One of the difficulties with dealing with the lectionary and blogging on it is that you get the parts of scripture that no one teaches and no one likes. So, as a way of introduction, a story.

The Son was talking about the prosecutors in the US indicting various politicians. I commented that in the US almost everyone commits a felony a day. He asked, would they indict Christ. And my response was that they would indict him, and the churches would cheer it on.

Christ was not comfortable. People pretend that Christ was peaceful, and that we have a better sense of morality: we are civilized. Well, Moses challenges our morality, and Christ whips the bankers out of the temple, probably breaking one of the multiple anti terrorist regulations that the US congress has passed and the TSA tries to inflict on the world.

“Do not say in your heart, after the LORD your God has thrust them out before you, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the LORD has brought me in to possess this land,’ whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is driving them out before you. Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations the LORD your God is driving them out from before you, and that he may confirm the word that the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

“Know, therefore, that the LORD your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stubborn people. Remember and do not forget how you provoked the LORD your God to wrath in the wilderness. From the day you came out of the land of Egypt until you came to this place, you have been rebellious against the LORD. Even at Horeb you provoked the LORD to wrath, and the LORD was so angry with you that he was ready to destroy you. When I went up the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant that the LORD made with you, I remained on the mountain forty days and forty nights. I neither ate bread nor drank water. And the LORD gave me the two tablets of stone written with the finger of God, and on them were all the words that the LORD had spoken with you on the mountain out of the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly. And at the end of forty days and forty nights the LORD gave me the two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant. Then the LORD said to me, ‘Arise, go down quickly from here, for your people whom you have brought from Egypt have acted corruptly. They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them; they have made themselves a metal image.’

(Deuteronomy 9:4-12 ESV)

The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

(John 2:13-22 ESV)

The key phrase the first passage is that we should not think our righteousness has saved us. It has not. For we are all fallen, we are all broken. Now, I can hear people shutting down, thinking that I am a a misanthrope, and my theology is far too bleakly reformed. The first is an argument against the person (and a logical fallacy) and the second a truism of the gospel: we cannot earn our way to God. Peter knew this: he was a fisherman (and a successful one) when Christ met him, and his immediate response was to ask Christ to leave, because the very presence of the incarnate God convicted him.

But we instead believe that we are the prize, that we are all princes or princesses, and that we must never have our feelings hurt. This leads to the distortions of our life, and the misery that attends upon them.

We believe what we think are pretty lies. But they are ugly, really ugly.

Parents of daughters (generally, not in all cases, just generally) don’t give a d-mn what their future prospective son-in-laws want from their daughters. If he wanted a virginal wife (and can never get that from their buttexxed-desouled daughter) well, that is just too bad, he will have to take her just the way she is and learn to love her and well, thats the end of it! They see their daughters as prizes to be worked for and won in marriage, (the daughter can ALWAYS do BETTER than any man that she eventually marries.) The parents feel he must EARN her and jump through all these hoops to get her. That is the way the feminist imperative marital market economics of this “works” in the MC and UMC. That was even the crap I had to deal with (growing up) from my own folks because (right out of the gate) they thought every gf I had could simply DO BETTER than ME by virtue of the fact that they were female. They were blue-pill brainwashed too.

The man can NEVER-EVER!!!! be the “prize.” In every marriage, someone must ALWAYS be getting the better end of the deal in marriage and the only way feminism works (in marriage) is if the man thinks that his wife could have done better than him BUT there is ZERO CHANCE that he could have ever have done better than her. That is how he “won” the “prize.” She HAD to have “settled.” He MUST love her more than she could ever love him. It can not work the other way. Ever. Because if it is the other way around then…. well…. (given unilateral divorce laws) he’ll just frivorce her (eventually) when he can trade up. And no parent wants that.

Outside the church, it is ugly, and within the church it is not that much better. We have people pleading for sacrificial giving so they can drive a Mercedes or similar “for the Glory of God” or so that they can build a stadium and call it a sanctuary — when I would argue it is better to divide, and school halls make perfectly adequate places to worship. (If we want to go big, and have a massive multi-congregational worship service (please. no.) then my town is lumbered with an international class enclosed rugby ground: that can be hired),

Within the church we provoke the person who is our Lord and who will rule us. We are stubborn. And when he places us under discipline, we whine like little children. We want to preserve a sense that we are righteous and precious, regardless of what we have done, to the point that we stand among the casualties of our pride, those we have damaged, and call it good.

But it is not. And our God is just.

So this is not taught, not preached, not mentioned. It is consigned to a silence, As if scripture is not inspired by God, and profitable for teaching and correction.

God preserve us, for we are foolish: we have forgotten that it is a terrible thing to be in the hands of a living God.