Unequal Death

Listening to the Bible is exciting because it gets me to know things that I seem to miss when I am reading. Some truths seem to be so hidden (of course that is not true) that even reading through them a hundred times you will slip through some key truths.

Of course I know that God also reserves the time to bring to life whatever truth He needs to transform me at any one time.

But I find the Audio Bible such a useful tool in my spiritual workshop.

Of course I listen to it differently than most because I put it on when I go to bed and it speaks to me the whole night. When I wake up, when I lose sleep, when I’m asleep and of course the time I am relaxing in bed after waking up.

I know you know that the brain does not die when one is asleep and so the Audio Bible is a good addition to a healthy sleep pattern.

Now to my topic.

I do not know whether you have followed Israel’s complaints since leaving Egypt.

Do you realize that the only time they did not prefer death was the first time they faced it at the Red Sea? They preferred slavery because that is what they had been facing.

Since that time, they were always saying that it would have been better if they had died the death they had been dreading the previous time.

What is so special about yesterday’s death that I want to celebrate it when I face death today?

I dare say that that is the conversation of people who would rather not progress. It is the cry of a people who have a problem with being led to a better place. In simple terms it is the language of the faithless; the diet of the perennial complainers.

Why would having died yesterday be preferable to dying today yet death is simply that, death?

I am not ready for growth. I am not ready for responsibility.

Why did I not embrace that death yesterday? I am not ready to die.

Facing death and dealing with the same is my problem. And it is so because I am not ready to live the present. I am not ready for the challenges today will bring.

Let me illustrate with the spies.

 They had gone to see the land God promised their fathers. And the land was there alright. And it was just as God had described it.

However, it required work before occupation. It required a breakthrough, them breaking through some obstacles and barriers.

We are not ready to fight to occupy. God ought to have cleared the Anakims before taking them there.

They chose to forget that the same God had told them that He would clear the inhabitants slowly by slowly so that they do not find a land overrun with wild animals, and of course bushes and forests. This would have required more work, more resources for the same and longer time before feeding off the land.

In short, the promise had included subduing the giants.

But they were not ready to work.

That is why they preferred the previous day’s death to facing the giants.

But look at Caleb.

And Caleb stilled the people before Moses, and said, Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it. (Numbers 13:30)

The problem was not the giants. It was an Israel unwilling to work.

That is why God agreed with them and killed them in the desert.

Does this speak to our generation?

Let us look at a few things.

What do you think when people talk about working smart and working hard?

Those two are treated as opposites.

Working smart means using your brain to make others work hard on your behalf. Simply said people work and you are paid.

The flip side of this is that those who are working do not deserve to earn because they are not smart. They are like asses or mules who just need food to survive, and of course work for the smart.

In short it means that the one who can get the most out of people and situations after putting in the least is the smartest.

And you will never hear even the most spiritual of these spiritual papas or mamas calling that wickedness and exploitation.

Or look at the political narratives in our country.

We did not educate our children to push wheelbarrows.

Now, since wheelbarrows will have to be pushed, who will push them?

The same mindset. We will exploit the poor and uneducated by paying them close to nothing to push our wheelbarrows.

But it is in the spiritual where it gets amplified.

Why do people look for miracles? Why do they run to prophets? Why do they give everything to the man of God (whatever that means)? Why are Prayer Mountains always occupied?

They are looking for short cuts. They want a breakthrough that does not require breaking through. They want to get to Canaan without passing through the wilderness for training. They want to occupy without dealing with the giants.

I want to experience peace without squaring it out with my pesky neighbor. I want to have great children without using the cane on them. I want to get the best job without being the best at my present one. I want to have a great marriage without working on my immaturity. And I want to have a vibrant ministry without putting in the labor, the sweat, the perseverance, the longsuffering it requires.

I will therefore use the least investment (money) on the least demanding (man of God, witch, lottery) to jump the queue because I am smarter than most (at least I think so).

Giving therefore becomes the short cut to God’s intervention because I think He fits the bill (at least that is what men of God have taught).

That is the greatest error and danger of the prosperity ungospel. It teaches people short cuts to things without short cuts. And the broker (man of God) is the ultimate reaper.

If we taught people to grow in the things of God, I doubt we will have as much drama as we continue to witness in the world today.

But there is something benefitting from those short cuts, the person occupying a spiritual position.

Do you know that most pyramid schemes thrive in church, many times being fronted by the main guys?

Some time ago I spoke to some friends and told them that it was a pyramid scheme.

One of them was very bold in challenging me, of course showing me a cheque in the name of a big pastor.

How can God speak to you and not to the denominational head and senior pastor? And of course I kept quiet.

It is when they lost their savings that they came to me with bowed heads.

The enticement of short cuts is because they appear too sweet and fleeting to think through. Losing through not thinking through appears wiser than delaying until you think and pray through. Very few such schemes will come back to you if you tell them to give you time to think about it. Thinking is not part of their modus operandi. Yet believers flock them.

And pastors have led many to everything from divorce to suicide when they endorse such short cuts.

Yet as much as pastors are complicit in most of these affairs, they are not the only culprits.

The believer who puts his brain in his pocket and uses someone else’s brain has no right to blame somebody else when they are fleeced.

But that is the problem we see with Israel in this instance. No wonder they prefer yesterday’s death to today’s challenge.

What would you?