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Just a Little Reminder Jan.

26, 2007
In "Mere Christianity," C. S. Lewis said, "Really great moral teachers never
introduce new moralities: 'People need to be reminded more often than they
need to be instructed.' The real job of every moral teacher is to keep on bringing
us back, time after time, to the old simple principles which we are all so anxious
not to see..."
Even so, I'm finding out that the gist of the lessons the Great Master Teacher has
been trying to bring home to me for the past months, if not years, was in essence
laid down already 2000 years ago. For once, there's the ever returning them of
"Without Me ye can do nothing," (John 15:5), and then there is the equally
important truth that whatever we do or may think to be accomplishing, without
love, it's worth nothing (see 1Corinthians 13).
What makes these old doctrines sound strange is, of course, the sad fact that so
few have ever really managed to live them, and it gives religious groups some
strange, weird, esoteric or "New Age" slant to be claiming that these ancient
values are very well to be expected of us to be put into practice. What's odd to
most people about it, is that it's something they cannot achieve by any efforts of
their own, but rather, the total "anti-effort:" a letting go of all personal effort
(excepting the one to obey), ambition and ulterior motives, and just "let go and let
God" do through us what we humanly can't.
Availing ourselves of the same, supernatural power through which every true
man or woman of God in both, the Old and New testaments did whatever they
accomplished for God, sounds so strange, so weird, so sectarian to us rational
thinkers in the age of the peak of man's glorious achievement, where we've
constructed machines to do practically every human task for us (except eating,
sleeping, making love and going to the toilet... but they're probably working on it),
without having relieved one ounce of the suffering humanity has known since its
early fall.
It sounds preposterous in modern man's ears that God would be expecting of us
to believe in the same child-like simple way that out forefathers did. They had the
Holy Spirit, we have television, tanks and cars. They had miracles, we get Pat
Robertson and George Bush... aaand, of course, the almighty (?) dollar.
That seems to be the accepted fate of 21st century humanity, and anyone saying,
"You keep your trinkets, your politicians & TV-religion and your money, just give
me those good old lasting values from the Bible," strikes the vast majority as
outrageous, blasphemous and treacherous. Although it could hardly be deemed
so, especially since no one wishing to return to the standard of biblical faith
would be blaspheming the true God, only the established religious System, which
are as far apart as the Rockefeller church in New York and John the Baptist's
coat. And as to who is truly being treacherous, I suppose only time will tell.
Nor can it be said that our modern "do-it-yourself" type of religion has anything
really new about it, since it originated with Cain, and has been observed by
tower-of-Babel constructors, golden-calf carvers and temple vendors ever since.
The old way of truth just sounds so weird and so damnable to us because it still
goes against our same old greedy and selfish grind. The Devil doesn't like Jesus
any better than he did 2000 years ago, nor do the followers of the one get along
any better with the followers of the other.
What has improved, though, is the art of disguise. It's more difficult than ever to
tell who's really a real follower of Christ. In fact, without the supernatural gift of
the Holy Spirit called discernment, it's hopeless.
That's one more reason why we need that supernatural help from above that
make us sound so strange, so weird, so esoteric. If you want to look up what
other gifts or weapons God equipped His people with in order to combat the
Enemy's forces in this world, even back in St. Paul's day, read the 12th chapter of
1Corinthians. It will lead you right to the most powerful weapon of all, described in a

chapter all on its own, and we're right back where we started from: All you need
is love, and it's the only thing that matters,and trying to do anything without Love,
which is God, is useless... (see,once again, John 15:5).
So, just a little reminder - not as much for anyone out there as for myself - of one
of the major lessons the school of life is all about. For without becoming good
learners in the first place, we'll never manage to be good teachers...

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