Whatever is .... (4)

The world was shocked in 1939. Clark Gable uttered his now-famous word in Gone With the Wind.

Richard Pryor, the so-called comedian, made a healthy living using profanity and irreverence.

What is Ax Men about? I watched to find out. I did not. There were not enough sentences that made sense. What they saying got lost in all the bleeps.

Is this entertainment? Or are we not thinking at all? Either way, it leads to people holding nothing sacred, modest or clean. Carnality reigns.

Paul is persuading the Philippians to adopt a refreshing thought pattern. It requires considerable time appraising whatever is PURE.

What could happen for a Christian if they spent time thinking of the sacred, modest, and clean?

Name anything that is modesty, chaste, or venerable. What about professions working at rape crises centers or battered women's shelters? Remember Iwo Jima. Describe the character of the men that raised the flag? What makes Abraham Lincoln so revered? Why is the Nobel Peace Prize cherished? Why is the silence deafening at the Vietnam Memorial? Why are Red Skelton, Carol Burnett and Lucille Ball still popular? Why do soldiers salute a flag-draped casket as it moves? These are special. Chaste. Revered.

Will a man with pure thoughts curse? Will purity-pursuers defraud an insurance company, or the government, or the grocery store clerk?

To establish why these are important to us will take some time. Inspection of pure lives will cause us to practice purity and reverence.

Becoming venerable is achievable if we will constantly look for whatever is pure, and decide to emulate those qualities. Think about purity and become pure.

Philippians 4:8 “Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.”

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Paul continues to train us. Let's study truth, honor, and purity.

Why Bad to Worse

Ever experience someone who could not stop being bad? People reason with them, but they will not listen. Nothing works.

Why will they not change? Today, I grasped an answer.

It is in Proverbs 17:4. "An evildoer listens to wicked lips; A liar pays attention to a destructive tongue."

Evil people do not follow watchful, loving men or women who recognize the inevitable consequences and endeavor to provoke change.

Instead, self-destructing humans, bent on being bad, solely pay attention to others voicing agitation, discord, depression, and grief. Like zombies, blundering along, they follow the directives of the discontented driving to desecration and disaster. (Is this selective hearing?)

When do people become selective for evil? Where is the proverbial 'point of no return'?

What does God do with the selectively evil? Two answers are:

• Hebrews 10:26-27 "26 For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, 27 but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries."
• Romans 1:28-32 "28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting; 29 being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, 30 backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful; 32 who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them."

Are you listening to God himself, solidly on good ground, gaining His grace, taking His advice, and struggling to imitate Him?

Strange Coffee

I like coffee. I like flavored coffee, especially Hazelnut. And who would have ever thought that chocolate flavor in coffee could be good? And each person has their favorite roast of coffee for their preferred strength. Me? I like simple dark roast Community Coffee -- a strong taste.  But have you ever considered what it took to get those flavors in coffee?

As a scientist I can see many ongoing experiments. I could see someone trying to put pepper flavor in coffee. That won't work. I could see someone trying to put chicken or beef flavor in coffee. That won't work, either. Have you every heard of mixing curry flavor with coffee? I haven't either. I am certain that someone is always trying many experiments to devise a new, great-tasting coffee, thus creating a niche in the market for them to make millions.

But why haven't we heard of some strange flavored coffees? Simple. They just won't work.

It seems to me that some favors are not meant to work with other flavors.

In a similar way there are some patterns of living that are not meant to work in any life. It is one thing to be a Christian in the counter-cultural 'lane', and it is another to be in a 'lane' leading to trouble, heart-ache and death -- the 'lane' God has warned us about.

What are the God-warned 'flavors' of living that won't work? In Rom 1: 19-32, Paul listed some impossible 'flavors', including:

• men and women in homosexuality
• unrighteousness
• wickedness
• greed
• evil
• envy
• murder
• strife
• trickery / deceit
• malice
• talking bad about other people (gossip, slander)
• hating God
• insolence
• arrogance
• bragging / boasting
• inventing ways to do evil
• those who don't obey their parents
• those who don't have (or choose to not to have) understanding
• being untrustworthy
• displaying no love for others.
• displaying no mercy for others.

 Galatians 5:19-21 is another list of awful tasting 'flavors'. They are:

• being sexually immoral (any sex outside marriage)
• impure
• doing anything to excite the senses
• honoring anything as more important than God (idolatry)
• 'druggies' (either prescription or illegal)
• being hostile
• personal animosity
• being and creating jealousy
• emotional explosions
• the spirit of causing division
• being preferential to hurt others
• envious
• drinking alcohol  and being in parties to become intoxicated. 

And as if these weren't enough, he added a phrase to including everything in-between ("and such like").

There should be no struggle in enjoying good tasting coffee. And there should be no struggle to enjoy life. All we have to do is not 'experiment' by trying to add things to this good life that will make it taste 'yucky!' We have already been told these experiments won't work.