A CUSSING KING

Warning.  This post contains a fully spelled out curse word, but it’s not me cussing. 

Inspired by former NFL quarterback Colin Kapernick, several NFL players elected to protest police brutality and systemic racism by kneeling during the national anthem.  President Donald J. Trump said:

In fairness to the president, this is not the first time a national leader went all potty-mouth in public.

Read 1 Samuel chapter 20.

Saul, the first king of Israel, had been chosen by God (1 Samuel 9:15-17), anointed by the prophet-priest Samuel (1 Samuel 10:1), and publicly selected in a national election in which the outcome was predetermined (1 Samuel 10:20-22).

In the first year of his administration, the new king solidified a fiercely loyal and enthusiastic base. 

So all the people shouted and said, “Long live the king!” (1 Samuel 10:24)

He inspired an opposition movement that questioned his qualifications for the office. 

But some rebels said, “How can this man save us?” So they despised him, and brought him no presents. But he held his peace. (1 Samuel 10:27)

And his supporters took violent action against their leader’s critics, which Saul actually, definitively condemned.

Then the people said to Samuel, “Who is he who said, ‘Shall Saul reign over us?’ Bring the men, that we may put them to death.”

But Saul said, “Not a man shall be put to death this day, for today the Lord has accomplished salvation in Israel” (1 Samuel 11: 12,13).

They had high hopes for King Saul until he started saying stupid stuff and issuing cool-sounding orders that made no sense.  Like, in 1 Samuel 14, when Saul cancelled all meals for the army and threatened to execute anyone who  ate or even drank water.  And this was while the army was in the middle of major combat (1 Samuel 24).  The king appointed David to his staff, but then he got mad because David was doing his job right, so he turned on David and tried to destroy him (1 Samuel 18; 19).

Around this time Saul contracted potty mouth.  Suspecting that his son and 2^nd in command, Jonathan, was not sufficiently enthusiastic about having his best friend and colleague David murdered, 1 Samuel 20:3-33, explains: Then Saul’s anger was aroused against Jonathan, and he said to him, “You son of a perverse, rebellious woman! Do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your own shame and to the shame of your mother’s nakedness?

“You son of a perverse, rebellious woman!” Translation, You, son of a b****!

The “shame of your mother’s nakedness” is either a reference to Jonathan’s birth, or a callback to the euphemism “uncover the nakedness of”  in Leviticus 18.  It's a euphemism for "have sex with."  The former interpretation means Saul said Jonathan had been a disappointment since the day he was born.  

The second interpretation, which I think is correct, means Saul said: “Jonathan, you son of a b****! I knew you’d chose that mother-f****  David over me!”

Now, where was I going with this?

Oh, yeah.    Three points: 

1) There’s going to be a lot more yelling, and cursing, and twitter-spear throwing before this term is over.

After all that cussing, Saul continued to be  king.

People asked David to remove Saul from office, but nope.    

Look, this day your eyes have seen that the LORD delivered you today into my hand in the cave, and someone urged me to kill you. But my eye spared you, and I said, ‘I will not stretch out my hand against my lord, for he is the LORD’s anointed’ (1 Samuel 24:10).

The cussin’ king had a long, full term as leader of the nation. For 4 decades, he decided military action, tax policy, immigration law.  During that time the political climate was characterized by infighting, betrayal, military resources wasted on strategically pointless personal vendettas and a steep degree of moral and psychological decline so bad that Samuel literally came back as a ghost to tell Saul that he was an idiot (1 Samuel 28:13-19).

But he was in office for a long, long, long time.   

2)  A verbally filthy leader indicates a spiritually unprotected nation. 

Unrestrained speech shows that the spirit of the leader is  unrepentant and un-redeemeed. Oh, the king/ president can go up to the temple and make the sacrifices/ take the communion and say all the right churchy words, but if he can't control his mouth,the Bible says that his faith is powerless at best, and insincere at worst. 

Read 1 Samuel 15. 

Saul’s unraveled, public profanity came after God had withdrawn His favor on the anointed, elected leader. 

Samuel said to Saul, “I will not return with you, for you have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you from being king over Israel” (1 Samuel 15:26).

3)  A nation following a leader who is leading outside of God’s favor, is a nation on the verge of getting its butt kicked by somebody and/ or something.

The next major military action led by Saul ended in humiliating defeat for his nation and a series of murder suicides that decimated the royal family (1 Samuel  31:1-13).

When a proclaimed Christian acts without restraint, it means that God had stopped restraining him/her.  If God has withdrawn His restraint, then God has also withdrawn His FAVOR (Acts 7:42-43; Romans 1:24-25). 

A nation outside of God's favor that thinks it's still God's chosen people, a spiritually unprotected people whose think they're still the America that God shed his grace on ----- that's a nation about to have a very unpleasant surprise. 

