At times, I like to get lost in the endless rabbit hole of 2leep.com. It is a network of blogs and posts, most of which contain photographs. At times it’s funny, but at other times really disheartening and sad.

Today, as I browsed through the long corridors of the site, I came across this post. It is mostly photographs from a museum featuring hundreds of ancient torture devices; some of the most brutal treatment of one human to another.

These are a few that are featured on the website. I’ve posted them very small because they are not for the squeamish. If you want a better look, click to enlarge. Or, check out the original post.

Many of these tortures and punishments were very likely used by the religious people of the time.

I think if there is any question about whether human beings have a certain ‘bent’ toward wickedness (even among the religious, the baptized), a gander at these photos should clear things up pretty sufficiently. For all of our learning, knowledge and enlightenment, we are a sick set of creatures.

For three transgressions and for four God would not stay the judgment pronounced on seven different peoples. But on only one of them God was angry for the injury to himself.

In the first two chapters of Amos, God pronounces judgment on Gaza, Damascus, Edom, the Ammonites, Tyre, Moab.

But to Israel he says this (Amos 2:6-7):

    "For three transgressions of Israel,
   and for four, I will not revoke the punishment,
because they sell the righteous for silver,
   and the needy for a pair of sandals—
…

a man and his father go in to the same girl,
   so that my holy name is profaned”

I had to stop and think about this. It was specifically the people called by God’s name that their sin not only stood in its own as a heinous crime. But was much worse than that. Their sin was actually profanity against God’s holiness.

Today, when the people called by God’s name fail to emulate his character to the broken world around them it’s not only a bitter failure, but it’s a caustic reflection of God himself. The church’s abhorrent behavior toward each other and the world is many people’s only picture of God.

Is it any wonder they don’t listen to us?

A few days ago I posted the lyrics to a song I’ve been stuck on. It’s called The Underdog, by a group known as ‘Spoon’. In the song, the chorus lyric is repeated several times:

You got no time for the messenger,
got no regard for the thing that you don’t understand,
you got no fear of the underdog,
that’s why you will not survive!

I was thinking of it earlier as I read in Proverbs 30, about the four exceedingly wise, yet very small things. It goes like this. Proverbs 30:24-28:

Four things on earth are small,
   but they are exceedingly wise:
the ants are a people not strong,
   yet they provide their food in the summer;
the rock badgers are a people not mighty,
   yet they make their homes in the cliffs;
the locusts have no king,
   yet all of them march in rank;
the lizard you can take in your hands,
   yet it is in kings’ palaces.

It reminded me of how easy it is for us to look down on people of different circumstances from our own. As Americans, it seems bred into us that we’re the pinnacle of what good society looks and acts like. But this isn’t necessarily true.

Ants store up food, rock badgers can live in treacherous terrain, locust march in rank and lizards get to live in the palace of a king.

Indeed, Christians in China have it more difficult than we do here. But they are seeing disciples made and the church spread. Christians in Africa struggle to find clean water, but they’re not weighed down by materialism.

The verse in Proverbs (and the song by Spoon, also I suppose), calls us to be humble. We have to realize that while there are some aspects of our society that are excellent, it has it’s own detrimental shortcomings too, and exporting our way of life will only export our problems, as well.

Consider these two quotes:

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom…”

and:

“To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom”

These two quotes are in direct opposition to one another. One says that fear must be overcome for wisdom. The other says that fear itself is where wisdom is found. The first quote comes from Psalms 9:10. The second comes from British philosopher Bertrand Russell in the 1800’s.

The philosophy of the world says that our fear is a hindrance. God says our stubborn confidence is.

James 4:4 says,

“You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”

In the past couple weeks this verse has become a bit haunting to me. I know that it doesn’t speak directly to my situation, but the principals apply nonetheless.

As I’ve been developing a discipline in prayer of the past couple of months, one of the things I’ve tried to make a priority is prayer for the lost. Specifically individuals in or around my life that don’t know Jesus yet. I think this has begun to deepen the seriousness of their plight in my heart and mind. When I’m around them, their spiritual condition is more on the forefront of my mind than it was in the past.

The trouble is, though my mind is there, my actions aren’t following yet.

It was recently that I was out with a handful of believers and about as many non-believers. At some point during the evening, I looked around and noticed that we weren’t too much different from them. At least not obviously. I don’t mean to imply these were particularly rough people. They were friendly, nice enough and weren’t even especially vulgar. But they weren’t loving either.

Neither were we.

And that’s the problem. Not especially loving to each other, to them or obviously to anyone else. I can’t help but wonder how we expect questions about “the hope that we have” when we’re not even obviously different.

Now, please, don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that we dawn exclusively black and white attire, with big hats and belt buckles. Nor am I really suggesting that there should be frivolous encouragements thrown around. I’m simply saying that our choices and actions should be shining with love for each other. That is how the world will know we are Jesus’ disciples–heck that’s how I became a believer.

I can’t help but feel like God is often working in spite of his Church, rather than through it.

It seems that people often read verses in the bible about the way God works through believers and assume that it’s true of them. But simply because the bible says that God does it, doesn’t mean he always does it. And, judging my what I’ve seen throughout most of my walk, in me and in my brothers and sisters, it seems unlikely that those verses are talking about us!

I would like to see, through prayer and Spirit lead sanctification, my own choices and my own attitudes, along with the whole church, shift. So that when the world sees us they will actually have a reason to wonder.