Translating a World on the Edge

Trunk, leaves, and branches, are important parts of what it means to be a tree.

Stem, petals, and stamen, are important parts of what it means to be a flower.

Bones, skin, and muscle are important parts of what it means to be an animal.

Language, decision-making, and love are crucial to what it means to be a human being.

Those are only a few of the attributes that give these living things their meanings. And each of their meanings is different as it pertains to the world it lives in.

We can think of a multitude of uses for trees, flowers, animals. We can build structures from the trunks of trees, or make perfume from flowers. We can use animals for comfort, or protection, or even food. And we can use them in these ways because God created them for our use.

BUT HE DID NOT CREATE HUMAN BEINGS TO BE USED, OR MALICIOUSLY LIED TO, BY OTHER HUMAN BEINGS. And so often we do it. To use another human being for our own selfish purpose is nothing less than evil.

I’m not talking only about the glaring evil of killing of an inconvenient child in the womb, or the selling of one human being to another as if he or she isn’t God’s child. What about the less obvious ways we use and lie to others?

What about people who use others for their own gain in business or politics– until they’re no longer needed, and then they dispose of them?

What about people who love to talk about other people, especially if they can say something bad? How many newspaper columns, magazines, and TV and radio talk shows delight in digging up dirt on others for a profit? And who cares if its a lie?

And how many times do we lie to others to get them to do what we them to do?

Or promise another person what we know we can’t, or won’t, deliver?

Have you known people who make up lies about others just to make themselves feel better?

We lie to others. We use others when we shouldn’t. We use them and lie to them without remembering that they are precious children of God, as we are.

Parents of children can easily understand God’s love for His children. Aren’t our own children so precious to us that we would fight tooth and nail to keep someone else from lying to them, and then using them in a demeaning way?

Lies always catch up with the people who spread them. Often it causes the ‘spreader’ great pain. Expect that–because God, in His loving wisdom, allows it to happen.