America's tied presidential election is over, with the minority popular vote
getter, George W. Bush receiving the State of Florida's electors and winning in
the electoral college. Now all the political spin gurus are telling us how he
is either going to be able, or not able, to unite the country. I have the
answer in a song that we can all sing with enthusiasm. Yes sir, re Bob, we just
need a good unity song and all will be fine.
Well, it really isn't a song as we normally look at it in this day an age,
it is really a psalm or a Biblical song. Some weird, old fashioned churches
still use them in their worship services, but chances are this will never make
it even on their play list. I have to thank one of the Chronicles
of Diversity readers, who wished
to remain anonymous, for this little ditty, not only did the contributor want
to remain unknown, he also said the same was true for the writer, or should we
say composer,who only wanted to see it distributed as widely as possible.
Therefore, ladies and gentlemen I give you:
Deity
is my spirit guide;
I have prosperity.
I sun on my emerald lawns;
I stroll to my effervescent spa.
Divinity is my soul;
I walk in paths of my own goodness
For I know it is so.
Even though I walk through a valley of deepening twilight,
I only chill;
For my divinity is with me;
My affluence and my knowledge, they comfort me.
I
have catered a banquet to lord over my enemies;
So my anointing all can see;
My cup is filled to overflowing.
Surely goodness and mercy lead me
All the days of my lonely life;
As I have chosen to abide in Sheol
Forever.
See it is something we can all sing, because it is all about me, or in your
case, you. All of course except the last forever line, that sort of shakes me
up a little, and that part about choosing to abide in Sheol, we know that is
just a lot of religious garbage, but if all our friends are headed in that
direction at least we can party! Hell is after all just like America except
without all those Christian trouble makers.
This morning as most every morning, except Sunday, I get up and head for,
and open my coffee jar, you know the one that mail order coffee company sends
out with your first order. Actually, I didn't order their coffee, I was given
the jar. Anyway, I take one scoop of beans and put it in my coffee grinder.
After grinding while counting to fifteen, I poor that finely ground delight
into the little gold strainer that came with the coffee maker. A few minutes
later, of course after adding the water and throwing the switch, I have my
great cup of coffee for the day, twenty ounces worth. I have made my first step
this morning toward becoming, the American third millennium crooner. See after
I make my coffee, the grounds are wasted and I through them out. Looking at it
in terms of global consumerism, we all are the grounds, to make someone's
morning cup of coffee, its just that the jar gets bigger as you move up the
chain.
My grandma had a jar of buttons, it was probably four or five times larger
than my coffee jar. It was plumb full of buttons, when you poured them out on
the table top, it was almost impossible to find any two that matched, but they
were all buttons, none the less, but you could never find the one you needed,
or wanted. I noticed during this thirty-six day presidential debacle, that one
thing you could say about all the experts on the subject, they were always
wrong, all the time. They were all different, they were all experts, and they
were all wrong. Just like grandma's buttons, none of them ever were the right
one, they said what they wanted to say, or what they believed they wanted
someone to hear, or even what they believed was right. But they were never
right, except what you heard here of course.
In my article, Slouching toward
division, by design? on November 22nd, I used male and female
descriptions of the same phenomena, fragmentation, extraction, integration,
from the male or analytical; or breaking, sifting, healing from a female or
emotional focus. What I left out was, of course, something needs to be created,
or made, before it can have any of the three ordered steps take place. So, we
have a jar of coffee beans, all alike but individual beans none the less, or a
jar of buttons, all unique, different, but separate. We have two models, but
they share some things in common. First of all is the jar. We could put the
coffee in the button jar or the buttons in the coffee jar and everything would
work fairly well. The only problem occurs when you mix the coffee beans and the
buttons together and fill both jars. Second, no matter how the beans and the
buttons may be grouped, to be useful to anyone, we need to supply some sort of
energy to achieve the desired result. Either a cup of morning coffee, or a
mended coat, blouse, or shirt. You, scoop, extract, sift and you eventually
achieve what you started out to make.
