Good morning on this first day of the work week. I know that I have, and I suspect that you have too. We have changed a word to something that we think parents will not figure out. Cockney slang is words changed so that the police won't figure out what is being said. Gangsta talk in the 'hood, this thing of ours, tech jargon, and in many other ways we take a perfectly understandable language and make it difficult. Sometimes it is children making up a secret language, other times adults do it. We get together in a group and seek to exclude others from our communication with a changed way of talking. One of the first things we do in life is take a word that would earn us a well-deserved punishment and change it into something that is as close as we can come without arousing suspicion from the authorities. Of course, the first authorities are the parents in most cases. The intent is to deceive and we start out in life with some ability in this area and develop it as we grow older.
We find that as we grow from sibling relationships to neighborhood clubs, on to school cliques or gangs, and into our adult societies that we kind of enjoy having a secret, but generally aren't very good at keeping one. Any group with a secret ritual backs it up with some threat for exposure, including expulsion from the group to fines and in some cases actual physical punishment. Often the only thing that makes a secret ritual special is to do the obvious, and keep it a secret known only to those initiated into the group. A mysterious ritual with a published manual in the local library is not much of a mystery. On the other hand, Christian groups with secret rituals or closed meetings may have something wrong going on.
The good news of Jesus Christ is not a secret to be kept among a select group. Throughout the history of churches, someone always wants to put together an elite group, sometimes with secret rituals or closed meetings. In a society such as ours where we are allowed to practice our worship of God in the open, it makes no sense to close the doors and whisper secret passwords to each other. Secret meetings in the dark tend to increase the temptation to sin. We have this tendency to forget that God is watching when we think that no humans can see us. Fear of God helps us to do the right thing when we see every opportunity to do what is wrong. Fear of the parental authority may cause a child to resort to secret whispers in the dark, but it also motivates the right kind of behavior in a child. The better way is a cleansing of the heart so that we want to obey God, but until that is fully completed in us by the Spirit, we need a little fear to keep us in the light. May God forgive us our sneaky ways. Didn't I outgrow that kind of thing? Surely do wish that was always the case.
Praise God for grace!Bucky
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