Michael Wilson – Poetry, Short Prose and Walking

Game—Six Sentence Story

Although Jeremy and his wife, Martha, welcomed everyone to the warehouse they converted into a chapel, there were signs telling newcomers before they entered to first write the names of any demons they planned on keeping outside on the wall of the building facing the street. Martha waited by the wall for any who were foolish enough to want to keep a demon.

Those who slipped past Martha ran into Jeremy wearing a T-shirt that read: I specialize in scaring the HELL out of stuff. When he asked them if they’d like to get rid of their demons they didn’t completely understand what they were being asked to do, but to be polite and figuring they didn’t have any demons, except maybe little ones, said, “Sure, Pastor, go for it.”

So, in the name of Jesus and in a loud voice, Jeremy rebuked in detail god-awful lists of demonic addictions and disabling stupidities that burned convicting blushes on their cheeks. He then said, “Your demons are gone and you’ve been forgiven for the time you’ve wasted playing games with them, but it’s up to you to decide whether you’ll run after them or stay here to rejoice with thanksgiving.”

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Denise offers the prompt word “game” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

Revelation 21:27
And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

With thanks to Michael Wilson for reminding me of this verse

Farm—Six Sentence Story

The Midianites loved to cross the Jordan during harvest time to raid their Israelite neighbors like a swarm of locusts. On the other hand, to the discredit of the Israelites many of them had set up altars to Baal forgetting the Lord in proud times of prosperity while expecting the Lord not to forget them when trouble came.

With the Midianites camped nearby preparing to raid, Gideon threshed wheat by his winepress trying to harvest something discretely before they trod across the land demanding all. That’s when the angel of the Lord appeared to him to tell him that he was sent to save his people and the Lord would be with him.

Gideon reminded the angel that he was a nobody, a nothing, and that his subsistence farm, thanks to those Midianites whom the Lord has done nothing about, was well below subsistence levels. The angel of the Lord knew all of that, but, considering the lesson that needed to be learnt, the weakness of Gideon’s position was one of the main reasons why he was chosen.

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Denise offers the prompt word “farm” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories. To read what really happened to Gideon (Jerubbaal) and his family especially his sons, Abimelech and Jotham, see Judges 6-9.

I am grateful to Michael Wilson who pointed out the interaction between the Lord and Gideon. Below is a map from the Bible Mapper site showing Gideon’s adventures against the Midianites.

While writing this I was also thinking of Mary (tqhousecat)’s essay Sometimes a Little is Enough.

Book – Six Sentence Story

Zaccheus claimed that the scribes and sinners – err, Pharisees – were better at fleecing the sheep than the average tax collector. He loved ticking people off so much that Yehováh wondered if He would ultimately have to scratch Zaccheus’ name out of the Book of Life.

To get a better view of Yeshua, Zaccheus climbed a tree. To get a better view of Zaccheus, Yeshua told him to get out of that tree so He could stay at his house.

When Zaccheus did, Yehováh was pleased. He watched His Son walk side by side with a tax collector, of all people, both of whom were ticking everyone of self-importance off along the way.

Denise offers the word “book” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

I am grateful to Michael Wilson who suggested using Zaccheus in a story. You can read what really happened in Luke 19:1-10.

Sunday Walk 75 – Amoral Sexual Behavior As A Strong Delusion

Of men aged 18 to 49, 67 percent say pornography is morally acceptable. And of all Americans who say religion is not very important, more than two-thirds (76 percent) find pornography morally acceptable.
Joe Carter, Fact Checker: Do Christian Men Watch More Pornography?, June 8, 2020

But I want to argue that the sexual revolution is not actually about expanding the bounds of sexual behavior. It’s about fundamentally challenging the notion that there is such a thing as wrong or right sexual behavior. It’s about blowing apart the whole notion of sexual morality.
Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, Lecture 1, starting about 21:55, May 1, 2021

Paul wrote in Romans 1:28 that God gives the disobedient over to a depraved mind. He wrote in 2 Thessalonians 2:11 that God sends a strong delusion so the disobedient will believe the lie.

What lie might that be? Perhaps the lie is that there is nothing morally right or wrong with our sexual behavior nor how we deal with the consequences of it such as abortion or divorce. That means we don’t think we have to repent. That suggests that we don’t believe that there is any God to Whom we owe repentance. And all of that makes us forget about the “pursuit of holiness” that Jerry Bridges rightly pointed out is not an option.

The lie confuses us about repentance, God and holiness. The lie affects our beliefs and our beliefs affect our behavior.

If you don’t behave as you believe, you will end by believing as you behave.
Ven. Archbishop Fulton Sheen, quoted by revivedwriter

I am grateful to Michael Wilson for the link to the statistics source on moral attitudes towards pornography. I am grateful to Jim Lee and Mandy Sweigart-Quinn for calling my attention to Carl R. Trueman and Jerry Bridges. I am grateful to Jenna at revivedwriter for the quote from Fulton Sheen.

