Psalms 15:4

I wrote a (very lengthy) entry yesterday about the effects the exaltation of evil people has on society. What, then is the appropriate thing to do?

Only a few chapters later, when the psalmist is listing the qualities of a person who may abide in God’s tabernacle or dwell in His holy hill, one of the things he lists is “In whose eyes a vile person is despised, but he honors those who fear the Lord,” (Psalms 15:4). Not only does the psalmist reiterate here that we should not show respect to vile people...he actually a positive response. A "thou shalt" to follow the "thou shalt not": we should honor those who fear the lord.

It's much easier to gossip than to spread good news. And it's easier to pick out the bad or annoying aspects of our associates than to find the good ones. We pick apart and tear down. When we should be honoring...but not just honoring anyone. We should go out of our way to honor those who fear the Lord.

You know someone like that. Maybe they are your spiritual mentor, maybe a friend, maybe someone you barely know but you respect the work you know they are doing for the Lord. If no one else, maybe it is your pastor or youth director or Sunday School teacher or someone else in a position of autority in the church. They, more than most, need our encouragement. They have just as many cares and worries as we do personally...and they share in those of the rest of the church, class, or group.

Challenge for Today: Find a person who fears the Lord and find a way to “honor” them today…even a word of encouragement will do. Perhaps you can meet a need you know of theirs. Ask God to bring something to your attention, ask Him to bring to mind the person you need to honor today...and the means by which you should do so.

Psalms 12:8

The wicked prowl on every side, when vileness is exalted among the sons of men.

I’m sure that our culture is not the first to exalt vileness. We may be the first with the communications technology to exalt it in such a widespread and graphic way, but I hardly think that David’s words in Psalms on this subject were prophetic. I believe he was probably speaking to people in his own time, as well as to those in times past and the future…our time…as well. The principle holds true, as it always has.

This is a topic that actually is very hard for me to write about because it’s got a large dose of “look in the mirror” to it, as you’ll see later on. So bear with me if I am, on this point, a pot calling the kettle black. The kettle is still black, regardless the similar hue of the pot.

In a culture where we have everything from TV and movies to video games that glorifies violence, sex, drugs…and every conceivable combination of all three, are we really surprised that our society is becoming more and more degraded?

Think about this for a minute:
Even as recently as a couple of years ago, if you heard that an elderly woman was followed into her garage, brutally beaten, and left injured without assistance - all for the contents of her purse, you might have said, “Wow…I can’t believe that happened! What is this world coming to?” But if that even makes the news today (it did… barely), it’s because it was a slow news day.
Now in order for us to be shocked, we have to hear about a man shooting and killing random people on the freeway (happened in Dallas the day before Christmas Eve) or dressing up as Santa Claus to brutally murder Christmas partygoers (happened in California Christmas Eve). Now things like that we “can’t believe” happened.
The little old lady in her garage?... par for the course; barely even news.

There are two points I’d like to make about this:
First, while it’s important to keep up with current events and to speak out and do something about what you can change, and therefore the news is important…what we are typically fed by the media is not that important kind of news we need. We need to keep abreast of developments in the world, the political stage in terms of how we can take part in that political process, and things of that nature. These things are relevant, and if we stick our head in the sand about them, we are remiss in our duty to be good citizens, and we miss a lot of opportunities to really impact our world for Christ.
However, every grisly detail of a brutal murder that happened half a world away is not something that is relevant. But consider for a minute: If you surf the web for news, do you look for follow-up stories in the latest legislation about to hit your City Council chamber? Or do you search out the much more sensational teenager that went missing while attending a frat party in another state and turned up dead three days later from alcohol poisoning?
Well… the news gives us what we find interesting… The news sells what people will buy. There's no money in an industry that peddles what people need (but don't buy). What’s likely to bring us back to the television station or get another hit on the website is what will be printed and publicized.

Now, take that one step further:
If someone is distraught or feels unloved or is begging for attention…how are they likely to get their 15 minutes of fame? If they’re inclined to look for that? You guessed it… the media. And the more shocking, grisly, or unacceptable the act, the more attention it will get. People know this, and I think this knowledge is partly to blame for the more and more shocking and brutal crimes we see with greater frequency. People want to be remembered, and they feel unimportant; therefore, if they can’t be remembered for something good…well, the worse the better, then! As long as they're not forgotten entirely.

Now… just food for thought: Are we actually making such acts more common by “exalting” these deeds and getting them into the media by being greedy consumers of that sort of news? If we gobbled up stories of charity, hope, or someone helping out instead of destroying their community, would more people make the effort to do so in an effort to be remembered and recognized and feel significant?

Second, in fiction, our society truly has started to exalt some very vile things. And I’m not talking about a little bit of implied sex, a “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a d*mn” by Rhett butler, or even some brutal violence on the part of a villain. Television and movies have, largely just in the past couple of years, started to really use evil characters as sympathetic protagonists...people the audience is meant to identify with and feel, well, good about to some degree.

I’m not talking about your shady “antihero”, either. I’m not talking about someone like Batman that may use questionable means for honorable ends. I’m not talking about your Hannibal Lecter who's an evil character and, actually, the villain in the story, though he’s portrayed as having a very cultured, polite manner…almost the kind of badguy you’re “like to meet”…but he’s still clearly BAD.

