Black American Idols

The next few posts will be hard to write, and for some (including myself) hard to read.  I have often compared the Black experience in America with Israel.  Both were enslaved people who were freed and inhabited a land that rejected them.  I believe both peoples are deeply spiritual and passionate about God.  However, it seems that Black folks have never truly made it out of the mindset of slavery; and it is something we struggle with to this day.  I will submit to you that a very large part of our collective lack of success has to with our dependence on, and uplifting of idols.  Idol worshipping is not something God loves.

i·dol  (dl)

n.

1.

a. An image used as an object of worship.

b. A false god.

2. One that is adored, often blindly or excessively.

3. Something visible but without substance.

It surprises me that a people whose roots are in the church exhibit such a limited understanding of such a huge biblical principle.  The Old Testament is literally filled with passages about God's hatred of idols.  Yet, we seem to have an ungodly tolerance to idols in our Black churches.  Don't misunderstand, I'm sure White churches also have their idols, but I cannot comment on that because I have not been a member of a predominately White church.  God wants us to love what he loves and hate what he hates.  Why then, do we tolerate, and, even celebrate idols and idolatry?  Is our love of worldly idols blocking God from establishing His will in our churches and in our lives?

What was that?  Yes, thank you.  The man in the back asked what are some specific examples of idols?  I'm glad you asked that sir.  I'm sure everyone in the room would like to know that.  Let's start with the obvious.  clothes.  People, there is nothing wrong with putting on your best when you come to church.  Personally, I love seeing a church full of well-dressed people.  But when you spend more time shopping for your Sunday outfit than you do in the word of God--YOUR CLOTHING IS AN IDOL.  Why?  Because idols receive the worship that should only belong to God.  Idols receive the energy, money, and thought that belongs to the creator, the redeemer, our Lord and Savior. 

I think our addiction to externals runs deep in the black subconscious.  We were never accepted for our beauty in this country.  Therefore we sought to make our appearance more palatable to the majority so we could blend into society easier.  But that cost us something.  It cost us our understanding of the biblical principle that we too were created in the image of God.  So we decided to help God finish what He started by putting all manner of time and effort into making ourselves lovely by standards other than His.  Since we have never really been accepted as equally beautiful, we have continued this foolish pursuit of looking good.

I'm equally guilty with reinforcing this idol.  I tell people in church how nice they look; but I don't inquire about the state of their Christian walk.  I compliment shoes, but I wont dare ask my brother if I can pray for him or with him.  Wow!  What am I communicating to folks?  What am I saying every time about what is really important to me? 

Ok, that last one hurt.  So I'll just make one more point about clothing and cosmetics in general.  I'm not fully convinced that when we invest resources into our exterior selves that we are worshipping the things we put on.  In fact, I want to revise that statement now.  When we are more focused on how we look than we are on what God has to say to us--we are not worshipping the clothes, jewelry, or make up. We are worshipping ourselves. 

Give God some glory today and everyday.  Let us all decrease, so He may increase. 

The Last Love Doctor: Love Never Fails

Brothers and Sisters, I have written this post 4 other times.  It should be the easiest post to write because it summarizes Paul's exposition on love.  Here is our text from 1 Corinthians 13:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
 ⁸ Love never fails.

This should be the easiest post.  However, one must be very careful not to mislead.  If we talk about love then we must transcend this world and point toward the cross.  Paul's final statement about love is that Love never fails.  Remember, this is not Disney love.  For our purposes here we are talking about Agape- the strongest love.  Agape never fails.

Paul's last statement has been the most difficult for me to reconcile.  I have often witnessed the death of what we commonly refer to as love.  So, how then, can we reconcile what Paul says here with the horrible truth that is our reality?  The truth that we have all been eyewitnesses or participants in love that has indeed failed.

My heart cried out when I reflected on these final words in this section from Paul.  I wanted to say Paul is a filthy liar!  How is it that love never fails when I know love fails.  I have seen love die a multitude of deaths.  I have seen love die in families, in churches, in communities, in friendships, in parent/child relationships, and in marriages.  What does Paul mean love never fails?  Then why is there so much pain in the world?  Why is there so much pain in my world!?  Yes, I compared the word of God to my own life and I cried foul!

But God!
God spoke to my heart as only He can.  He said David, you are a fool.  (I knew that already).  You still think Paul wrote as a man to men.  No David, Paul was writing My words to men.  The problem is not that love fails.  The problem is you still don't understand Agape!  Agape is a picture of my relationship with Israel.  They kept turning away from me, and I kept on loving them.  Agape is a picture of Jesus' love for the world.  When the people who welcomed Jesus into the city turned on Him and yelled 'crucify him' soon after, Jesus said, 'Forgive them Father.'  That is love.  Paul never promised that relationships would never fail.  He said love never fails.

Even though some children cannot stand to be in the same room with their parents, the loving spirit of God in the parent will allow that parent to continue praying for that wayward child.  Even though that boss or coworker treats a person like dirt. My spirit in that person can allow them to love through being mistreated.  Even though that spouse has made the other feel like a leper.  My treasure in that earthen vessel will cause that spouse to stay in the marriage and continue to love the other person.  It is not the person that loves, but the spirit of God in the person that loves. 

So beloved, I will leave you with this logical proof of Paul's great final statement on love.

God is love.
Love never fails.
God never fails.

Love Doctor: Love Endureth All Things

If love, as defined by our fallen culture, has deconstructed me; then love, as defined by God, has recreated me.  Brother's and Sister's I have seen the incredible carnage a selfish love can leave in its enormous wake.  I have also experienced the all encompassing redemption of agape.

Love endureth all things is what Paul says about agape after he writes in 1 Corinthians 13 that love hopes all things.  No matter how much I mediatate on God's word, something new is always revealed to me.  There is a supernatural genius about how this passage is put together.  You see, our hope fuels our ability to endure.  Endurance enables us to continue to love through the storms that test our resolve.

