Black Truth

Truth is like silly putty. You can bend it, stretch it, pull it until it is completely unrecognizable from its original form. Regardless, it always returns to the only thing it is whether you want it to or not. - Theba Glady

If you have never had the experience of sitting in a courtroom, listening to someone bear earnest, slanderous false witness against you or someone you love, you will never fully appreciate the importance of the analogy between truth and silly putty.

Since we have a legal system, rather than a justice system, you have no recourse but to take it gracefully on the chin while your character is used for a dartboard. It is in that moment that you hope another old axiom is true, which is, time heals all wounds and wounds all heels. For some, this is little or no comfort. Most people want justice dealt out instantly. We are deluded to expect that unfairness, in any form, should be met with rapid retaliation. This is only because humiliation, outrage, and incense boil up into your chest like heartburn. Naturally you want relief and your first impulse is to believe that somehow setting about to prove what is untrue will reap relief.

We are so temporal, we think we require instant gratification, believing time is our foe instead of our friend. We shake our fists at the injustices we see. Innocents die and murderers walk free. Hateful gossip ruins reputations and causes life altering grief. Thoughtless and/or calculatedly malicious actions foster countless number of senseless troubles. And as bad as these are, none are as insidious as black truth. Unlike a white lie, where the author knows it is untrue, a black truth becomes real to the person who has crafted it. It is a created reality for this person so it becomes real enough for others to be convinced as well. Whole belief systems are often founded on nothing more than a single individual’s black truth.

The bad news is, most of us will come up against black truth sooner or later. The good news is, there is a strategy to triumph over it, if you are willing to be patient. We are told we have free will but this only means we are given the opportunity to choose to be vessels of honor or vessels of dishonor. God will use us either way, but if you believe that all things work together for God’s good purpose, then you must also believe that He is working good things through you at all times, regardless of how it looks to you. This doesn’t mean that you can’t stand up for yourself or that you must accept abuse. It only means that you should have developed the fine-tuned listening skills it takes to hear when God is whispering for you to be still and watch. More often than not, through life crisis, He is teaching and it is in these times it behooves us to be fully engaged in a learning mode.

Learning to wait is undoubtedly the hardest lesson in life because we permit the unknown to threaten and overwhelm us. Instead of saying “peace be still”, fully trusting the storm to turn, we succumb to the fear of that which seems to be out of our control. We then become victims. If one can find comfort in knowing there is, indeed, a final judgment, one never has to be devastated by black truth. Even if it seems for a time that the whole world is willing to believe the worst of you, you can still choose to be a vessel of honor. Having made that choice, you can be at peace with losing any battle, knowing the war has already been won.

You see, God knows the difference between lies, white lies, black truth and real truth. Not even black truth, though it gathers up followers and devoted believers like a vacuum, can survive the ultimate cleansing power of that which is genuinely true. God sorts it all out in His good time. The irony is, since liars live as though there is no God or final judgment, they won’t know how wrong they have been, until it is too late.

For Him,

Meema

Truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue lasts only a moment. (Proverbs 12:19)

The Trouble With All Things Safe

Sometimes you’re just chugging along and suddenly life jumps up and spikes you to the ground like a volleyball. You can’t believe it. You don’t even know how to react because you are in shock from the jolt. It could be anything, financial setback, sudden illness, a family death or upheaval. One day you’re all cozy in status quo and the next you’re struggling to survive or regain your equilibrium.

Trouble is something we can never be completely prepared for or shielded from either, no matter how hard we try to buffer ourselves. However we cannot live in constant expectation of worse case scenario because living in daily fear of trouble is not living at all, rather it’s standing guard while life marches past, conversely, we cannot ignore that trouble can happen at anytime and usually without warning.

Life can never be fully trouble proof nor safe either but “trouble-free and safe” has become a mantra whispered in our ears and taught to us as though it were a natural right. In fact, we seem to have become fixated with all things safe.

I watch with amazement as this new standard has slowly evolved. I don’t know how it began but it seems that in all ways, in all things, we have been brainwashed to believe that our lives can and should be without trouble and completely safe if we are simply vigilant enough. We can avoid the flu if we take shots, we can protect ourselves from all manner of larceny, theft, fire, accidents (pick one) if we use caution and load up with insurance. We can count on government and consumer advocates to monitor any and all things potentially harmful to us. If we read warning labels and cautionary statements we can reduce the chance of electric shock, skin broken or blood spilled. And even when we disregard the warnings, we can always blame manufacturers if we misuse a product that injures us. 

Apparently pain and suffering has a hefty dollar value now.

Unfortunately, regardless what we have been told, living in this world remains naturally full of risk. Here’s a newsflash: safe is not a right bestowed on us at birth. We come into this world without guarantees. The human infant is hardwired to accept risk as a given or no one would ever learn to walk upright. New dangers emerge daily; we cannot stop them nor avoid them. 

And if we could, should we? 

Progress is the end product of trial and error. Innovation is the result of risk takers stepping outside of what is sure. Pioneers who strike out for new territory often die trying. Trouble and tribulation are the knives that carve character into life. Though there is nothing inherently wrong with being safe, it’s only a small part of what is worthwhile about living. Sometimes standing up to conflict and surviving is ten times more satisfying than hiding behind security. To spend our days obsessed with avoiding every possible scenario of strife is to deny us opportunities for growth. Yes, risk is dangerous and sometimes we get hurt, even irreparably. Sometimes the price seems too high. But wisdom is rarely born of status quo and what is wisdom worth? How valuable is courage that stares squarely in the face of insurmountable odds and emerges triumphant? 

