The earlier post concerning thanksgiving is not a diatribe. What it is, is a comparative reflection contrasting eternal truth with temporal reality. Has anybody read it? I cannot determine that, however examining Creator’s directives as a mirror for contrasting current reality with His heart a response wells up within me compelling me to speak. Jeremiah (8:18-19a) had much the same experience dealing with the dominate ideology in his day. Like him, I have tried not to voice what I see and hear. Also, like Jeremiah compulsion pushes me to voice this infraction against Creator/Yahweh and those made in his image. Paul tells us clearly that giving approval to evil equates to participating with that evil. Those who give approval through silence or denial will join the actors of ignored evil in Creator’s justice on behalf of the victims (judgment), Romans 1:28-32. We have got to take this seriously! The European colonizers, our, hands carry the blood of injustice. Injustice enacted by the hands of colonizers, whether personal or systemic reflects the contrasts between the questioning of the “pious” and the instruction of a true fast in Isaiah 58. The seriousness becomes even more evident through Paul’s instruction concerning proper empathy to the situation of other members of His Body 1st Corinthians 12:22-26. Thus, First Nations and indigenous people across the Earth and the injustice thrust against them should be understood and embraced by the Church as suffering of the whole body. Only when this connection takes on reality that we are members of one another can grieve over these issues within His body begin. Grieving gives rise to the healing process with empathic identification culminating with true reconciliation. Segregation of another’s experience is segregation and makes those whose experience different from our own an outsider, an “other” who needs to deal with their issues. This conclusion born out of individualized “Christianity” instead of a shared communal understanding, by principle rejects Paul’s instruction of empathy identification.
Since the time, “When the Most High gave the Nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of man, He set the boundaries of the peoples,” Deuteronomy 32:8 NASB His intention guided the people to homelands, “Filling the earth” which has been Creator’s heart from the beginning. The ancient boundaries between “the sons of man” are His. Through the study of the Scriptures in the earlier post we understand changing them brings curse. To do so through the means of bloodshed, theft, or enslavement incurs a double portion of curse. Studying the list of Scripture proclaims plainly and openly implications associated with the process that motivated much of colonization by people migrating out of European nations not only in what has become the US but throughout the peoples of the world. Moreover, the insidiousness harkens back to the action imposed upon the “sons of man” gathered in the, “plain in the land of Shinar” Genesis 11:2 where Creator/Yahweh imposed His heart through forming the nations and people groups He planned, Genesis 1:26-28,& 9:7 to reflect the multiplicity of Himself. Colonial culture today expresses itself in modernity. Modernity embodies the sin of Babel one culture one language turned against the Creator and His heart. Lucifer understands two things about the process of modernity. He draws upon the Fallen heart of man to make a name for himself and the understanding that the unified/homogenized identity eliminates competition, and alters the image of Yahweh seen in the diversity of Man. This in turn renews the Babylonian heart of, “nothing which they purpose to do will be imposable for them” Genesis 11:6b. This singleness of expression seems to be expressed with, “kings of the earth… were made drunk with the wine of her immorality”, Revelation 17:2.
Drunkenness implies impaired activities and the ease of the ability to take advantage of the impaired by, “mix[ing] in your venom even to make them drunk so as to look on their nakedness”, Habakkuk 2:15. As we can gather, through these connections the “venom” implies a serpent/snake. The venom we call sin entered into Man at the fall and the poison inflected through the “bite” intoxicates (Latin root of poison) Man (kings), through the promises of an oneness apart from the truth of Scripture. The most insidious aspect of modernity (and her mother colonialism) hides uniformity under the cloak of unity where even Yahweh’s people become mislead as history testifies, and Jesus warned Matthew 24:24. Manifest Destiny and other aspects of imposed racial cultural superiority often took on religious fervor and unfortunately combined with Scriptural terminology influencing a reaction to “civilizing” as Jesus being the “white man’s god”. I often ask, is your savior your creator and is your creator your savior they must be one and the same or you worship a false god. He who created who flooded the earth also, “… made from one, every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times, and boundaries of their habitation, that they should seek God [Creator/Yahweh]”, Acts 17:26-27a NASB.
So, I ask again in conclusion, “Who’s thankful for what?”. Moreover, let me add “Can we sit together as one at Yahweh’s table giving thanks to Him for His blessings shared in common?”
