at the balanced view of God and then preach and practice those principles revealed.