Remember Lot's Wife

Most people remember Lot's wife as a pillar of salt. She gained this peculiar stature by — you guessed it  — trying to run back home!

Jesus said, "Remember Lot's wife," in the middle of his teaching about preparing for the end-times. Luke recorded it in his Gospel account (17:32). I will quote it here in context:

"On that day,¹ the one who is on the housetop and whose goods are in the house must not go down to take them out; and likewise the one who is in the field must not turn back.  Remember Lot's wife. Whoever seeks to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.…"  Luke 17:31-33

The Bible does not give us much resumé information about Lot's wife. We can count the timeline and determine that it had been at least 24 years since Lot and Abraham had parted ways and Lot took his tents to the fertile valley. It would be a reasonable guess that Lot met his wife shortly upon arrival in the area. They now have children of a marriageable age and live in a fairly nice house.  If Lot's wife had roots in the city— relatives, wealth, longstanding friendships, etc., it would explain the lure of turning back.

Although we may not know who her father was, where/if she went to school, or other items in her bio, we do know quite a lot about her cognitive and spiritual dysfunction. If you are not familiar with her story, look it up in Genesis 19:1-29. Briefly, two angelic messengers were sent to bring God's destroying judgment. Lot invited them into his home for the night, but when they explained their mission, they did not get any cooperation. The angels had to force them to leave the city. 

1.) Lot's wife did not value the angelic visitation.
This is a "What's wrong with you, woman?" event.  God sends not one, but two personal messengers to spare their lives and the family is uncooperative. The sons-in-law think it's a joke. The hey complain that escaping to th e mountains is too hard, and Lot succeeds in talking them into letting him go to the small town of Zoar instead. Even then. half-way to miraculous rescue, Lot's wife turned back.

She may not have recognized the messengers for what they really were at first, but even she did not recognize them herself nor believe Lot when he told her, she would have had figured it out at dawn when they had to physically remove the family from the city.

There is a parallel prophecy in Luke 19:44 that is worth looking at: they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation. This refers to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, not Sodom 2100 years prior, but in both counts, it was the failure to accept the opportunity for salvation that brought their destruction.


2.) Lot's wife could not adapt to change.
Lot's wife was psychologically rigid. We know this by her behavior. Escaping to the mountains, (God's perfect will in this case,) or moving to the rural town of Zoar, (God's permissive will,) just did not fit the structure of her preconceived notions.

Surely it was inconvenient. Maybe she wanted to give it more time; to take things slowly.  The problem with that argument is that the angels had already revealed God's will.  Any other posturing to try and avoid or delay what God had revealed was sin. She needed only to "get in alignment with the assignment." That is where she would have found her fulfillment.

But Lot's wife fixated on the familiar. She refused to embrace where God wanted to take her. She met His will with doubt and skepticism and her rigidity cost her her life.

3.) Lot's wife prioritized vanities.
Even though scripture does not tell us much about Lot's wife, everything that it does tell us points to the conclusion that she was comfortable with the way things were. Given that she was living in Sodom, that is saying quite a bit. In addition to the sexual perversions mentioned in Genesis, other historical sources tell of how the homeless were stared to death as entertainment. If someone acted with compassion and was caught rescuing them, that person could be sentenced by a judge to be burned alive. Lot's wife appears to be the sort of woman who could focus on her daughters' upcoming weddings and ignore the evils outside her door. To be happy in a place like that means the she was placing importance on things that are pretty much a façade or window dressing. 

One could say that Lot's wife was transition-challenged; she had convinced herself that things were okay where she was.  She did not understand that transition is a hallway to someplace else. A hallway never looks like the destination; it is a place of transit, not a place of destiny. This is why the Bible teaches us to NOT walk by sight. When God open a door, sometimes all you get to see is the hallway. It must be walked by faith.

The Lesson
In her hesitation, Lot's wife missed what God was doing and became a monument to the past. This blog has dozens of posts comparing a real-life runaway bride with what is taught in scripture; Jesus' admonition to Remember Lot's wife is one of the most poignant. Got was ready and willing to move Lot's wife from her "okay" life in a city that held little opportunity for her. His angels had prepared a way that would take her to God's destiny for her.  But she was spooked by the hallway of transition. It did not look like her preconceived ideas of a safe future. The image of the destiny that she had made for herself looked so unlike the one that the angels were offering that she did not even recognize that she was missing God's visitation.

One More Thing...
This quote is from a play by William Shakespeare, not the Bible,  Julius Caesar Act 3, scene ii.

The evil that men do lives after them... 

The consequences of Lot's wife's choice to return home lived on far after her own death removed her from the scene.

Lot did not stay in Zoar, at least not for long, because we next find him living in a mountain cave with his daughters. This leads to speculations that the Bible does not answer directly in the Genesis account. (Whose idea was it to go to Zoar? Was Lot trying to appease his wife by asking the angels if they could go to a town instead of escaping to the mountains? Did his wife give him an ultimatum and he compromised because of the urgency? We saw that Lot is "an appeaser" when he offered up his virgin daughters to be raped Gen. 19:8) At any rate, with Lot's wife out of the picture, her daughters would go on to commit incest with their father and procreate Moab, the father of the Moabite tribe, and Ben-ammi, the father of the Ammonites. These two tribes of distant cousins to the Israelites would go on to cause problems for them throughout history. If Lot's wife had still been there, history would be different.

KatieLyn's choices do have long lasting consequences that she refuses to address and resolve. She has the power to bring a lot of healing relatively simply, but her priorities are out of order, she is rigid in her pride and postuing, and she shunned God's plan for her life by choosing to return to what was familiar. 







¹"On that day" refers to "the day that the Son of Man is revealed." It is not that Jesus has not been present throughout the ages,but that He had not been plainly seen. 

A Facebook Find

I found this meme on Facebook this morning:

In a gender-reversal kind of way, it fits right in with the Runaway Bride. Here is my adaptation:

There is no denying that KatieLyn behaved like a scared little girl, not as a woman who is in covenant with Jehovah.

