Of Mercy

This is a personal testimony, and I seek the counsel of brethren in Christ for an experience I am going through. Without it, I will most assuredly, in my nature, and apart from the mercy of God, set fire to everything from orbit in relation to this issue on general principle, and live the remainder of my life with the consequences of my actions. I have it in me to do it and not look back, and the situation is screaming for me to do precisely that for my own peace of mind, but I know this to be expedient, selfish, and wrong.

I must not allow the self which I am to deny to win the day on this one. It's too important that I not fail, so I need the safety found in the counsel of brethren.

Now, to set the table so you can understand the dilemma without using names:

Think of the most vicious, unimaginable thing you ever witnessed a human being do to another human being with your own eyes. I can not be specific in this forum. Suffice it to say that it is a thing which *anyone*, with a living conscience, would know to be an affront to their soul, under every imaginable circumstance, with no hesitation. Imagine witnessing it done over and over again, countless times, while you were helpless to prevent it.

Now, imagine that the person who committed the aforementioned act was someone whom you love and respect. Imagine that you want this person to not go to meet the LORD with this terrible thing unacknowledged in this life. Imagine that you prayed for several days over approaching this person whom you love about this, knowing that time and revisionism would cause you to pay full retail for doing so, but you were willing to endure it for loyalty and love of that individual. Imagine that you begged God that you not be in the way, that you only honor and respect this person, and that only the presence of the Christ, in you, be seen.

Imagine that you then led that individual, for 90 whole minutes, first with your own testimony of what the LORD has done to help you deal with your own internal bent toward viciousness. Imagine that you listened to them agree with your testimony about yourself on several points, and that the moment the discussion *began* a turn toward that individual, you were verbally slapped with the label of LIAR, with such vehement certainty, that you have cause to *question* both your sanity and visceral memory of what you *know* you saw repeated many times with your own eyes, because, surely, they would not place such a label on you if it were untrue...

Who does that to a person they love? What answer to that question exists, besides "no one", that rises above the level of feeble excuse for what is inexcusable?

Imagine that your fresh self-doubt of your own memory, in honor of this person, was sufficient enough that you asked someone else, whom you both love, if they also witnessed what you did, or if you were, in fact, insane.

Imagine the wrath you experience when that person whose counsel you sought confirms that you are *not* insane; and you receive confirmation that what you experienced actually happened, with full details, that this witness was scarred on the inside because of it (and is made worse in that the same was done to you) and this individual who has emphatically called you LIAR has effectively participated in the act of "gaslighting" you, allowing you to think you were a damned, insane fool for believing something that *actually happened*.

If you have trouble imagining it, suffice it to say that said wrath is of sufficient force to destroy entire worlds, and annihilate entire civilizations. This response turns out to be a the natural causality of revisionism, sort of a match to dry tinder and plenty of oxygen; flames are virtually guaranteed, and expecting none to occur would be... illogical.

Now, imagine that you take the requisite time to get over said mind-numbing anger long enough to go to this person again, whom you yet love, despite the new pain you have received from their hand, and respectfully point out that you were not the only witness to this vicious, unimaginable thing. Imagine that you ask whether you and the corroborating witness are both wrong, only to receive a reflexive non-answer.

Imagine, two hours later, receiving a call from this person. They seem broken. Hurt. You begin, inwardly, to be thankful to God as you wait for what is to come, expecting that, at long last admission of what was done was coming.

Imagine how far your heart falls. Imagine the surety of your inner nod, saying to yourself, "Of *course* it is the precise opposite of all my hopes," as you get to add "dishonorable" and "disrespectful" to go stand alongside "LIAR".

Then, imagine your failure, when, upon hearing the labels, in sequence, thrown at you four times in succession, finally being guilty of what you are accused of, and yelling with deafening force at this person whom you love, at the top of your lungs, and hanging up the phone.

Imagine how thoroughly you berate yourself, for allowing yourself to be pushed into being your damned self, whom you *begged* God to not allow you to be. *Now* you've done it. You've gone and done a dishonorable thing, yelling at this person whom you love, because you would no longer bear the weight of labels you did not deserve. You did not count this occurrence among the costs. You did not anticipate that your attempt to bring healing to a festering wound decades old would exact *that* as the price from you.

To top all of this off, imagine that someone who defends this person in a way in which I have never seen anyone so staunchly defended, tells you that what you witnessed, that viciousness which you saw with your own eyes, was good. Not only did your eyes play tricks on you, what they *did* witness was normative. Acceptable. Imagine that you are told, in Orwellian fashion, what an ungrateful person you are for your *choice* of seeing it as precisely the unimaginably vicious thing you know it to be. The fact that you paused and verified that you were not insane rendered completely irrelevant.

