On the surface, it's obvious to anyone Isaiah worried about the integrity of his nation, both moral and existential. Judah as the surviving stump of the nation was about to be uprooted and carried away for transplant. As a fundamental element of the national covenant was the Land itself, a major element in Judah's identity would be gone. Could she survive with her knowledge of God intact? God said it was possible, but it did not happen. Upon return, the reborn nation quickly wandered off into even greater sin. Gone were the idols, but not the idolatry of the heart. So it is we note the deeper meaning of things typically implied in Hebrew writing itself. Isaiah knew all the externals he discussed were pointing relentlessly to the higher spiritual realities, to things inexpressible in human words.
With my intellectual poverty I can never really penetrate the depth of Isaiah's grand writing. I struggle just to see some of what's on the surface; only my spirit knows what is there at the deeper level. I know what I must do, but I could hardly explain rationally why I must. I'm driven by a deep concern for the lives of those around me. Doom hangs heavy overhead like the storm clouds which pass so often here. At any moment, the literal tornado of destruction will signal God's wrath on the higher level. While it is true tornadoes are natural here, were we just and righteous, there would be little damage to our lives and possessions. That much is so bluntly stated in God's Word, I wonder how anyone can question it. While there is some element of selectivity in what God allows the tornado to shred, there remains the larger issue of the community absorbing His wrath. Such is the Covenant of Noah, carrying a command the community be righteous as a whole. Between the individual and the community, the inscrutable workings of God give just a hint here and there to those who lack His Spirit. He still speaks to, and through, all Creation if anyone will listen.
Set aside my extensive assertions about social structure in God's Word. Let's assume for a moment our Founding Fathers actually did have a vision from God for aspirations of just government and a just society, best they knew it. So many seem to revere the Constitution, you wonder just why no one bothers to understand what it meant to those men. Every few years we slide farther and farther from that vision. Take a moment to review: Just 13 years ago Charles Colson and friends laid out a very strong case against giving any further allegiance to the Supreme Court of the United States. While the article series in quite long-winded, it remains a rather blunt rejection of judicial drift in secularism. Not merely on religious grounds, but on purely moral questions we have a government which contemptuously rejects what matters most to the people under their judgment. While anyone can admit Colson and friends would jump at the chance to make a partisan stab at the Clinton Administration, it was far more than that. This brought into the question our traditional assumptions the Court was legitimate.
But if we scan farther back, we have Smedely Butler's warning we were ruled indirectly by scoundrels who gladly saw bloodshed for a profit. Keep looking farther back. The trouble, of course, is the gilded aura pasted over the whole of our national history, such that precious few even care, much less know just how much of what we think we know is pure manure. It is possible to make a strong case for believing many of the founders themselves were motivated more by sheer profit than any real concern for the common good of the colonists. More recent events point to a signal example of profit over people. The mere continued existence of the Federal Reserve Bank is de facto proof we do not abide by our own founding documents, as the Constitution expressly forbids it. The people who designed and pushed it through did so almost entirely in secret, knowing it was contrary to both the will and welfare of the nation. And the system under which we now languish has pointedly given future tax dollars (via incomprehensible levels of national debt) to the very people who exacerbated all the weaknesses inherent in our economic system.
As the nation withers away, I wonder how many will remember: It need not have been this way. For countless millennia God has held firm in His demands, and in His revelation of those demands. Can we not for a moment shed our Platonic fascination for emphasizing only individual spiritual redemption, and realize that same redemption requires we seek the national redemption of righteous national policies? Not in the prissy demands for Western Middle Class lifestyle, but a fundamental demand for justice. We can hardly legislate against sexual depravity and abortion if we have no underlying sense of right and wrong. The utterly silly materialism of the likes of Bork's Slouching Towards Gomorrah is rightly lost in the mists of time, but the higher lesson is even more lost. So-called "higher virtues" of Platonic idealism serve no purpose at all, because they demand a mere paint job over a much deeper evil.
What is that ultimate sin? Blasphemy. No, secular government is the child of Satan. Be an atheist if you like, or believe in any pagan deity which appeals to you, but don't blaspheme God. Not just in name or title, but in terms God Himself raised via His own Son:
"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." (Matthew 22:37-40)
Jesus quoted Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18. Everything God had said up to that point to any and all of mankind could be covered by the bare principles of giving God His due honor and respect, and by treating His Creation as He intended. I will be so bold as to suggest if you do not see in my choice of words a reflection of Jesus' choice of words, you have no comprehension of the Hebrew culture which preserved the quotes Jesus used there. But that is no matter if you don't obey even the letter of that Law. The meaning of "blasphemy" is widely known: either (1) raising yourself to God's place in authority or (2) pulling God down to your fallen level. It is not our mere laws which have promoted that sin, but our choice to allow the culture to slide so far as to permit such a thing.
Jesus rescued the woman caught in adultery, but released her with the words, "Go and sin no more." No one questions whether she sinned. And if it was a sin for her, it was a sin for the man, too. But that was hardly unique to Moses; it was wrong all the way back to the Garden. It hasn't changed since then. It applies to all humanity. It's one thing, like Jesus, to realize it can't be stopped. It's another to act as if there's no real problem. Just watch a day of TV, and you'll understand. Why do you still watch it? "You have not yet resisted sin to the shedding of blood." We can't even be bothered to shed tears, much less blood.
Isaiah published his prophecies around 700 BC. That's almost 3 millennia past. We haven't learned much, have we?
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