Religion and Spirituality

Isaiah 58 - Tell my people of their sins.... And they will be incredulous

They act so pious - they SEEM delighted to learn about me - ACT like a righteous nation - pretending they want to be near me.

We have fasted...why aren't you impressed.  We've been hard on ourselves and you don't even notice. 

You fast and do all the religious stuff but then go about your every day life doing all kinds of things that are wrong.  This is what religion does: Do all the right religious things trying to get God to notice and come through for us.  Then go on about our day and disregard God in how we treat people, how we spend money etc.  

God warns them and us not to imagine we can do all our spiritual practices separate from our every day lives.  Don't imagine that it's all well and good to go to church, small group, fast, pray etc.  Get up from doing these activities and just go do what we want now that we've done all our religious things.

And don't turn dealing with the poor and oppressed as another religious duty.  People do this now and miss the whole point Isaiah is making. They go out and do their justice and compassion ministry and think "O good, I've done my duty.  Now I can do what I want" with little or no thought to living a God honoring, God glorifying kind of life.

Bad things happen to good people...

It's the age old inescapable question that haunts every strata of society: Why do bad things happen to good people?

Keller has a lot on this in Reason for God.  Others have written brilliantly.  One of the best responses to this question came from a conference book: The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World.  Not sure who said it but the speaker/writer countered back with something like this: I'll answer that if you can answer for me why the God of the Universe didn't kill everyone in our city today for the sin of our actions and our hearts just today. Forget about last week or our cumulative record of sin and idolatry against God.  

Interesting thoughts...

However, came across the writings of Isaiah this morning and he wonders why good godly people die before their time - and no one can figure out why.  His answer: "No one seems to understand that God is protecting them from the evil to come. For those who follow godly paths will rest in peace when they die."

Maybe it's part of God's sovereign providential care for his people to kill some of us early so that we avoid future catastrophe - and maybe because God knows that it would be better for a particular individual to die now, while a shred of godliness remains, than to drift away completely. 

Hmmm!!