Zeal Reveals
"Drug money saved banks in global crisis, claims UN advisor"
(read the headline from an article in the Guardian Sat 12 Dec 2009)
The idea was that billions of drug cartel dollars kept the financial banking systems afloat at the height of the global economic crisis during the Obama era economic collapse and financial downgrading caused by terrible government overspending and corrupted economic housing policies.
This was the crux of the story being told in the seventh episode of the season one Net Flix series Ozark. The young son [Jonah] of Marty and Wendy Byrde is being forced by a school teacher to sign a pledge (along with his entire class) that states that he will say no to drugs. Why is this a lesson for us today? Well...to answer that I have to first explain that, as I see it, this series exposes the ugly truth about truth. It exposes the truth about people. And the truth about all cultures. About all classes of humanity. And often I come away undecided if there are any redeeming people at all in the world (including myself) as a result of watching this show. But if there is a characteristic of redeeming character in any of the show's characters, the closest so far would be young Jonah (except maybe pastor Mason Young's pregnant wife Grace). Not that Jonah's "good", or is even meant to represent good, but he acts as a sort of social mirror. I see Jonah Byrde as a twisted sort of prophet.
Jonah Byrde makes an assertion to his class and then the school administrators that the drug trade basically saved the country from complete economic collapse in 2008, and its a true story. This is the habit of Jonah. He's a truth teller. He's in fact obsessed with the ironic realities of this life. Starlings and Blue Birds, Vultures and Carrion. Jonah sees the natural order of the ugly truth of this world. The inconvenient truth. Jonah doesn't judge these natural truths, no condemnation, just a logical Vulcan-like approach to assessing the world around him. He comes off a little creepy, maybe a serial killer in the making, but from his perspective, everyone is dirty, no one does good, no not one.
This dark ugly series about truth and lies reveals how everyone is making excuses for their particular sins. Even the church (religious people) comes under condemnation when a heroin drug runner makes the point to the Pastor who's about to compromise his truth in order to maintain his position, "Don’t the dealers deserve a little religion, too? Who is it hurting?" What's revealed is that humanity, or more specifically mankind's sinful nature, is the "invading species" in an otherwise good natural order. Mankind weaves webs of lies. And ensnares within those webs of compromised truths the lives of multitudes of others, known and unknown. Like the starlings and the bluebirds. Like the virtue-signaling snob vultures. Like the little white liars, and the straight up evil strip club owners. No one is good, no not one. There is no safe option found among men. Everyone is caught up between warring evil cartels, virtue-signaling snobs, corrupted governments and law enforcement, and religious zealots controlled by the desire to be desired and praised by everyone of these other dirty people. Who will save us from this wretched people?
What's the lesson from the prophet Jonah Byrde today?
The wages of sin is death.
For Jonah Byrde, death represents the death of being a truth teller. Jonah says as much when he states, "YOU WOULDN'T WANT ME TO SIGN SOMETHING I DON'T COMPLETELY BELIEVE IN, WOULD YOU?"
What does God's word have to say about this?
“Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak truth each one of you with his neighbor, for we are members of one another.” (Ephesians 4:25)
Truth is:
We bend the truth. We tell half truths and white lies. We don't tell the whole truth. We cover up the truth by lying to cover for someone else. We stretch the truth. We evade and withhold the truth.
In the book, The Day that America Told the Truth, it states (p. 45) that 91 percent of us lie regularly. Of the people interviewed, 92 percent said the main reason for their lying was to save face, and 98 percent said the reason they told lies was so as not to offend people. In another survey; 91 percent of all respondents said they were “satisfied with my own ethics and character” (Reader’s Digest [Nov., 1999], pp. 81-82).
Even biblical heroes lied; Abraham, Sarah, Moses, Aaron, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob, Rachel, and David all lied, as did Peter. Good company...right? I suppose so (shrug).
So what does The Holy Spirit have to say about all this?
Since God has changed us through the gospel, we are to live in the light of the truth by putting off the old life, being renewed in the spirit of our minds, and putting on the new life (4:22-24). But do we apply it specifically to our daily lives?
God is the source of truth. He is the only true God, whose word is truth (John 17:3). Jesus Christ is the embodiment of the truth (John 14:6; Eph. 4:21). Jesus, our God, was asked by Pilate his executioner, "what is truth?" - Jesus never did reply to that question, but I will. Truth is an accurate representation of the facts. Especially, truth is conformity to God’s standards as revealed in His Word (John 17:17). And therefore, telling untruths is any deliberate misrepresentation of the facts. As is popularly and controversially talked about today, telling untruths is misinformation.
Jonah Byrde doesn't want to become a vector of misinformation. He is trying to navigate through these deep dark waters of deception that live and breathe all around him. His approach, is a zeal for logic and a bold truth telling. This is the style of the prophet, and most prophets end up dead. Why is that? Simply put, truth-telling makes people nervous, it's inconvenient and considered to be inconsiderate. And so guilt makes people act out. The consistency of a logical truth-teller heaps burning coals of condemnation upon the heads of the guilty. One's conduct can bring people to faith or cause them to act out in wicked ways. Conviction is a powerful transforming tool in God's Spiritual sanctifying grace. Our zeal for truth can encourage and discourage.
Truth is: Zeal Can Reveal
The cross is easier to the Christian who takes it up than to the one who drags it along.
Zeal without knowledge is like heat without light. Zeal without knowledge is fanaticism.
If people were more zealous about truth and less jealous about being found out, this world would be a much better place in which to live.
Extra Credit Lesson: 1 Kings 17:17-24 A Zeal For Truth And For God's Will To Be Done
In this Old Testament teaching the widow speaks for all of us, how we all seem to approach God's Works, especially in hard times. The widow’s reaction is to turn on Elijah. What kind of “man of God” saves a mother and son from starvation only to allow the son to die of illness? She speaks against Elijah the Prophet, she said to Elijah, “What have you against me, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance and to cause the death of my son!” [verse 18]. She blames God and her sin for the death of her son. I wonder if she says “man of God” with sarcasm dripping from her lips.
Elijah does not say, “Do not worry, widow — it is all part of the plan.” Or “God would not do such a thing.” He simply says, “Give me the boy.” Elijah prays and I mean he really PRAYS!
He cried out to the Lord, “O Lord my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I sojourn, by killing her son?” Then he stretched himself upon the child three times and cried to the Lord, “O Lord my God, let this child's life come into him again.” And the Lord listened to the voice of Elijah. And the life of the child came into him again, and he revived. [verses 20-22].
The moral of the story is we should approach the temptation to sin by focusing on God as our best chance at winning this battle day by day, and not continue to sow to the flesh. Jonah Byrde's dad Marty is forever weaving lie upon lie in order to "save" his family. And yet he also constantly tells the whole truth eventually when pressed up against it. It doesn't change anything for him to tell the whole truth because in his heart he intends only to do his own will in all his own ways. He's not trying at all to please God, only fix his own circumstances under his own strengths. Marty not only doesn't expect God's help, he's not looking for God's involvement at all. And this is the lesson this father is teaching his family and everyone else around him. And that's how generational sin gets a foothold in families. It's learned.
Elijah expects God to redeem the situation. And he cries out until God acts. And that's the zealous thing to do. Starve the compromise, starve the jealousy, starve the impatience, and zealously pray for the grace of God.
Go with God and humble yourself in His Good Graces.
Amen.