The Thirtieth Day of Lent

It seems to me that our lack of purposeful awareness with regard to who and whose we are is costing us a great price. There is an uncannily strong parallel between the legalsim of Jesus’ time and ours. In first-century Judea, obedience was to the law of God as interpreted by Man. In the present, however, our supposed obedience is to the law of Man which has essentially preempted God’s existence. For the former worldview, breaking the law was a transgression against God. In today’s society, breaking the law is a transgression against Man; unethical, perhaps, but certainly not immoral. We hear a lot of talk about having lost our moral compass, but what did we expect when we neatly killed off God to human experience? The God of religion is just that, isolated now to institutions such as the Church which are literally segregated from the rest of society. As long as God is confined to the Bible and houses of worship, Wall Street and the like can carry on with immoral impunity because they see themselves as outside or beyond God’s sphere of influence. Who’s to blame for this current ideology is hard to say, and probably not worth the effort of trying to determine. What may be more important is to individually, mustard seed by mustard seed, work diligently to restore first the awareness and then the connection. I invite my readers to give it a try as the journey to Easter grows shorter each day. Instead of storing God in a box somewhere, strive to recognize the God within and see what kind of difference it makes.