Supply Chains and Tripping Hazards
Something I never heard before 2020 were the two words, “supply chain.” I looked into those two words and didn’t find them used together before the last half of the twentieth century. Google books gives just one page of examples for the whole century and none in the nineteenth century. Examples explode in the last twenty years.
Now that people use “supply chain,” historians provide supply chain advantage as the primary reason for victory in World War Two. It was easier for the United States to get its supplies in Europe than for Germany to get theirs. The Americans, over two thousand miles from home, had more and better supplies than the Germans, only hundreds of miles away.
The success of the Viet Cong in the Vietnam War were short supply chains, essentially tunnels, jungle trails, and near limitless volunteers. Among an assortment of lesser causes, this led to their victory over a superior foe.
To achieve success in life requires eliminating as many possible factors that impede that success. Next week Monday, I’m supposed to have a hip replacement. The booklet to prepare for it explains certain fundamentals like removing threats of tripping from the walking surface of your floors. As you read that, it seems a bit of a “duh” moment. And yet, people leave tripping hazards all over their lives.
Supply Chain Dysfunction
Life became more difficult for many people beginning in 2020 because of “supply chain” dysfunction. The price of homes increased because it’s harder to get the supplies. It’s also more difficult to find the people to build the homes.
God in scripture points out factors comparable to a broken supply chain and a tripping hazard. Peter expresses one in 1 Peter 2:11:
Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul.
Paul begs and commands those traversing their life’s path on earth, “Abstain from fleshly lusts.” He didn’t say, “Stop sinning.” Saying “stop sinning” is like saying, “Win the war.” You want to win the war, but more basic than that is “build and sustain a supply chain.” Remove tripping hazards.
Professing Christianity today acts like an industrial complex for fleshly lusts. It isn’t abstaining. It riddles the floor with tripping hazards. If the goal is winning the war, not abstaining is a losing strategy. It creates a disadvantage so large that it guarantees failure. Fleshly lusts destroy the supply chain.
Winning the War
People might say they want to win the war. They might publish multitudes of magnificent war victory posters. Until they want to abstain from fleshly lusts and then abstain, they won’t. In fact, professing Christianity today campaigns for feeding fleshly lusts. It thinks its worst enemy is the command. Professing Christianity reacts most harsh to the threat of abstaining from fleshly lusts than the fleshly lusts.
A popular phrase, reaching cliche status, I will still use because of its appropriateness. Professing Christians shoot themselves in the foot when they do not abstain from fleshly lusts. They might not like the idea, but they are in a war, a war they should desire to win. Instead, they provide the way for their own defeat. They have multiple bullet holes in both feet. I think we should say that they want to lose. Losing must in fact be their goal. They are going to get tired of losing, they’ll lose so much.
“Dearly beloved” or “strangers and pilgrims” in this world find their interests in the world to come, not this one. They instead plan their lives around a future kingdom and a heavenly city. They invest for eternity.
Still, 1 Peter 2:11 expresses a command to believers, an unpopular mode of communication. True Christians still participate in fleshly lusts, so Peter commands them to abstain from them. Commands are not options. He also provides the consequence of not abstaining. Psychological problems, soul problems, are the worst ones people have. They obliterate people and families like Sherman’s march tore through the South at the end of the Civil War.
Fleshly Lusts and True Christianity
Fleshly lusts cannot characterize true Christianity. If fleshly lusts do, it isn’t Christianity. It’s something else, not Christianity. Someone who laps up fleshly lusts is not a Christian.
Biblical Christianity, true Christianity, is more than just a series of things someone doesn’t get to do that he might want to do. It is wanting to do what Christ wants Him to do and liking it. Loving it.
The soul that will operate in a godly manner will unhitch itself from fleshly lusts. A soul that continues in its pursuit of worldly pleasure is not “converted” or “restored” (Psalms 19:7, 23:3). God does not possess that soul. It remains in the realm of the wicked one. This is not a person who has lost his life (psuche, his soul) for Christ’s sake. He still loves the world and the love of the Father is not in Him.
More to Come
Thanks for the challenge. I’ve found in my life that as I’ve removed certain tripping hazards, more come up. It seems that it will be a never ending battle.
What do you think about the words in 1Pe 4:1-2 Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin; 2 That he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.
Do you think there is something special about suffering in the flesh that changes a man’s perspective? Paul seems to think that the suffering is part of being made complete as well here:
Php 3:9-11 And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith: 10 That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; 11 If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.
The flesh wants to avoid suffering, so someone who is willing to suffer, the flesh has mainly lost its hold on him.
As far as Philip 3, I think Paul there testifies of his salvation if that’s what you mean by being complete. It’s a difficult verse to comprehend. Paul wanted what Jesus had. He had something beyond the Pharisees and the law.
Kent wrote:
“It’s a difficult verse to comprehend.”
It really is not a difficult verse to comprehend. What is difficult concerning this verse and others like them (2 Corinthians 11:21-30, Galatians 2:20, Romans 8:18, etc.) is to live a life in “knowing him” that becomes a life of paradoxical truth where you rejoice in the Lord always, but the world and most Christians cannot stand the life of such devotion in holiness, character and zeal that you are classified as follows:
We are fools for Christ’s sake, but ye are wise in Christ; we are weak, but ye are strong; ye are honourable, but we are despised. Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwellingplace; And labour, working with our own hands: being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it: Being defamed, we intreat: we are made as the filth of the world, and are the offscouring of all things unto this day. (1Co 4:10-13)
We in America have it too good to live a life of that true “suffering” for Jesus Christ.
Tom
Tom,
When I said I didn’t comprehend it easily, I didn’t mean that I don’t understand the verse. I mean it’s difficult to comprehend someone who is drawn to suffering before he receives Jesus Christ, which is what Paul says in his testimony.
Something maybe you might find of interest. Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 uses hyperbole to describe spiritual gifts without love. He says, “though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.” Paul says that even if someone went to martyrdom and did it in a self-serving way, that is, having not charity, it profits him nothing.” Maybe you could take that into consideration as you talk about your own suffering.
Kent wrote:
“Maybe you could take that into consideration as you talk about your own suffering.”
Brother Kent, as I said, we in America have it too good at this time to know what it is to suffer based on 2 Corinthians 11:16-30.
In 40 years of salvation, and around many Christians, I have only known one man and his wife in America who have come close to the Pauline example that “was drawn toward suffering” for Jesus Christ.
Tom
Brother Kent,
What I did not say is that the article as a whole was an excellent parallel of contrasting the need to live in Christ for “ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.
(Rom 8:9)
Quote: “Biblical Christianity, true Christianity, is more than just a series of things someone doesn’t get to do that he might want to do. It is wanting to do what Christ wants Him to do and liking it. Loving it.”
Tom
Thanks!