As long as men desire to be as god they will find themselves disappointed, unable to receive the place they want for themselves. However, when we hear what Jesus is teaching His people, that recognizes who we truly are, sinners saved by grace, those who have received by gift and grant the benefits won by the Messiah who humbled Himself, even to the point of the cross, and was obedient not out of hope of gaining back His place, but knowing that the promise had already been made. Not my will, but thy will be done summarizes the difference at a foundational level between those who go back to their house justified, and those who continue to, in anger, lash out against the love of God found in Christ Jesus the perfect Son and Redeemer.

The blessings of God include clarity of mind and soul. There is freedom from the oppressing power of sin, and its influence to destroy. While the old man within us yearns to drag us back into the clutches of death and Hell the assurance we receive in Christ is that if we are united to our Lord by faith no created person or affect can separate us from the love of our glorious Redeemer. These truths allow us to receive an understanding of the world around us that should change the way we see the fallenness of man and all that takes place downstream from sin’s wages. In some measure this has the possibility of increasing our lamentation for the reality of the world as it is. When you know the way things ought to be it exacerbates the bother when men choose to do otherwise. There is a meme around that images a Ph.D Historian sitting in a comfy wingback that contains a tagline which reads:

Those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it. Yet those who do study history are doomed to stand by helplessly while everyone else repeats it.

As we continue to look at and consider paganism and all its tricks and trades there is a need for Christians to read and learn about these things with discernment. We need to not only take honestly their teachings, but warn with wisdom those caught in the thought patterns which inhabit the blindness operating within false religions. As has been noted before that begins first with better comprehending what the true religion teaches. I’ve heard catechisms referred to in the past as the skeleton upon which to hang the meat of the word, and there is a lot of truth to that.

To illustrate this let’s take a look at what the Children’s Catechism does when it declares to our elementary kids in questions 4 and 5 the reasons why we are to love what God loves:

Q. 4. How can you glorify God?
A. By loving him and doing what he commands.

Q. 5. Why ought you to glorify God?
A. Because he made me and takes care of me.

Training the minds of young ones to see the relationship they have with the one who made the Heavens and the Earth, and how He made them to be His, is helpful in then teaching them why because of this mercy our response is to first love and then obey. Getting things in that order is what really maintains the wall of separation between paganism and Christianity. While we can make the love of God for His people into a saccharine humanistic mess it doesn’t need to be so. When the apostle John defines Jehovah as love it is in the context of him saying, “. . . and everyone that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God”.

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