And the Lord said: "Because this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment of men learned by rote;.. Isa 29:13
The people being confronted by God through Isaiah in this passage were religious people: prophets, priests, synagogue-attenders, etc. God said they honored Him with their words, but their hearts were far from Him. I recently saw a couple in therapy who were very religious Christians. They attended not only regular church services, but extra-curricular Bible studies, and even taught a Bible class [the husband]. And I believe they were sincere in their faith. But their hearts were full of criticism, anger, and hostility that caused them to have to separate from each other because one could not tolerate the physical presence of the other. I asked the husband to lead in prayer at the end of a session and he prayed with some eloquence, as a man accustomed to public praying. He did not, however, mention his wife, with whom he was having obvious problems, in the prayer, so I asked, after he had closed, if he would pray for her. He stammered and struggled through a prayer, obviously trying, not quite successfully, to avoid sounding like an indictment against his wife. She was full of anxiety, with a pattern of chronic defensiveness that sounded like a whining, victimized, but counterattacking shrew.
Their painful patterns reminded me of the very important truth elucidated in the above passage. We religious folks can be living behind a veneer of love for Christ while harboring a heart full of bitterness, resentment, and critical blame toward our own spouse or some other person in our life. One man said, "It's easier to forgive folks you don't live with." [Or have ever lived with, I would add.] That's true I believe. But Jesus has not given us an out on this score. He commanded us to love our enemies, bless those who curse us, do good to those who hate us, and pray for those who despitefully use and persecute us. [Mt. 5:44]. Guess that pretty much covers any evil thing my wife might do to me. Love?! Bless?! Pray for?! Do good to?!
We can get so much negative crap built up in our souls that trying to do that is like trying to eat your own vomit. Unless we allow the Truth that is at the core of it transform that vomit into the most potent and sweetest nectar that ever passed through our lips, into the heart, like a healing potent, warming and opening the heart, and washing away all the plaque-like clusters that had been blocking the flow of one's very life; relaxing constriction into freedom. As one writer penned, it's like setting a prisoner free, then determining that the prisoner was you.
What is this Truth that is at the core of this commandment of Christ? It is that He commands us to be motivated only by His Love. He wants us to be free from the heavy, leaden, grip of an angry, bitter heart. He knows that we are creating unnecessary suffering for ourselves [and others] by languishing in that darkness. He is inviting us into the light. "But men loved darkness more than light" Jesus said. [Jn 3:19] And they just get lost in it...lost in the darkness. While the Light is shining all around them.