If I had to choose, I’d pick courage that overcomes rather than security that shields because the myth of life that is trouble free and safe was created to sell product and service not preserve us from harm. Safe and secure does not always guarantee quality of life either anymore than wealth insures happiness. 

Establishing a fear of everything is the perfect set up for enslavement because a society obsessed with being safe at all times is already enslaved to fear. Ironically, those who fear nothing and no one but God, live in complete freedom from all other fears.

For Christ,

Meema

(Matthew 6:27) And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit unto the measure of his life?  

To those who have had no agony Jesus says, “I have nothing for you; stand on your own feet, square your own shoulders. I have come for the man who knows he has a bigger handful than he can cope with, who knows there are forces he cannot touch; I will do everything for him if he will let Me. Only let a man grant he needs it, and I will do it for him. ~ Oswald Chambers 

Choosing The Light

I’m exhausted today because yesterday was full and long, though incredibly eye-opening and encouraging. Holly, the boys, and I attended the annual state home education convention, GHEA. We milled about, exploring, gathering information, and visiting the colorful exhibits that were selling everything from hands on teaching tools and  curriculum to T-shirts - “Homeschool Mom-Just Add Coffee”, “I Love My Kid’s Teacher”. 

What an experience, filled with abundant opportunity to network with seasoned homeschoolers, both parents and kids. The old perceptions of homeschoolers being pale-faced, narrow-minded, fundamentalist, isolationists are not only misconceived, they are ludicrous. In recent memory, I’ve not been exposed to a more intelligent, educated, well-rounded mass of individuals gathered in one place.

While the boys were being entertained in a high energy program put on by teens, we poured over a plethora of different curriculum sets. Given all the choices, Holly didn’t expect she would find one off the bat–but she did. Having been advised to cherry-pick and custom design for her boys’ particular learning styles, she bought the BJU math and language arts workbooks for 3rd and 6th grade. For all the other subjects, history, social studies and science we will create our own curriculum. And there are plenty of other options online that we can tap into as we go along, not to mention bookstores, libraries and home school consultants. The possibilities are staggering. 

Having gone in anxious with a million questions, we came out feeling incredibly liberated. There is so much out there to learn and the homeschool environment opens not only the door but time for abundant unfettered learning, by leaving out all the irrelevant chaff. No need to even mention the unspeakable negative influences we will kick to the curb as we embark on teaching not just information but, and more importantly, the love of learning which is like teaching the hungry to fish instead of shoving a fish down their throats and saying, “eat!” 

For a life-long lover of learning, such as I, this new paradigm, scrutinizing the dynamics of homeschooling, has added an unexpected dimension to what I thought was a nearly capped off capability to learn. But the real epiphany came for me as I took a coffee break and sat engaged in people watching. The convention was well-attended; whole families came, which meant every age group was represented. As I watched the individuals and groups move about, I noticed something seemed different from a run of the mill standard crowd, especially those with children. I finally realized that what I was witnessing could be defined as overall calm, civil, peaceful, intelligent, respectful, self-controlled, godly. 

Apparently God was in the house. 

Children were quiet, well-behaved, obedient. Parents were pleasant, gentle, yet in control. A family of four, mom, dad, two boys under age twelve met to chat. The parents left, probably to attend one of the many lectures offered, and their sons sat down, pulled out books and started reading. I didn’t see a single incident where a parent had to scold or fuss at a child. 

At the end of the day I remarked that it was something of a shock to my system to be in such a public place where no one seemed to be afraid of the words “God” “Christ” or “Jesus”. But it wasn’t like “church” where the focus is on all things Christian. It was more like a walk back in time to a period when basic Christian principles were the quiet underpinnings built into the behaviors and social interactions of hundreds of unrelated strangers. And what does this say about our anything-goes-culture when being in a crowd that is civil and well-behaved is an unexpected, pleasant and unique experience? What does this say about what one lecturer referred to as “how do we raise authentic children in a hypocritical age?” 

I don’t know what others might glean from this but it certainly confirmed for me that there is a genuine difference between good and evil. It is not a compromised gray area that darkness pushers constantly strive for us to meet in the middle. There is a defined line, not in the least blurred. I see more clearly now why there has always been a struggle to outlaw homeschooling. It’s not about the thousands of different combinations of things that children can learn in twelve years, or the methodologies of how to teach those things; 2+2 will always equal 4 no matter how many ways you can get to the answer. It’s not even really about the opposition to religion-based curriculum. 

I believe there is a battle raging between those who choose to live in the light and those who prefer the dark where nothing good can bloom or grow, where no one is held accountable for behavior that is counter to all things moral and/or civil. The opposition to homeschooling is about extinguishing the white light that exposes that which desires to eliminate everything that will not conform to the gray middle.  

Over-board dramatic, you say? If you sat and listened to the horror stories of what is happening in the gray middle where our precious children are being carefully conditioned to embrace and prefer the dark, you’d be looking into alternatives too.

For Christ,

Meema 

What some think is the world becoming more Christian is just Christians becoming more worldly. We can have the word or the world but not both. There is no concord between Christ and Belial. We are strangers here. Don’t make yourself at home. ~ Vance Havner

(James 4:7) Be subject therefore unto God; but resist the devil, and he will flee from you.  (4:8) Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye doubleminded.