I Will & I Won't

Did you know that the eye is not the final determiner of what you see? As complex as the eye is, with its cornea, lens, pupil, iris, macula, retina and vitreous humor (not an exhaustive inventory), the final regulator of what you see is your brain. In fact, the left side of the brain captures your right-side field of vision and the right side of the brain captures your left-side field of vision. And yet, with all this complexity and wonder, there is yet another arbiter even more sophisticated and determined than the brain. This determining mechanism is called the will.

Let’s say you’re a 40 year old man, married to an attractive professional woman, with three children in late elementary grades. You live in a middle-class gated community in your four bedroom Dutch Colonial home on the 9th fairway from where you commute 30 minutes each way to a respectable office job, and supervise six junior executives, an office assistant, and a pretty young intern anxious to make good. The intern seems to violate your sense of personal space, brushes against you at the coffee urn, refers to your self-conscious irks about your paunch and thinning pate as “mature” attributes, and would like to devote some extracurricular time with you to cultivate a leadership style she much admires in you. Every image your eyes see, every signal your brain interprets as the neurotransmitters perform their designated chemical functions, and every message your mind receives tells you that what you’re contemplating is putting at risk your marriage, your home, your reputation, and your children’s esteem . . . yet you choose jeopardy. The eyes were functional . . . the brain did its job . . . what happened?

There was an angel. He was described by God as “the model of perfection” (Ezekiel 28:12) but somehow made a determination to commit rebellion because holding the highest post in creation was somehow insufficient. Notwithstanding his own beauty, intelligence, position and gifts (unsurpassed), he determined to strike out at his own benefactor in revolt. We know it wasn’t design or destiny, impulse or improvisation, mistake or malfunction. The record of his determined decision is recorded in Isaiah 14:13-14; “I will,” “I will,” “I will,” “I will,” “I will.” Not to be confused with “I want,” or “I wonder.” Five times he exercised dominion over his decision process, against all the data to which his surroundings testified.

Mankind, like Lucifer, is equipped with this apparatus of self-determination wherein we are capable of ignoring every signal in the flow of one direction and choose the opposite. Now, it’s not an easy path to live out Mazlow’s hierarchy of needs (Survival, Safety & Security, Belonging, Esteem, Full Potential) if one chooses rebellion as a life script. So, we (humans) have discovered that, like wearing sun glasses to mitigate the harshness of light, or like wearing corrective lenses to compensate for what we actually see (due to faulty optical parts), we can wear an adapter (called “world view”) to help us make decisions that seem to “not be so contrary.” For example, in order to justify and excuse the behavior of a chief executive who committed adultery, lied, violated his oath of office and betrayed his national constituency in an “in-your-face” fashion and without remorse, I can wear my cynical “everybody-does-it” hedonist world view prism apparatus and be very at ease with my decision. This is why those who take what’s not theirs, commit violence and murder, abuse and mistreat children, cheat on their tax responsibilities, or bear false witness without regret or shame can do so with a clear conscience. Therefore, “I will” endeavor to “seek first His kingdom and His righteousness” (Matthew 6:33) in order to navigate through this vale of tears, and when I stumble “I will” avoid the corrective lenses designed to assuage my shame and instead seek forgiveness and accept restoration. (1 John 1:9)

Ann Coulter, How Do I Love Thee?