Furthermore, she refused to take godly counsel. That was an option for her. Joe had asked her to stay until morning and talk it out in counseling; their final premarital counseling session had been scheduled for 10 AM, and no red flags had turned up in the previous sessions. But she would not.

None of the excuses that she gave Joe that night make sense. She claimed that he would grow to hate her, but was unable to say why. She said that the house scared her, but there was money to redecorate it any way that she wanted. She said that their lifestyles were too different, but when asked for an example the best that she had was that she likes to drink tea. (At the time, Joe's friends were having get-togethers at his house once or twice a month where they'd barbecue and take whiskey shots—that pretty much ended after she ran off into the middle of the night because no one felt they could have a good time anymore. That is the only thing we can figure out about her "I drink tea" comment, because otherwise it seems pretty arcane.)

And the night that she ran off, she told Joe that he was "everything" she had prayed for. That is definitely the most hurtful thing she ever said to him. Plus, it makes her look like a nutcase for running away from an answer to prayer. She left Joe totally bewildered. And she turned defiant and unapologetic for doing so.  (She expressed sorrow that he was hurt, but no sorrow for refusing his request that they try one more counseling session, so I am sticking with unapologetic as the accurate word here.)

Later on she whined that Joe had caused her to not focus on God as much as she should have.
She is 180° wrong about that.
Not focusing on God as much as she should have is why she ran away in the first place.
Joe did not cause that.

The Lesson
The Facebook meme cuts straight to the problem. KatieLyn is immature. Fortunately that is a problem with a fairly straightforward solution: Take responsibility. Stop making an idol of a mother who wants to keep you as her daughter and start honestly following your heart toward the Lord. It may be extremely difficult, but it is not confusing.

KatieLyn's prophecy that Joe would grow to hate her has not come true. His greatest concern for her right now is that she will settle for a guy that her mother approves of—someone who makes her mom happy because KatieLyn does not want a life of in-law problems, so she will settle for the guy who is 'close,' but not 'everything' that she ever prayed for. Joe's concern is that KatieLyn will compromise to have peace with her mom.

I believe his deduction shows a lot of wisdom.  I have multiple reasons for believing this, all of which have been mentioned in one form or another in previous posts.  If that happens, I will make a prophecy of my own:  KatieLyn can know exactly when she is being pushed into immaturely choosing her mother's opinion over the Lord's will when she hears her mom say something like, "Katie, no man is perfect."  

What about Ephesians 6?

Ephesians 6:1 in the King James  says—
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.

"Children" generally means offspring, and the original Greek word, transliterated as teknon, does not limit the meaning to prepubescence.  In fact, its definition spans a wide range of meanings.  It can be an term of affectionate address such as a priest might use: my child. It can mean a male child, which would not apply to KatieLyn! The Greek word was also used for a pupil in a teacher/student relationship. And Larry Pierce, editor of The Outline of Biblical Usage, lists some additional usage: (a) children of God: in the OT of "the people of Israel" as especially dear to God, in the NT, in Paul's writings, all who are led by the Spirit of God and thus closely related to God; (b) the votaries of wisdom, those souls who have, as it were, been nurtured and moulded by wisdom; and (c) cursed children, exposed to a curse and doomed to God's wrath or penalty.  All-in-all, the term is pretty inclusive, and we cannot rule out its being applied to KatieLyn just because she is turning 30 soon.

Let's consider other translations, both literal and contemporary:
⁜ Children, obey your parents as the Lord wants, because this is just and the right thing to do.
⁜ Children, obey your parents in the Lord [as His representatives], for this is just and right.
⁜ The children! obey your parents in the Lord, for this is righteous. 

The obedience that is right is the obedience "in the Lord."  To say it another way, the grammatical structure pairs "in the Lord" with obey, not with parents. The point made here is that nowhere is there a demand for blind obedience of parents. The command is: Obey in the Lord.  The phrase "in the Lord" acts to put limitations on obedience. A demand for actions which are not loving and in the will of God do not have to be obeyed; they should not be obeyed because they are neither just nor right. 

The child should obey as a WWJD* kind of thing.  Obviously Jesus could not have obeyed a command to sin. Peter offers some clarity in Acts 5:29 when he states, "We ought to obey God rather than men."


The Instruction Continues...
Ephesians 6:4 in the King James says—
And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

Let's consider other updated translations here too:
⁜ Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.
⁜ Fathers, [or Parents,] do not make your children angry, but raise them with the training and the teaching of the Lord. 

The sorry fact is,  KatieLyn's parents were wildly disobedient on this one. Her mom was chronically rekindling the fire and inciting arguments. In hindsight, it became evident that KatieLyn told Joe a glossed-over version to protect her mother's reputation. This allowed Joe to be deceived into thinking KatieLyn was handling it okay. She was not.  

KatieLyn's dad did nothing to intervene; and that makes him an accessory to the fighting.  KatieLyn's dad did the ostrich thing and stuck his head in the ground while his wife was systematically destroying his daughter's first love. Meanwhile, KatieLyn was doing the Pollyanna thing with Joe, pretending that her relationship with her mom was great, even as her mother was ripping her world to shreds. 

But the problems went even further than Gwen deliberately exasperating her daughter into a loss of faith. Huge deficits in the nurture/training and the admonition/teaching are evident as well.

Even though KatieLyn gave very little reason for her parents to mistrust her, they did. Her mother especially doubted KatieLyn's judgment at choosing a husband. ...

Let me digress a bit and tell my story about a friend who was studying at seminary. He studied the coursework and got good grades; all his classes were complete and had earned an outstanding GPA.* But he never graduated. The certificate he received, in lieu of a diploma, said ABT. He never got a job as a pastor. I lost track of him after he became a jeweler at a Kmart, and that store is no more.  There is a parallel here, even if it is a bit oblique, with the way that Gwen has run KatieLyn's life: She put in the love, time, and effort to raise a great daughter, but then she never let her efforts come to fruition. She stubbornly stopped short of the finish line because she herself was not sure about wanting to pursue the final step. It is like she aborted the nearly full-term dreams daughter because it was uncomfortable for her, just as my friend aborted his dream of going into the ministry when he discovered an easier way to make more money.  They were walking by sight and not by faith.