Now for the cherry on this cake of... questionable materials... I need a new word for it.

Let's call it defecake. It describes the situation well enough without being overtly crass.

Imagine that you are mandated to deepen your relationship with this person, whom you love, and who you are told loves you, but who also found it perfectly acceptable to allow you to believe you were insane in order to avoid the truth, and when you verified that you were not insane via another witness, has unjustly labeled you an ungrateful, dishonorable, disrespectful liar.

My question, finally:

Precisely what am I supposed to do?

Am I actually *supposed* to want to draw closer to someone who would do that to me to avoid the truth, or would tout revisionist "alternative facts" rather than face actual ones? Is that not the definition of a wastefully superficial relationship? Is that not *supposed* to seem completely insane? Because it *does* seem completely insane, (like purposefully-bathing-in-toxic-waste level insanity), but as a slave of Christ... who knows God's commandments are to be obeyed and not circumvented...

How can I proceed with this person, and remain honest?

Here is what I *have* concluded, brothers and sisters. Tell me if I am on the right track.

This whole situation brings home to me that repentance, when granted, is a truly miraculous, and holy gift. There is no history which will not be revised to prevent the honest facing of hard facts which require repentance. There is no barrier that will not be crossed, and no moral hazard that will not be violated. I am reasonably certain that everyone reading this has experienced moments when someone close enough to matter opts to be unburdened by fact, and manipulate them in some parallel fashion.

Well, this morning, I am in great need of heeding these words below.

They are about mercy. Sometimes, as in the case of the depraved wretch writing this where the LORD our God is concerned, that mercy comes with no chance of being earned in any way by the recipient.

I share the words here, in the hope that another may be edified by them. Pray that I heed them. Should God grant me grace, I will pray that you heed them, too.

"Are you merciful?

"Why?

"Because Jesus healed the sick.

Because Jesus fed the multitudes.

Because Jesus gave legs to the crippled.

Because Jesus granted sight to the blind.

Because Jesus opened the ears of the deaf.

Because Jesus found prostitutes and tax collectors and drew them into the sphere of His love.

Because Jesus touched the untouchable

And loved the unlovable

And forgave the unforgivable

And welcomed the undesirable.

Because Jesus even now saves the otherwise unsavable, why!?

"Because they deserve it!?

"When the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared,

He saved us, NOT because of works done in righteousness,

NOT because we met Him halfway,

NOT because we took the proper steps forward

And in good faith have elevated ourselves to the place of the deserving poor,

"But according to His MERCY!

"We are here because Jesus Christ didn't say with cold indifference,

"Give them what they deserve, they brought it on themselves!"

"Jesus Christ IS the Mercy of God!

"And seeing us in our misery and need,

He doesn't just feel for us,

He takes the necessary action to relieve our distress.

He leaves the eternal glory of heaven and the perfect fellowship of the Trinity

He condescends to us

Lives among us

Suffers like us

Dies for us!

Do you understand this!?

Have YOU EXPERIENCED this!?

How then is it possible to EXPERIENCE it and not DISPLAY it!?

IT ISN'T POSSIBLE!!!

YOU HAVEN'T EXPERIENCED IT IF YOU DON'T DISPLAY IT!!

"The evidence of God's mercy in your life isn't determined by how much theology you know,

By how many books you read

But by your active goodness to people in misery and in need!

"Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy."

--Dr. Arturo G. Azurdia III

God, help me to be merciful to those who have treated me spitefully, who have brought me to a place where I deem it safest to burn to ash the bridge I am mandated to mend. May what is on the other side be founded in truth, and not "alternative fact." May it please You that I display the mercy which I have experienced in You.

Without You, I am lost.

Help me, LORD, in Jesus' Name.

Selfian, Remove Your Christian Disguise.

Two ideologies have been wed to one another by men, yet are worldviews which are diametrically opposed to one another.

The rights of the United States citizen promote the pursuit of whatever course seems right to men, as affirmed in the Declaration of Independence. Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness.

The commandments of the LORD promote the pursuit of only what the LORD says is right. Refuse to associate with your self. Repent of your ways and obey His. Seek His pleasure and will in rejection of your own.

Only a mortal, selfish man could successfully delude himself into believing that these things, these mortal enemies, could be in league with one another, and only he could then have the temerity to teach it as doctrine to other souls.

These things are in mortal conflict, and the adherence to one over the other firmly delineates the Christ-ian from the Self-ian.

