Episodes
Sunday Aug 20, 2017
The way out of darkness
Sunday Aug 20, 2017
Sunday Aug 20, 2017
The light beam of god’s love is the only thing that can reorder our world, and dispel the darkness of the hatred and division that is being seen in today’s world.
1 John 2:11. Whoever acts hatefully towards his brother is living life in darkness and does not know where his life is taking him, because the darkness blinds his eyes to the way ahead of him.
WHERE DO THE DIVISIONS COME FROM?
We all derive a sense of belonging from somewhere. Our sense of belonging comes firstly from our family. Here is where parents determine the values and worldview of the child. They determine which race, culture, religion and political preferences a child belongs to. A child pins its loyalty to these worldviews of the family ‘isms’ and can start to feel different from others. This is how tribal values and behaviours begin, between the ages of 7 to about 12 and into adolescence. Emotional attachments are formed to the tribal flag or banner and that causes separation.
One group will devalue the values of another group and then tend to devalue the persons in that group. But breaking out is as commonplace as hanging in – just under another banner. Some ideological, cultural and religious groupings are like prisons that make it extremely difficult for people to break out. When these groupings become destructive within a peace loving community it becomes a matter of law and order to bring peace and order (Romans 13:1-7). Nonetheless even if the ideology is unredeemable, the individuals are always redeemable.
But we are talking here about people who should know better and who have a Judeo Christian heritage, and unfortunately separation has happened in various degrees over the years within Christianity between the thirty six thousand protestant denominations and the Catholic and the Orthodox Church etc. Galatians 3:27 … there is no Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male or female…
Here Paul defines ethnic, social, political, and gender groupings. Those kinds of groupings used to and still do bring division and hostility into human relationships. This has now become a social and political war of entitlement between special interest groups.
We also have people who advocate tolerance to ‘moral progressiveness’ speaking hatefully in their intolerance of those who stand up for traditional moral values.
TODAY’S WORLD
In the US in the last week there has been cultural and racial and political hostility erupting, culminating in the death and injury of people in Charlottesville Virginia. White Nazi supremacists from out of state, epitomized by one man from Carolina who justified the killing of an innocent woman, have become the focus of the darkness in the tribal divisions existing in the nation. America is better than that, but the hostile and angry rhetoric, sadly from people in the highest places of leadership have left millions of people, including myself, dismayed and disappointed. Both Democrats and Republicans are perplexed and confused.
I mentioned some weeks ago that there was to be a total eclipse of the sun over America on Monday, occurring from West to East (NASA map) starting from Oregon and ending in South Carolina. Is this symbolic of the darkness? Is God sending a wake up call?
Ephesians 4:6…One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.
My hope is that the awakening would cause people to see one another as their Father in Heaven sees them.
Acts 17:26 And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our bein
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