 
Bottom line though, Gwen did not trust her own daughter to hear from the Lord. Even though Gwen had over 28 years to invest and teach her child to follow the godly leading of her heart, Gwen did not trust that her teaching had been effective, she did not trust the Lord to work things out, and she did not trust her daughter to make an adult decision on her own. And THAT is a colossal failure in parenting!   

The Lesson
KatieLyn tried to follow the command to obey her parents. She was so OCD about it that she gave up her first love, totally confused by her parents' misleading, and ultimately ungodly, "guidance." Meanwhile, her parents were in flagrant disobedience to the command to not stir up anger in your children. I'm sure Gwen has come up with some rationalization for it that she can live with, even though her "advice" and seizure of control over communication has been harsh to the point of cruelty and abuse. As hateful as it was toward Joe, the damage to her daughter's self-image is probably even worse.

The sixth chapter of Ephesians continues with two more themes: 
• One is about the armor of warfare where we are reminded that "we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." Gwen is not the real enemy, but she has allowed the enemy to use her to destroy her daughter. That is tragic.
• The other main theme is the call to pray continually. There has never been a day since KatieLyn ran off into the middle of the night that she has not been brought before the Lord. This situation is far from resolved. 

If KatieLyn tries to "just move on" without addressing the root of the problems, then she will not have pleased God. I know this because without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him, (Hebrews 11:6). This is very different than seeking approval from one's mother    




* Key to abbreviations
WWJD What Would Jesus Do? 
GPA - Grade Point Average
ABT - All But Thesis
OCD - Obsessive Compulsive Disabled   

What about the 5th Commandment?

If you have been reading these posts for awhile, you may think I have been harsh on KatieLyn's parents. And yet, from my point of view, I have been extraordinarily even tempered in my comments.

KatieLyn's family is Christian, yes. But based on the parents' actions, they seem to be more of the sail-in-the-church Christianity that is lived in front of others and less of the dig-for-a-personal-relationship with Jesus kind. Gwen identifies more through her church work than through her intimate confidence in scripture.

The fact is, for whatever reason the parents had, they raised a daughter who was still very dependent, both emotionally and financially, and who was still living at home at age 29. I am not the kind of person who thinks parents ought to kick their children out of the house at age 18 or 21 or whatever random number they set as a limit, but generally, if an adult child has not been trained in the skills and built up in the confidence that they can survive on their own, the parents have failed to be parents. KatieLyn seemed mostly trained in the skills, although unpracticed in a few things. But when it came to raising a confident adult daughter, her parents had tanked.  Joe understood this far better than most men. God had given Joe special revelation and insight into this. And for that reason and others, I remain confident that God was directing His plan for their marriage and providing a relatively gentle journey for KatieLyn to grow into God's call on her life.

Now, on to the topic: What about the 5th Commandment that is found in Exodus 20:12?

Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. King James Version

Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you. English Standard Version 

The command is to honor. It does not say to kowtow, to proceed from, or even to obey, although obedience is certainly an honorable act for young children. Honor is ethical behavior. It is being true to what the Lord has entrusted you with. 

Planning a wedding and inviting one's parents to sit in the front row is an act that honors them. Secretly eloping and telling them what you did after the fact is not. (There may be a few cases where a parent is so mentally ill that the safety of eloping trumps a marriage announcement ahead of time, but those special cases are few and far between.)  In this regard, KatieLyn was honoring her mother and her father. 

Fighting with your mother, especially when your mother is the provocateur, is not honoring her. KatieLyn knew this, and she determined to end it.  But she made a catastrophic decision and walked away from the wrong person. She ought to have walked away from her mom on this one. Refusing to fight would have honored her mother, it would have honored her love for Joe, and it would have honored God's provision for her life. Instead, she walked away from Joe, disobeyed God, and caved in to her mother's mechanization. That was not honor. 

I know it was tough living in the same house 24/7 with a mother who is jealous of your first love and who is constantly seeding doubt into your life.  When I met Gwen, she was treating KatieLyn as though she was a 14 year-old girl. Given that, I though KatieLyn had fared remarkably well, so that even though it was evident that her self-confidence was not up to what a woman her age would usually exhibit, I thought that she'd done extremely well under the conditions and would be able to mature quickly up to speed in the marriage that would boost her self-assurance. 

KatieLyn would have honored her mother simply by seriously listening and evaluating what her mom said. When KatieLyn saw that her mom's emotions did not align with what God had already told her about His plan for her life, she should have done the Jehoshaphat thing listed in last week's post and let God fight the battle for her. But because her parents had never allowed her to fully stand on her own often enough to get good at it, and because her mom did not trust Katie's being able to hear the Shepherd's voice, that did not happen. 

The Lesson
   This is precisely the way the devil exploits weaknesses. It is a classic illustration of how people miss God.  KatieLyn wanted to "do the right thing" and honor her mother.  Satan could make her feel guilty for not listening to her mom; yet all the while her mom had not been confident about hearing God's plan for her daughter. In Katie's attempt to honor her mother, she went beyond what the command says and she made an idol out of her mother's words, even though they were in conflict with what the Lord had originally told her. 

When Paul taught on this command in his letter to the Ephesians, he pointed out, "this is the first commandment with a promise." Paul's expansion on the 5th Commandment shows both that the command given through Moses had not been done away with, and that honor was higher than obedience.* 

When KatieLyn ran home in the middle of the night, she was behaving like a daughter, not like a wife.  Her parents, whom she was commanded to honor, had failed to help her mature into the transition that God was calling her to make. Her mother even went the other direction—not only did she fail to help her daughter establish her own identity, but Gwen hampered KatieLyn from achieving it by supplying phony rationalizations, such as, "Katie was just in love with the idea of a wedding; she wasn't in love with Joe."  No. KatieLyn was falling in love for real with the man whom God had sent, and that is what her mother was jealous of.




