Your Purpose May Only Be to Serve as a Warning to Others

I've been trying to blog All Day. But instead of blogging I let Matt have my computer cord and made bread and Cream of Cauliflower Soup and Curried Chicken Vegetable Soup (well worth it).

And contemplated quietly the warning of King Asa.
Having started out so well, having called upon the name of the Lord in the time of need and been delivered, having sought obedience and truth, to the point of getting rid of his own mother, at some point, for whatever reason, he chucked it all. When the next enemy came up before him he didn't call on God, he sent off for help from Ben-hadad, and when God gave him the opportunity to repent he seriously hardened his heart into anger, locked up that opportunity and "inflicted cruelties upon some of the people at the same time." (1 Chron 16:10)

Its such an interestingly haunting thought, especially as nothing more is said.
Asa 'sleeps with his fathers' and seems to undergo some interesting pagan burning thing (don't have time to read up just this second).

I've been perplexed, as the days roll by, by the increasing hardening and chaos of the leadership of the Episcopal Church. Looking in from the outside (praise be), it appears to be so irrational, particularly the actions of the Presiding Bishop (ie deposing people without bothering to do the leg work to accomplish that purpose, or writing about global warming for Easter). But all behavior, on some level, is rational, in that it is intended towards a particular goal (usually one's own good), and that it comes from somewhere. Theoretically, it should be possible to understand human behavior by searching out these two-the goal and the origin. I am finding, however, that I have more and more to pursue the Holy Scriptures in trying to understand the behavior of those leading this 'church'. And so much comes down to the Providence, Sovereignty and Omniscience of God. For his own purposes he hardens hearts. For his own purposes he saves some. For his own purposes he intervenes in human affairs.

And for me it continues to prove that Real Rationality can only be found in orthodox Christianity. If you want to be a sensible, rational, thinking person you ought to seek out God on his own terms which means, essentially, being a Christian, a Real Christian. Not that you can't think and be rational in other systems, but you will always end up in the wrong place, having to reconcile contradictions or living into 'the tension'. And the result of living into the 'tension' is a hard heart and some sort of weird pagan thing.