I’m so in love with Ann Coulter. She does her homework and makes her case without political correct caution. Her arguments are forceful and clinical and obliterate the opposition because all her foes have to hang their argument on is ad hominem attacks and volume. Her facts are indisputable, which is why her enemies continue to try to silence her. In reading her newest book, “Demonic,” I have determined that she has discovered the fundamental reason why the left is so incapable of interpreting the facts as reality. It’s not because they’re mean and despicable (they simply appear that way), it’s because they are handicapped with a Progressive Jamming Device (PJR) called ignorance. Ignorance is not stupidity. The dictionary defines stupidity as “mental dullness” or “lacking ordinary quickness and keenness of mind.” These people are not stupid; they are simply afflicted with PJD that keeps them from integrating actual facts in a healthy, normal manner. It is self-imposed to be sure but nevertheless definite. Jesus said “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” (Mk. 4:9) He wasn’t “implying” anything – he was saying straight out . . . it’s a choice. Weather spiritual or political it ought to be sensible to cut out all the extraneous blather (these two words together constitute a redundancy but in this case it seems to apply) and speak forthrightly. In the case of the Gospel narrative Jesus apparently determined that assuaging the hurt feelings of some who might be offended at his frankness was much less important than getting the message across. Those who are going to be offended will take offense anyway. They want to be offended. They want the facts to be as they see and hear them, not as they are. Therefore, much like an electrical short circuit that causes machinery to malfunction, PJR scrambles the data and . . . presto! . . . ignorance. Many on the left are champions of compromise, that peaceful, cooperating, lets-all-get-along-together attitude of a negotiated settlement. It sounds so right. It seems so proper. (“There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.” Prov. 14:12) Daniel and his companions were legitimate servants to the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar who had the right of conquest to do as he wished with them. When told they had to violate their laws of kosher and eat foods that would defile them, Daniel could have compromised and his decision would have been understood. Yet he insisted on faithfulness, understanding that there can be no compromise to fidelity. The champions of compromise want to muddy the water and then ask you to drink from a polluted source, trying to convince you that there’s no such thing as perfection . . . or purity. Jesus was encouraged to turn stones into bread. After all, he had fasted for 40 days, was undoubtedly very hungry, and no one would know the difference. But truth minus anything in the direction of compromise is less than truth. “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

Poor Old Jeremiah

Poor old Jeremiah, he just couldn’t seem to get out of the way of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. He had to call it like he saw it and that offended just about the entire country. It’s difficult to swim against the current and the consequences of his determination cost him a lot . . . he was beaten and put into stocks; he was imprisoned by the king; he was threatened with death; he was thrown into a cistern (a big vat); and he was condescendingly opposed in public by the local good-guy prophet, Hananiah. Even his own family turned on him. In the end, when it turned out that he was seeing clearly and everyone else was wrong, he received no apologies or acknowledgements. But that seems to be the way it is with the human condition. The Apostle Paul said, “. . . they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear” (2 Tim 4:3). It’s not meanness and ugliness; it’s a sincere desire to want things to be fair and kind. But, we are poor judges of what is true. “There is a way that seems right to man but in the end it leads to death." (Prov. 14:12). Our ability to see and hear properly depends on whether we have “eyes to see” and “ears to hear.” (Mark 4:9)

The Gospel, of course, is simple. All that other theologian stuff can get fairly complicated: Justification, Sanctification, Glorification, Hermeneutics, Systematic Theology, Eschatology, etc. Yet, if we could just stumble on the simple prospect that “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever would believe in Him would not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16) we could realize that it’s not about us but all about Him and rest in the peace that transcends all understanding (Phil. 4:7). But the world is full of other stuff too, like politics, economics, history, science, relationships and family. Even when we ask God to weigh in on these matters it seems we’ve already made up our minds about what he will say . . . or should say . . . to be fair. In his 2001 historical dissertation titled “While God is Marching On,” Steven Woodworth illustrates how both sides in the great American War Between the States were convinced that God was on their side. Yet, we have a peculiar and fervent gift for interpreting things through a prism of self-centeredness. We simply will not tolerate hearing the truth if it doesn’t pass the muster of our prideful world view. Following WWI, wherein the British lost about a million (dead) and another 1.5 million wounded out of a population of less than 30 million men, they were in no mood for another fight. By the 1930s they were already determined not to listen to even one as eloquent as Winston Churchill who warned of the need to oppose Hitler and the Nazi movement as early as October 1930. Yet he was booed and hissed in Parliament, ridiculed in the press, and suffered tepid support even in his own political party. As late as May 1940, King George VI did not want him to be his prime minister and he was dumped less than a month after VE Day.

Today, there are voices of prophecy in the political/economic arena, warning of impending disaster. Will we call on God to ratify our beliefs and strategies, or will we get serious about jettisoning all unnecessary philosophical baggage and turn to Him for our deliverance? Our first destination ought not to be the voting booth but a place where our knees can find surface. “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” (2 Chr. 7:14)