Big Idea #1 From Me
In the Bible, we see how the children of Israel alternated between cycles of faith in God and cycles of rebellion and idolatry.
Instances where the Israelites lived in obedience coincided with peace on all sides, and abundance.
However, as soon as the Israelites got too comfortable and took their relationship with God for granted, famines, droughts, sieges, and outright wars became the order of the day.
Whenever I read these stories, I often wonder what was so special about these idols that provoked worship from the ancient Israelites.
But the more I think about this, the more I realize that perhaps there’s no big difference between me in 2020 and the Israelites back then.
If time travel was a practical possibility, I’d bet that the Israelites who lived thousands of years ago will also be flummoxed by the idols we have in this present age.
On one hand, they will probably be shocked by how we literally worship our phones by paying homage to it first thing in the mornings before we get out of bed, and worshipping it before we shut our eyes for the night.
But even more, they will be blown away by the altars we’ve erected to our ideas.
You see, in the wake of the scientific revolutions which began approximately 500 years ago, man’s capacity for abstraction has grown in leaps and bounds.
This means that man could think about physical objects in the form of ideas. For instance, a physical rock was now seen as something possessing “mass” and could produce “force” when made to move at a certain “acceleration”. With this power, man was able to start understanding the workings of the physical universe.
Ever the maverick, man sought to use this newly-found powers of abstraction to solve societal or economical problems exclusive of God. Sometimes, it had the potential to work. But more often than not, it gave us brutal dictatorships, depressions, and wars.
When you fall into the trap of using abstraction capabilities exclusive of God, what you’re saying in effect is, “As far as this economic/social problem is concerned, I know everything there is to know”
In other words, you’re imitating the devil by elevating your idea to the place of God – falling in love with it and worshipping it unabashedly.
I’d end with the following profound words from Makar Ivanovich Dolgoruky, one of the main characters in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 19th-Century novel, The Raw Youth:
“A man cannot live without worshipping something; without worshipping, he cannot bear the burden of himself. And that goes for every man. So that if a man rejects God, he will have to worship an idol that may be made of wood, gold or ideas. So those who think they don’t need God are really just idol worshippers, and that’s what we should call them.”
Big Idea #2 From Research
In their 1959 classic paper, Cognitive consequences of forced compliance, Leon Festinger and James Carlsmith describe a study where they gave a set of students an incredibly boring task to do individually. At the end of the task, each participant was instructed to tell the next person how exciting and enjoyable the task was. In other words, they were told to lie. For their efforts, each student was paid – some a paltry amount, while others were paid enough money to go out on a date at a high-end restaurant.
At the end of the study, each participant were asked how much they had really enjoyed the original boring task.
Here’s where it gets interesting. Participants who were paid a little kept on telling the lie, while those who were paid a lot told the honest truth: They had detested the task and did not enjoy it.
This is counterintuitive because you’d expect those who were paid a lot to keep on lying to themselves, and vice versa.
Here’s what’s going on.
People experience some mental discomfort when they behave in ways that are not consistent with their values or beliefs. This state is referred to as cognitive dissonance. Since people generally have a tendency to minimize pain and maximize pleasure, they resort to all forms of rationalization and self-justification in order to enjoy the bliss that psychological consistency delivers.
The group of students that were paid a lot did not have to resolve whether the task was indeed boring or not. When given the permission to do so, they could be objective about how they really felt about task. On the other hand, the students who were paid a little had to struggle to find a consistency between what they did and what they told others about what they did. They were more liable to rationalize the joy in the task with thoughts such as ‘The experimenter told me to tell the others that this task is fun. Maybe it actually is and I haven’t figured it out yet.’
My key takeaway from this study is somewhat related to the concept of sunk costs which I have discussed before. What are the non-essentials in your life that you keep holding on to, even when you know there’s no light at the end of that path? What are the long-term relationships you are still holding on to, even when you realize that they are toxic to you? What are the bad habits you are still engaged in, even when you are aware that they could be the end of you? How long will you keep trying to resolve the conflict between your actions and your values? This is a conversation you need to have with yourself.
Big Idea #3 From the Bible
The common scripture used in explaining the chastisement of God is found in Hebrews 12:5-7,
“…My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of Him: For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the Father chasteneth not?”
In the course of studying this topic, I made an interesting discovery by the Holy Spirit. You know, in the original Greek in which the New Testament was written, the word translated ‘chastisement’, as used in Hebrews 12:5-7, literally means, ‘tutorage’, ‘education’, or ‘training’!
Wow! I wonder what this would do to many people’s theology.
So, we can see that ‘chastisement’ doesn’t even mean that God is busy inflicting you with pain, sickness, poverty and so on for the majority of your Christian walk!
Biblically, when God is chastising you, it simply means that He’s educating, tutoring and training you!
Isn’t that liberating?
You see, as a believer, you have the Holy Spirit of God residing right in your spirit man. Hence, you have access to the Mind of Christ at any given time (1 Corinthians 2:12, 16).
As a result, God doesn’t have to use external factors to communicate His Will to you. Rather, as a believer, He speaks to you in your heart.
Let me share a personal experience:
During my one-year mandatory Youth Service, I had an ‘intense discussion’ with a brother over a doctrinal matter. In the heat of the moment, I rudely told the brother that he was religious, but not spiritual. As soon as those words left my lips, I didn’t hear God’s audible voice rebuking me for yelling at that brother. Neither did God strike me with blindness or cause me to be sacked from my place of work.
Instead, I perceived in my heart that it wasn’t God’s Will for me to speak to my brother in the manner that I did. In fact, I was restless in my spirit until I apologized to the brother for the way I addressed him.
Would you believe it if I told you that the entire process was God chastising me?
Well, that was God chastising me – tutoring, training and teaching me to walk the way Jesus walked. It was easy for God to do this with me because I have His Spirit resident within me. This, of course, is also related to the fact that I had also been exposed to the Word of God, which “…is profitable…for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16).
As believers, the LORD is going to use His Word to chastise us. His Words are Spirit (John 6:63) and the Holy Spirit is committed to reminding us of God’s Word (John 16:13-15) when we are in danger of missing the mark!
It’s very liberating to realize that God would never chastise us with pain, sickness and poverty.
It’s even more liberating to know that God is madly in love with you and He’s ever ready to teach, train and tutor us on how to walk like Christ per time.
With this at the back of our minds, it makes perfect sense to heed the advice contained in Hebrews 12:5,
“…despise not thou the chastening of the Lord…”
God loves you and He wants you to manifest the life of Christ!
When you’re armed with that understanding, you can resist the lies of the devil; you can actively kick out sickness and lack out of your life; and most importantly, you have the right perspective about the chastening of the Lord – allowing it have its perfect work in you!
