day no. 17,264: church discipline is good medicine

“A church that does not practice church discipline is a church with an immune system collapse.” — Douglas Wilson, Mines of Difficulty

Sin is a given. You must budget for it. The way it ought to be dealt with it Biblically and quickly so that accounts are kept short and up to date. 

Romans 13:8

Owe no man any thing, but to love one another:

for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.

Keeping the law by loving one another is the best way to stay healthy. No one should owe anyone anything except to love one another. That means no apologies should be outstanding and no forgiveness should be withheld. 

Proverbs 3:27

Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, 

when it is in the power of thine hand to do it.

Everyone is giving and receiving what they owe one another. This will keep the sniffles away.

Church discipline is good medicine. If you get sick, it's not the end of the world if you address it. If you tolerate viruses, you could die. If you eliminate them, you can live to fight another day.

Song of Solomon 2:15

Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes.

Good fences make good neighbors. Do your best to keep the foxes out of the garden. If they get in, chase them out. Little things can ruin everything. Do not sleep on small sins. Set up good guard rails and keep the good well protected inside and the bad well defended against.

A fruitful vineyard is an attractive target for sly foxes, so the better the fruit, the more attacks you can expect, but the better the defense, the safer the garden. Do as Adam ought to have done and protect the garden. Do not allow snakes to slither about and do not force your people to face them alone or allow them to think that they aren't as dangerous as they really are. 

day no. 17,263: deceived about deception

“Damnation is a function of loving a lie, preeminently the lies you tell yourself. Self-deception is the prince of all deceptions. The wrath of God is seen in this, when God gives people over to what they have loved all along.” — Douglas Wilson, Mines of Difficulty

Do not be deceived, you can deceive yourself. If you think that you can't, then you are deceived about the nature of yourself and the nature of deception.

Jeremiah 17:9

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? 

You are not the expert on you, your Creator is. And He has told you that your heart is deceitful. You think and feel things that are not true. You believe things that wrong. You call some good things "evil" and you call some evil things "good." But how would you know if you were doing that?

James 1:22-25

Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

Do you believe things that you are not doing? Do your actions betray your "beliefs." When they do, is it because your actions misrepresent you or because your beliefs are not what you think they are?

Deuteronomy 11:16

Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived.

The first step is realizing that you could be deceived. The next step is finding a standard of truth and purity against which to measure yourself.

James 1:25

Whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.

The Word of God is a perfect mirror. It will tell you who you really are. In its reflection, will see an accurate picture. So, read the Word of God and know the truth and it will set you free.

day no. 17,262: hidden sins create cowards

“It’s amazing how much panic one honest man can spread among a multitude of hypocrites.” — Thomas Sowell

Liars don't like the light. Like cockroaches, they run from it. The truth is a dangerous thing to those who rely on the night to hide them. One bold man with his finger on the light switch can create a riot. 

Proverbs 28:1

The wicked flee when no man pursueth: 

but the righteous are bold as a lion.

Liars run from the rumor of the light switch and riot at the report of someone threatening to flip it on.

The righteous, however, love the truth. They have confessed their sins and drug them out into the light. The truth is not a danger to be avoided, it is a comfort to be sought. Forgiven men are bold men. Hidden sin creates cowards.

day no. 17,261: mission creeps

“You don’t want to be the gardener who gets so focused on pulling weeds that he forgets he is doing so in order to grow something else. It is supposed to be a flower garden, not a no-weeds dirt patch.” — Douglas Wilson, Mines of Difficulty

Mission creep can happen to anyone. You need to bail water in order to keep the boat afloat and so the bureau for bailing water is created. They are essential, don't you know, to the preservation of the ship. But the reason the ship left port in the first place was not merely stay afloat. If that was the goal, staying in the harbor would have better served that end. No, the ship left the safety of the harbor for a reason. There was a destination in mind or some fish to catch or an enemy to engage. Staying afloat is, of course, crucial to completing the mission, whatever it was, but it is not the mission itself. The mission is landing at that place, returning with those fish, or sinking that enemy. When we make side quests the top priority, we are off mission. 

The point of a garden is to grow things. Weeds interfere with that goal. So, weeds must be pulled, but not because pulling weeds is important, but because growing things is. So, sins must be dealt with, but not because dealing with sin is the chief end of man, but because glorying God and enjoying Him forever is, and sins get in the way of that.