Weekly Bible Reading: John and Acts
Commentaries:
David Pawson, John, Part 6, Acts, Part 7, Unlocking the Bible
Bible Project, John 1-12, John 13-21, Acts 1-12, Acts 13-28
Weekly Torah Readings
13 Shevat, 5782, Beshalach: Parashat Exodus 13:17-17:16; Haftarat Judges 4:4-5:3

Merry Christmas

Michael Wilson posted the following Christmas story earlier this evening. I am passing it on to you.

Igniter Media, The Christmas Scale

Sunday Walk 50 – Good At Heart?

Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.
Psalm 51:10, King James Bible 1769

When I was a teenager my family and I watched the 1959 film The Diary of Anne Frank in our living room. Anne died in a Nazi concentration camp, but she left behind a diary of the events that occurred while her family was in hiding. A memorable part of the movie was when she expressed her belief that people were good at heart.

George Barna of the Cultural Research Center wrote recently that one of the top 10 most seductive unbiblical ideas embraced by Americans is ‘the idea that people are “basically good”’. That suggests that the memorable part of the movie about Anne Frank was seductively unbiblical.

The reason the idea that we are good at heart is wrong is because it is sentimental. It is a false form of consolation, because it looks for goodness in the wrong place. Rather than acknowledging that God is good, it claims that somewhere deep down inside of us we are.

To a society that rejects Jesus, we mythologize the Kingdom of God rather than preach it. To a society that blatantly intimidates with sexual addiction, we downplay the need for repentance. Alisa Childers wrote that one of the five signs that one’s church was becoming progressive is “[t]he heart of the gospel message shifts from sin and redemption to social justice”.

I’m still trying to figure this out. You are welcome to tell me what you think about people being good at heart.

I am grateful to Michael Wilson for presenting George Barna’s research and to Bruce Cooper for pointing out Alisa Childers’ criticism of progressive Christianity.

Final thought: After David impregnated Bathsheba, had her husband Uriah killed to avoid scandal, and was called out for it by Nathan (2 Samuel 11-12), he didn’t think much of his heart. He wanted God to create in him a clean one (Psalm 51).

Weekly Bible Reading: Joshua (Audio), Judges (Audio), Ruth (Audio)
Commentary: David Pawson, Joshua, Part 2 of 2, Judges and Ruth, Part 1 of 2, Unlocking the Bible

Sunday Walk 41 – Abortion and Communion

תועבת יהוה דרך רשׁע ומרדף צדקה יאהב
Proverbs 15:9 Masoretic Text with various translations

I learned from Michael Wilson’s blog that the San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone had called on the Catholic Church to deny Communion to prominent pro-abortion Catholics.

I agree with Archbishop Cordileone, but would add a twist to his call making it relevant even for non-Catholics: All Christians should advise those who are pro-abortion to refrain from Communion until they have repented.

Does that sound harsh?

What would be harsh would be Satan’s accusations full of finger-pointing and despair with no hope of forgiveness on the other side. However, this call is different. It is a call to the discomfort of repentance and the liberation of change where pardon replaces that crash into the brick wall.

Selah, Before the Throne of God Above

Extraordinary

Does an extraordinary claim require extraordinary evidence? If one thinks of ordinary as natural, something one can see, touch or measure, and one thinks of extra as super, then it might make sense to transform extraordinary into supernatural just to help us see what’s at stake. From that new perspective, a supernatural claim would seem to require supernatural evidence.

True, some proudly deny the supernatural entirely. They might as well deny the extraordinary itself, but such a denial would itself be an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary or supernatural evidence to justify it.

Pause for a moment.

Without the supernatural there would be no words to describe the ordinary if the ordinary could exist at all. That we take words for granted does not mean they are ordinary or can be completely reduced to something natural. We are just used to the extraordinary, the supernatural, pervading our lives in spite of our denials.

Furthermore, we use these words that are extraordinary to form presuppositions, or believed assumptions that cannot be reduced to the ordinary, in order to rationalize those very denials.

Those presuppositions are part of our spiritual environment. Can we change our minds? From this environment do we produce wholesome fruit worth offering to our loved ones? Can we repent if that fruit is rotten? Can we be forgiven?

We sink into the waters aware of those presuppositions, those mundane, questionable, unwholesome, but extraordinary claims. As we are brought back up, having repented, having changed our minds, the Lord renews in us a right spirit and creates in us a clean heart.

Now that’s extraordinary.

My thoughts expressed here were motivated from reading Michael Wilson’s post Do Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence? which led me to Frank Turek’s podcast. When Eugenia offered the word “extraordinary” for this week’s prompt I figured the coincidence was significant.