Sabbath Messages > Sabbath Message: Oct. 30, 2004
Good Sabbath
October 30, 2004 " May it be Thy will, O Lord,God of my Fathers, to deliver me this day and every day from arrogance and from arrogant men, from every corrupt person, from every evil companion and neighbor, and from all mishap."
"All passions are good or bad, according to their objectives: where the object is absolutely good, there the greatest passion is too little; where absolutely evil, there the least passion is too much; where indifferent, there a little is enough." (Quarles)
This wonderful disgrace, called the presidential election, mixes love of God with infallibility of human and comes up wanting as we wait for decisions, which will be determined by courts rather than electorate.
God is not the coach or partisan fan; He is the product of faith and history, despising guile and the corruption of modern Babel, with voices of unreasoning faithlessness. Memorized devotion is no devotion at all for the foundation of faith stands on the concrete of reason rather than habit. God simply asks that we behave towards each other the way we would like others to behave towards us.
As young people listen and watch, there is a high level of cynicism about the ethics of successful people and the prevalence of cheating in the real world, creating the justification for dishonest conduct (the Josephson Institute of Ethics); two in three children said that "in the real world,successful people can do what they have to do to win,even if others consider it cheating." Yet even the kids understand that it's not worth it to lie or cheat because it hurts your character. Yet actions speak much louder than words for they tell us how the character of a generation and the culture of the nation are evolving, and I note very little to be admired.
Politics corrupts all that it touches and as it becomes more professionalized, its power grows, its propaganda marches to its own self-service as it disfigures all that it touches.
What then is the meaning of life and when is the definition formed, and who teaches the lessons so that life becomes meaningful? It is wonderfully simple, yet politics complicates the simplicity. And what is perfection? I learned that it is the perfection of God, yet even He is in evolution, so written words are temporary judgments as lessons keep coming in the form of how we behave. Faith is dangerous if it is misplaced by blind obedience. The literal translation of foreign words into concrete is fallible, make no mistake about that. Faith is not blind, but reasoned out as it is lived.
Mr. Bush's minister is supposed to tell him tomorrow, that "God will frequently have to knock the bottom out of your experience, as his saint, to get you in direct contact with yourself". Yet the politician who believes that only he has been told the truth by God suffers from illusion as faith and life are still being tested and tried. Maturity isn't the years one lives; it is the character that comes out of living the years.The leader who loves his constituency so much that as he suffers loss of guile and vanity, he becomes more in touch with God and humans who worship God and not man.
Then who is the mighty man? He that subdues his evil impulse, as it is said, "he that is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he that rules his spirit than him that wins an election".
When a man is drunk with power, he is intoxicated with himself; his god becomes himself for God will bring that man down sooner than later. God waits for change as He hopes for mortal man to learn humility, but not forever.
It is astounding how a person will believe that God loves him while ignoring all that has been written in the name of a God of love and kindness. There is no kindness in vanity, only inflated ego; there is no need for intoxication when love is real, when passion assists devotion and forgiveness transcends miracle.
"It is a terrible law that one cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing ones' own humanity; in the face of one's victim,one sees oneself." (James Baldwin)
We are too much thought to be a nation of laws, therefore we flood our voting booths with lawyers rather than ethical sanity. Foreigners will look at us this voting day and try to discover if we are still a unique society, civilized to be sure, but humanized to be worth salvation.
This Sabbath carefully think about the preciousness of how you think before you vote, human mistakes to tolerate and corruptive power to be replaced.
sandy
