Posted on by Abe Austin

Continuing With Leviticus

Just over six months ago I finished my study of Exodus. At the time, I said I was going to share some essays and small thoughts. I estimated this would go for a couple weeks, which was clearly a great underestimation! I think part of why I spent so much longer exploring other topics is the rapid and dramatic changes that have been happening world, prompting me to delve into the spiritual questions I saw attached to those changes.

Now, though, I do want to get back to my scripture study. As before, I intend to cover a small batch of verses at a time, going chapter-by-chapter through the entire book of Leviticus. I’m sure that I will periodically do one-off studies in between chapters as well, whenever a particular question or thought is weighing on me.

You can go back to read my full summary of Exodus, but I’ll take just a moment here to re-establish context.

Genesis was dedicated to laying the core patterns of the world, distilling eternal truths in legendary and dramatic manifestations. Exodus was the bridge from the supernatural world to the natural, bringing those core patterns to everyday existence.

Of course, Exodus still had its fair share of miracles and supernatural wonders, but it also made the way that people related to the Lord ritualistic and common. We followed an everyday people who passed through relatable phases of tragedy, rebellion, and repentance. The book concluded with them finally being ready to enter covenant with the Lord, and to receive Him in their midst via the tabernacle and regular, daily ritual. That tabernacle and all of its instruments were made at the end of the book, and the Lord accepted it all.

Now, in Leviticus, we will hear in greater detail all the laws and rituals of that tabernacle. We will hear all the different sacrifices to be made, and when they need to be done, and in what way. This book is therefore a narrower slice of the word of God, a sort of instruction manual for priests. We, of course, will look for the symbolism in every instruction and ritual, to see how it points to each of us in our daily lives.

I hope to see you tomorrow when we begin.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Faith Tried

Everyone’s faith looks beautiful before it has been tried
But at some point, each must prove whether it is actually useful
Thus, all faiths must be strained, and many of them broken,
To find beauty that can also hold true

Posted on by Abe Austin

Unrealized Potential

Unspent things have no value
Dollars, thoughts, effort
They are only potential until they are given away

Life itself is only idleness
Until it is offered for something greater
It finds it value in being sacrificed

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Threat of Good People- Patterns Big and Small

Pattern of Hate)

I’ve spent the past two days discussing the tendency of those that feel wrong to try and tear down those that seem right. The reason for this is that the very existence of the holy is a testament against the impure. The holy prove that moral living is possible, and that it is better, which means that the immoral are worse and deserving of blame.

This pattern is nothing new. To his friends Jesus foretold, “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you,” (John 15:18-19).

To his enemies Jesus said, “Ye seek to kill me, because my word hath no place in you. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning,” (John 8:37, 44).

The children of the devil seek to destroy Jesus and also hate those he has chosen. Thus, the impulse of the wicked to destroy the righteous is nothing more than an extension of the devil’s desire to destroy God.

Woven Through All)

This animosity isn’t just political, and it isn’t isolated to one instance. What we see in our private lives is but a fractal strand of a war that is cosmic and universal. There are branches of this struggle that are relatively low stakes, such as when the awkward child tries to tear down his more successful peer, but it is the same spirit behind it that would murder a God.

The immoral want to destroy the moral because evil wants to destroy good. Meanwhile the good, if they are truly good, emulate the God at their root and seek to redeem the wicked.

Just as these cosmic, eternal forces have fractal strands woven into our society, so too, there are strands woven into our own selves as well. There is an agent of evil within us that seeks to tear down our good parts, because those good parts remind us that there is a better version of us inside, and that we are not meeting our full potential. And there is that agent of good in us that seeks to redeem the evil part and raise it to its holy potential. As we learn to find the right solution within ourselves, we will learn how to find it in our society, and our society will join God in His solution for the entire universe.

We are all part of one cosmic ritual or another, and the outcome that we support in the eternities is echoed in the outcome we seek in ourselves.

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Threat of Good People- Justification for Evil

Yesterday I spoke about how children who are socially insecure can try to tear down those who are confident, because they hold up a mirror to the insecure children’s flaws. But as the years go by, what might be nothing more than teenage angst, gradually evolves into something deeper. Even, something evil.

Selfishness and Sin)

Most of us come into evil by simple selfishness. A neighbor is looking for help with some yardwork, and we discreetly make plans to be out of town that morning. Upon seeing a traffic lane slowing down, we might swerve into the next, cutting off the driver behind. We disparage the “other side” for their idiocy, enjoying the moral superiority that that brings. We want what they want, and we only deviate from our predetermined path when it serves our own interest.

And then, inevitably, that same selfishness leads to doing something objectively wrong. The commission of a mortal sin. Something truly damning, which far more than the teenage awkwardness discussed in yesterday’s post, is something that we tend to shrink from, to try and not face up to in our own heart.

And to soothe our conscience on the matter, we tell ourselves that everyone is “looking out for number one.” Everyone takes the advantage when it is presented to them. Everyone holds a grudge. Everyone is selfish. Everyone has a serious sin hidden inside. We become suspicious of those that appear to defy these universal assertions, assuming that the so-called good are really just hypocrites and liars, pretending to be holier-than-thou, but secretly just as selfish and compromised as the rest of us.

An Unbearable Reality)

Which then makes it very difficult when someone shows an undeniable act of kindness. When someone is doing good, even when they think no one else is looking. When someone is giving, with no possibility of return. When someone forgives another, even though they have every right to demand vengeance. When someone openly confesses and renounces their sins.