* Honor - The Hebrew root (kabad/kavad) and stem (piel) actually has a two-fold meaning: 1. to make heavy, make dull, make insensible; 2. to make honourable, honour, glorify. It implies a weighty gravitas. The Greek word for honor used by Paul when he quotes the law is τιμάω, which stresses reverence and value. An adult child is required to value his parents, but not to give blind obedience. God will hold an adult responsible for his/her own decision, and will not accept "I was obeying my parents" as an excuse the same way He would work around the intent of a child's heart when the child was trying to do the right thing, even though the parent was wrong. 

2 Chronicles 20

     Once upon a time, the Moabites and Ammonites with some of the Meunites came to wage war against Jehoshaphat.  There came some men that warned him, "A great army from beyond the sea has come against you, and they are already in En-gedi!"
Jehoshaphat, being a God-fearing man, was afraid and set his face to seek the Lord. He called a fast
throughout all Judah. And the people of Judah gathered to seek Jehovah.

     Jehoshaphat's prayer is recorded in 2 Chronicles 20:6-12.

   “O LORD, God of our fathers, are you not God in heaven? You rule over all the kingdoms of the nations. In your hand are power and might, so that none is able to withstand you.
Did you not, our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before your people Israel, and give it forever to the descendants of Abraham your friend?
And they have lived in it and have built for you in it a sanctuary for your name, saying,
'If disaster comes upon us, the sword, judgment, or pestilence, or famine, we will stand before this house and before you—for your name is in this house—and cry out to you in our affliction, and you will hear and save.'
And now behold, the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir, whom you would not let Israel invade when they came from the land of Egypt, and whom they avoided and did not destroy—
behold, they reward us by coming to drive us out of your possession, which you have given us to inherit.
O our God, will you not execute judgment on them? For we are powerless against this great horde that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.”

While Jehoshaphat prayed,  Judah was standing before the LORD with their infants, their wives, and their children. When he finished, the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jahaziel, a member of the priestly clan. Jahaziel then gives what has become one of the more familiar Old Testament prophecies on war:

Thus says the LORD to you, ‘Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed at this great horde, for the battle is not yours but God’s. [...] You will not need to fight in this battle. Stand firm, hold your position, and see the salvation of the LORD on your behalf, O Judah and Jerusalem.’ Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed. (15, 17)

Jehoshaphat bowed with his face to the ground and all the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem worshiped the Lord.

The next day, they were up at dawn and went out to the wilderness of Tekoa. Jehoshaphat reminded the people that they should, "Believe in the LORD your God, and you will be established; believe his prophets, and you will succeed." Then he appointed those who were to praise and sing. 
As the singing began, the Lord set ambushes against the men who were invading Judah, and they began killing each other. 

The adventure concludes:

When Judah came to the watchtower of the wilderness, they looked toward the horde, and behold, there were dead bodies lying on the ground; none had escaped. When Jehoshaphat and his people came to take their spoil, they found among them, in great numbers, goods, clothing, and precious things, which they took for themselves until they could carry no more. They were three days in taking the spoil, it was so much. On the fourth day they assembled in the Valley of Beracah, (the Hebrew fern, the valley of blessing) for there they blessed the LORD. Therefore the name of that place has been called the Valley of Beracah to this day. (24-26)

The Lesson
Okay, nice story, but what does it have to do with the Runaway Bride?  
This:
  It is the story of how to behave so that the Lord fights your battles against a stronger enemy. KatieLyn lost because she did not properly identify the enemy; she never suspected that the devil would work through her mother. But a marriage partner is a HUGE thing, and Satan used the biggest weapon available, a jealous, doubting mother.  KatieLyn lost because no reliable source warned her; as far as we know, her dad never did a thing to stop the fighting. Was he clueless? I don't know, but a man's role in the home as husband and father is to hear God and act.  KatieLyn lost because because she did not sing praises that would have drawn God to battle for her, but tried to fight a stronger foe on her own. When her mother brought the fight to her, she fought back. She did not seek the Lord at first, and by the time that she finally did, she was seeking Him about a battle that she had already lost.  She did not have the strength to rise at dawn and believe in the Lord. Her faith in God and her first love in life had already been destroyed by doubt. 



Scripture quoted from the  ESV (English Standard)
Link to Ferrell Jenkins' © photo of the Valley of Beracah and a bit of a geography lesson!

Did Joe Dodge a Bullet?

I have been asked that question several times since KatieLyn ran off in the middle of the night. I was asked again as recently as last week. To be clear, the questioners are asking if I think Joe is better off without KatieLyn; if marriage would have been a disastrous mistake.

Usually, I have had mixed feelings about the answer.

No, the marriage was clearly God's will for both Joe and KatieLyn. It would not have been a mistake. It was a mistake for KatieLyn to begin using the reasoning of this world to count the "what ifs" and to drop her faith in having heard God.

But... On the other hand, while we knew KatieLyn had a close relationship with her mother, we did not realize the magnitude of her attachment disorder, nor did we ever suspect the depth of dysfunction that later manifest in Gwen's triangulation demands to shut off and control all communication.

Enlightenment Can Come from the Oddest Places!

Who could have guessed that a discussion about North Carolina's bathroom bill, which requires persons using public bathrooms to use the gender that matches their original body parts rather than whichever bathroom they "feel like" in the moment, would have exposed a new level of βat&hit craziness in KatieLyn's family. Okay, maybe not actually the guano. Maybe factually the pee.

As we were delicately discussing privacy issues, the openness of urinals, and the dope-damaged brains of certain policy setters, the conversation took an unexpected twist. Apparently part of KatieLyn's job description as a nursery teacher is to teach two-year-old boys to potty sitting down—like a girl. I find that in itself disturbing, but that wasn't the part that left me incredulous.

