Scarecrows

While Jesus was speaking to the crowds, his mother and his brothers appeared outside,

wishing to speak with him. Someone told him, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, asking to speak with you.” But he said in reply to the one who told him, “Who is my mother?  Who are my brothers?” And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, and sister, and mother.” (Matthew 12:46-50)

Honor the knowledge and wisdom of your predecessors or stated another way: honor your father and mother. There is an attitude prevalent among certain Christians that the Holy Spirit will guide our reading [of the Bible], so whatever you may glean from a biblical text is actually God interpreting and dictating it directly to you.  This is a dangerous abdicating of one’s God-given intellectual capacity and replacing it with lazy ignorance.  I’m reminded of the story of a monk and the garden he restored on monastery grounds.  

One day a superior came to visit the monastery.  Impressed with the order and beauty of the grounds, he said to the gardener-monk, “It’s a wonder what the good Lord and you have done here,” to which the monk replied, “You should have seen what it looked like when the good Lord was taking care of it by himself.”

Use your own brain by learning from experts, and with all that scholarship in hand think for yourself.  Then question your thinking, do some more research, and think again. [preceding from “A Most Peculiar Book: The Inherent Strangeness of the Bible” by Kristin Swenson, 2021]

The academic Bertrand Russell worked in philosophy, mathematics, and logic.  He argued against the idea that man is rational, saying "Man is a rational animal — so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life I have looked diligently for evidence in favor of this statement, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it."

If only we rational men and women would not abdicate our God-given intellectual capacity to replace it with lazy ignorance.  The good Lord needs our hand and feet to do Christ’s work. The Lord also need our brains, if we care to use them.   Many of us choose not to.   We act like scarecrows.

Deacon David Pierce