Their Truth, My Truth, and GOD's Truth:

 Three Different Trees

     While praying for one of my clients from the food pantry where I volunteer, I thought about his life story that he told me and how he ended up where he is living now, if you could call that living.  It's a very rewarding and frustrating job to deliver food to these people, especially the ones living in such abject and pitiful situations.  One client, in particular, has everything under the sun gone wrong against him, and he is completely innocent in his dire situation, or so he thinks.  I want to help them in other ways, besides just bringing them their monthly food boxes, but I am powerless to help some of them.  There are just too many problem with their living situations for me to tackle.  I decided its best to help where I can and pray for them about the other things.  I thought that I could offer solutions and ideas to help them, but then it occurred to me that I only know their side of the story.  

     While praying about this one in particular, I told GOD that his story just seemed a little off, and then the wisdom of GOD hit me like a ton of bricks.  The Holy Spirit put it in me like this:  Their stories may be an exaggeration, but to them it's their truth.  To them, it really did happen that way, and their plight is really as bad as they have told me, even if it's not the whole truth.  Then, GOD related it to us, all of mankind, and He hit me with another ton of bricks to really flatten the curve of my own story.  I've been blaming quite a few people for my own plight and situation, while they have been blaming me for being in the wrong as far as they are concerned. There are many people who have done me wrong, as I see it, but I will  use two men in particular to best describe the point I am trying to make. 

     To one, nothing I say is truth to him, it's only truth to me in his eyes, and none of it means anything to him, because it would interfere with his current happy lifestyle.  Biblically speaking, the truth I've been speaking to him comes straight from Scripture.  GOD has already shown me that this man has created God in his own image, an image that is acceptable to him, one who accepts his actions as okay, not offensive to YHVH GOD in any way, when clearly what he has done is spoken against in multiple places in the Bible.  He doesn't read those passages. He is not in the least bit interested in reading those portions of the Bible, but he goes to church on a regular basis.  He likes his last seat in the back row, way up in the balcony, where no one will bother him. The soothing message of just how much GOD loves him, regardless of how he lives, makes him feel better about himself, while the Scripture passages I share with him make him uncomfortable enough to ignore them as if they do not exist or as if they are obsolete today. His truth is that today we live under grace and not law, as he's been taught by the New Testament Church. To him, he's not obligated to keep any of the Laws, especially the parts about making vows to YHVH GOD.  According to him, this wonderful pastor and the enjoyable music that is played at this mega church speak quite the contrary to the things I've been telling him are in Scripture.  In essence, he prefers his "truth" to the Truth.  The real truth makes him look bad. It says that because he has turned his back on GOD he may have lost his salvation, and well, that's just unacceptable to him.  

    The other man has many things against me, none of which I really know, because he refuses to speak to me, but his truth is just as viable and real to him as the first man's is to him.  I can't fight this second man's truth with Scripture, because I don't know what his truth is to him. I only know what my truth is to me, and how it relates to me.  The crux of the problem is that we have two different truths.  I only know mine, he only knows his, and I'm going to venture a guess that neither one of our truths are GOD's Truth.  I can only make assumptions about him  based mainly on misinformation that I myself have had to conclude or deduce, and quite frankly, I could be way off base here.  He has a huge advantage over me because he knows all about me, and I know nothing about him, that is his choice. 

     So, the moral of this story is, as humans, we make up our own truths, and to us they are rock solid, whether they are GOD's truth, close to GOD's truth, or even way off of GOD's truth.  We are  judgmental by nature, and we judge other people's truths as lies if we believe they are lies.  We can't convince anyone of their lies being lies because our lies to ourselves are truth to us only.  Does that make sense?  What I am saying is that we all lie to ourselves that our truth is the truth.  How do we find the actual truth? Well, the truth is in the Bible, all of it, but unfortunately, we feed our lies into Scripture and pick and choose what truth means from those Scriptures.  We take our personal doctrines not from Scripture, but we force our doctrines into Scripture with select verses that seem to agree with our doctrine.  If I had to use a picture to describe it, I guess I could use a fruit tree.  The roots are GOD's truth, His actual Words, but the leaves and fruit that grow off the stem and the root are our truth. Hence, to us, the leaves and the fruit are just as much of the tree as the root.  The leaves and fruit are the truth we accept because they are the most visible to our naked eye. 

      My fruit tree may be an apple, another's fruit tree may be a peach tree and another's an orange tree.  They are all trees to us, they are all truths to us, but the actual truth for all our trees is in the roots, which are under the ground and they all look exactly alike, because the roots are GOD's truth.  So, what can we do about all these differing lies we convince ourselves are the rock solid truth.  Nothing, absolutely nothing. 

