I do not like to separate a message from its concrete business. I am deliberately highlighting Roman 12:2 without the context of human bodies – balancing our godward and community obligations – because the connection lends itself to the very thing we need to do but largely ignore. 12:2 may begin like the notable Sinai covenant with its Do not conform, but it rattles a cage we need to protest.

Do not conform to the fashion of this world; but be transformed by the complete change that has come over your minds, so that you may discern what God’s will is–all that is good, acceptable, and perfect.

Romans 12:2

Stop conforming! Cooperating with the transforming work of the Holy Spirit. The world wants us to adopt its wisdom, fashion, and goals, but we are on a different trek. Keep decreasing the readiness to shape our lives by what the world dictates. Knowing that friendship with the world demonstrates the absence of divine Father-love we mount a strong and sustained protest. Knowing that for the rest of our lives there is transformation and renewal we contend vigorously for growth in Christ. Knowing that the world will eventually turn on us we refuse to be turned on by its pretty pictures of shallow success.

Isaiah is the salvation prophet of Old Testament times and he draws the fire of New Testament times observers who wish he has not asked. “Who believes our report?” is the dreaded question that opens his 53^rd chapter. He also exposes the lipservice rendered by people in ancient and New Testament times who reject faith in God as all sufficient. By the time we arrive at the 5th verse – one of the iconic sayings in this passage – we have seen 17 actions defined.

• verse 1: believe, reveal
• verse 2: ascend, see, desire
• verse 3: despise, be familiar, despise, esteem
• verse 4: lift, carry, esteem, plague, smite, afflict
• verse 5: pierce, bruise, heal

What we can learn from this small observation is that 7 of these actions are human and none of them are honourable, not even our seeing him, which does not end in desire for him.

Ben Carson on What is a Bad Racist
Is there an intelligent nuance to “not too bad sinner”? How does any literate person define racism if not by what a person says and does?
Ben Carson, a sometimes departed Christian, a man whose defence of African liberation is a feather in the wind, a cowardly activist for the poor, has failed to bring the fire of his medical expertise to the political arena. If he still names Christ as Lord and Saviour-God there remains much room for growth, at least a small sign of maturing.

The dives into political power with a religious mask, in Judaism, Islam, or Hinduism, are a catastrophic error. Caesar and Christ do not become genuine partners.

The ability to repent and discern truth is a function of paternal pity. Repentance and discernment help comes and goes with minimal human intervention and their progress do much better when we stay off our neighbours’ field.

There comes a time, unlike all others, when God wants nothing but a one-on-one with those he wants close to him. They can short-circuit his intentions by hanging on to testimony that says they already know about the righteous and the wicked (the ungodly, the same guys from Psalm 1).

Then shall ye return, and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not.

Malachi 3:18

We in the 21st century have to revise our concept that people in antiquity always knew the difference between the righteous and the wicked.

• Consider that 400 years go by and no one discerns the difference; in Egypt
• Imagine that 40 years (an entire generation) go by and there is no consensus; in the wilderness
• Consider that three persons out of thousands stood resolute against idolatry; in Babylonian exile
• A millennium passes from the first king to the great passover; ending in New Testament times

Killing people as service to God

A man faces opposition, word traps from religious people, death threats, and accusations of wrongdoing for doing on demand a host of things that were either rare or nonexistent in the province of Judea. Even faith for a healing was scarce in Israel.

They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time comes, that whosoever kills you will think that he does God service. And these things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor me.

John 16:2-3

This treatment of a neighbour, demonstrates poor community standards and a lack of direction, and it shows that having Abraham as ancestor and the four world-ruling powers are inconsequential.

Knowing the difference between the tsiddiqim and the reshayim is not so easy as singing a popular song (Ps 1) about the counsel of the the wicked/ungodly. It does not happen apart from God’s personal intervention.

Preachers and the bigot in the White House have been doing the same thing: trying make a hero to tie Mr. Obama’s laces. Good luck with that!