I’m talking about the fact that the evil characters are portrayed in many recent works as protagonists, and that they are not just the “lesser of two evils so by default the good guy"…they are often the worst, most morally deficient, person in the whole cast of characters. And yet they are the “hero” of the story. Examples of what I am talking about are the television show Dexter, currently on Showtime (but now between seasons) that uses a serial killer who takes justice (his own extremely twisted brand) into his hands to do what the cops can’t because of their respect for the law…never mind that he is a cop at his day job.

Or movies like Sweeney Todd. Now, I must admit, I greatly enjoyed Sweeney Todd. The story was well-written and the musical performances were phenomenal, but it does not say very good things about our society that a blood-covered movie with a mass murderer as its protagonist can turn a profit. (Even previous versions of the same tale were much more tame and less graphic.)

Challenge for Today (Choose one):
1. Go for a day, tomorrow (no fair cheating and only doing this for the last 4 hours left in today or something...try it ALL DAY), without watching shows or movies or listening to music or reading books that glorify vile people or a vile lifestyle. I think you'll be surprised to notice how much you end up having to "leave out"...unless you are very discriminating already in what you watch!
2. Again, just for tomorrow, don’t forward any sensational “gross me out” and "shock me" types of news stories or chat about them or use them as dinner conversation.

Once you try this for a day, consider...should you be doing it on a long-term basis? Cutting out the "junk food" in your mental diet?

If you don't mind, share what you had to cut out of your watching/reading/listening habits. Or how many times you started to hit forward or opened your mouth to say, "Did you hear about that psychopath that..." Just the number of times...no need to use this list as an outlet to talk about "here's what I didn't talk about but was really itching to shock someone with!" Hah!

Psalms 84:10

For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.

For those of you who have been following this blog and know that I was reading through Psalms...no, I haven't gotten all the way to number 84 yet. This was just something that came to me last night. I was in choir practice (my first time back after...well, more than a year...maybe two), and the director was talking about worship and the presence of God and how we could lead the church and mentioned that we should all be doorkeepers. And I was really trying to figure out why we needed so many greeters at the church (because we have alot of voices in the choir) and why we would all need to do that practical service. It shows you how my head was not really in the game that I didn't realize he was talking about this verse...and not literal doorkeepers...until he quoted part of the rest of the verse. Then, I kicked myself for the misinterpretation.

But then I got to really thinking about it. I know the intent of the verse is that we would rather have even the most humble place in God's kingdom than a high and proud place outside it. But there can be something else we should take from this verse, as well. Maybe doorkeeper, though a lowly position in ancient times, is not such a bad place to be. After all, the doorkeepers of today, the greeters at our church, are the first face someone sees when they arrive. They have the privilege to usher people into the house of God. They have the responsibility to be a positive representation of Christianity. Shouldn't we all, who would prefer to be doorkeepers in the Kingdom, be doing the same thing? Every day, we should be ushering our friends, our relatives, our co-workers, and our accquaintances into the presence of God. That can be an encouragement to a Christian friend, bringing them back to a knowledge of His presence in their lives. Or it can be a shared testimony with someone who is not a believer. Or it can be the way we live our lives, in a manner that makes the unbeliever say "what's different about that person?"

In one way or another, we ought to be holding the door open and inviting people to come in.

Challenge for Today: Do something to bring someone else closer to God today.

THIS IS A TEST - ONLY A TEST

I'm testing to see if the blog "feed" is working now. If it is, this should send you an email that "there's a new post" available if you are "following" the blog. If it does, please come and reply on the comments that it did in fact send the email. If not, I'm going back to the drawing board.

Lamentations 3:22-23

Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

As the New Year starts, we often feel a spirit of lightheartedness or that a weight has been lifted. Things feel new, and possibilities feel fresh. Many of us make New Year's Resolutions. For myself personally, last year I had five and I went five-for-five (that is, on ones I didn't accomplish). Yet this year, as I sat down to write a couple, I'm hopeful and expectant that they will be accomplished.

I just marvelled at how different things were on the first day back to work in the "New Year" compared to the last days of work in the old. Nothing actually "changed". The same work is still there, with the same hours, tasks, people, computer systems, and pay. But because my attitude had changed, everything seemed different.

It's remarkable what effect something simply being "new" can have on us. A "new" year means we'll do better at fending off our old habits (even if we haven't in the past year). "New" clothes make us feel pretty, even though we are the same person as before.

The "New" year is a pretty good feeling. The high that it brings and the optimism is something that is unmatched during the rest of the year. We live more resolutely, more purposefully, and more conscious of our time and our habits.

God's word says His compassions are NEW every morning.

Yesterday you messed up? Well, don't dwell on it. Put that failure aside and start again at it new, with God's help. Let His compassion cover over whatever it is you've done yesterday or in the past, and open your eyes to look for what He has for you today.

God has new compassion for us every day. Because of Him, we can have that high that comes with the "new" year every day. This year, don't live the first couple of weeks like it's new and then the rest like it's the same old drudgery. Keep that optimism and hopefulness of the new year throughout the whole year. And refresh it every morning by remembering this "THIS is the day that the Lord has made"...and that His compassion for you this morning is the same in intensity as it was yesterday, no matter what you've done. But it's not the SAME compassion...it's brand new compassion, just for today!

Happy New Year!
(And a Happy New Day!)

Challenge for Today: Consider the compassion God has for you. Not the compassion God "has had on you" in the past...but the compassion He has for you today. For just a few minutes, consider thoughtfully and deliberately what we all learned in a song as children: "Jesus loves me." And then keep that thought with you for the rest of the day from time to time.