- Not The Only One!
- Post #151
- 5 Sept 24
- ” Bet The Farm”
- Howdy,
- I hope that you guys are buckled in because I feel some egos being smashed . Feelings hurt, and a look in the mirror, that may be some what painful. ☺️☺️ When I say bet the farm, it would usually imply that something is a sure thing. You guys are familiar with sure things, they include a few extra pounds after Thanksgiving dinner ☺️☺️. Then of course there is stubbing your toe in the dark on your way to the bathroom in the middle of the night ☺️☺️. An absolute guaranteed sure thing just about for everyone is walking into a room and then not being able to remember what you went in there for in the first place☺️☺️. Honestly if we want to look at things from a cynical point of view, the only sure thing in life is death and taxes☺️☺️. God!, I hope that isn’t a summation of life!!☺️☺️
- We all aren’t really all that different from one another so , maybe this should be called follow the leader.☺️ I was introduced to an online article today, that honestly made me gasp. It reminded me that God never gives us more than we can handle. It also reminded me that money is the root of evil. It also reminded me of the fact that cleanliness is next to godliness . I only mention this because God only helps those who help themselves.
- Some of you may recognize this as a list of tall falsehoods, but I’m not going to ask for a show of hands. 😀☺️. This is like you just took a quiz and you passed your quiz to your neighbor and the teacher is going through the answers so that your partner can grade your quiz☺️☺️. The teacher is telling you that the answers are all false, regardless of what you may have thought the correct answer was.☺️☺️ These are just a few of the things that people say and get repeated over and over again. Another lesson from the democratic play book, if you repeat a lie enough times, it will eventually be excepted as truth☺️☺️. I mean if you say it confidently enough, it may sound as if it holds merit. Does God helps those who help themselves? If that’s the truth, then who would need and what would be the point in having a God?
- Ok, let’s just get to my gasp☺️☺️ . Have You ever heard of “MTD”? Don’t Google it because it will explain month to date, all to well for you☺️☺️. This is from a research article that lead to a book called ” soul searching ” . MTD stands for Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. It was first coined about twenty years ago based on data that was compiled of off teenagers, which is wildly pervasive throughout all of our culture. It basically has five belief points and they are as follows
- 1. A God exist who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.
- 2.God wants people to be good ,nice and fair to one another as taught in the Bible and most world religions
- 3. The central goal in life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself
- 4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life, except when God is needed to resolve some problem
- 5. Good people go to heaven when they die.
- Wow!! How did we get here?
- MTD is a Moralistic view that places high value on being good, and good is defined by whatever the popular culture says that it is , and not defined by the moral imperative found in the Bible. So tolerating behaviors that the Bible calls sin is seen as good, and at the same time calling out or labeling those things as sin , is seen as bad, intolerant, or even hateful in nature. ☺️☺️. I know that we are getting close to Halloween, but what a tangled Webb of mess we have created☺️☺️
- Then there is the whole debate between Deism and Theism. The sticking point here is , whether God interacts with His creation or just observes care free from a distance as a cosmic spectator. True Deist, don’t believe that God interacts, but leaves us completely alone to live out our lives as we see fit. Theist believe that God exist and that He can and does interact with His creations, such as in the answering of prayer and such. So the biggest difference here is not the clash between Deism and Theism, but just how far we have gotten away from Biblical truth. It seems that many people just view God as a cosmic genie, or a heavenly bellhop, or a roadside assistant mechanic, and you don’t necessarily need Him or need to know Him, but when you break down, you can call Him and He will come and get you going , how utterly ridiculous ☺️☺️. Now, remember and keep in mind that the most important thing in MTD, is to be good, nice and tolerant and God will ultimately receive you into heaven. Yes!, it’s a crock, but this is the alter where way to many people worship now days. It is the” civic religion” of our day. This kind of thinking puts and focus mostly on the horizontal relationships with others, over the vertical relationship with God. MTD places humanity at the center of everything. It’s about self and it places us at the center of our belief system. It’s all about ourselves , just like we created ourselves ☺️☺️.
- I dispatched and unpacked a few untruthful sayings and then I gave you the one through five of MTD, and you probably see how they fit together and how our own self thinking can lead us off into a ditch somewhere ☺️☺️. I will occasionally ask the question, how many decisions and choices do we make in a single day to shape how we want others to view us. Did we say the right thing and say it in the most political correct way, careful not to offend anyone. Did we do the right thing in traffic by letting someone merge in front of us ? Do people think that I’m good and kind because I grabbed my neighbors trash can and brought it in , instead of letting it fly all over the neighborhood? When there is a natural disaster somewhere in the world, do I donate money to the cause? One of the definitions of integrity is what do you do , when no one is around to see it. I believe that all of the above is geared to make us feel good or better about ourselves. Even some of our most selfless behaviors are defined by some underline selflessness. Did I donate because it’s a tax write off? Did I grab the trash can because I don’t want it to end up in my flower bed?☺️☺️. The reset position is to be good, nice and tolerant.
- The majority of this is counter to real Christianity, and I will say that much of it goes to the condition of our hearts. I can do the horizontal relationships without exposing my heart, but not so much ! , with the vertical relationship with God. One I can fake my way through and the other, I’m just completely undone and exposed. If you are going to bet the farm, wager it on something that is true. Something that is life giving. Something that is eternal and everlasting. I have observed my own life and noticed how much I change from day to day in my own life. If I could step outside of myself and be completely an observer, I would definitely describe myself as fickle. The crazy part is that I love stability and think of myself as a creature of habit ☺️☺️. If there was a book out there similar to a dictionary and you looked up hating change, there would be a Picture of my face☺️☺️. I’m just simply aware because of and based on the petitions that I bring before God each and every morning. Human beings are volatile, our lives are constantly being impacted by our surroundings and interactions with other sinful people like ourselves. Sometimes we think that we are much further a head than we actually are, maybe a little self delusion. ☺️☺️ I know that I find myself sharing things with others, that I need to remind myself of as well.