Energy comes in two forms for our discussion, natural energy, or common
grace energy for the theologian, and spiritual energy, or specific grace
energy. One we can naturally measure and to some extent utilize, the other one;
well is a little more complicated. But to achieve true healing or integration,
both energy components are required. Since I used Thomas Jefferson's election
in my example and so did President elect Bush in his healing statement, let us
continue with our third president.
Thomas Jefferson in sort of the same way as our new president, had and have
some familiarity with farming, or ranching. Agriculture and its examples are
part of both common grace energy and specific grace energy described in the
Bible. Now it would seem logical that if specific grace created common grace,
as the Bible clearly states, then man created in the image of God should be able
to work in both areas of grace also, but because of sin he is much more limited
in his understanding of specific grace energy. Jefferson is well known for his
removing all the sections from his Bible that dealt with the
supernatural,(specific grace) but was completely, perhaps more than any
national leader in our history, versed in the workings of common grace. That
wisdom gained from working, and wandering, and studying at Montesano, allowed
him the ability to write, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution,
buy the Louisiana Territory, and found the secular University of Virginia.
To put it simply, when Jefferson saw an oak, or a pine, or a deer, he saw
through common grace the energy required to be the best, most unique, oak,
pine, or deer in the natural community. That energy is the basis, which many on
the religious right have deemed our American Christian Heritage, but they are
mistaken, because its energy flows only from common grace and its wisdom. But
that wisdom is much superior to the knowledge of specific grace gained from man
and his endeavors alone. Or to put it another way, there is more creative,
natural, common energy available from creation than available to fallen man.
That is why those educated essentially in religious dogma from man's knowledge
see a depth of wisdom in Jefferson's work, that they find compelling. Without a
fundamental knowledge of common grace, or common grace energy, they have a
aberrant vision of reality and true Biblical doctrine. What Jefferson did not
and could not see, was that through specific grace energy, that the oak, and
pine, and the deer, were designed that way, to fit into a community. They each
had a part in the community that was not controlled by chance, but by destiny.
Left to our own nature, we all sing the same song, but if George W. Bush is
truly going to bring about the healing, or the integration, that I believe he
is seeking, then he must unlike Jefferson acknowledge, that the weeds are in
the field because God put them there, He and his administration must not only
weed them out but, he must be guided by the fact that they are weeds with a
purpose, a much more difficult premise. Before they start up the roto-tiller it
might be well to examine the plants, to see if they are really weeds, or tasty
herbs in disguise. But if he seeks that weeding wisdom not from just the hoe,
or natural energy, but also from the spiritual energy spectrum, true and
lasting healing or integration of this nation can be obtained.
So we all sing a song about ourselves, but there are many prominent
American's on the left and right of the political spectrum, that promote their
prominence by focusing their constituencies on a specific type of natural
injustice or legalism, instead of spiritual justice or forgiveness. Weeding
could begin there. On the left there is of course some who promote racism to
further their own agenda. On the right we have a whole host of characters who,
as I said earlier don't know the difference between common energy and spiritual
energy. Both groups need to understand that a common grace gospel based on or
rooted in common grace energy, is not the true gospel of the Bible and
spiritual energy. That natural moral and legalistic gospel is just a simplistic
form of naturalism, without the wisdom that even the great Jefferson
understood. The natural gospel needs to bring bondage to self and others, the
spiritual gospel establishes freedom, for self and others, at a level that
common grace can not understand.
The main focus however, is not to focus on the person as an end, but on the
individual as a beginning. Not as an evolutionary descendant of a pool of an
effervescent spa, but as human beings, endowed by their creator, not with just
rights, but created in the image of God with opportunity,purpose, and destiny.
This must begin through the focus of common energy, as we have defined it here.
