The point of this talk was to show the reality in which we live. How our pride is cultivated by our self love and our culture, and enthusiastically distorts our view of what is real. This view denies God's placement as God in our lives and replaces it with us. Which then is held up by a wavering reality that we need in order to keep mentally stable. Yet within this world of self worship we become most interested in what gives our pride the most kick. which is what we see in our world today. (the answer to this in my understanding is letting Jesus redeem all parts of our soul (heart mind body etc), Letting God be God, and moving out of self and into christlikeness)
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I like to learn. That’s why I watch the learning channel. TLC. This is a channel that got popular with trading spaces. And now airs a show that is very transformational. Every person in there changes from dreadful, to dazzling in one hour. It’s called What not to wear.
Here, Stacy and Clinton sneak up on a person who has been nominated by their family and friends and give this person 5000 dollars to get a new wardrobe and look. They show secret footage in front of their friends of what they have been wearing. And then take them and show them how to dress.
One of the most tearfelt moments is when Stacy and Clinton take them into their 360 mirror. Where they actually show them what they look like. What do they look like? Awful. Yet it is an amazing tool of transformation. Confronting someone in denial with lights, and visuals.
Today I am going to attempt to do the same thing. Now I don’t have 5000 to give you, I have something far more precious.
But my hope is to transform you. By revealing truth. Like the 360 mirror. Tough love. And as a result I’m going to offend you today. I’m not going to offend you by saying fuck or shit. I am going to offend you by poking holes in your pride.
I’m going to do that by saying words that your pride can’t handle. Words like sin, evil, lost, not God and hell. And I’m going to use just those words because I’m exactly what your pride wants me to be. A dick pastor. I’m going to use those words because they’re offensive. They are painted on TV, and in the papers and in social circles as only words that manipulative dick pastors like me would use. And the reason why is: they do what they are sapposed to do. Offend a very delicate house of cards of denial that is destructive, awful, and if it was wearing something it would be close to badfitting spandex from the 80’s.
Psalm 14:2-3 The LORD looks down from heaven on the entire human race; he looks to see if anyone is truly wise, if anyone seeks God. 3 But no, all have turned away; all have become corrupt.[a] No one does good, not a single one!
Let me let you in on my thinking. Last time I spoke to you I gave you a cup of water on behalf of Jesus. It was fresh, cool, and refreshing. Except for the first one that deborah got which was rusty… yick. Today I want to bring out the 360 mirror to show what we are dealing with. We live in a world that is not good. And has created underpinnings to make it stay that way. And it encourages you to stay that way. Some of us are fighting with all that we have. Others are blind.
Jer 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?
Bible is filled with these passages, they are so depressing. They talk about hating the world. How God hates the wicked and…hell. What a downer. We have people crying and saying they are sinners, can’t people who read the bible just get some self esteme? Why do they talk about evil so much. Evil…
In the bible it is starkly clear and repeated over and over by Moses, Samuel, Paul, John, and Jesus that the human soul is lost. Lost. In a world of where manson can explain his killings through the meaninglessness of life, and even churches find themselves with people cultivating secretive behavior that underlines their lack of christlikeness, we might be able to see a little bit of what God is saying. But it’s just so depressing. Where’s the hope? Where’s the love? Why is God so angry? Jeeesh Bible.
Here’s where hole number one is poked. The bible is stating that the soul is lost, not to depress you, not to make an embarrassing religion out of Christianity. It is stating it because I’m not OK and you’re not OK. We’re all in serious trouble. And that must be our starting point. We are placed in the 360 and told. You aren’t where you need to be.
Denial – usually in some rationalization – is the primary device that humans use to deal with their own wrongness.
I was in journal class and I was spouting off how most of the pastors of the bridge have a type b personality so there is less ego centrism. My friend Rachel who is a masters in psychology gently says to me. Type B's have an ego too. Which really was her way of saying... Geoff you don't really know what you're talking about do you. And ... You have some pride there that you may want to look at.
Denial – usually in some rationalization – is the primary device that humans use to deal with their own wrongness.
We love to hate the pharisees of Jesus time, being people who worried about appearances rather than what was inside, trying to be famous, how they were unable to believe in Jesus because they saught to be honored by each other. They desired to be popular. Yet these people when you look at these traits are not really talking about a pharisical condintion. They are talking about a human condition. We love to hate them the same way I love to hate the people on dateline who aren’t saving the fake baby from the boiling car. But in reality we are the kind of people that would not save the fake baby.
Paul sums it up in Romans 3
"There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are open graves; their tongues keep decieving. The poison of Asps is under their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; detruction and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes.
This last statement actually goes to the core. The fear of God Proverbs tells us is the beginning of wisdom.
