Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.

• James 1:8

“To you, O people, I call out;
    I raise my voice to all mankind.
You who are simple, gain prudence;
    you who are foolish, set your hearts on it.
Listen, for I have trustworthy things to say;
    I open my lips to speak what is right.
My mouth speaks what is true,
    for my lips detest wickedness.
All the words of my mouth are just;
    none of them is crooked or perverse.
To the discerning all of them are right;
    they are upright to those who have found knowledge.
Choose my instruction instead of silver,
    knowledge rather than choice gold,
for wisdom is more precious than rubies,
    and nothing you desire can compare with her.

• Proverbs 8:4-11

The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple.

• Psalm 19:7

The unfolding of your words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple.

• Psalm 119:30

“Then they will call to me but I will not answer;
    they will look for me but will not find me,
since they hated knowledge
    and did not choose to fear the Lord.

• Proverbs 1:28-29

“Those who can combine simplicity and intelligence can … prevail. But what is simplicity? What is intelligence? How can the two become one? Simple is the one who in the transfiguration, confusion, and twisting of all concepts keeps the simple truth of God in focus, who is not double-minded, not a person with two minds (Jas. 1:8), but has an undivided heart. Because such people have and know God, they hold to the commandments, to the judgment and mercy that daily come anew from the mouth of God. Not enslaved to principles but bound by love for God, they have become free from the problems and conflicts of ethical decision. They are no longer weighed down by them. They belong completely and solely to God and God’s will. Because simple people do not look past God to the world, they are in a position to look freely and naturally at the reality of the world. Thus simplicity becomes intelligence. Intelligent is the one who sees reality as it is, who sees the foundation of things. Therefore, only those who see reality in God are intelligent. The perception of reality is not the same thing as the knowledge of external processes; it is, rather, seeing the essence of things. The most intelligent are not those who are the best informed.”

• Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I Want to Live These Days with You (devotion for August 28, devotions compiled from his writings)

“If we ask for something more than simplicity, it is silly then to complain that the something more is not simple.”

• C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

”Really great moral teachers never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks and cranks who do that… The real job of every moral teacher is to keep on bringing us back, time after time, to the old simple principles which we are all so anxious not to see.”

• C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

I have quoted Bonhoeffer a lot lately, but this insight answers so many questions.  Christians have been called fools, ignorant, and haters.

But once you have your eyes opened by God, you see the world for what it is.  You see God for who He is, but only in part.  Our human minds could not comprehend everything.  But because those who do not believe are blinded to God’s majesty, they call the Christian foolish.  Can you imagine a blind man telling a sighted art critic that he has interpreted a work of art all wrong?  I am sure that some blind person somewhere would think that to be horribly amusing, but to what end?  Yet, those that cannot see God, that is the evidence of God, are calling us foolish for seeing what they cannot see.

And can a man who cannot read the Bible tell a Christian that he believes those words are wrong?  Jeff Allen is a very interesting comedian.  He was saved at a point where his marriage was failing, health failing with alcoholism, and his comedy act might not have been so funny at that moment either.  He was playing golf with a Christian and the Christian asked him why he did not like what was written in the Bible.  Jeff replied something along the lines of “It’s all garbage.”  The Christian then asked, “Have you ever read the Bible?”  Jeff said he had not.  The Christian then replied, “Well, Jeff, you aren’t an atheist.  You’re a fool.”  This got Jeff Allen to start reading the Bible.  He flipped the book open and found Ecclesiastes.  He comments that he might be the only Christian on earth that was led to the Lord by reading Ecclesiastes, but “Meaningless, meaningless, all is meaningless” described his life, and he couldn’t put the book down.

How can anyone who has read a book and had divine inspiration to see beyond sight, to read what the words mean within your soul when before Christ those were just words…  How can that make one ignorant – to have knowledge that others do not have?

And the other epithet is hater.

If you stood next to a cliff, and you told people to not walk past that line of bushes over there or you will die, how are you a hater when you see countless people demand their right to walk past those bushes and they fall to their death?  How does that make you a hater?  The few that listen to your plea never regret their decision.  But no, you are a hater because you love other people so much that you do not want to see one more person step off the cliff and die.

A lot of people say that becoming a Christian is the simplest thing in the world.  You just believe in an invisible God who Created everything.  But why then did I say the salvation prayer more than 500 times to no avail?  It is simple, but I thought myself intelligent enough to only need God occasionally.  I did not want to go all in.  I did like Ananias and Sapphira.  I held something back, until one night that I was in such a horrible emotional condition that I simply (that word again) gave up, and God said, at least I think I heard it, “That’s what I have been waiting for.”

It is simple, but sometimes it is the hardest thing to do, to let go and let God …

But then after I did that, the next morning I picked up the Bible and this book that I had read over fifteen times from cover to cover (that is not including the concordance in the back, but if you just count the maps – a thousand times – now that I think of that, the question of why I went into the Corps of Engineers in the army makes more sense).  No, I read the Bible and understood what I was reading for the first time.  I read and understood beyond what those words and sentences said.  Because suddenly, it applied to me, and how before the dawn of time, God chose me.  And each time I have read the Bible sense, God tells me something new.

And each believer, once they know that God loves them that much, they start loving people they never ever met.  They all stand next to a cliff trying to keep people from stepping off into oblivion.

That is not ignorant, it is extremely intelligent.  That is not a hater, that is a lover of the God who is Love itself.

As for the fool, I would rather be a fool for Christ than anything you could imagine.  For in the end, those fools for Christ get to be with Him forever.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.