For the last several months my favorite show has been a
British murder mystery on Netflix called "Midsomer Murders." I was
hooked from the very first episode because whoever wrote them really understood
human nature and reasoning. Every episode has several plot twists over a course
of almost two hours. As humans, and I admit I am no different, we make judgments
and draw conclusions based on the "evidence" that we have available
to us through one of our senses. In the case of Midsomer Murders, we only have
our eyes and ears to provide us with the information we need to determine who
the murderer is and the motive as to why they did it. The writers of Midsomer
Murders did a phenomenal job of feeding the viewer just enough information to
get them to formulate a theory and then they would feed them just enough
additional information that the previous theory was probably not plausible.
Over the course of two hours it would be very easy for the plot to change a
half dozen times or more. As always, during the last few minutes of the show
the big reveal takes place of who and why. As the viewer reminisces about the
episode as a whole, they realize that at some point or another they suspected
several folks, who were totally innocent, of having been guilty in some way or
another. So often the person who seems most innocent and incapable of doing
something so heinous is the murderer who was hiding behind a facade of
innocence.
Since I like to use physical world examples for issues that
potentially have spiritual world ramifications, I am going to do the same in
this blog. As humans, we like to formulate conclusions about what others are
doing based on what information we have collected, even if we don't have all
the information we need to draw the correct conclusion. This is true in the secular, as well as the
religious arenas. We are all guilty of this, so if your cackles are up and you
are huffy after reading this, please take the time to ask God to help you with
your pride and then come back to read the rest of this blog.
Unfortunately we live in a world that has adopted a "facebook
perception" mindset. What I mean by that is that people get their
information in little snippits and from that they draw elaborate conclusions
about situations that people are going through. Besides facebook, they see
other people in short periods of time at church, or at church related functions,
or hear things from those "innocent persons" behind the facade and
from that they can determine the condition of other people's souls. Sometimes
they even claim that "God" revealed something to them, when in
reality they are so far off that one could question which "god"
(notice the little "g") they are listening to.
Sometimes religious people question why other religious
people do what they do, judge them harshly for doing it, yet they don't know
the entire story. Fortunately for those people who are on the receiving end of
that harsh judgment the Bible says in several places (Matthew 10:26, Mark 4:22,
Luke 8:17, Luke 12:2) that " there is nothing concealed that
will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known." We must be
aware that this is a double-edged sword. If we are being judged and treated
wrongly by those who don't know everything that they need to, to draw a correct
conclusion, then God will be our advocate in the end and will set the record
straight. However, if we are doing something wrong or purposefully misleading
people and we are able to hide it in this life, it will be revealed in the next
and we will have to answer for it.
Sometimes the judgments are not based on what a person is
doing as much as why a person is doing what they are doing. Here's a little analogy...if
a person is drowning out in the middle of a lake, the only person who can usually
save them is another person who is out in the lake with them. It's extremely
challenging to save somebody who is drowning out in the middle of a lake while
standing on the shore line. In some cases, however, the "drowning"
person will either reject the "saving" person's help or will drag
them down with them in the process. In those cases, the person responding to
the drowning person's need for help has no choice but to turn around and head
back to the safety of the shoreline. Going back to the comment that sometimes
religious people question why other religious people do what they do, one needs
to put it into perspective. God sometimes sends certain people to other people
in an attempt to help them. To those religious people standing at a distance it
may seem ludicrous, "ungodly" and wrong, yet they seem to forget that
their judgments are only based on what they see and perceive as being true and
not necessarily what is reality. In the end, God will hold them accountable for
any actions they take based upon their perceptions. And just like those who
respond to a drowning person's need for help will have to turn back should all
attempts fail, God's people sometimes have to change course when God directs
them to do so. Ecclesiastes 3:1 says,
"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity
under the heavens".
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