Tiny Devotional for Monday, 07-24-2023

 A great good morning to all my friends and neighbors in Internet Land! And to family members who have dropped by, Piper is asleep on my feet.

Deliver those who are being taken away to death,
And those who are staggering to slaughter, Oh hold them back.
If you say, “See, we did not know this,”
Does He not consider it who weighs the hearts?
And does He not know it who keeps your soul?
And will He not render to man according to his work?
Proverbs 24:11-12, NASB

I had to research this one: Who are those being taken away to death? 

A non-famous scholar points out similar language being used earlier in Proverbs to describe what happens to the naive youth, if he places himself under the control of the violent, the foolish, the wicked, and the immoral woman. These are individual moral failings, not institutional wickedness.

That doesn’t give institutional wickedness a pass, though. It just means you can’t say that the writers in 700 BC were concerned about the political opinion of Internet Bob. 

I regret that I can’t consider these verses without remembering an organization which used them as a ‘proof-text,’ declaring God favored blocking access to abortion clinics.  A 1994 federal law providing significant fines and jail time for blockades effectively ended that strategy, but memories still linger.

Here’s how to mess up: proclaim that God told you to do something, when that isn’t true. 

Our mother Eve is the first recorded example; she told the serpent God said they couldn’t even TOUCH the tree, which wasn’t true.

Guard your tongue: don’t say “God said,” when all you’ve got is “I think.”

And remember: a text without a context is just a pretext.

Peace be on your household.