Fear No Fear

(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)

“Then the daughters of Zelophehad, the son of Hepher, the son of Gilead, the son of Machir, the son of Manasseh, of the families of Manasseh the son of Joseph came near. These are the names of his daughters: Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah. They stood before Moses, before Eleazar the priest, and before the princes and all the congregation, at the door of the Tent of Meeting, saying, “Our father died in the wilderness. He was not among the company of those who gathered themselves together against Yahweh in the company of Korah, but he died in his own sin. He had no sons. Why should the name of our father be taken away from among his family, because he had no son? Give to us a possession among the brothers of our father.” Moses brought their cause before Yahweh. Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, “The daughters of Zelophehad speak right. You shall surely give them a possession of an inheritance among their father’s brothers. You shall cause the inheritance of their father to pass to them. You shall speak to the children of Israel, saying, ‘If a man dies, and has no son, then you shall cause his inheritance to pass to his daughter.”
(Numbers 267:1-8)

“So they called the man who was blind a second time, and said to him, “Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner.” He therefore answered, “I don’t know if he is a sinner. One thing I do know: that though I was blind, now I see.” They said to him again, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” He answered them, “I told you already, and you didn’t listen. Why do you want to hear it again? You don’t also want to become his disciples, do you?” They insulted him and said, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses. But as for this man, we don’t know where he comes from.” The man answered them, “How amazing! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God doesn’t listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, he listens to him. Since the world began it has never been heard of that anyone opened the eyes of someone born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”“
(John 9:24-33)

Unlike all the other cultures that surrounded them, the Israelites respected women. Usually, women could NOT hold property. But God has ALWAYS seen women as equal to men (Genesis 5:2). In fact, God frequently bucks human tradition. When we think something should be done a certain way, or can’t be done another way, we often find God has a DIFFERENT idea. All human ideas are based on human thinking and whatever circumstances we think we are seeing. But God’s ideas are based on TRUTH – and OBJECTIVE truth at that. Human thinking often misses the boat, but God’s thinking is always prepared to save us.

It was beyond the thinking of these particular Pharisees that someone who was sick or in some way disabled could be in that condition outside of judgment for some personal sin or iniquity. While Jesus does acknowledge than personal sins CAN affect us (John 5:14), He ALSO is clear that personal sins are NOT always what has affected us (John 9:3). This challenged their thinking and they kicked back at the idea that they could be wrong. But Jesus was speaking Truth. He healed because it was God’s will for His children to be whole and healthy. Sickness wasn’t a punishment from God. Jesus wanted the man to rest in his health in the same way he was to rest on the Sabbath. Jesus went against what was THOUGHT to be right, in order to do what was ACTUALLY RIGHT in the eyes of God.

Summary

Prejudice affects human thought because it is an unfair and unreasonable opinion or feeling formed without enough thought or knowledge. And when we lack TRUTHFUL knowledge, we perish (Hosea 4:6). When we reject God’s point of view – the TRUTH – whether on purpose or because we haven’t bothered to find it out, we perish. Figuratively, spiritually, physically, emotionally, there is no limit to the ways it can happen. Human thinking does not always equate to CORRECT thinking – in spite of our ingenuity and methods of observation. We are prejudiced to think that what WE think is the epitome of thinking. But it is not. God is the ONLY objective observer. He is the ONLY one who can tell us what TRUTH is. We don’t always want to hear it, but we ALWAYS benefit from knowing it. We need to be prepared to put away our thinking in favour of God’s thinking – even when there are centuries of tradition behind it. God’s Truth trumps all else.