I'm going to have to take the reporting of KatieLyn's word for this, I don't have an eyewitness, but reportedly, KatieLyn's mother has trained KatieLyn's father in a similar fashion because it makes cleaning easier.          
...   ...   ... 

Yes, it took me a moment to find words again. For what it's worth, the Bible is not exactly silent on this subject, so it ought to be fair to consider it here in a blog that compares real life with scripture. Every person has quirks and peculiarities. Those aren't the point here. What is more troubling is the degree of control that Gwen is enforcing over her husband. Telling a man, especially one's husband, how he may or may not use the facilities because it inconveniences your cleaning schedule is just plain freaky.  And weird. And abnormal. Emasculating one's husband because his God-given plumbing naturally splatters is definitely on the screwball side, and that he'd go along with it is worse.

Did Joe dodge a bullet? 

For the time being, yes. Until and unless KatieLyn is going to cut the apron strings that hold her fast, she can't be a good wife to anyone! She is willingly under the thrall of a control-freak mother, which would automatically make her a horrible wife.
I have said it before, and it is still true; God's design was for her to leave home and grow into her own person. She could have flourished and thrived if she'd been obedient to the Lord.
Joe dodged this bullet, but it hit KatieLyn in the heart.

But what about the 5th Commandment?

That is a legitimate question. It needs a post of its own. Yes, KatieLyn needs to honor her mother and her father. Real honor. Not false pride. I am not sure that she has grown to learn the difference yet.

A Duct Tape Story

Katie on Display

When you are bound by the devil, it is akin to being bound by duct tape. There are two main ways to break free of the tape. 1) rip it off quickly, or, 2) ease it off bit by bit.
KatieLyn's mom wants her to use the tediously slow approach. I think she has Katie totally convinced that is the best way.

 We'll see how that works out for them.  

   ★   ★   ★   ★  ★




Questions:
To what extent does Gwen derive pleasure from showing KatieLyn off as her perfect daughter?
Is that a status thing for her?

Our Life is the Result of Our Response to God's Word

Your life is the result of your response to God's word. This is not hard to prove. It makes perfect sense to everyone who knows God. And yet, many Christians are totally oblivious to it until it is explicitly pointed out to them.

In the 29th and 30th chapters of Deuteronomy, blessings and curses are laid out. The summary begins at 30:19—

 I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days...

 What was the runaway bride KatieLyn's response to His Word? There is a parable for that!  
     Mark 4:14, "The sower sows the word." KatieLyn matches the seed sown in verses 16 and 17.

When they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy; and they have no firm root in themselves, but are only temporary; then, when affliction or persecution arises because of the word, immediately they fall away.

 God told her who her husband should be. She immediately received it with joy. She had not developed a root in herself; she lived at home with a codependent mother who is highly skilled in manipulation and who used KatieLyn as a rent-paying scrubwoman. Then, affliction and distress arose because Gwen, her mother, was jealous and started provoking fights. As part of Gwen's mechanization, (I said she was a master manipulator,) she got KatieLyn to doubt that she'd really heard the Lord's will for her. Persecution came in the form of subtly layering on guilt trips. Wasn't Katie supposed to "honor" her mother?

KatieLyn's parents had never made her develop a root system of her own. She had always been dependent upon them. So when her mother hated Joe because she saw him as a threat who would "take Katie away from her," the rootless KatieLyn was unable to stand. Worse still, she now blames Joe like her mother does!

This is abusive parenting and the kind of stuff that gives homeschooling a bad name. KatieLyn was living in a bubble and she knew it. The Lord was providing a place for her to begin growing and flourishing n a new field, but she balked and ran back to her overly sheltering mommy.

Today, her life is a result of her response to God's word, and she is further behind now than she was a year ago. 

What is the proper response to God's word? 

 I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you. Psalm 199:11

Paul and Barnabas understood the proper response to God's word, and in one short sentence in Act 13:46, they explain why Israel was sent out in the diaspora.

And Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly, saying, “It was necessary that the word of God be spoken first to you. Since you thrust it aside and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we are turning to the Gentiles.

They thrust it aside and judged themselves unworthy. God did not judge them. The judged themselves after they thrust God's Word aside. Earlier this month a posted a blog titled "Destination: the Wilderness."  It profiled three Old Testament characters who ran away from God's Word. The all ended up in the Wilderness, and when God caught up with them, some time days  and other times decades later, He told them all essentially the same thing: You have to go back.
The New Testament pattern deals with the entire nation of Israel, not an individual, and the time lapse is nearly 2000 years. Only since 1948 could they return.

The Lesson
This is serious stuff for those who thrust aside God's word. Their response radically changes the results they get in their lives. The good part is that Joe will not have to suffer for KatieLyn's faithlessness forever. When the Jews rejected Jesus, God turned to the Gentiles. And their response surely warmed God's heart. We read, "And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed." 

Eventually, Paul and Barnabas "shook off the dust of their feet against" the Jews who incited the persecution (of Paul and Barnabas).  This is what Jesus had said to do in Matthew 10:14, "Whoever does not receive you, nor heed your words, as you go out of that house or that city, shake the dust off your feet." If the Jews were thinking "good riddance," then they probably had rejected 10:15 as well. "Truly I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city." This is serious stuff for those who thrust aside God's word.

How's it going, Pops?

My blog posting today is going to be a short one because there is a dearth of information on the subject. The only thing is abundance are the questions.

• How does a father act to protect his children?
     Contrary to the political correctness of the era, men are different than women and their Creator has assigned them certain roles. Perhaps foremost among the God-ordained duties of fatherhood is the task of protecting a child's heart.
   So, what, exactly, did KatieLyn's father do to protect her heart and prevent the crisis caused by her running off in the middle of the night?  Nothing that I can see.

• How does a husband act to protect his wife?
    What did Gwen's husband do to protect her from a replay of the Adam and Eve fiasco when Adam left Eve to deal with the serpent all by herself? Nothing comes to mind. 
     