I was in boy scouts and one of my friends thought it would be funny to pee on the electric fence outside the horse park. I thought it would be funny too. I was right. Right when the stream hit the fence he got a shock downstairs that knocked him back and there he was on the ground pissing all over himself. He didn’t have fear of the electric fence. Now he does. Thankfully he's fertile.
Fear is the anticipation of harm. The intellegent person recognizes that his or her well-being lies in being in harmony with God and what God is doing in the “kingdom.” God is not mean, but he is dangerous. It is the same with Electricity and nuclear power. They are not mean, but they are dangerous. One who does not “worry” about God is just not smart (poke). And that’s the point that this proverb is talking about “the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.” (fear of god – poke poke)
True understanding is knowledge of God. (another proverb) Not head knowledge… but having experiential involvement with. Actual engagement of God. This is what brings about true understanding. But it is the lack of involvement with God that leads to life around us. When we aren’t participating with God, we begin wanting something else in our heart, which then deflects our mind, and we create a denial.
Tolstoy wrote There are two Gods, There is the God that people generally believe in – A God who has to serve them (sometimes in very refined ways, say by merely giving them peace of mind). This God does not exist. But the God whom people forget – the God whom we all have to serve – exists, and is the prime cause of our existance and of all that we perceive.
This is life today. We are so interested in being taken care of by our god. The god of our bellies. That we aren’t interested in serving the real one.
The historian of Alcoholics Anonymous titled his work NOT GOD (poke) because that stands as the most important hurdle an addicted person must surmount: to acknowledge, deep in the soul, not being God. No mastery of manipulation and control, at which alcoholics excel, can overcome the root problem; rather, the alcoholic must recognize individual helplessness and fall back in the arms of the Higher Power. “First of all, we had to quit playing God,” concluded the founders of AA; and then allow God himself to “play God” in the addict’s life, which involves daily, even moment by moment, surrender.
The sin (poke poke) of Pride uproots the reality that God is God. Instead pride allows you to function in the denial and the delusion that you are God. You are the great one. So that you can psychologically maintain that house of cards … keep it balenced. As you slowly get more and more lost, bitter, prideful, hard hearted. As an aside, sensuality plays a major part in soul ruin because people worship the creation rather than the creator… sex gives the biggest kick and violence probably comes in second. And most of us arent even aware that worshiping the abs buns, and guns of today are slowly making us into monsters.
CS Lewis in the weight of glory writes that we need “to remember that the dullest and most uniteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare… There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations--- these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.
When we think of hell (poke poke)… many times we think of it in terms of its outcome. Which is an awful thought. But the condition of lostness is not the same as the outcome. We are not lost because we are going to wind up in the wrong place. We are going to wind up in the wrong place because we’re lost. To be lost is to mean “out of place.” Jesus uses the term Gehenna because it was thought of as the cosmic dump for the irretrievably useless. Do you know what would it mean if your soul was irretrievably useless. I’m not saying God doesn’t hold you with great value. Its just you are useless to him.
I can lose a winning lottery ticket. And That ticket has great value to me, yet that value means nothing when it is lost. Same thing goes for my keys. They could be great keys ... very well crafted keys. But lost... they are worthless to me.
When we are lost to God, we are not where we are sapposed to be in his world and as a result are not caught up in his life.
Essentially being lost means you are obsessed with yourself. Paul writes “their god is their belly,”. Slaves to their appetites and feelings. Because it is their feelings that become unsatiable. As a result no one chooses to be the kind of person who belongs in hell. But their self orientation leads them to become the kind of person whom “Away from God” is the only place for which they are suited. It is a place that someone would choose for themselves rather than humble themselves, and put away their pride and accept God for who he is.
Am I poking holes in your pride? Is it insulting to call someone lost? These topics we need to be kind about. But truth have an edge to it. Is it insulting to give someone a diagnosis of a disease that needs treatment. Maybe… but if they get treatment they live. Lostness is a factual condition of the self, of the ruined soul. You either have it or you don’t. You probably wont know it if you have it. Because it’s blindness. But you need treatment, if you aren’t going to be lost forever. And being informed can help you find relief.
So there’s my 360 mirror. Pretty rough to face the lights and the visuals. I wanted to show you how ugly pride is and how it ruins our souls and makes this world an evil place. Do you see how our hearts naturally cultivate the love of ourself, which blooms into pride where it emits the fragrences of denial of true reality that smells like shit. God is God. We are powerful Souls that can participate or not participate in his kingdom. And we live in a world that currently is not “his kingdom come” because not all of us are doing our job.
We have rags on. Jesus Christ allows us to have his pristine clothes. And lets us follow him into the town to do some really great things on his behalf.
Do you want to hold onto the rags because they are yours, or do you want to bow deep let go of your pride that holds up a chinsy reality of insatiable hunger. Let’s have some remorse today. Let’s have some fear of a very powerful God. Let’s rework our realities to serve a God who can save us from ourselves. So that we can be the people that he wants us to be.
