(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for Save the Dinosaurs, originally shared on July 13, 2020. It was the thirty-first video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
Every week, we seem to be at an odd point in
the coronavirus pandemic.
We now seem to be setting records everywhere:
12 million cases in the world, 3.3 million in
the United States, cases in Arizona up 165%, testing up only 75%
137,000 Americans have died of the coronavirus so far. We average 38,000 deaths from automobile
accidents in the US in an entire year.
Yet
some people will wear their seatbelts but refuse to wear masks, practice social
distancing or wash their hands frequently to flatten the curve, maintain
effective levels of medical services, and buy time to study the virus and
develop effective treatments and vaccines.
Last week, a member of congress said that we
shouldn’t listen to the experts. Experts don’t know everything.
I guess he was thinking of the folk wisdom
that says that an “expert” can be anyone living more than 50 miles from home.
Most people, though, recognize that experts
must have credentials, in this case education and experience in a particular
field well beyond that of the vast majority of other people. Their expertness
has been evaluated and tested, and they are now recognized as someone whose
statements have authority.
Suppose it didn’t matter, however.
I read an article satirizing this idea on
line the other day. It was called, “We Shouldn’t Presume That the Velociraptor Experts
Know the Best Way to Deal with Velociraptor Attacks”, written from the
reopening of Jurassic Park. It included the observation:
“However, I an assure you that the increase
in attacks is simply due to our vigilant park rangers who patrol the hiking
trails each morning and count the number of human bones they find on the sides
of each trail. With more rangers patrolling the grounds these days, of course
we are going to find more human remains, which is why I’ve repeatedly said that
the morning patrols are a double-edged sword.”
You can find the whole letter here: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/we-shouldnt-presume-that-the-velociraptor-experts-know-the-best-way-to-deal-with-velociraptor-attacks
I also saw a purported letter to the editor
of a small town newspaper online headlined “Welcome to the Freedom Café” the
other day, announcing a restaurant for those who don’t want to wear masks and
observing other freedoms like the temperature to which chicken is cooked, the
use of cooking utensils that already have been used for known allergens, the
practice of allowing servers to touch customers’ food, dishwashing water
temperature, and so on. It ends:
“Some
of you may get sick, but almost everyone survives food poisoning. We think you’ll
agree that it’s a small price to pay for the sweet freedom of no one ever being
told what to do – and especially not for the silly reason of keeping strangers
healthy.”,
Some say, let them die. Let them win the
Darwin Award. They are dinosaurs. There
will be more room in the gene pool.
But, that’s no more an option for us than to
say, let them go to hell.
We are called and
equipped to bring a word of hope and redemption to the world.
*Matthew
13:9-16
Instead, we are called to bring a word of
redemption.
*John 3:17-21
Neither do we bring condemnation upon those
with whom we disagree, but love. Unconditional love. That is, you don’t have to
meet God’s standards before God loves you. God loves you as you are but, we
find, God doesn’t leave you as you are.
God makes of us a new creation, we are at
the same time sinner and saint. For this reason, we do not condemn anyone, but
point to our common need of a Savior, the one who lived among us, and died to
redeem the world from the consequences of our Sin.
The dinosaurs went extinct. There are a lot
of theories why. But, for whatever reason, they were part of God’s creation
too. If we find usable DNA in the melting permafrost, would we bring them back?
Given their size and possibly their disposition, would we confine them to an
island and make an open air zoo for tourists there?
The thing is that we all will die, and we
are all separated from God by our Sin. But the good news is that God has
entered human history, fully God and fully human being, to suffer and die for
us at the cross, to take our punishment, so that no one would be condemned, but
that the world might be saved through him.
Why doesn’t everyone see that? That is, why
doesn’t everybody see things the way I do.
The world doesn’t want to hear it? Christians
have experienced that for a long time.
The world refuses to act in its best
interest. What else is new?
The world doesn’t care about us or them, it
just cares about “me”? That’s the world.
I’ve had to wear glasses to see since I was
in 4th grade. My vision was 20/400
I scheduled required cataract surgery right
after my retirement, which I knew would give me my distance vision, but also
require that I wear reading glasses. No big deal.
However, I found out after the surgery that
my horrendous nearsightedness masked a minor misalignment between my two eyes.
I noticed that I was seeing double at a distance and at close range. Middle
distance was fine. My eyes gradually have mostly corrected, or adjusted. Where
they haven’t, I’ve gotten used to it. No big deal.
There is a difference, however between sight
and in insight, between seeing what is in front of you and having a vision for
what is possible.
Jesus healed some people who were physically
blind, but the healing of inadequate insight or of a broken vision is something
we all struggle with. It took the cross to fix that, and still some of us see
neither our problem nor the presence of God at work in the world for us.
That takes streams of living water, the
presence of the Holy Spirit within us that shapes and hydrate us with a living
relationship with the living God, a relationship that defines us.
We live from the inside out, not defined by
our outer selves, but by the power of God at work within us.
Have you every tried to change a person’s
mind? It’s hard isn’t it. It seems only to happen when that person has a high level
of trust for you as a credible witness to what is truth. I don’t even know if
talking a person into something is always helpful. If a person changes their mind
because someone talked them into it, someone else can come along and talk them
out of it.
I don’t think that that’s the reason many of
us have come to faith, a living relationship with the living God. At least not
for long.
God doesn’t come to change our mind, but to
change our heart. To dwell within us, in a living relationship with the living
God, and by the Holy Spirit God gives us the eyes to see and he ears to hear.
To call us to repentance. To set us free from sin, death, and the power of all
that defies God. That’s the message of salvation. Dinosaurs like humanity apart
from God need a Savior, and he has come for us in Jesus Christ.
Let the psalm be our Prayer:
“Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and put a new and right spirit within me.
11 Do not cast me away from your presence,
and do not take your holy spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and sustain in me a willing spirit.
Let God save you, or deepen your faith, today. Open your heart to the
Holy Spirit, to Streams of Living Water.
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