A curious convergence of messages met me this morning over coffee. It would have been nice if God had bopped me on the head with his magic wand and planted some extraordinary and profound revelation in my brain. What a great birthday present that would have been. But, no. Leave it to God to do the unexpected. Instead he provided a convergence of information that left me asking hard questions that lack simple answers.
Coming Soon to a Location Near You?
David Jeremiah’s devotional this morning was about end times. Ever since Jesus left, his disciples have been expecting his return any day. No one knows the hour or the day: it could be a thousand years hence, or this afternoon. His devotional said: “Be prepared. Be ready.” My question is, “How would you live this day if you knew Jesus would be coming back tomorrow?” There’s not a pat answer to that question. Another, more general, question is, “How would the world change if everyone knew Jesus was coming back tomorrow? Or next week? Or next month?”
Through the Needle’s Eye
The devotional from Walk Thru the Bible focused on this comment by Jesus:
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “I tell you the truth, it is very hard for a rich person to get into the Kingdom of Heaven.
—Matthew 19:23 (NLT)
The point of the devotional is that this really applies to all of us. We all fall into idol worship. That temptation is built into every heart. There are some who seek money for its own sake. But most of us have other idols that we sacrifice our money and our time to: popularity, education, fashion, looks, achievement, influence, being “in-the-know”, and many more. All of them consume resources—money, talent, and time—that should be going to God’s kingdom.
There are things that I feel are very important to me. Music is one of them. Education, respect, friendship, achievement—these are all positive things. At what point do they become idols? And how would you live without them? This is one of those “hard sayings” of Jesus that everyone rationalizes. It’s easy to understand why. How can you live like that? Who will teach us? Scripture tells us we won’t have to live without the things that are important to us:
Delight yourself in the LORD
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
—Psalm 37:4 (NIV)
But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.
—Matthew 6:33 (NKJV)
That sounds wonderful. But practically speaking, how do you do that?
In the Hands of the Harlot on the Highway to Hell
Next, since today is the 7th, I read the 7th chapter of Proverbs. This chapter is about the harlot who leads the unwary to ruin. I used to simply go through the motions when reading this, doing it mechanically and ritualistically. Obviously, frequenting prostitutes is a path to ruin. I have seen good people go down that path. I feel fortunate that it has never appealed to me. But the past few months I’ve been reading this chapter differently, metaphorically. The harlot represents anything in your life that inflames your appetites, ignites your passions, and gains control over your will, even temporarily. Lust for power, prestige, influence, money, ambition, sex, addiction, revenge, jealousy, pride—each of us has a different set of weaknesses and temptations. And each of us has harlots in our lives, pursuing us, seeking to cloud our judgment, steal our heart, and wreak havoc in our lives.
So what are the harlots in my life? I know one of them is laziness. I love to chill, relax, take a load off, forget my worries in idle amusements. It eats way too much of my time. I went on a 40-day media fast, and I have lost track, but it has been about 8 weeks since the TV was on in my house. That’s a lot more that 40 days. It has done me a lot of good, but I still find plenty of other ways to amuse myself and waste time. I don’t have to look for them; they find me. In Proverbs, it describes how the harlot comes out to meet the unwary young man. In verses 10-15, it tells how she seeks him and seizes him in the street, then lures him to his destruction. He wasn’t looking for her, she came looking for him.
So how do we go about identifying the harlots in our lives? Some of them seem to be the dark sides of the idols I talked about above. And since they are looking for us, seeking to trap us unawares, how do we protect ourselves from them? Is there a connection here to the message above about being prepared?
She’d Only Just Begun
Early this morning I was reading about Karen Carpenter, that beautiful and gifted woman who died at 33 of complications from anorexia. She grew up in an environment where nothing she did was good enough. She internalized that belief and never escaped from it. She spent her whole life trying to do more, to do better, but nothing she did was enough. The Carpenters were one of the best-selling musical groups in history, but Karen was never satisfied. No matter what they did, it was never enough. When they first began recording, she was told by her management that she needed to slim down from 140 to about 120 pounds before going on tour. She lost the 20 pounds, but it was not enough for her. For the rest of her life, she struggled with the sense that she could never be slim enough, sometimes dropping to the low 80’s and having to be hospitalized. Her idols killed her. Her harlots pursued her unto death.
Queens of Skankdom
Yesterday I was reading an article about the current crop of sleazy young pop tarts and the effect their behavior has on young girls. Hardly a day passes that the media doesn’t have a story about Paris Hilton, or Britney Spears, or Lindsay Lohan, or another one of these queens of skankdom, doing something ridiculously depraved. What about all the little girls entering their teens who have been led to idolize these stars they have seen in movies, in magazines, on TV (Disney Channel, worst of all), and are now watching this kind of behavior from their role models? How does that affect their values? Are they following in their footsteps? Or learning from their mistakes? It would be easy to point to these celebrities and identify them as harlots. After all they dress and act just like the usual definition of whores. But in truth, these women were waylaid in the street. They were seized on the sidewalk and led down the path of destruction by the harlots our culture embraces—wealth, sex, fame, etc. This is nothing new. G. K. Chesterton
wrote a hundred years ago about how 19th century society idolized Oscar Wilde for preaching his immoral philosophy, then imprisoned and ruined him when he acted it out.
So if the girls brought up to idolize these celebrities follow their same highway to hell, who is responsible? Is it the celebrities themselves? Or is it the culture that made them? Is it the media that publicizes their sordid antics? Or is it the consumers who eagerly devour every tidbit of juicy gossip? And no matter where you point the finger, when you look a second time you find that the culprit you identified is another victim. They’ve been waylaid by the same harlots that pursue us all. (This is not to say that no one is responsible, or that no one is to be held accountable. This is to say be careful who you hit with that two-by-four in your eye.)
Most, if not all, of us felt a little envious of their lifestyles at first. (C’mon! Get honest. You envied a little. You know you did.) The wealth, the popularity, traveling the world, going to all kinds of events and parties with famous people—it sounds like fun. At first. And most of us felt there was a sense of poetic justice in their downfall. Perhaps a little smug self-righteousness? A little “I told you so?” (C’mon! Tell the truth.) But it’s easy to see the effect the harlot has on someone else’s life. How can we learn to recognize and avoid the harlot in our own lives? More important, how can we spot her while we’re still on the sidewalk, before we fall into her clutches? That has never been easy to do, it seems. Proverbs pointed that out ages ago.
Do not let your heart turn to her ways
or stray into her paths.
Many are the victims she has brought down;
her slain are a mighty throng.
Her house is a highway to the grave,
leading down to the chambers of death.
—Proverbs 7:25-27 (NIV)
Wish I had clever answers to tie all these things up in a bow. Some sweeping and profound revelation. Some “In conclusion, thus and so. . .” Sorry. That’s not what God gave me today.
Today he gave me questions. Tough ones. And I suspect he wants me to live with them a while.
“Here,” says God, “Happy Birthday!”
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