Looters not Leaders
Some passages of scripture have a powerful effect on you because they move you. They make a spiritual impression on you. That happens from time to time.
Some passages of scripture make an aesthetic impression. They move you with their grandeur and the vision of glory.
I don’t know that there is a big difference between this type of impression and the spiritual impression.
Can a scripture make you feel sick to your stomach? Can a scripture dredge up the pain inside?
We know it can, because in Jacob ch. 2 he says he worries that is doing just that.
So a scripture can flay the tender feelings of the wounded but no scripture, I would have thought, would do that to me. Well, one just did. I read Ezekiel, where he laments how his civilization has been sucked dry from the inside by his leaders. Those who should be the shepherds of his people, looting them and butchering them and leading to the slaughter. Perhaps I should feel the sad plight of our country less personally than I do. But I do feel it personally. It hurts. And this lament from Ezekiel hits far too close to home.
Woe be to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves! should not the shepherds feed the flocks?
Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you with the wool, ye kill them that are fed: but ye feed not the flock.
but with force and with cruelty have ye ruled them.
And they were scattered, because there is no shepherd: and they became meat to all the beasts of the field,
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Zen
October 31, 2022
18 Seemeth it a small thing unto you to have eaten up the good pasture, but ye must tread down with your feet the residue of your pastures? and to have drunk of the deep waters, but ye must foul the residue with your feet?
19 And as for my flock, they eat that which ye have trodden with your feet; and they drink that which ye have fouled with your feet
E.C.
October 31, 2022
That is exactly what that passage did to me: made me sick to my stomach. I want to love America for what it could be, but I cannot in good conscience feel that we are good right now, or that our leaders care for us in any way, shape, or form.
Vader
November 3, 2022
America is better than its leaders, and the Constitution is better than America. But:
“But should the people of America once become capable of that deep simulation towards one another, and towards foreign nations, which assumes the language of justice and moderation, while it is practising iniquity and extravagance, and displays in the most captivating manner the charming pictures of candour, frankness, and sincerity, while it is rioting in the rapine and insolence, this country will be the most miserable habitation in the world. Because we have no government armed with the power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
–John Adams