Well, the blog has been silent for some time. Not for lack of trying, mind you. My Google Drive is littered with quarter, half, three quarters, and nine tenths completed posts going back to November of 2015. About the time I am ready to pull the trigger, to post. My editor steps in and says, “Wait boy. Take some time to grok it all. Waiting is.”
So. I wait to grok the fullness.
As I was binge watching the TV series “Fringe” on Netflix, in the wee hours of Tuesday (today), I snagged a quote from St. Augustine spoken by mad scientist Dr. Walter Bishop that electrified me: “Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis.”
Walter attributed the quote as the English translation of Isaiah 7:9 but it was Augustine who said it. It means, “Unless you believe, you cannot understand.” Or, “If you do not believe, you will not understand.” After a little sleep (45 minutes, give or take) I awoke with the voice of the Editor in my head: “Get up and write, boy.”
And write I did. And to quote Randy Quaid’s character McDougal in “The Paper”: “This is great! This is great! It writes like butter. I mean, there is actual butter coming out of my pen.” (Well, my Chromebook keyboard but you get the drift.)
The following is what I produced and posted to Facebook on Tuesday, 22 March 2016:
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The following came to me around 4:30 this morning. Maybe I forgot the lithium at bedtime. Who knows.
It is what it is. Read it or don’t. Comment or don’t, Share it or don’t.
St. Augustine is believed to have said, “Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis.” Or, “If you do not believe, you will not understand.” Perhaps it applies here. Understand it or don’t.
My thanks to Messrs. David H. Goodman and Andrew Kreisberg (screenwriters), the greatest, most morally and existentially tortured “mad” scientist, Dr. Walter Bishop, and JJ Abrams, et al, (the creators). Snagged the Augustine quote in Season 1, Episode 21, “Unearthed,” of Fringe while ‘Netflix and chillin’” (alone!) around 2:46 AM, CDT.
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An Open Letter to the Church:
What leads to our unending quarrels and conflicts? Don't they come from our hedonistic desires that fight for control over us?
We’re jealous and we covet what others have and our lusting goes unfulfilled; so we “murder” - whether by thought or word or deed. (Jesus said if we are angry with a brother or sister, if we are insulting, if we are really insulting, contemptuous, we stand in danger of hell itself. My Paraphrase Matt. 5:22)
We envy and when we cannot obtain what we envy, we fight.
Isn’t it true that we don't have what we want because we don't even pray to God? And when we ask, we still don't get what we want because our motivations, our agendas are selfish and unrighteous - we want what we want for our own desires.
It’s mostly an archaic idea in our time: adultery. But God would say that we are all adulteresses!
We flirt with the World, we think we are still part of the Kingdom of man so we deliberately violate our vows of faith and service to God. Apparently we think He doesn’t notice!
Maybe we haven't known or considered it, but loving the things of this World - wealth, “security” in this World, political power, secular matters - makes us friends with the World and enemies of the God we profess to know and love and whom we call our Lord and Savior!
So, whoever chooses to be a friend, a lover of this World is an enemy of God! Period.
Or do you think that Scripture says that, not for nothing, the human spirit God gave us lusts with intense envy?! But He gives us grace upon grace through the Holy Spirit to tell sin to take a flying leap and allows us to live a submissive and obedient life that reflects both our faith and our incredible gratitude for His priceless gift of our salvation.
So, Scripture says, “God is opposed to the proud and haughty, but continues to cover in grace those who are his disciples who are humble and turn away from the World, repent of our proud self-righteousness.
If we want to be covered in His grace, all the more, we must submit to His sovereign authority. We must resist the devil by standing firm against him and...he flees.
Come close to God with a contrite heart and He will come close to us. Let us wash the sin from our hearts and hands and purify our unfaithful, adulterous heart, all of us who are double minded; who easily straddle the two Kingdoms and think nothing of it: the Kingdom of man and the eternal Kingdom of the LORD of Lords, and the KING of Kings, who was, and is, and ever shall be! World without end! Amen and amen.
It’s time, it is past time, that we recognize the true sin in our hearts and grieve, weep for our station in life that we ourselves have put us in, that we wallow in like pigs. We must stop laughing for a while, quit living in the Kingdom of man with such reckless, thoughtless joy at the man made miracles and the reckless, pointless, lifeless philosophies and teachings of men, of false teachers and prophets in the House of GOD and turn to solemness.
So, we have to humble ourselves. We have to understand what repentance truly is and truly repent! Humbling ourselves before Him the LORD and He will exalt us; He will lift us up and give us a mission to fulfil for Him and not for our own purposes or understanding.
We must stop speaking against one another, stop our so easy slander against our brethren and our neighbors. If we speak self-righteously - that is outside of the Father’s will - against a brother or sister, we judge them hypocritically, speak against the Law and judges the Law. If we judge the Law, we are no longer a doer of the Law but a judge of it and that spells trouble for us.
There is only one Lawgiver and righteous, holy Judge, the One who is able to save and destroy, the One who holds the absolute power over life and death and all of Creation. Who are we then to hypocritically and self-righteously pass judgement on our neighbor? And who is our “neighbor”? Every living, breathing soul on this planet.
So listen up, those of us who are so confident of the future beyond this moment! We don’t have the first clue as to what may happen in our next breath, let alone tomorrow! What is secure in our lives? Our country, our politics, our “way of life,” our cars, our money, our deliberate refusal to grow to reflect the glory of the Christ in our lives? But in the long view, the view of the LORD, we are a puff of smoke, a wisp of vapor that is visible for the blink of an eye then vanishes.
So let us say, “If the LORD wills it, we will live and do this or that, regardless of what may happen in the next moment or tomorrow.” As it is, our pretension and arrogance - our massive hubris at being disobedient to our liege lord - is vanity, it is self-righteousness and envy and jealousy and all manner of evil that we pretend is unthinkingly, unexamined, ASSUMED "good," multiplied by 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000 or 10 to the nth power!
Consequently, our attitude is unrepentant; it is evil.
St. Gregory of Nyssa, a Church Father, declared that sin is failure to mature (in Christ, our Master).
So if we know what is right to do but we don’t do it, if we deliberately fail to do what is righteous in His eyes, the LORD of Lords, the LORD of Creation, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion, and the God of all comfort, it is to us sin; evil, vile, repugnant.
May the Peace of Christ be with us all.
†The Snarky Prophet
For those of you who have made it all the way to here and who know what an “easter egg” is beside made of chocolate, plastic, or hard boiled egg...there is an easter egg here. Did you see it? ;-) Aye, mateys. There be easter egg here!
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Well, there it is. Test my spirit. Think about it. Are you comfortable in your sin?
Until next time, may the peace of Christ be with you,
† Scott, V.D.M., ev