Many Christians, not only in North America, have countenanced an endless stream of doublespeak. The apostolic witness is clear: Christ is boss of everything by himself. No government or country commands equal attention with the gospel.

They flip between Baal and Yahweh in the same sentence. Elijah (John the Baptist) is cooking their goose.

In the modern era we suffer from hundreds of dangerous soundbytes. Some of them are a single word, others consist of a few words and may be a full sentence. Even if the words are factual the sound few soundbytes can compete for leaving the smell of death like “God and country” or “one nation under God”.

What is a soundbyte? It is an expression that is small and intentionally charged with meaning, positive or negative. Advertisements on television and radio are popular users of soundbytes: well-chosen words intended to seize attention and become part of the public’s thinking.

Nation under God

Where is that righteous nation? Why does a nation have transgression and sins? How do these two conditions get resolved? These are our concerns for the people who take the bible into their civic life as if one can make a car run on grape juice.

Isaiah had an assignment that helps us understand the values of any nation or kingdom that steps up to be registered as righteous. In 58:1-2 we read of the rebellion and misses.

Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins. Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of their God: they ask of me the ordinances of justice; they take delight in approaching to God.

If these people who Isaiah addressed had the best instruction what hope can anyone clung to in quest of a righteous report card?

In every nation

Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him.

Acts 10:34ff

The devil’s grip on the nations

That word which God sent unto the children of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ: (he is Lord of all:) That word, I say, ye know, which was published throughout all Judæa, and began from Galilee, after the baptism which John preached; How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him

The nation vs the righteous

• And we are witnesses of all things which he did both in the land of the Jews, and in Jerusalem;
• whom they slew and hanged on a tree:
• Him God raised up the third day,
• and shewed him openly; Not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before of God, even to us, who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead.
• And he commanded us to preach unto the people, and to testify that it is he which was ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead.
• To him give all the prophets witness, that through his name whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins.

There is no righteousness in the law, not for nations nor for individuals. So what could possibly constitute the righteous report card for the world’s modern nations? Will they turn their swords in farming tools? Will empty their prisons of condemned inncent and their jurisdictions of poor and disenfranchised citizens?

Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.

Ps. 127:1

Nations are typically defined as republics, kingdoms, principalities, or states. The Bible recognizes all of them but only the kingdom, those having an effective head in whom resides both leadership and representation has a chance of getting a well-done from God. That is rare, and the entity that puts its own goals and concepts ahead of pure philanthropy can be expected to be part of the alliance that separates divine graces from its civic process can hardly be called righteous. Even when they claim to have Judaic and Christian foundations the politics turns out to be a mishmash of cruelty and oppression. The rich are the models while the messengers of the healing of the human family are despised and assassinated.

Here what Stephen had to say when he came face to face with the civic power of a religious entity. It is a severe warning about mixing political power with a religious agenda. No-one with a cleansed heart can want to be subject to the judgment of religious bigots as Stephen was.

Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, Acts. 7:52 you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it.” Acts. 7:53 Now when they heard these things they were enraged, and they ground their teeth at him. Acts. 7:54

The search for the righteous nation with the same qualities as the redeemed person is futile. No mob rule – people blindly following traditon – can ever represent God’s idea of righteous. “Nations under God” are bound to be idolatrous comedies. The beast will never beome a man. The mixing of Caesar’s dominion with a corporate religious entity will give way to individual responsibility.

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man and the seed of beast. Jer. 31:27 And it shall come to pass that as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring harm, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, declares the LORD. Jer. 31:28 In those days they shall no longer say: “‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ Jer. 31:29 But everyone shall die for his own iniquity. Each man who eats sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge. Jer. 31:30

The real regime

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, Jer. 31:31
not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. Jer. 31:32

A righteous nation can only have righteous building blocks, as Peter calls them, living stones. No alliance with Caesar is acceptable. the guidance offered to earth’s nations in our times has been ignored: only a sense of collective security commitment to the human race can qualify the nations for righteous identity. The great and mighty have the greatest hurdles to getting there.