I was a little puny kid growing up. When scuffles broke out with my sister, who is three years older and ate all her vegetables, I relied on my ability to pinch and bite as my primary weapons. One day she was harassing me about something, I do not remember what, but I am certain it was entirely her fault and she absolutely deserved to be pinched. So I pinched her and drew blood. I was given a sound talking to and sent to my room while she was being consoled and tended to. I distinctly remember thinking it was so unfair.
Fast forward what seems like eons later, I came across this verse in Ezekiel.
“Yet the house of Israel says, ‘The way of the Lord is not fair.’ O house of Israel, is it not My ways which are fair, and your ways which are not fair?”
-Ezekiel 18:29
My take on the setup of this verse is that while God is grieved by Israel’s worship of everything and everyone but Him, His primary concern runs even deeper: how we treat each other. In Ezekiel 18, every sin God lays out is committed against a fellow human being. Oppression, robbery, violence, exploitation of the vulnerable. The idolatry and the injustice are connected, because when we dethrone God, we inevitably devalue the people He made in His image.
The two commandments of loving our Lord and our neighbor come to life again in the Old Testament. I hear: repent, learn, and live, or die.
‘”For I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies,” says the Lord God. “Therefore turn and live!”’
-Ezekiel 18:32
I know a lot of intelligent people, the kind who learn quickly, comprehend complex concepts, extrapolate brilliantly, and bloom in their areas of interest. Not just in the form of professional success, but in wisdom, closeness with God, and being a genuine blessing to others. But I have observed the reverse as well. People who devolve through mind numbing doom scrolling, letting media do their thinking instead of applying the God given reasoning they were created with. In many cases, unlearning is a choice, just as the choice between turning and living, or dying, is a choice
Learning can be as hard as unlearning. To learn, we have to build habits, stay consistent, and commit to a continuous plan of growth. To unlearn, we simply stay unobservant and let the world pull us into its dangerous fold. I do not think Israel became the scattered, broken nation of the Old Testament overnight. It was a slow and painful process of unlearning, pages and pages of it, followed by repenting, learning again, and then unlearning all over again. I can relate to this on a deep level. My end of day forgiveness prayer is a testament to my daily unlearning.
However, our Potter does restore us through it all, and in that I have full faith. When He is done, the image of a sheep lying in cool grass by the river will come true, rather than one that tramples its neighbor’s grass.
Dear God,
Thank You for being a teacher par excellence. No one can show us the way to perfection better than the Perfect One. Today, as I embark on anything big or small, please guide me to follow You, my true north. I pray in Your precious name, Jesus. Amen.