Imagine

I am the LORD your God, who brought you up out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.  You shall no over gods before Me!  Exodus 20:2-3

This is the starting point of life.  Everything — every life and every society is to be built upon and centered on this most indispensable and preeminent truth.  This is the first Truth to be anchored to. If we are untethered here, we end up a drift into personal and cultural chaos.

Life - our life does not start with us.  It starts with God.  If we start with "us", we have no objective truth to define who we are or why we are here.  We have no underlying basis to treat the rest of humanity with dignity from the womb to the tomb.  We end up creating our own gods — in our image for us to control and yet we come undone.  This is precisely what happens to any individual and society who rejects  God (see Romans 1:18-32).

Look among the nations who have government as god and not God as God.  The State takes the place of God and defines our worth and value.  How does the State treat its people — with compassion or as chattel?  Are children considered a blessing or burden?  Does the State promote the sanctity of marriage (between one man and one woman) and family?  Or does the State redefine both according to its whim?  How will the State treat the elderly when its medical system cannot bear the economic weight?

For example, we partner with an orphanage is an Asian country where false gods are the religion of that country. The children of the orphanage have not lost parents or relatives but they have been abandoned by them. They are left to either die or else they get taken to be shipped to a neighboring country and sold into slavery as sex slaves.  

The State is impersonal and you and I are merely its pawn or a number.  In contrast, The LORD is the eternal-personal-Covenant-making-keeping God.  He sets us free to live within the bounds of His righteous nature.  He is eternal:  There is no other.  He alone dwells in immortality and is sovereign over all.  He is personal:  He is not an it.  He is not an impersonal force or law.  He knows us, loves us and is with us! He is the Covenant-making-keeping God.  He brings us into a covenant relationship with Himself based on His performance, not ours.  He alone is the One who determines our worth and value as created-dependent beings.  We are to treat each other with care and compassion; with justice and mercy; with grace and truth because this is who God is.  

Imagine - what we would be like, what a country would be like, whose God is the LORD!  

Psalm 33:12,

doug