Are we seekers of the truth? The men of Jerusalem thought
that they were. After the destruction of Jerusalem and three successive exiles
to Babylon, those who remained in Judah came to the Prophet Jeremiah and asked
him to seek the counsel of the Lord. They were afraid that King Nebuchadnezzar
of Babylon would return to destroy this small remnant for killing his governor,
Gedaliah. Should they remain in Judah or flee to their ally, Egypt?
Ten days later, Jeremiah returned with the Lord’s verdict.
He would protect them only if they
remained in Judah:
·
“hear the word of the LORD, O remnant of Judah.
Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: If you set your faces to enter
Egypt and go to live there, then the sword that you fear shall overtake you
there in the land of Egypt, and the famine of which you are afraid shall follow
close after you to Egypt, and there you shall die. All the men who set their
faces to go to Egypt to live there shall die by the sword, by famine, and by
pestilence. They shall have no remnant or survivor from the disaster that I
will bring upon them. (Jeremiah 42:15-17)
Sadly, even though they sought the Lord’s counsel, they
refused to obey it and fled to Egypt. To justify their disobedience, they
accused Jeremiah of lying. Any leader justifies his sin by clothing himself
with the appearance of righteousness. This had also characterized the history
of Israel – ostensibly seeking the truth only to reject it.
Is it bad enough to reject the Word of God. However, to seek
it and then to reject it is even worse, as Jeremiah explained:
·
“For you sent me to the LORD your God, saying,
‘Pray for us to the LORD our God, and whatever the LORD our God says declare to
us and we will do it.’ And I have this day declared it to you, but you have not
obeyed the voice of the LORD your God in anything that he sent me to tell you.
Now therefore know for a certainty that you shall die by the sword, by famine,
and by pestilence in the place where you desire to go to live.” (Jeremiah 42:20-22)
The world is no different. We claim that we are “truth-seekers,”
but when we are confronted with a truth that doesn’t affirm our interests and
beliefs, we reject it. We deny that we have freewill because it doesn’t conform
to our materialistic paradigm. We try to explain the wonder of consciousness as
a material phenomenon because we have rejected anything beyond the material. We
try to squirm around the incredible fine-tuning of the universe by proposing
the existence of a multiverse, without the slightest shred of evidence. We try
to explain the wonder of life by the naturalistic tale of self-organization,
again without any evidence and in the face of counter-evidence.
Are we any less guilty than the Israelites who rejected the
Word of God? Is rejecting the evidence of God a matter of moral culpability? I
don’t see why this shouldn’t be! Nor does God (Romans 1:18-32).
No comments:
Post a Comment