Wilful and enforced blindness.
One of the things that becomes quite apparent when you have been around this earth for a while is that the anxieties of each age generally are in the wrong place. We were worried about a lack of freedom when I was a child, but that generation has embraced political correctness, and the regulation of thought in the name of tolerance.
The clear eyed warnings given in the 1960s and 1970s were ignored by progressives. We are left with the consequences. And, as Job points out, this is obvious.
1Then Job answered: 2“No doubt you are the people, and wisdom will die with you. 3But I have understanding as well as you; I am not inferior to you. Who does not know such things as these? 4I am a laughingstock to my friends; I, who called upon God and he answered me, a just and blameless man, I am a laughingstock. 5Those at ease have contempt for misfortune, but it is ready for those whose feet are unstable. 6The tents of robbers are at peace, and those who provoke God are secure, who bring their god in their hands.
13“With God are wisdom and strength; he has counsel and understanding. 14If he tears down, no one can rebuild; if he shuts someone in, no one can open up. 15If he withholds the waters, they dry up; if he sends them out, they overwhelm the land. 16With him are strength and wisdom; the deceived and the deceiver are his. 17He leads counselors away stripped, and makes fools of judges. 18He looses the sash of kings, and binds a waistcloth on their loins. 19He leads priests away stripped, and overthrows the mighty. 20He deprives of speech those who are trusted, and takes away the discernment of the elders. 21He pours contempt on princes, and looses the belt of the strong. 22He uncovers the deeps out of darkness, and brings deep darkness to light. 23He makes nations great, then destroys them; he enlarges nations, then leads them away. 24He strips understanding from the leaders of the earth, and makes them wander in a pathless waste. 25They grope in the dark without light; he makes them stagger like a drunkard.
21Again he said to them, “I am going away, and you will search for me, but you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come.” 22Then the Jews said, “Is he going to kill himself? Is that what he means by saying, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come’?” 23He said to them, “You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world. 24I told you that you would die in your sins, for you will die in your sins unless you believe that I am he.” 25They said to him, “Who are you?” Jesus said to them, “Why do I speak to you at all? 26I have much to say about you and much to condemn; but the one who sent me is true, and I declare to the world what I have heard from him.” 27They did not understand that he was speaking to them about the Father. 28So Jesus said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own, but I speak these things as the Father instructed me. 29And the one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what is pleasing to him.” 30As he was saying these things, many believed in him.
31Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; 32and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
Now, Jesus was going to the grave. He was going to the cross. This was a place where we cannot go. As his audience could not comprehend what was going to happen — despite what now appears to be plain predictions — so we ignore the warnings around us.
For we have been blinded. We are told not to look here, not to think this. By making doubt questionable and dissent unthinkable, we lose the ability to correct the path we are on. One of the most frightening parts of this is the warning implied in what Jesus wrote — that there is a season during which we can change, and after than we are on the road to perdition, and we will die in our sins.
For we are limited. We live within an culture, and we cannot easily see the assumptions of that culture. The culture may gradually change — or, as is the case in this post-Christian age, change rapidly. What we were taught was right, and has always been seen as right, and indeed has been the practice of the church since the beginning may be proclaimed by our culture as wrong.
The church, in short, is always at risk of being captured by the culture it sits in and turning apostate. This is not merely a historical issue that happened in Germany or Russia last century. With the current move to legalize a form of marriage that is no longer covenantal (and then extend it to gays) we are facing a challenge to our corporate conscience — as we are challenged to assent with the fashion of this day.
We need to remember it is not our role to be fashionably blind but instead by clear eyed, and steadfast in the faith. As Jesus noted — we need to remain in him. Not in today’s fashions.
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