With Passover and Easter over, this has come on my heart. This isn't mine, it couldn't be. The Prophets said it all before, and G-d told them. I could quote you chapter and verse from the Prophets, but I won't. You either know in your heart it's true, or you don't.
When the Temple was set up and authorized, for whose benefit was it? For human benefit of course, so there would be a place where symbolically G-d dwelt with men. How long it actually served that purpose is unknown, but since Solomon built it and since he started putting idols in it immediately, it is possible that it never served its purpose at all. Humans corrupted the place from the instant they built it. Now it is possible that at later times, like in the reign of Josiah, it did fulfill its original purpose, but it was always ever intended as a gift for us. What does G-d want? Does G-d want thousands of people bowing down to Him in a big house? Did He want burnt offerings, the blood of lambs and bulls? That was a system of human governance: you do wrong, and you pay a lamb. You do well for yourself and you give a lamb, so that someone other than you can eat. That was the idea anyway. So that was for us. Just like church services and so on are for us. When this becomes our only real worship however, that's a problem.
What does G-d want?
Does G-d want you to be a big tither at church?
Does G-d want you to witness?
Does G-d want you to sing at church?
Does G-d want praise?
Does G-d want rock bands behind the pulpit and big stadium seating?
He wants you to love justice.
If millions of people are slaughtering their innocent sons and daughters, and the State protects them doing it, and you say nothing, how are you loving justice? You aren't. Now, you can't change it and I know you can't. If any act of mine could end abortion forever, I would do it. I would lose my life for it. But it's not possible.
But what does it cost you to move your freaking lips on the topic? To write some words on a keyboard? You might alienate some friends, oh no! People may not like you. They might think you're some sort of anal retentive Old Testament type. You're repressive, is what you are.
If you won't love justice when all it requires is for you to sacrifice the "love" of your friends and your good reputation, you won't love it when it requires blood and sacrifice. The answer to the question of what kind of person stands by and watches as the Holocaust happens is, most likely you are exactly the kind of person. If you won't even speak out against abortion when it costs you so little, you are that person. "The Jews aren't really humans, they're just tissue." "My country my choice."
We already know the answer to the "good" German question, those of us who understand. There's a holocaust now and nobody cares.
G-d wants you to love mercy.
Now, mercy isn't always what it seems. Mercy can seem cruel, but if its intent is the well-being of others, it is not actually. If someone is on the street with a heroin needle in their arm, and I tell them they need to stop that shit and get with the Lord's program, that probably seems unkind to them. Remember that what they would consider kindness would be for me to give them a packet of heroin. This is a confused time and land and world, nothing is at it appears. Remember that to love mercy is to intend the well-being of the other, and to act in accordance with that if they are willing for you to. In this crazy mixed up world, it is not necessary that they see it that way, only that you genuinely intend it to that end.
I had friends once. Not many now. What cost me many of them is speaking truthfully to their benefit. If someone is expressing a godless nihilistic viewpoint and I confront them on that, it is because I know the benefit, the priceless blessings that they could receive by rejecting such a worldview and turning to the Lord YHWH. I seriously would be dead multiple times over had I not accepted the Lord and embraced His teaching. Because that's what such a worldview is, the path of death. My mercy, intended for their well-being, caused them to dislike me.
We tend to focus on the more emotionally tugging examples of mercy and those are important too. It's important to feed the hungry and tend the sick. The thing is, if we do not try to teach them to turn to the Lord, we are only putting a band-aid on their real sickness and the sickness of this whole world. If the whole world turned to the Lord, there would be a lot fewer hungry or sick because the Lord would be their shepherd.
He wants you to speak truthfully.
If you lie as a regular thing, lie to other people, lie about things, how can you please G-d?
G-D HATES LIES.
A falsehood is an insult to the Creator who made all things. You cannot please G-d if you lie. And lies are EVERYWHERE about us. You see them when you turn on your TV, when you watch your Youtube videos. I used to get a bundle of lies in the mail every week, people trying to sell me stuff. Actual living trees died for that crapola. A world in which good living trees are killed to print lies, that is a confused world my friend.
I used to work in telemarketing, I know how it is. You do the job they give you so you can survive. I don't have any rancor for those people but for the people who hired them.
People bathe in lies, they breathe lies, they live by lies. "It's not a person" is a lie. "Only idiots believe in G-d" is a lie. "Science explains everything" is a lie. Hell, honest scientists know that science explains nothing, it only offers a workable framework for understanding things, tentatively. Nothing is less certain than science, but science does offer a workable framework for understanding and doing things. When science becomes metaphysics, it stops being science.
You want to do one beautiful thing for G-d (and ultimately yourself,) do this: stop lying.
G-d wants you to walk humbly with Him.
What is this, to walk humbly? He's the boss. He's G-d. You are but clay. Nonetheless He will let you walk with Him, but only in humility.
I guess the first part of humility is obedience. You are not being a humble child if you are being a disobedient child. Now we all have our issues with obedience, if we were capable of perfect obedience we perhaps would be less in need of humility. But we are in need of it, because we can't be perfectly obedient and even if we were, we would still be clay. Still be Creature. What can you even offer G-d who has everything? If you were perfect in your walk, what would that by itself be to G-d?
What He wants, is you: the only creature who can make a decision to reject Him. If you decide your own way for yourself, and decide that what you really need is not your own way at all, but G-d, that is the only thing He wants. You.
But you aren't really coming into relation with Him if you don't love what He loves and hate what He hates. Would you marry someone who, when you tell them you hate abortion, says "I love abortion and have one every time I can." Would you marry someone who, when you say you hate lies, says "I love them!" I hope not. Well, you will never actually know the true inmost self of your wife or husband, their inmost self is hidden to you. Their essence is hidden from your view. It's not hidden to G-d. If your inmost self is not being purified, how will G-d come to live with you?
This is what G-d wants:
“My people, what have I done to you?
How have I burdened you? Answer me.
I brought you up out of Egypt
and redeemed you from the land of slavery.
I sent Moses to lead you,
also Aaron and Miriam.
My people, remember
what Balak king of Moab plotted
and what Balaam son of Beor answered.
Remember your journey from Shittim to Gilgal,
that you may know the righteous acts of the Lord."
With what shall I come before the Lord
and bow down before the exalted God?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousand rivers of olive oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
~Micah 6:3-8
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