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

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IDK WHAT HAPPENED TO THE LOVE

I was having a conversation with a teacher friend and I realized something.  We have texting acronyms to express humor, sarcasm, anger, and sexual innuendo, but not for compassion or shared grief.  (None that I’ve seen)

If you wreck your car,  I might LOL or SMDH.  But  I don't FBFU (feel bad for you) or HURA (hope you're all right).

Our communication lacks the language of empathy.

If you wreck your car,  I might LOL or SMDH.  But  I don't FBFU (feel bad for you) or HURA (hope you're all right).

Our communication lacks the language of empathy.

As a society we’re training our hands and lips to be mean and nothing else.  We’re teaching ourselves, especially our children, to interpret every event as something to be laughed at or scoffed at.

What are we making of our children, of ourselves?

David described the product of such grammatical manufacturing. 

Pride serves as their necklace;

Violence covers them like a garment.

Their eyes bulge with abundance;

They have more than heart could wish.

They scoff and speak wickedly concerning oppression;

They speak loftily.

They set their mouth against the heavens, (Psalm 73: 6-9)

Verse 9 prophetically describes the range of this kind of communication. 

And their tongue walks through the earth.  

Worldwide 

WWW dot

Hashtag

No filter

Think about it.  When's the last time you saw a funeral broadcast on tv that didn't include some kind of snarky commentary or supposed controversy?

When's the last time that a tragedy was just a tragedy and not also a scandal?

What does it mean when the most important word in the last year was “selfie”?

SELFie.

Most daily communication is devoid of any emotion that cannot be expressed in a picture I took of me.

I of ME.

Culturally, we don’t talk anymore about loving our neighbors.  It takes too long, so we only talk about loving ourselves.

We're losing the language of empathy and replacing it with the vocabulary of pandemic narcissism.

Linguistic history teaches that when a society loses the words for a thing, the thing itself disappears.

What does that look like?  Again, the ancient Book describes it well.

But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come:   For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.  (2 Timothy 3: 1-4)

Any of this sounding the least bit familiar?

Solomon said: Death and life are in the power of the tongue (Proverbs 18: 21).

Perhaps we should add a footnote saying, “and in the power of the text, too.”

And if that’s true, then what are we doing by what we are saying?

What are we losing by what we aren’t texting?

By what we have no acronyms to depict?

We have abbreviations for hate and lust and mockery, but we are losing the language of genuine love.

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Hall Memorial CME Church in Montgomery, Alabama, executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO) and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

To listen to sermons and learn more about the ministry at Hall Memorial CME Church, visit www.hallmemorialcme.blogspot.com .

You can help support this ministry by clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to

Hall Memorial CME Church

541 Seibles Road

Montgomery, AL 36116

A WORD TO THE WISE. Proverbs 29: 20

Proverbs 29: 20     Do you see a man hasty in his words? There is more hope for a fool than for him.

Proverbs 29: 20.  At some point, someone is going to confront you and ask for your reaction to something that you know little or nothing about.  The demand may be from a reporter shoving a microphone in your face, or a pushy bystander holding a camera-phone, or a peer with hand on hip saying, “Well, So-and-so said that they heard that you said......”

However the query comes, your interrogator will demand that you give an immediate answer.

The Bible calls it a hasty answer, and reflects upon the mentality of those people develop the  habit of giving hasty answers.  Proverbs 29:20 calls such people worse-than-stupid.

The endless cycle of news and the endless supply of supposedly-expert testimony-givers creates pressure to post/text/tweet/blog/give an answer as hastily as possible.  Everyone else has something to say, so you also feel compelled to say------ something. 

The problem is that you cannot speak intelligently when you don’t have the intelligence (in the military sense of “information”) to speak from.  Therefore, to answer hastily is always to answer un-intelligently.  Unintelligent=foolish=stupid.  Once you’ve said/tweeted/posted/ blogged something stupid------ it follows you forever.

The same people who pressured you to give a hasty answer will crucify you for giving a stupid answer.

If you don’t believe me, ask the University of North Alabama football player who got kicked off the team for a hasty (and racist) tweet posted when the President’s speech pre-empted a football game.

Ask Ambassador Susan Rice, who missed out on the nomination for Secretary of State because of a hastily prepared interview about an attack at an embassy.

Ask the kid who will get suspended today for a fight that started when he told her that he would kick his butt after she told him that she heard that he was scared of him and she just wanted to know if he was really scared and all she did was tell him what he said.

If you don’t know the necessary facts, the only intelligent answer is, “I don’t know------ yet.”

“Better to be silent and thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.” --- Abraham Lincoln

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Hall Memorial CME Church in Montgomery, Alabama.

Call  334-288-0577
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