- Just yesterday I was having a conversation with my sixteen year old grandson about a tough situation that he is dealing with, and I reminded him that we can’t always control the narrative, but absolutely in control of our response to life’s challenges. I have to and need to remind myself of that , and preach it to myself on a regular. ☺️☺️ We can choose joy in the midst of difficulties and disappointments. We can and get to choose contentment over becoming bitter about some failure in life . We also get to choose between making it about ourselves or someone else, as in the creator of the universe and the maker of all things.
- Honestly, I don’t really know why we are so high on ourselves. We are always carrying around some guilt over some mistakes that we’ve made. We are selfish and judgmental of others. We have blinders on towards our own short comings. I already covered how fickle we can be.☺️ Some of us are just ruled by our emotions that are in a constant state of flux. We gossip, we lie and have a tendency to blow things out of proportion. We are usually ungrateful and often unsatisfied with the offerings that life currently presents to us. I guess that makes us spoiled ☺️☺️. We constantly assume that we are correct in our thinking of a particular situation and we usually aren’t. ☺️☺️We constantly miss the boat in handling others with care and concern. This would be a manifesto of misery, if it wasn’t the very things that make us human. Yeah!, yeah!, I know that we have other characteristics to balance those things out such as our compacity to love others. We are all of those things each and every day, nothing that I would be running towards to embrace, but God sees us for who we really are, and He still loves us and wants a relationship with us. Yes, it sounds ridiculous, but God has shown Himself as someone who refuses to be stuffed into a nice , neat tiny little box☺️☺️. Who would choose to rescue mankind from itself, by sending a baby in a feeding trough?
- I want to say that on the surface, there is nothing wrong with be moral, but you need to ask yourself where does that come from and what is it based on. If it’s just about you feeling good about yourself and being good, nice and tolerant and hoping for safe passage to the promise land, well, you might just want to hold off on betting the farm ☺️☺️. I hate to put it this way. Instead of calling it punching holes in, how about we just call it a comparison. Moral Therapeutic Deism VS. Genuine Traditional Christianity
- 1. It’s not just does God exist, but He has revealed himself in three persons as the Father, the Son and the Spirit. Whoever believes in God must demonstrate this by having faith in Him and it’s impossible to believe in Him without having an exercising faith.
- 2. God doesn’t call us to be good and nice, but He requires and expects obedience to his word, which we just mostly disregard. It’s through submitting to His will and plan for our life that produces good and nice.
- 3. The central goal in life is to give God glory and to make Him more well known to those who do not know Him. A by- product of that may give us feelings of feeling good about ourselves as we serve Him well.
- 4. Our primary focus as believers should be fellowship with God. In a relationship where we are in constant connection with Him, so that we would know His will and act upon it.
- 5. Christianity has always held the position that no one and I mean no one is good enough to get into heaven based on their own good deeds. The Bible clearly states that all have sinned and the price or wages of that sin is death. We mostly don’t like that, but it doesn’t change the facts. ☺️ We can not escape God’s judgement and wrath regardless of how many good things we do or how good we feel about ourselves.
- The good news is that God didn’t just leave us in a helpless state, but that His great love and compassion for us, moved and moved in a mighty way to redeem us from our state of spiritual depravity and poverty . God made a way for us by sending His one and only son to redeem and rescue us. Jesus took the punishment that was deservingly ours and ours alone. He offers it to us as a free gift. A gift is nothing if you don’t reach out to receive it . I will often hear people say that is just to easy. We have something within us that just wants to work for it. If you work for it, then it’s no longer a free gift. If it was some difficult task, then we would line up to do that, because it brings us back to self again. Look at me and what I accomplished. Once again the focus is off of the creator and back on ourselves ☺️☺️. A slippery slope that we just love to dance on☺️☺️☺️. . How could God be fair and just, if He made it difficult and some couldn’t make some lofty and grand gesture . That right there is the major difference between authentic Christianity and every other religion in the world. They all say do! Do this and do that to prove your worthiness and allegiance to some deity and Christianity says DONE!!. It’s done, because God did it. God has done all of the work, all of the heavy lifting and made the provision ☺️☺️
- If your plan is to pile up a whole bunch of good works and good deeds and to feel good about yourself, your farm may be built on a sand dune or sand bar, which isn’t very stable in the storms of life. The person who excepts the free gift and just admits that they don’t have it all together and that they need rescue, is built on the rock, and that rock is Christ. I’m not calling anyone out here, but I believe that scripture encourages us to do a little self examination from time to time .
- This is going to be my close today and I really want you to think about it. Do you know for absolute for sure that if you were to die today, that you would go to heaven? Do you know that you know and that you are secure in that. ? It’s not a hope so, or think so, but it’s an absolute I know so! All I’m saying is if , I’m going to bet the Farm, then it’s going to be something that I’m absolutely sure of. I entertain comments here, so if you don’t know that you know, please reach out and don’t stay in the dark. And for you skeptics out there who say that no one can know that for sure, we will just have to agreed to disagree ☺️☺️
- Till Next Time ✌️ Peace!
- Sandy The Southerner
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