Keep Listening

God’s Message; “Guard my common good: Do what’s right and do it in a right way. For salvation is just around the corner, my setting-things-straight is about to go into action… Make sure no outsider who now follows God ever has occasion to say, ‘God put me in second-class. I don’t really belong.” Isaiah 56:1, 3a

Why do people classify themselves as “conservative” and “liberal”? It seems these labels cause divisions more often than they define anything. And, do these labels help our spiritual life at all? Here God says that we should be careful to guard the common good; doing what’s right and doing it in the right way.

Within certain contexts this could sound quite liberal. Guarding the “common good” sounds too much like socialism. So, if we don’t like to be classed as a “liberal” we spiritualize a passage such as this. We accept the statements about God’s grace and offering salvation without cost, but we make sure everybody pays for any earthly benefit they might receive.

I don’t think Jesus cared much for labels. It mattered little what people thought of Him, so long so as they understood that He was the One and Only Son of God who had come to do them good! If eating with sinners made Him look like a liberal, so be it. If take a strong stand for marriage and against easy divorce made Him appear a conservative, big deal.

God is making it clear that He will no longer keep anyone out of His kingdom based on inadequacies of any sort. The foreigner who decides He wants to be part of God’s people is no longer to be told “Sorry, just for the Jews.” The eunuch, or physically emasculated, who previously was not allowed into the temple, now was called to enter with everyone else. There was not to be even a hint that there were any second class citizens.

Does our speech line up with God’s desire? I hear statements like, “If they want to be in our country, they should learn our language,” and I wonder how closely it mirrors God’s own heart.

I think we need to learn the art of listening and stop popping our opinions about every little thing. That person, speaking their native language, loves their heritage as much as I do mine. Have we really taken time to put ourselves in the shoes of those we about whom we quickly form so many opinions?

Who needs to be “liberated”? What is worth “conserving”? People need liberation, and acceptance, and elevating out of the pits they may be in. They do not need their hole dug even deeper? And, if what we want to “conserve” gets in the way of truly liberating people, perhaps we are conserving the wrong things.

It takes true listening to see where liberation is needed. It takes a heart that really wants to hear God to know what needs to be “conserved” and what can be let go. Israel would have much rather “conserved” their old law about keeping foreigners and eunuchs out of the temple. But this was no time for conservatism; it was a time for liberation!

God says it’s a new day. No more dividing people up based up their worth according to earthly standards. Even our own country has moved away from seeing some people as only 1/3 human in our not too distant past. Is it possible we still need to change our thoughts and plans?

Christians, we should be in the frong of the lien about this! We should be the first to watch out tongues and stop the racial joking. We should be the loudest voices when questions are asked about who can “come in”. God, after all, had been the one who originally said that eunuchs had to stay out!

Now it was time for a change! Could Israel take it? They would find out within a few hundred years when Jesus died on the cross, destroying every barrier between Jew and Gentile once and for all. It was never God’s desire to keep anyone out of His kingdom based on physical differences. Every person who is willing to honor and reverence Christ is welcome in to the wonderful family of God.

Can we learn to come with God to listening ears? I am amazed, now that I am closer to 60 than I am to 50, that I can still grow. I can change. I can, with God’s help, change my attitudes, words, thoughts and opinions. I no longer accept the “old dogs/new tricks” truism. No matter our ages, let us always stay on the listening end with God. We might just learn something new!