No longer can we pretend that Christians come in 31 flavors. Not now. A Christian emulates the Christ Who died for them, by obeying the Father, and rejecting the self. The Selfian affirms all that they are, is blind and deaf to what defames his or her Maker, and, if they even believe there is a being greater than themselves to be obeyed, fashions rather for themselves an idol which accepts them just as they are, requiring no repentance, no change, no obedience; only self gratification, self satisfaction, self fulfillment.

Christians are not carnal; they refuse to associate with their corrupt desires, and instead walk after the Spirit without excuse. When they fail to do so, they are mortified, and implore the LORD for forgiveness, get up from off the ground faithfully, and walk after Him again. The Selfian does not know what it means to be anything other than carnal, pursues its own pleasures and happiness unabashedly, and commits acts of altruism only to please themselves rather than the LORD.

Christians are not disobedient; they faithfully obey, as the Master did, the command to love God with all that they are and love their neighbor as themselves. They aim for the mark of the high calling without failure, and mourn when they fail, nock another arrow, pull the bow taut, and aim for the mark again, and again, and again. They endure to the end, to the detriment of their flesh, to the glory and honor of the Creator Who makes it possible to hit the mark and honor His Great Name. The Selfian obeys only themselves, and their neighbor had not only better look and act exactly as they do, they had better not be a burden to them at all.

Christians are not selfish; they care for the widow and for the orphan, and do so with love though they know it will cost them, just as the Samaritan of Jesus' parable did, without complaint. They follow up later and make sure the one who has been waylaid, beaten, and left for dead is cared for and can get back on their feet, because their Master left that example in both parable and deed. The Selfian looks out for the usurper of the throne of the heart, labels him or her "number one", and cares only for the occupant in accordance to how the wind blows rather than an objective purpose outside of the self.

Christ-ians who are not Self-ians on a masquerade are PAINFULLY FEW. When I find them, I prize them as precious and cling to them like glue. The gifts of repentance, the miracles of regeneration and holiness and sharing in the nature of God, are rare and supremely precious gifts. That is why Christianity, as it is known to the world, is the blasphemous, God-defaming business that it is; it is vastly inhabited by Selfians, with the rare, starving Christian in their midst BEGGING for the food of God's Word. In the majority of cases, their emotions are so entertained, in the various forms which the showmen, who assume titles above the people in lieu of sharing a gift among the people, expertly deploy, they do not notice that the presence of the Living God is absent. They do not know Him, they do not know His Word, they do not make living sacrifices of themselves as Jesus taught His disciples.

They do not even believe that He is real.

They can not, therefore, be distinguished from the world, because they worship the same god of self that the moral relativist world worships, where no truth is knowable, where no law is to be obeyed, where there is no cause for grief over their sin, and even their sins themselves are re-labeled as virtues to be affirmed rather than denied.

This is why people believe Christianity is Baskin Robbins 31 flavors, instead of only ONE. The obedient slave of God knows that widows and orphans *must* be cared for, because it is the Word's definition of "pure and undefiled religion". They *must* be cared for just as the hated Samaritan did, because the slave of Christ as been shown the same mercy. We were, each, waylaid, beaten, and left for dead by our sins, and God was merciful, sending His Only Son to take on the form of a slave, and the iron price of our sin. We, who are worthy only of death, have been given His eternal life.

The Selfian, when masquerading as a Christian, is willfully ignorant of this, especially when that widow or orphan looks nothing like them. Their conscience is cauterized from it, their sight blind to it. They do not smell the putrefaction of their hearts. They do not cringe when they hear the blasphemies they speak every day. The command of the Christ, to not be like the priest, and the Levite, who walked by the man who had been beaten and robbed and left for dead, as though he were not there, but to be like the despised member of that society, the tainted mongrel from Samaria, who showed mercy to the man, is NOT ignored by the follower of the Christ. That is the dominion and purpose of the Self-ian in disguise.

That is the difference. Before this sort of speech is officially labeled as "hate speech" and simultaneously censured and censored, I will call it out when I see it.

We must expose the Selfian in Christian clothing. We must show the world that some words have not been mislabeled through our society's Orwellian torture efforts to the contrary, and still hold their meaning. Evil remains evil. What is right in the LORD's sight remains the only litmus by which we are to know what it right.

Christian, when you say you will not care for a person less fortunate than yourself, I will know you for the Selfian you are, and I will not remain silent about it. Time is short, and the Master is being defamed by your claim of His title of ownership. He is not your Master. You are.