What Guides Our Daily Doings?

I am reading a book about the character, and integrity, of the Prophet Jeremiah. In one chapter the author is telling us about how disappointed Jeremiah was, when after the new king had worked so diligently for reform; and  after the temple had been restore to a true place of worship, the people still live in unfortunate ways.  

Their everyday lives went on “as usual.”  Still doing all of the things that moved them away from God.

Their worship habits went only skin deep. They came to worship on the Holy Days, sang all the right words to the songs, and spoke all the acceptable words. But the rest of the week was filled with the opposite.

It saddened Jeremiah.  Indeed it made him angry.  And he preach a harsh word.

However, preaching a word of truth, whether a harsh word or a gracious one, is not all that impressive - effective — to folks whose live have been conditioned to be, and live, another way.  

To be fair, most of them don’t mean to;  it is just that they don’t know any other way.

This is a familiar state-of-affairs.  

It has been the reality even before Jeremiah came on the scene.

It is the main frustration of any person who has stood before a congregation, and with sweating hand and shaking knees, to faithfully preach God’s word.

It is not that the people who come are ‘bad’.  I would never want to even suggest that.  

It is just that the human society has moved so far away from the original times when Moses and Jesus walked along side with them.

It seems we have forgotten, or lost, the energy of passionate faith that guided the ancient people.  And replace it with culturally ingrained, traditionally created, rituals for everyday existence.  

“This was Jeremiah’s fate in Jerusalem.  The crowd avoided dealing with his life by setting him apart.  The crowds understood what was he was saying and probably admired the way he was living, but their self-concepts were crowd-conditioned.  They didn’t disbelieve in God, but they disqualified themselves from strenuous, personal participation.  

Biblical faith, however, has always insisted that there are not special aptitudes for a life with God — no required level of intelligence or degree of mortality, no particular spiritual experience…..”  (Run with the Horses by Eugene Peterson pages 134-135)

To be continued