Endure:

1. to remain
   1. to tarry behind
2. to remain i.e. abide, not recede or flee
   1. to preserve: under misfortunes and trials to hold fast to one's faith in Christ
   
   2. to endure, bear bravely and calmly: ill treatments 

 In this culture we have a tendancy to abandon relationships that are not currently functioning the way we would like them to.  Look at the number of abandoned children, or the 50% divorce rate in America.  Look at how often some people switch jobs or doctors.  We are a people that love to jump around and experience new things.  Or abandon ship at the first sign of trouble.  Unfortunately, the creator of the universe values endurance in relationships over the ending of relationships.  You see how we relate to each other is a picture of our relationship with our heavenly father.






Please do not believe that this only applies to marriage, but I'd like to use marriage as an illustration for this principle.  Marriage is a metaphor for God's love for his people, and Jesus' love for the church.  Thus, the husband shall love the wife as Christ loves the church.  Christ will not simply abandon his bride if she burns the bread.  He will not abandon her is she fails to come home one night.  He will not abandon her if she is known to be unfaithful to Him.   He will continue to love her, cherish her, teach her, protect her, regardless of her behavior.  Christ has chosen, or elected his church.  Husbands and wives elect one another.  Once that election occurs, it is sure.

Thus, when we encounter tests in our marriages, we must allow our hope that God's will is being done always to allow us to endure.  Satan will try to break apart everything God has put together.  He is the great divider.  He separated us from our God from the begining.  He will separate us from one another because an isolated Christian will fall faster, further, and harder than one who is loved and supported regardless of their shortcomminngs.

Enduring love, agape love is God's plan for every relationship.  It is the thing that allows us to trust each other.  Stay with me here.  We trust God because he is unchanging.  He is the same today, yesterday and forever.  The same is true of our loved ones.  I cannot put my trust in people's emotions.  Emotions are fickle.  Any trust in emotions is foolishness.  I have walked with God too long to be fooled in that way.  What I have learned (through a very painful, sobering work of the Holy Spirit) is that I can trust in those who rely on the hope of glory to strengthen them to endure through any dumb thing I can think of doing.  And I can think of some pretty dumb things to do.  I cannot trust myself not to grieve people.  The Bible says that the fact I believe in Jesus greives a bunch of people I don't even know.  So I know in this life I will offend.  Therefore, I can only trust in those that rely on God to give them grace to forgive me, and endure my human fraility, as I endure the human frailty of others.  I hope that makes sense.  Love endureth all things. 


 

Love Doctor: Love always hopes

Whew!  I made it back to my task.  Satan is busy; and his business has been keeping me busy.  But, glory be to the most high God that I finally can take a breath and turn my mind once again toward Paul's discourse on love found in 1 Corinthians.

 Here is the text from 1 Corinthians 13.
 ⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
 ⁸ Love never fails.
In the last entry we looked at love and trust.  Basically we said that love, agape love, gives people the benefit of the doubt.  Paul follows his statement about trust by saying that love always hopes, or love Hope all things.

Of all the posts on this topic of love; I believe this is the strongest aspect of agape love as we can apply it to our lives.  Love always hopes!  We know that agape is a type of love that is selfless and giving.  It is a mirror of the way God loves us.  We cannot ever repay God for his love, yet he gives it freely and abundantly to all of us. 

What about hope?  Hope means to expect with confidence.  As Christians we know we serve a God that is immutable and omnipotent.  He does not change and he has the ability to do all he says he will do.  Those two attributes, when joined together give us hope that every one of over 3,000 promises made in the Bible will be fulfilled concerning those that have repented and believed in the Lord Jesus Christ.  It is from this place that we can begin to draw upon the hope that we have in Christ; the hope of glory!

So, our agape love must manifest itself in both an inward expectation with confidence, and an outward display of hope.  This is not hope in ourselves, but hope that God will do what he said he will do.   

One author wrote this about hope:

* "When we are trapped in a tunnel of misery, hope points to the light at the end.
* When we are overworked and exhausted, hope gives us fresh energy.
* When we are discouraged, hope lifts our spirits.
* When we are tempted to quit, hope keeps us going.
* When we lose our way and confusion blurs our destination, hope dulls the edge of panic.
* When we struggle with a crippling disease or a lingering illness, hope helps us persevere beyond the pain.
* When we fear the worst, hope brings reminders that God is still in control.
* When we must endure the consequences of bad decisions, hope fuels our recovery.
* When we find ourselves in financial difficulty, hope tells us that we still have a future.
* When we are forced to sit back and wait, hope gives us the patience to trust.
* When we feel rejected and abandoned, hope reminds us we're not alone...we'll make it.
* When we say our final farewell to someone we love, hope in the life beyond gets us through our grief."

(Charles R. Swindoll, Hope Again: When Life Hurts and Dreams Fade, pp.xi,xii)

Brothers and sisters Satan will try his level best (remember he has been practicing his craft since the beginning) to discourage us.  When we are doing well in one area, Satan will attack us somewhere us.  When we are praying without ceasing, Satan will cause us to be too busy to pray for a season.  When we get a promotion at work, Satan will attack a spouse or a parent, or a child.

At a relationship level, Satan will bring confusion and chaos into our relationships with our loved ones in our home and in our church.  He will attempt to bring division through his lies and deceit.  He will bring devastation through addiction to drugs, alcohol, or pornography.  It is during these times that Paul says we must have hope that God has a plan and that plan will come to pass.

 Romans 8:28
And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. 

Hope allows us to persevere.  It causes us to be able to praise God when things are hard.  It allows us to wait on the Lord and pray through every unfavorable circumstance with confident expectation.