Saturday, May 5, 2018

Psalm 31:17,18 – “Loving With Our Eyes Open”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

17YHVH, do not let me be ashamed because I have called on You. Let the wicked ones be ashamed. Let them be silent to Sheol. 18Let lips of a lie be silenced, ones speaking upon righteous ones arrogance in pride and contempt.

Wise as serpents; harmless as doves. The more we know Jesus, the more kind and gentle we become. “A bruised reed” He wouldn’t break, nor a “smoldering wick put out.” “For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him should be saved.” To know Him is to more and more wish for others’ salvation, not judgment.

On the other hand, to know Him is to know the truth. To know Him is to see wickedness for the murderous lying madness that it really is. To know Him is to know it isn’t just a “difference of opinion” and “alternative views.” Evil is evil.

And unfortunately the world is full of evil people. To know Jesus, to truly love people, to love the truth, is to be very, very deeply grieved by the evil. The Lord told the angel in Ezekiel 9:4: “Go throughout the city of Jerusalem and put a mark on the foreheads of those who grieve and lament over all the detestable things that are done in it.”

It’s just life in the real world.

As I sit here typing in the America of May 5, 2018, I have to say I find it frankly unbearable to listen to and read the constant barrage of murderous, lying scoundrels doing exactly what David speaks of here. I think in my own heart, “… let the wicked be put to shame and lie silent in the grave. Let their lying lips be silenced, for with pride and contempt they speak arrogantly against the righteous.”

Boy do they.

It is almost a joke, if it weren’t so sad, to have Congress doing all these investigations. Congress? Has there ever been a “more wretched hive of scum and villainy?” You have a bunch of filthy lying scoundrels accusing and investigating all the other filthy lying scoundrels. We finally have a president who actually wants to be sensible and fix problems and what does that hive of scum and villainy do? Investigate!!! Never mind that they do nothing. They always do nothing. The only thing they do well is vote to themselves benefits. The most basic simple thing they ought to do is balance a budget, but that of course is entirely impossible when their real goal even for being in office is not to fix the system but rather to milk it.

We have actors and actresses who can’t stay married telling the rest of the country what is and isn’t right. We have liberal journalists who cruelly destroy anyone who disagrees with them, while proclaiming themselves the champions of free speech.

And on and on I go. “… let the wicked be put to shame and lie silent in the grave. Let their lying lips be silenced, …” I find myself at the same time wanting to pray for these people’s salvation, knowing they are simply captives of their murderous, lying father, then on the other hand, wanting to pray they would somehow be exposed for their utter hypocrisy and lies.

I guess I’m in good company. That’s how David felt.

Wise as serpents; harmless as doves.

God help us to love, even loving with our eyes open, seeing the evil, being grieved by it, praying You’d somehow conquer it, yet never losing sight of the worth of a single soul, even of the most evil people.

That said, I do pray that their lying lips would be silenced. I do pray that, if anyone is to be ashamed, it would be them, and that somehow, even in a very wicked world, those who really are trying to do right “would shine like stars in the firmament,” that He would “make their righteousness like the light and their justice like the noonday sun.”

God help us.

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