• How does the male head of household act to protect its members from each other?  
   What did he do to stop his wife from picking fights with his daughter? Nothing that I have seen.

• How has KatieLyn's father taught her to hear God's voice?
     IDK. 

• How has KatieLyn's father empowered her to grow into a strong, confident woman of faith? What is he doing to prepare KatieLyn for the realities of adult life in a fallen world?
     This one does appear to have an answer—he delegated that responsibility to his wife. Or maybe Gwen just took it over on her own, who knows?

KatieLyn never spoke much about how her father taught her the skills and attitudes that she needed to succeed as a wife. We know that scripture commands a man to train up his children in the way that they should go, but somehow I doubt that running home in the middle of the night when no one is chasing would count as proof of dad's effective training.

The Lesson
   I don't know KatieLyn's father very well. I have never been in his home. But from my little perch in this world, it looks like he is trying to win Colossians 3:21 on a technicality. Colossians 3:21 says:

  Fathers! vex not your children, lest they be discouraged.

To vex means to bring distress or suffering to; to plague or afflict; to cause perplexity in the soul.  Or in modern language, "Fathers, do not exasperate your children, so that they will not lose heart."

Okay, so technically, KatieLyn's dad didn't do this directly. But he did allow his wife to infuriate his daughter, he permitted Gwen to badger his daughter to a degree that it caused KatieLyn to lose her first love. That is pretty serious stuff. Usually we think of fathers having to protect their daughters from the boyfriends, but in this case, the father failed to protect his daughter from the destruction being sown by her mother, his wife. He allowed Katielyn to become so discouraged and so disheartening that she lost her faith in knowing God's will. 

Whether he knows this or not, I have no clue, but he has put his daughter in the untenable position of either having to get Mommy-approval before pursuing relationships or rebelling against her mother. He has allowed the mother/daughter codependency to flourish right under his nose. So, how's it going, Pops? The answer to that has been swept under the rug. And that is very poor housekeeping.

Today, if you hear his voice...

Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.
Hebrews 3:15

Within this verse lies one of the reasons that I believe KatieLyn did NOT hear from God when she broke the engagement and bolted back home in the middle of the night.

Let's review the sequence of the courtship:
KatieLyn, the not-yet-running bride, heard from God; she was happy, even euphoric. Gos had answered fifteen years of prayer!
Gwen, KatieLyn's mom, became jealous of her daughter's joy and her answered prayers.
Gwen's own premarital dating had been filled with sex and lies, and Satan provoked her into being envious of her daughter.
This opened the door for the devil to deceive Gwen. Where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. James 3:16
Satan manipulated Gwen's jealousy in order to steal KatieLyn's peace.

God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, 1 Corinthians 14:33.
KatieLyn original peace was robbed by the fighting that her mother provoked.
Once the devil stole KatieLyn's peace, he planted doubts.
KatieLyn no longer trusted what she had originally heard from the Lord.
Her mother, whom had been used to plant the doubt in the first place, now told KatieLyn that she had to be 100% sure.
KatieLyn panics in hysteria¹ because her mother's words do not match what God told her. 

The author of Hebrews² goes back to this point first made in 3:15 and repeats it in 4:7.
   He spoke through David, as was already stated: "Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts."

Today, KatieLyn's heart is much harder than the heart of the woman Joe fell in love with. There is a correlation between one's ability to hear God and the hardness of one's heart. It is what did Pharaoh in during the time of Moses; David wrote about it in the Psalms. It is the hard heart of the receiver that is the problem, not God's transmission of the message. 

KatieLyn heard God originally because her heart was tender and open to receiving and answer for her fifteen years of prayers. Gwen, on the other hand, was rigid and expected God's answer to match her preconceived ideas of what a courtship should look like. It did not, so she could not accept it as being God.

The fact is, God talks to everybody who will listen to Him. KatieLyn listened at first until the devil stole her joy and injected words of faith-robbing doubt during the fights with her mom.  Gwen was going to hear God only if He would say what she wanted to hear. He did not. The Lord has a call on KatieLyn's life, but it wasn't the call that her mother wanted. Gwen had other plans, and because she walks by sight, the devil was able to use her to derail God's plan. Gwen believes a courtship must be long and drawn out because it usually takes her a long and drawn out time to hear God. 
The fact is, God talks to everybody who will listen to Him, and if you are listening well with the inner ears of your heart, you can hear God at the speed of thought.

The Lesson
There are many voices in the world. To hear God clearly and consistently, you can develop your listening by keeping your heart tender. (You also need to keep you mind quiet and free of worldly reasoning, but I chose to limit this post to the heart part.)  It is not hard. We easily recognize voices of our family and our friends because we are familiar with them.  
The night KatieLyn ran back to her parents' house, Joe was dealing with KatieLyn's obstinate, hardened heart. Hers was not the heart of a woman who had heard God. She would not even answer the question, "Are you sure that you heard from God?" The recalcitrance he saw that night did not come from the Lord. To this day she is unrepentant, which means that she hasn't dealt with the underlying issue yet. She only ran from it.



¹ "Hysterical" is a quote from Gwen; I would not have used it otherwise. .
² Scholars disagree about who wrote Hebrews. Authorship is often attributed to Paul, but some variances in the wording don't follow the style he used in other letters. The explanation that I am most comfortable with is this one: Paul wrote his other letters in Greek, the universal language of the day. But to the Hebrews, he wrote in Hebrew. That is perfectly reasonable. The  closest-to-original manuscripts that we have today are in Greek. It is probable that Luke translated Paul's original Hebrew language letter into Greek to make the information more widely accessible. This would explain why the content matches something Paul would have written, but yet the language varies from his usual style.

The Sheep and the Goats

Matthew 25:31-46 tells of what is often referred to as the judgment of the sheep and goat nations. It tells of when Jesus comes in His glory and all the nations will be gathered before Him. He will separate them one from another, just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

The standard that is used for judging is found in verse 40: 
    "as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me."