Infused with that power, a morning cup of coffee is just that, the beans are
just beans and the buttons are just buttons, but specific grace energy has
infused and justified that whole program, and it is through that justification,
the healing, the integration of the individual and the community as a whole
takes place. And through that process we in a small way begin to see that it is
not about me, but part of a grand plan, a plan from within which the young king
David composed the 23rd Psalm, the pastoral refuge for millions, religious and
pagan, for three thousand years. His focus was different and much superior, to
our present naturalistic individual and cultural focus.
Moving toward closure, "Who would have thunk it?" This election was the greatest in all recorded
history. As a third millennium American I know I speak for God on this issue.
Of course that divine connection, you must judge for yourself. Al Gore lost
this election because he could not, would not, or should not have separated
himself and his values from the politics of Bill Clinton. George W. Bush lost
this election because he could not, would not, or should not have separated
himself and his values from his father and Ronald Reagan.
But thunk about this, the boring campaign was run not as political campaigns
of this segment of history, but on a difference of values. Without politics, or
religion, or something that we could discuss over a cup of coffee, or see, and
or heard spun on a ground coffee bean news segment, there was really nothing,
of no (sic) substance, to report. Too the credit of all four candidates, they
focused on common grace values and energetics. All four seemed to have an
understanding of an Almighty beyond Jefferson's. And when ask, all answered
those religious questions truthfully and honestly. Without any specific grace
understanding these subtle differences were impossible for most to understand,
and because of the limited scope of that inquiry, we do not really know a lot
of those personal religious details of any of the candidates. And we should
not, because by the grace of God alone and His distinction between His common
revelation and His specific revelation, that understanding should rest with God
and not in words to our own song.
This was not the case in much of the email I received, and the commentary I
heard, from the spectrum of religious thought. The devil, who ever he may be,
to whom ever, was trying to steal this election from God's anointed, or chosen.
Nonsense!. When all the votes were counted in a two party American system, we
see that through common grace diversity and two (four) very centralist
candidates, that by God's sovereign design, one half of the people are more
conservative and one half are more liberal, both in values, and if need be,
politics. Now the really cool thing was that not only did this include the
democratic voters (in the generic sense) and their republican representatives
(again in the generic sense) but also the spectrum of values of the judiciary.
Supreme court judges anywhere they are appointed, do not get to that position
by being political proponents, they get appointed (or not appointed) because of
the values they hold. To say that their prime goals are political expediency,
is simplistic ground coffee rhetoric. These justices are at least buttons,
designed with a specific purpose, and appointed to fulfill that purpose.
Therefore at the very end of the drama, we are left waiting for a decision
from the United States Supreme court. All nine justices interpreted the
complex, and sometimes conflicting laws, and the Constitution of the United
States of America, using their own God given values, and they articulated those
values beyond the ability of simple expert buttons, to explain to the ground
coffee. When all was said and done one vote chose, the next president of the
United States of America. To paraphrase my dad in my high school student
council, "Out of the millions of votes, counted, recounted, or not counted
at all, only one vote alone, really counted." That vote was not cast by
one justice, even though we might believe or hear such, that vote was cast by
God for His own glory and His own good purpose, long before time began.
So we see the application of specific grace, spiritual energy, applied
through what appears ordinary, common grace, means. This throughout time has
been its normative appearance. Money, power, votes, service, good works,bread,
wine, and the preaching of a gospel message that makes no sense at all to the
wisest of men, surely, there is no glory in all of that. But does that in any
way repudiate the source and the application of this specific grace,spiritual
energy? The choice is really continuing to follow a path where we are destined
to spend our eternity in Sheol, or believing a stupid story about a baby Jesus,
born in Bethelem, lying in a manger, because there was no room in the inn. The
Son of God? That choice makes all the difference in the world, and the world to
come. It is a choice all who have come before in some way have made. We must
all make and must live and die by those consequences of our own choice, a
choice many celebrate in this dark season.