Questions

In my last post I talked about my kids; how it bothers me when they aren’t grateful.  Truth be told, I, like Bill Cosby believe all kids are brain damaged.  It’s true!  How else can you explain a child who is caught red handed in the act of committing some offense and then when the punishment is handed down, they act shocked…dismayed…dumbfounded?  Me?  What did I do?  My daughter will even sometimes get angry and blame ME for being mean!  I particularly like that strategy because it shows creativity.  She’s brain damaged but creative.  So I can kind of understand how God must feel in Malachi 1 when he begins to excoriate his children.  He begins with some questions of His own:

Mal 1:6  "A son honors his father, and a slave his master. If I am a father, where is the honor due me? If I am a master, where is the respect due me?" says the LORD Almighty. "

Many of us like to call God our father, and He certainly is.  But God would like to know, if he IS your father when are you going to start loving and honoring Him in a way befitting a father?  For a smaller number of us it is easier to think of God as Master.  But if God is your Master, when are you going to start obeying Him?  In reality God is both our Father and our Master and we cannot have a right view of Him until we see Him from both perspectives simultaneously.

I think sometimes I like to toy with the idea of obedience.  Obedience is like recycling.  It seems like a good idea until I have to walk all the way to the garage to throw away the soda can, and then it just seems like a lot of work!   Obedience is a nice concept but when the rubber hits the road, sometimes I’m just not interested.  When I read Malachi, I’m caught red handed, and my bluff is called because God is calling me out.  The folks in Malachi, just like my kids, just like me, are incredulous.  How have we shown contempt for your name?  How have we defiled you?

God says that He is defiled because the people are promising to give the best of their flocks for sacrifice, but when the time for the sacrifice comes, they bring the diseased and sick from the flock to sacrifice instead.  They persist in this as if God wouldn't be aware of what they are up to.

I see a direct correlation here between the Israelites and us.  Like them we promise to give God our best, we promise to obey Him, we promise to give him the first part of our day, the first part of our income, the first part of us.  But often as I mentioned before, obedience is just a nice sentiment, it’s something we sing about in worship songs and talk about in small group.  Obedience is a slogan we mindlessly repeat without comprehending the meaning.  Reading the bible and spending time with God in prayer is important, I’m sure we all agree, but often God gets our leftovers or maybe nothing at all.  It’s almost like we thought he wasn’t really standing there seeing all of it right?

Apparently brain damaged kids grow up to be brain damaged adults.