Let's Pretend

#486


When I was a child, and that was a long time ago, the favorite Saturday morning children's program was entitled “Let's Pretend”. It featured big John and his dog Sparky. This was the beginning of the favorite children's book, “Puss and Boots”. When I was in Mongolia, about 30 years ago, already, workers from Communist North Korea were coming into Mongolia as laborers. Having been slave laborers in North Korea, one would think that they would have a work ethic. But, as I learned from “comrades” as I traveled Russia, “they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work”. The North Koreans who then as now, have such miserable lives, did not have any work ethic at all. Communism has caused much horrific decadence throughout the world but what Communism has done for the world cannot compare to what is has done to the soul and worth of the individual.

My son, Dr. John Morris, and his wife Grace, headed the SBC missions work in South Korea for many years. My two grandsons were reared in South Korea. As was the case when I was there last, after the war, along the line separating the two Koreas, North Korea has every few feet, a large, well groomed, soldier standing at attention trying to symbolize a strong North Korea. Everyone knows this is just pretension. From those who have escaped North Korea, even those who have migrated to Communist China, it is known that there is mass starvation there. An estimated 100,000 North Korean Christians are in prison. Can one even imagine their tortured existence? And yet the Christian church, according to everything we know, is growing in North Korea. One does not pretend to be a Christian...not in a Communist country where it can cost you your life.

I never thought I would live to see the day when most of American life is built around pretending. The best example I could ever give of this, a family I know, owners of a large lumber company, from very humble beginnings, cutting logs in the woods, hauling them out with oxen, sawing 2x4s and 2x6s one by one on an ancient saw mill, had built a very large, very successful lumber and building supply company...the American way, hard work, treating people right. They were ever pestered by state and federal tax collectors spooking and looking into every crook and cranny trying to find another dime of taxation.

He knew they were coming. They had warned him. So, the day the tax auditors arrived on the scene the owner said, “I've got all the books set up in the back for you to peruse but before we start, I got here this morning too early for breakfast and I am feeling weak, let's go get a bite to eat”. While in the restaurant, he was called to the phone, he went back to the table where the federal agents were seated, and said, “take your time eating, the lumber yard is burning to the ground”. It was one of the largest fires in the city's history. First the office building went down, and then all the warehouses. He and his family had salted away enough money for survival, and he was simply tired of the Communist system of government which we have in this country pretending to be a Democratic republic. Look at your own situation. You are just pretending that your country has not already fallen into the Communist system.

Right now, today, Japan and China own 55% of the American debt. We are all working just to pay the interest on the National debt which amounts to 14,000 billion dollars, impossible to ever pay.

Yesterday, the man who has put the country into debt more than all previous 43 Presidents combined (Washing to Bush) standing on a platform with union workers wearing hard hats standing behind him, pretending to have the American populous think that he is interested in “jobs”. The “liar” knew then as those of you with any intelligence know now that his very base, the environmentalists, will keep our country from building any nuclear plants, any off shore drilling, and job procurement. A Communist government wants the “masses” totally dependent on government.

School boards pretend that children are learning. College trustees pretend that students are achieving. Pastors pretend that their pews are full of committed Christians. The truth is, we have just pretenders, children who cannot read and write, college students without academic qualifications having spent so much time in remedial work, if churches were full of Christians the world would be a different place. Most Christians have never talked to one other person about the “victory found in Christ”.

From the Garden of Eden to the great flood was about 2,000 years. From the great flood to Babylon was about 2-300 years. There was only 8 human beings saved from the first 2,000 years. Only one, Abraham, the first Jew, saved from Babylon, directed from God 600 miles North to present day Israel. On this side of the cross, after 2,000 years the number is still small. In Ezekiel 8:12, we find the reason for most pretending (Then He said to me, "Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in the room of his idols? For they say, 'The LORD does not see us, the LORD has forsaken the land.' ").

In ancient Israel, the leaders, probably the Sanhedrin, had a secret dark room in their house. It was in this dark room that the truth came out...their worship of idols...while pretending all the time to be spiritual and patriotic. Surely, this is the answer to the problems of political, spiritual, academic, corporate, and even leaders of families. We are pretending not to worship idols within the dark recesses of our hearts, minds, soul and even our very homes. We are pretending to love country when daily we see it sink into the mire of enslavement through the authoritarian control of Communism. We are pretending not to worship the idols of the “world” when in our churches, even our Christian schools, we are using the same idol methods of temporal existence even yielding to the temptations brought on by the marvelous technological inventions of television and the computer. Think of Satan's delight when he knows your home, your office, your church, has been demonized by the pornography and absurdities enlightened by modern technology. Light came into the world and men prefer darkness because they love their idols (John 1:4-9)

How insane that we think that we can pray to a supreme power who knows the very number of hairs on our head and pretend that he does no know what goes on in the deepest corners of our heart?

“Open my eyes, that I may see
Glimpses of truth Thou hast for me.”