But wait! There's more...
Failure to act is covered in verse 45: 
   "to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me."

Jesus was teaching the macrocosm of "the nations," but the principle is the same at an individual level. People tend to focus on the first part about doing and omit the second part about not doing. In full context, neglect is equal to a wrongful act.  

I don't know whether KatieLyn realized it or not, but her mom actively supported Katie's failure!  
Let me explain...

The control of dialogue, the triangulation, and KatieLyn's refusal to speak to Joe was/is abusive. 
 It is abuse to deliberately ignore someone. It is intentional sabotage of a relationship.

 The 'silent treatment' otherwise named as 'deliberate intent to ignore' or ATCH (absent to cause harm), is where an abuser completely cuts the victim off and the abuser will not budge. They often acknowledge in their own minds that the victim is suffering but do nothing about it, walk away and simply ignore it. The silent abuser is able to switch him/herself off emotionally to the pain and suffering they cause, and will deny he/she is the problem. The abuser's behavior in society is often charming, calm, happy and can fool the outside world; he/she will be seen by others as a pillar of society, gentle-natured, helpful, kind, caring.  (T. Cooper)

Interestingly, as I researched this, I found that those persons most likely to use  the 'silent treatment' of ATCH methods to punish and control others often have a history of having suffered abuse by a parent. They will convince themselves they are not abusing because they haven’t physically engaged, but in reality, it is a form of passive/aggressive behavior. And while I will stop short of accusing Gwen of abusing KatieLyn, the control that she exercises in the codependency does play toward that pathology.

I also learned that the silent treatment is a common punishment, which explains why Gwen encouraged KatieLyn to use it!  If you have been following this blog, you know that Gwen retroactively claimed to have "misgivings"about the relationship. "Misgivings" was her pc (pridefully correct) code word for abject dislike and near-hatred. Gwen needed to feel good about herself, so she never called it hatred, but in the end, Gwen fully supported KatieLyn's punishment of Joe, so it fits.  

Gwen does not think that I heard from the Lord; she thinks I only think that I do, but that I don't.  That bothers me a bit, but I could not sway her wrong conclusion, so, Pfft! I can and do hear the Lord. Jesus said that He is the good Shepherd and His sheep hear His voice. (If Christians can't hear the Shepherd, they may be following the goat herder instead.) One thing that the Lord impressed upon me recently was that among the reasons Gwen did not like Joe, one was that she blamed him for KatieLyn keeping things from her.

In their codependency, they had shared many close thoughts. As God began preparing KatieLyn for marriage, she began sharing things with Joe that she was not telling her mother. This is normal and healthy, but Gwen blamed Joe for her loss. The quote from my notes—I wrote it down when God first showed it to me because I knew I would not be able to write the next blog post right away—was this: She hated him because KL was keeping things from her (and they'd always shared everything). She felt Joe was invading. The hypocritical irony of it all is that at the same time that Gwen saw Joe as an invader, she was perfectly was comfortable pushing her opinions on him about about things that were far outside her authority, such as how she thought Joe should trim his beard

I have learned that in the 'textbook example,' the silent treatment behavior is used to (a) hide the vulnerabilities of the abuser, (b) obscure the awareness of who the abuser really is, or (c) both. By ignoring his/her partner, the abuser does not have to deal with any problematic issues.
    (a) The vulnerabilities of the abuser - Joe knew from the earliest stages of the courtship that KatieLyn had and inferiority complex, and was vulnerable to manipulation because of it. He consciously tried to avoid exploiting this. It came as no surprise when Gwen later accused him of trying to talk Katie into or out of things, but that was not the case. If anything, Gwen was projecting her own treatment of KatieLyn.
   (b) The awareness of who the abuser is - This is where the passive/aggressive part comes in. This is also the part that Jesus called out in verse 45, above, "to the extent that you did not do." The abuse can be hard to see because, unless ignoring can be called an activity, the abuser is not doing anything; but the not-doing is the abuse! The abuser moves even further from a healthy reality by being in denial that such behavior is punitive.
   (c) Both - In the case of the runaway bride, it was both. Joe's and KatieLyn's relationship could have survived part a by itself. Moving out of her parents' home and gaining confidence as a wife would have gone a long way to ameliorating the feelings of inferiority that are at the root of KatieLyn's codependency; she would have thrived and bloomed into her own person as she let go of the apron-strings. That had been a part of God's plan, and it would have been the easiest, most natural, and most loving resolution to the codependency. Instead, feelings of inferiority were "cured" with narcissism—and that is like taking an addictive painkiller without treating an underlying chronic problem. That is what deepens a codependent relationship. 
When KatieLyn ran back home, she reinforced the codependency.* She realized a temporary flush of power, which I fear has probably changed her permanently, and not for the better. If it had changed her for the better, then she would have moved out on her own to figure out what she needed; she does not need to be enslaved to her codependency unless, in her heart of hearts, she wants to be her mother's mini-me.  Continuing to live at home after calling off the wedding was like an alcoholic keeping liquor in the cupboard.

The Lesson
Jesus' Sheep and Goats teaching clearly indicates that God considers not dealing with a need to be a serious issue. He taught that neglecting others in this way counts as if you were treating Him that way. When KatieLyn ignores Joe and refuses to speak with him, it counts as her ignoring Jesus and refusing to speak to Him.
This is not the kind of a problem that can be resolved by moving on. It cannot be resolved by burying it and getting a fresh start. Is one of those problems that exists (and will probably grow) until she deals with it, no matter how well she hides temporarily. KatieLyn has become one of those women who use the silent treatment to punish others and get what she wants.

One of Joe's delights in their courtship had been that neither of them had a lot of emotional baggage from past failures.  KatieLyn has a goatskin bag now.


 




* From my research on this, there are two ways her future could go, 1) she kicked the codependent can down the road where it will be harder for her to overcome now, or  2) she will adapt, become even more like her mother, and date only mommy-approved men who can be controlled.