   We cannot ever convince the other that their fruit or leaves aren't really GOD's truth, only GOD can do that. Our own leaves and fruit are likely not GOD's truth.  Somehow, we have to learn to live with each other's lies, and just keep searching our own trees' roots, and pray that somehow, we can live acceptable lives to GOD, and thank Him with all we have that Jesus's death on the cross is the grace that keeps our trees standing, until it's time for our trees to fall. The best we can do is to keep praying, keep studying, and keep believing that the Living Water of Jesus will extend to the next generation we leave behind when our own trees fall to the ground. (Pun not intended, but if the fruit fits, eat it!)

 

Stone Siblings 

Because Allen Means Stone!

    

    Biological connection does not make a family, love does. That was in very short supply in the family and home in which I grew up in, due to the fact that my parents despised each other.  They never taught us to love each other or anyone else. My mother taught us to hate everyone, my father taught us to love only ourselves. I'm not saying they indoctrinated us with that, I'm saying they lived that out before us.

     I used to be covetous of other families whose siblings were loving and intimately close friends, while mine were only related by blood. Once every ten years or so, they'd be a family reunion of sorts for some special occasion, and I always dreaded going, because I knew what I would be facing. I was always the odd man out, and the older I got the odder I became, to them. The closer I became with YHVH GOD the less I was liked by them.  It's to the point now, where I am not even welcome to a family funeral, and not only am I not welcome, but my children are not welcome, either.   

    I have looked at this picture hundreds of times over the decades, and I never noticed that I am "set apart" from the rest of them.  They are all in relatively close contact with each other, and I am off to the side a bit, I am the odd man out.  That never occurred to me before this moment.  Kodesh/Kadosh are Hebrew words that mean "SET APART."  The English Bible translators translated those words as holy.  Holy to most church people means pure, clean, good, and yet that is nothing like what the Hebrew word means.  The Hebrew words do not always translate properly into English, because Hebrew words have so much more depth to them than the English. Christians have misused and mistranslated the word holy for centuries. It simply means, SET APART. Something could be set apart for a good use or even a bad use. Someone can be set apart to do a work for GOD and some people could be set apart to do an evil thing, all for the purposes of the growth of the Kingdom of GOD or a person's spiritual growth and health.

     Having studied the Bible as a means of survival these past decades,  I have observed a lot of sibling dysfunction. The very first sibling rivalry ended in murder.  Cain, out of his jealousy for Abel's being favored of GOD, killed him, for no other reason than jealousy and hate.  Jacob and Esau were a mess because their parents pitted them against one another by favoring one over the other. Most of the Biblical heroes were not well-liked by their siblings, they were SET APART by GOD for His special purpose.  David is a perfect example, the "runt" of the family, and quite possibly not even from the same mother as the other seven, according to ancient Hebrew tradition.  It has been thought by ancient Rabbis that David could have been the son of an adulterous woman or even a prostitute,  None of that is in the Bible, but it does make sense, seeing how he was definitely the family reject. 1 Samuel 17 tells it all. (28 Eli’av his oldest brother heard when David spoke to the men, and it made Eli’av angry at him. He asked, “Why did you come down here? With whom did you leave those few sheep in the desert? I know how conceited you are and how wicked your heart is! You just came down to watch the fighting.” 29 David said, “What have I done now? I only asked a question.”)  

     Many times, the set apart one is called the trouble maker, is the hated one for no other reason than there is something different in them.  Jacob's son, Joseph, was just that kind of brother.  His brothers  were so full of hate they had no regard for how losing Joseph would devastate their father.  Their stone-hearted hate was more important to them then their father's heart of flesh. They had no remorse when they lied to him, telling him that his precious son was eaten by a wild animal, and bringing back only a bloody tunic. They were never convicted of their guilt, until such a time as near twenty years later when they were in a bind, and it occurred to them that this was their punishment for what they did to Joseph and their father.  Sadly, some family members are never convicted about their ill-treatment of the "set-apart" one. 

     GOD doesn't see the ugly others see, He sees a set-apart one.  Even if that set apart one is living in very ugly and not so pure circumstances.  YHVH GOD knows what He will be doing with His set-apart ones, and we are judged based on what His plans are, not the mistakes we make.   

    Even Jesus had a few renegade brothers who thought Jesus went mad by calling himself the "Son of GOD. (Mark 3: 21 When his family heard about this, they set out to take charge of him; for they said, “He’s out of his mind!”). I love Jesus response, which was basically, he dissed them in public, and they well deserved it. Jesus did not do it with malice, but with truth in love. Jesus said, in a nutshell, biology means nothing, but those who belong to GOD are my true family. 

      So, although, I have been envious of other families and their closeness, in a way, I'm glad that I grew up in the house of "stone," full of hate and rivalry, at least that's all I ever felt from them. When I was twenty-six-years-old, GOD changed my stone heart to flesh, (Ezekiel 37), and as the years passed, He blessed me with eight children of my own, two more than my mother had. Although, it is never pleasant to be rejected, falsely accused and blamed for everything from one's siblings, I was the one of the six who YHVH GOD set-apart.  I was the one called to a special work for Him, while they just revile me more and more each year. The key here is to always see how YHVH GOD sees us, not as man sees us.