Insightful Musings on theScriptures

by

Raymond P. Sparre
Northwest University class of '67

Hello, dear ones.

You can probably use your imagination as to how our discussion could have gone this morning in regards to this little composition. Ideas radiating from the core issue that Jesus addresses here could generate another book. We both feel that formulating some resulting views and responses offers valuable stability in life.

A rather interesting day is before us. We, like you, need to seek help and guidance from our Sovereign so as to make the best of it. So be it.

Love, Dad/Ray.

Did you hear what Jesus just said? He doesn’t “accept praise from men.” How are we supposed to regard all the sermons, songs, and testimonies that are pumped full of praise to Jesus? I think it’s both easy and highly beneficial to figure out what Jesus is really saying.

The key to Jesus intended meaning can be easily gleaned from verse 44: “How can you believe if you accept praise from one another, yet make no effort to obtain praise that comes from the only God?” Get it? Perhaps I’ll offer my view of clarification by spinning it with my own paraphrase: “How will you guys ever come to embrace the most essential TRUTH in the universe if your primary method of establishing your personal identity, purpose, and self-worth is by means of your participation in social media, putting on a show to appear cool, and building your life around affirmation and feedback (or the lack thereof) from other humans around you?”

It’s easy to find evidence of people striving for social acceptance all around us. One phenomenon of our modern culture that amuses me is the wave of tattoo art, and how so many seem so bent on displaying their compositions of permanently-marked skin—sometimes intentionally showing off their markings on border-line personal areas. Then there is the rage of piercings—in ears, noses, lips, tongues, and then some. Speech is also a platform for putting on a performance—and many who are convinced that profanity is cool will fill their speech with profanity—lacing obscenities like the “F-word” into absurd places throughout their verbal sentences. I’m wondering too who ever established this “new” stocking cap fad—and assigned so much importance as a status symbol that some will wear that stupid stocking cap on a hot summer day!—bearing the heat so they can be cool! Watching all this show-business through the lens of a HEART AFTER GOD (v. 42) can cause my heart to break—seeing a woman, for example, less than attractive by “Cover Girl” standards, afflicted with morbid obesity, obviously giving up on gaining attention and acceptance by means of a trim and beautiful body, but now resorting to a full range of tattoos and piercings, virtually screaming to the world around her, “Please, please, notice me—I crave your acceptance—please affirm me—give me some value—that’s all that matters to me!”

Apparently this same preoccupation with status symbols, peer pressure, and social acceptance was the norm in Jesus’ day as well. And Paul was inspired to warn of the same misplaced priority—affirming that peer pressure is a lousy role model. He observes, “When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise” (2 Corinthians 10:12).

I have come to believe that the recipe for success in life is fairly simple. If I can get my head and heart wrapped around the precept of Matthew 6:33—to “seek first the kingdom of God”—and really believe that THE BASIC PURPOSE OF MY EXISTENCE IS TO PLEASE MY MAKER, then pleasing Him is all that really matters, and all this questing for human approval in comparison to the approval that really matters, is just absolutely silly!