Extortion turns a wise person into a fool,
and a bribe corrupts the heart.*
As I write this I’m in a courthouse, awaiting possible call as a juror. I have mixed feelings about it all. Of course if it was me on trial, I’d want someone as level-headed and pure-hearted as myself. (Then again, I might want someone as merciful as possible, and altogether benign.)
If truth be known, I’d just as soon not be here . . . if nobody minds . . . and let this privilege go to someone else.
Meantime, while I sit here waiting, in another room others are also waiting . . . to hear their cases tried. Who know for what? Could be for the subject of today’s Ecclesiastical warning, extortion and bribes.
Extortion: The crime of obtaining money or some other thing of value by the abuse of one’s office or authority.
Bribe: Something such as money or favor, offered or given to a person in a position to influence that person’s views or conduct.
Okay, Your Honor, I understand. And I understand that these things are against the law and do harm to other people taken advantage of.
But, I tell myself, that’s not the reason Ecclesiastes warns against them. Rather it’s because of their damage against myself, whether or not I’m hauled into court. And, whether I’m the briber or the bribed!
Convicted in court or not, all my level-headed wisdom goes down the drain, as well as any vestige of pure heart.
Here’s the irony: Extortion and bribes are committed because one cares first about himself . . . but if one truly cares about himself he stays far from even the hint of these things.
Desperately trying to win, he loses. And not just because he eventually winds up in jail . . . but for what he’s become in the process: A self-justifying, mind-writhing, fogged-vision fool.
Not the way we want to live . . . in jail or out.
Meantime, I sit here in this witness-selection area awaiting my own verdict . . . of whether I will be chosen to judge another.
Contemplating sin’s true penalty, measuring my own heart.
I plead for mercy.
_____________________
*Ecclesiastes 7:7
Our Lives Together
Its About Life
2:05 pm
This just makes me continue to wonder what is up with this General Petreous resignation. Some things we will probably never know the whole story, still we wonder.
6:58 pm
“Desperately trying to win, he loses.” That’s gold, Hyatt! It’s like this could (and should) be the headline read in each morning’s paper. Our inherent nature is to work things out for ourselves, to secure our own safety, to go after our dreams (even if it means marginalizing others in the process eg. the use of steroids to win the Tour) … and all inevitably goes South. The mercy part, thankfully, is this: when our worlds have come apart, he allows us to find Him, delights in our homecoming, and says, “Here is where your life begins.”
7:27 pm
Both of the pitfalls promise to be shortcuts to achieving goals (which may or may not in themselves be admirable), and most of us are just lazy enough to contemplate the efficiency that’s promised in the temptation… once enticed, the end tends to justify the means; none of that is exonerating when standing before The Judge (though ‘under the sun’ it might sway the jury). I’ve got to admit, though, I know I’m guilty of the thinking and/or rationale behind these traps, and I’ve seen my middle school son try to use these means to wriggle out of consequences–operating from a place of no power at all. Jeremiah 7:9 applies here, and Hyatt is right to acknowledge the thinness of the ice we’re on–despite God’s grip on us (John 10:28)