"We may have a duty to rescue a drowning man and, perhaps, if we live on a dangerous coast, to learn lifesaving so as to be ready for any drowning man when he turns up. It may be our duty to lose our own lives in saving him. But if anyone devoted himself to lifesaving in the sense of giving it his total attention—so that he thought and spoke of nothing else and demanded the cessation of all other human activities until everyone had learned to swim—he would be a monomaniac. The rescue of drowning men is, then, a duty worth dying for, but not worth living for. It seems to me that all political duties (among which I include military duties) are of this kind. A man may have to die for our country, but no man must, in any exclusive sense, live for his country. He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation, or a party, or a class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to God: himself.”

― C.S. Lewis, Learning in Wartime (The Weight of Glory)

Keeping your house from burning down is a noble goal, but living to keep your house fireproof is a lame way to spend your life. Saving a drowning victim is a noble venture and worth losing your life over if you should fail, but living your life looking for drowning victims is a waste of a life and not worth the cost of burying your talents in the sand as you watch and wait. Do not allow yourself to become a lopsided monster. Do not be a mission creep.

day no. 17,260: the only difference between Caesar salad and garbage is timing

"Caesar is as much under authority as we are. He has no authority to touch certain things because he is God’s deacon. This means that Jesus is Lord and Caesar isn’t. Caesar is Caesar, but Caesar too is created in the image of God. That means that he must render to God the things that are God’s." — Douglas Wilson, Paul, The Faithful Roman

We are commanded to give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's (Matthew 22:21), but presupposed in that command is the fact that all things do not belong to Caesar. So, if Caesar begins to act as though all things are his, it is our duty to remind him of his error and oppose him if he is unwilling to hear.

Caesar is a created being. As such, he is under authority. He is not just in charge, he is under a charge. He is the kind of boss who has a boss. No earthly authority is absolute. Civil magistrates, husbands, fathers, mothers, and masters all have a representative head. They are given the privilege of occupying a lower office because there is a higher office. There is a Maker, Creator, Sustainer, Husband, Father, and Master. And He has deputized some to stand in His stead and act under His authority. 

But if and when they step outside their assigned jurisdiction, they are breaking the law. If they attempt to make a law that goes beyond their authority, it is the duty of those under them to disobey. They are not required to join them in their rebellion against their Lord and Master. If your leaders attempt a mutiny against their leader, you are not a traitor if you refuse to join them, you are a traitor if you do. You are not obligated to participate in someone else's treason, and if you do, you are as guilty as they are. You will not be exonerated by saying, "I was merely following orders." There is a kind of following orders that is disobedience. Obedience is not inherently blessed. It all depends on who is asking and what they are asking you to do. If you do whatever anyone tells you, it is not a feather in your cap, it is a flaw in your character.

"The rescue of drowning men is, then, a duty worth dying for, but not worth living for. It seems to me that all political duties (among which I include military duties) are of this kind. A man may have to die for our country, but no man must, in any exclusive sense, live for his country. He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation, or a party, or a class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to God: himself.” ― C.S. Lewis, Learning in Wartime (The Weight of Glory)

The only difference between a Caesar salad and garbage is timing, and the difference between obeying Caesar and disobeying him is jurisdiction. Caesar salads can and do go bad, but they are not bad at the right time and in the right place. So, if something smells fishy, it is either because you don't like anchovies, which is a you problem (addressed by developing your palate) or the anchovies have turned, which is also a you problem, but handled very differently (e.g. tossing it out).

day no. 17,259: a distinguished gentlemen

3 John 12

Demetrius has received a good testimony from everyone, and from the truth itself. We also add our testimony, and you know that our testimony is true. 

Most people want to distinguish themselves as being the one that everyone else is talking about, but that just makes you like everyone else. if you really want to distinguish yourself, be the kind of person who promotes others. Spend your time and energy drawing attention to the good deeds and good character of others. That will set you apart. Who does that? That will shock the world. 

A husband who works hard to ensure his wife has a great reputation with others? 

Who is this guy? 

A wife who cannot sleep unless she has increased her husband’s honor in the eyes of others? 

Where is this lady?

day no. 17,258: the danger of love and the danger of lust

“Fighting for a thing without loving it is not even fighting; it can only be called a kind of horse-play that is occasionally fatal." — G.K. Chesterton

Love is the desire to put oneself between the beloved and the danger.

Lust is the danger of putting one's desires before the other.

James 4:1-2

From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not.

We fight for things we love.

We fight with things we lust after.

Most modern warfare is not about loving what is behind us but hating what is in front of us. It involve a lot of horsing around online and most of the time people merely get their feelings hurt, but sometimes it escalates out onto the streets of Minneapolis where someone dies.