Spaghetti World

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
- Albert Einstein

I was bred on a farm in Eastern NC on simple foods with simple taste. I well remember my consternation, the first time I attempted to eat spaghetti. Now, having traveled the world-- even accomplished eating with chopsticks and eating the messy couscous with fingers-- I better understand-- not only the complexities of food-- but the complexities of the human mind. The minds of men lead to complexities in this "spaghetti" world.

To the uninformed, everything is obscure. Technology has changed the world, but human nature is unchanged. Cyber space has introduced the simplest uninformed minds to the pluses and minuses of such things as cell phones and even drones. It is expected that any way you go, any direction in which you look, you will hear someone talking on a cell phone. We hear intimate details of business and life discussed at nearby tables in a restaurant. One television program features lonely people seeking emotional fulfillment via the internet.

A middle-aged female came to me, seeking employment. I asked about her experience with the computer and she told me she could build one. She had technical skills, but was totally unaware of her emotional instability. A local man, a Vietnam-wounded-warrior with many disabilities, initiated a modern, lovelorn relationship with her in far-away England. After months of inter-relationship communication, against her families wishes, she sold her house and moved here to marry him. We have heard that love is blind and loneliness is crippling; she evidently suffered from both. The man had already lost his former wife by suicide, and his boys had left home. He then finagled the money from the sale of her house and told her to find a job. Without a Green Card or American work experience, she worked for a short time with me. She gave new significance to "marry in haste repent at leisure." So it is with not evaluating every action of life.

American business is built around the concept of impulse buying and catchy advertising-- saying or doing something which you later wish to reconsider. So it is with eternal life. Too many get caught up with the anxiety of the moment. Any person with nominal intelligence realizes the uncertainties of life. News broadcasts detail the death of some famous young person and obituary columns show the deaths of older people. Even though you have your doubts and fears about everything, and in your own wisdom and the wisdom of other unbelievers, think that "God thing" is preposterous, in the darkness of the night, in the recesses of your soul, you are bothered by the thought, "Perhaps there's something to it." Because of family expectations, pressures of one sort or another, you make the decision (walk the isle, sign a card) or someone else makes the decision for you (infant baptism) and you are considered a believer.

80% of all young people, brought up in the church and entering college from Christian homes, leave the church-- disdain their faith. How can they leave that which never existed? Is faith in God a matter of justice or mercy?

Being totally blind for many years, the radio is my best friend. I listen to and participate in many local and national talk shows. On a local radio talk show, one morning, an elderly black woman, who lives in this city on Castle St., called seeking help with expenses. In the course of the conversation, having experienced the blight of bigotry, she said, "The only God I have ever know is a white man's God." I well remember as a child in a time of drought-- crops drying up in the fields-- my believing, sincere father would go around and announce that everyone would gather at the church house to pray for rain. One man in the community, a very affluent land owner, never attended church as far as I know, and never did anything good for anyone (his wife told my aunt she had never had a store-bought dress). He, in spite of no obvious relationship with God, would always go to the church when there was prayer for rain. Will that much faith be sufficient for him at the final round-up? Will a childhood faith of some sort be sufficient for that denying college student? Even the most sanctified of us (set apart, declared holy), like them, must depend on the mercy not the justice of God.

Great artworks, paintings of the masters, sell at auction for as much as $1 Million a square inch. These artists were not consumed with money when they demonstrated their magnificent talent, but were consumed with the love of what they were doing. Van Gogh sold only one painting during his lifetime. The last Van Gogh painting, at auction, sold for $39.7 million. The umbilical chord of gold, in this mixed up spaghetti world, keeps the power brokers, politicians, and untalented pundits, pounding the world for money. The IRS, "do-gooder" groups, bankers, and securities promoters want you to fear the worst--  the scares of this world. You cannot explain to the unbeliever anything about the security involved in the grasp of Christ.

Let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

Hebrews 13:5

There are 1,500 verses proclaiming the holiness of God in His word. No sin will enter heaven. Don't mess around with God.

Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy.

1 Peter 1:16

In today's church house, there is much white hair. The younger "tares" have found other things to do, since Christianity and church-going has become so unpopular with the world.  You can expect the number of people in churches, civic clubs, college campuses-- even family reunions-- to get smaller and smaller.

They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.

1 John 2:19

Real faithfulness (action based on belief, sustained by confidence) is not just a Christian experience. Think of the faith of astronauts-- the willingness to be shot into uncertain space. Perhaps the best example of faith-- a real belief system-- is Joseph of the Old Testament. He was sold into slavery by his brothers. The iron bands, which held him in the slave wagon, moving to Egypt, must have given him an immunity which, like Paul of the New Testament, would see him through many prisons. Joseph was purchased by the Egyptian official named Potiphar and entrusted with all of Potiphar's wealth. He was thrown into prison for not yielding to the seduction of Potiphar's wife. His retort to the deceptive wife:

How then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?

Genesis 39:9

Joseph was more concerned with what God thought of him, than what anyone else thought of him. He was used by God to save a chosen nation. The salvation of this writer, from his rotten sins, was paid for at a great price. There is nothing cheap or complicated about Christianity.

Have the faith of Joshua and Caleb, returning spies, reporting to Moses. They were not afraid of the promised land. They were the only two men, of those leaving Egyptian slavery, to reach the promised land. The world, flesh, devil desired death in a wilderness of spaghetti-like entanglement. There is no middle ground, only eternal happiness or eternal damnation