January 9 2024
Has my disciplined life made me guilty of manslaughter?
The Bible is big on discipline: the word appears 124 times there, most often as a reminder that the Lord ‘disciplines’ a person who swerves away from his Law, which, today, we experience in Climate Change. However, Proverbs sees it as the basis for erudition, as in Proverbs 12: 1: Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge.
In the Newer Testament, Jesus’ immediate class of students are called ‘disciples’, people, in this case all men, eager to know ‘the Way of the Lord’, making true the biblical rule for ‘wisdom’: “The fear of the Lord is the onset of wisdom.”
A person can have an immense amount of knowledge, but lack wisdom. AI – Artificial Intelligence – comes to mind, which, to some extent, is the summum of all knowledge, but cannot possibly instill wisdom. To attain wisdom we need guidelines, which we find in God’s Words, coming to us in three indispensable and inter-related ways. Wisdom is a gift from God, obtained by observing creation and its structure and coherence, and seeing divinity there: that is the beginning of wisdom. Romans 1: 20 is worthy of quoting again: For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
In other words: observing the way of ‘nature’ is the divine directive for instilling wisdom, aided by reading the ‘written’ Word, and both deeply determined by Jesus Christ, the Word become flesh, by God becoming a human being, our example to follow. So, yes, just like in the Trinity, GOD’S WORD too, is a threefold given.
Live by wisdom.
That’s the kind of wisdom I try to live by most of my life. By the grace of God, I should add. The entire body of mere human knowledge has led us to the ‘state of doom’ we are in, and it takes ‘divine wisdom’, to extract us from that situation. That’s not easy! Perhaps impossible.
This also indicates that we are responsible for who we are.
Yes, we are responsible for who we are. Christian parents are charged to bring up their children ‘in the fear of the Lord’, and I am thankful that my parents tried to do that through example, to the best of their ability, as their parents did for them, and I did for my children. But there always comes a time when the responsibility shifts, when maturity is reached, and the children go their own way.
All this applies to us, creatures of the 21st Century. We, as, the human race, also have grown up: God has allowed us to pursue a path apart from him. Deuteronomy 32: 20, makes that clear: “I will hide my face from them,” God said, “and see what their end will be; for they are a perverse generation, children who are unfaithful”.
Note: God still sees us as his children. In a sense, we never fully mature: we always have to be open to new ideas, new insights, not going back, but forward, to the New Creation, not dependent on and glorifying in new technical stuff, almost always powered by creation-destroying carbon-based fuel, but always aiming for ever expanding insight into matters that really matter, such as ‘why we are here’.
I have been self-employed, since 1952, for more than 70 years. During these decades I have driven at least a TWO million kilometres, first as an insurance and real estate broker, and finishing my career as an accredited commercial real estate appraiser, in a region in Eastern Ontario, from Picton to the Algonquin, from Peterborough to Smith Falls, some 200 km x 150 km, often traveling 300 km a day.
“What have I learned?”
An article in the latest Economist, entitled THE GREEN MAN’S BURDEN, tells me that I am guilty of causing death. It says, “In 2011 John Nolt, a philosopher at the University of Tennessee, estimated that a typical (North) American, born in 1960, would be responsible for enough Green House Gas emissions over his or her lifetime to cause between one or two deaths.”
Born in 1928 I certainly qualify! I wonder: “Has my business life made me guilty of manslaughter?” Yes, Ephesians 2:3 is correct: by nature, we are children of wrath. All too plain today!
We need God’s grace, now more than ever.