Moments like these threaten the wicked, because it holds up a mirror, showing us that we don’t have to be the way that we are. That person was willing to forgive his enemy, so why don’t I? That person gave with true charity, so why don’t I? That person admitted his sins and forsook them, so why don’t I? These questions remind the sinners that we do what we do because we choose to, not because it was inevitable. The sinners see what we really are, and how what we still cling to is inexcusable. We see that we are deserving of hell.

The good people therefore become hateful to us for no other reason than that they are sincerely good. They become an unbearable burden. They are a threat to the illusion that everyone is guilty, so we’re no worse than anyone else. They are a threat because they show us that change is necessary, but we are still unwilling to change.

Then, the good people have to be crushed so that there is no longer a standard to be measured against. Society redefines morality, so that even thinking or believing or speaking “incorrectly” is now deemed violence. Then the destruction of the good is considered justified and even called right.

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Threat of Good People- Awkward Children

Good people, by their very existence, provide an existential threat to the wicked. And I do not mean people that claim that they are good, or which assume the moral high ground, I mean those who genuinely live principles of goodness. People who are loving, who are humble, who willingly sacrifice, who show mercy and forgiveness, who every day try to be a better version of themselves. These are the best of people, but they are also the greatest of threats.

Not a threat in the sense that there is a risk of them attacking or harming others. Of all people, genuinely good people are clearly the safest. But they are a threat to the ego, a threat to illusion, a threat to those who are insecure.

Early Beginnings)

The pattern of insecure people feeling threatened by the successful and seeking to tear them down begins when we are still children. As children, we go through many awkward and insecure phases. Most of us care a lot about what others think of us. We crave attention. We become willing to do anything to gain the admiration of the opposite sex. Unfortunately, many of us meet abject failure in these arenas many times, and those failures hurt very, very much. What makes it all the worse, is seeing a peer who is cool, casual, and content. A peer who is not only more socially adept, but who also doesn’t care when he does commit a rare faux pas. The confident child becomes a mirror showing how awkward and warped we are in comparison, something that we desperately don’t want to see. So…we seek to break the mirror.

Today, I work with the youth in my church, and I see this age-old pattern still playing out. The most insecure children try to tear down the most secure. They mock and disparage, even become physically violent, all to try and drag the confident child beneath them. They would rather a world where no one was secure, where everyone was awkward, because at least that would mean that there was nothing wrong with them. Obviously, this is not the only pattern of childhood bullying, there are many other categories of perpetrators and targets, but from my observation this is one of the patterns that does emerge.

But if this pattern begins in us as children, how much further can it go in adulthood? How do things escalate when mere awkwardness is replaced with guilty and shameful behavior? When sin stands in stark contrast to the good and pure? When “being worse” means “being evil?” We will explore that aspect tomorrow.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Moral Growth and Decline

If we think that people hundreds of years ago had morally despicable views, and that now we have a better view of the truth, we ought to consider why. What beliefs and values did our forefathers foster that led them to become more moral, leading to where we are now?

And if we are now prying those beliefs and values from the public square, if we are rejecting the faith of the very people who made the world a better place, what do we expect to happen to our morality in the next hundred years?

Posted on by Abe Austin

Inside Out- Internal Control

Yesterday we talked about the external influences that society puts on us, molding us into decent and productive citizens. We talked about how there is great good in this, and that we ought not to do away with it. However, we also discussed the limitations of external influence. How it can allow for a society of moral behavior, but inwardly immoral people. How it can be eroded, and when that happens, horrors follow.

Internal Control)

True stability in society requires internal control. It requires people to be inwardly converted to the principles of morality and civility, who will self-govern themselves, no matter what the laws or social norms say. Thus, laws of the land may be important, but laws of the heart even more so.

Consider how Jesus’s words align with this. “Do ye not perceive, that whatsoever thing from without entereth into the man, it cannot defile him; That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man,” (Mark 7:18, 20). We can infer that the opposite of this statement is also true, it is not that which goes into a man, but comes out of him, that justifies him and proves him good. It is the choices from the inner place, not the outer, that truly matter.

Notice, then, how sensible the work of missionaries and proselytizers is. They do not go to change public policy, to lobby for laws, to influence the external controls. They go to the individual, convict them of moral sin, reintroduce God to heal what is broken in the heart, and leave a soul that is personally committed to doing what is good. It is hard work and is only effective on those who are open to it, but it is the most important work to maintain the fabric of our societies, let alone the saving of souls.

A Warped Priority)

You would think that we as a people would have learned the importance of this work. That we would trust that as we focused on the individual soul, that the collective society would improve. That as we fixed what is inside, all of the outer peripheries would correct themselves on their own.

As one who gave two years of my life to missionary efforts, I can tell you that that is not the case at all. Opposition to proselyting efforts, and a desire to banish them is everywhere. Both from governments and individuals. Not only this, but we live in a time where people who do have a strong moral compass are often ridiculed or considered suspect. Instead, people crave more legislation, more external control, more outer force, particularly on those they disagree with.

As discussed yesterday, this is a very dangerous attitude to take. The more society discourages and tears down internal control, the more its people will be uprooted from true morality, the more wildly they will start to swing, and eventually they will surely fall to debauchery, perversion, and destruction.

In summary, this question of inner or outer moral convictions may seem a small and simple thing, but its long-term implications are far-reaching. All of us should be sharply aware of our own reliance upon internal or external controls, and also our society’s. And for both ourselves and others, the most important work is to heal the heart within, connect God to the inner man, and establish internal moral control.