Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

• Romans 12:1-2

This is the last installment in this little miniseries.  I could probably think of other things, but if I thought too hard, I might pull a muscle.

I wrote in a Philosophy post one time that the philosopher in question was saying what a friend of mine in South Carolina had framed and placed behind his desk, “Everything that you know is wrong.”

But there is three problems with that.  Some things that we know when we first leave home are correct.  Very late in life, just before my Dad passed away, he said that working hard all my life may have not worked out so well in this world, but God had noticed.  And I think writing an average 13 and a half posts each week is working hard.  It takes a lot of time.

But other than that worldly wisdom versus spiritual wisdom stuff, we know that two plus two is four.  That is, unless we are dealing with a base three system, where two plus two is eleven, but who uses a screwed-up system like that?

But then there is another problem with everything that you know is wrong.  You learned that stuff from your parents or people that you respected.  Their advice was not just unhelpful, it was hurtful.  But you must honor your parents.

And the third reason this is hard is that you have to be kicked in the teeth repeatedly before you realize that what these people from a different age told you probably did not fit their age and it definitely does not fit the present age.  And we have that psychological issue that the first thing we learn is hard to relearn and get it replaced.

But I have to add the Bible verse above.  Now after being the person who had ideas crammed into his head for the first 22 years of his life, and repeated each time I learned that what my parents told me did not work now, probably did not work when my parents were my age, and was probably outdated when they learned those “wise” sayings.  When the reason my mother’s lies do not work and never did work is that those sayings were of a perfect world.  We are not to conform to that world.  In the working world, we might have a treacherous tightrope to walk, but we still must be transformed by the renewing of our minds.

So, maybe everything that I knew was not wrong from the very beginning, it was just wrong for this fallen world.  At some point, God will put His arms around me and say that it’s all okay for everything has worked for my good.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.