Destination: the Wilderness... and what happened next.

One of my earlier posts looked at Jonah. When he decided to run from God, he went overboard. I think we could safely say that his fish belly destination is the exception to the rule!  There are many other Bible characters who also tried to run from God, but instead of plunging into the waters of the deep with seaweed wrapping around their heads, their result was a geophysical opposite, an arid wilderness.

 
Hagar 
The story of Sarai, Hagar, and Ishmael is told in Genesis 16, and quite frankly, it is a mess. Sarai could not get pregnant, so she told her husband Abram to take her Egyptian servant, Hagar, and he could try to have a child through her. A pregnancy was the only part of the plan that worked. There were side effects that were not what Sarah had expected. Hagar, understandably to anyone with half a clue, began to despise Sarah. Abram turned slacker at this point and told his wife, Sarai, handle it however she saw fit. So Sarai treated her maidservant harshly, and a pregnant Hagar fled from her presence into the wilderness.
   "The angel of the LORD found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur.  And he said, 'Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?” She said, 'I am fleeing from my mistress Sarai.'  The angel of the LORD said to her, 'Return to your mistress and submit to her.'" verses 7-9.
When we read ahead into the future, we find that eventually Abraham, as head of his household, did have to send Hagar and her son away.  Galatians 4:22-31 covers the New Testament perspective of the pattern lived out by Sarah and Hagar. Allegorically speaking, the women are two covenants:  one represents the flesh in which persons are externally led by what is happening around them,  and the other the spirit, in which persons are internally led as the Spirit of God bears witness with you spirit.

Moses
In Acts chapter seven, Stephen gives a historical summation of Israelite history before the Sanhedrin. In verse 23, at 40 years of age, Moses begins to discover the call of God on his life. Verses 25-28 show that his mission call wasn't working out like he expected, and he ran into some threatening disagreement.
  "At this retort Moses fled and became an exile in the land of Midian," verse 29.
This began the first of two times Moses would spend years in the wilderness, wandering in a permissive rather than a perfect will of God. This first time was his own chioce; he could not blame it on the disobedience of others. What can we say? That he learned some good survival skills during this time? That his experiences now would give him the compassion to intercede for the Israelites later? That may be true, but it does not mean that it was the only way or the best way.  It would be another 40 years before Moses had the encounter with the Lord that would get him back on track. 
    "Now when forty years had passed, an angel appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, in a flame of fire in a bush," verse 30. Moses gets curious in verse 31, God identified Himself in verse 32, told Moses to take off his sandals in verse 33, and then in verse 33 says, "Now come, I will send you back to Egypt."
Moses would go on to perform great miracles, bring great deliverance, and to receive the 'living oracles' when he returned to Mount Sinai with the newly liberated Israelites, but he still had problems. Stephen recounts: 
   "Our fathers were unwilling to be obedient to him, but repudiated him and in their hearts turned back to Egypt," verse 39.
We cannot know the "what ifs" with any certainly, but it is possible that if Moses had not fled the first time, those years could have been spent changing to Israelites hearts to become more cooperative. Instead, Moses would live through the repetition of the wilderness-time pattern he once instigated for himself.  
 

Elijah
1 Kings 19 tells of when Elijah ran from Jezebel. His destination was a juniper tree a day's journey into the wilderness.   In some ways he was more despondent than Jonah, who also told God that he'd had enough and wanted to quit, except Elijah went even further and asked the Lord to take his life. We pick up at 1 Kings 19:5-7.

He lay down and slept under a juniper tree; and behold, there was an angel touching him, and he said to him, "Arise, eat."
Then he looked and behold, there was at his head a bread cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. So he ate and drank and lay down again.
The angel of the LORD came again a second time and touched him and said, "Arise, eat, because the journey is too great for you."

 Obviously, God did not give Elijah the lay-down-and-die plan, although he equally obviously "felt" that was the thing to do. A high drama sequence follows with tornadic winds, shattered rocks and fire. But when Elijah finally hears God's voice, it is saying, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" 
Elijah's excuse is part defensive and part woebegone. Then God says, "Return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus." God is sending him back to anoint a king for Israel and anoint a successor for himself. In a roundabout way, Elisha will get his desire, but first he must put affairs in order and anoint the new regime. God did not allow him to leave behind a mess for others. 

The Lesson
These stories which appear very different at first look share several strong parallels. 
1. They all felt pressured and fled.
2. They all ended up in the wilderness.
3. In each case, God sent them back to deal with the original issues before they got their resolution.
According to Gwen, mother of the runaway, and her whatever-pops-from-the-mouth analysis, these folks should have slammed the door to their personal history shut and moved on.  God did not.
KatieLyn does not have a wise mother who expects her to grow up and deal. She has one who coddles a codependency. And she like it like that.
But God does not leave things half-done.
At some point, KatieLyn will have to learn that. Next time will be harder for her. 

The April ~or anytime, actually~ Fool

The Tunes ap, (who uses the radio any more?) is featuring Fool-themes in keeping with the the atheists holiday. You know, Psalm 14:1, "The fool has said in his heart, There is no God," making April Fool's Day a legitimate atheist holiday. But I digress.

Anyway, I heard the song "Why Do Fools Fall in Love," a rock and roll classic from the 1950s that was rooted in the R&B style. Most people of KatieLyn's and Joe's generation are more familiar with the Diana Ross version. For me, it was the Beach Boys' rendition that's most familiar.

Click for walk down Nostalgia Lane ~ Perfect for Snoopy Happy Dancing. 

That vered off-topic, but in a fun way. Okay, back to the issue at hand. So, it is a rhetorical question, "why do fools fall in love?" I am not going to plumb the depths of the lyrics looking for some arcane truth. What I am going to do is experiment with transcribing some observations about fools by juxtaposing portions of what 1 Corinthians 13 says about love.

Fools are impatient, fools are unkind and jealous; 
Fools display a false bravado and are obstinate.
Fools act unbecomingly; they seek their own, provoking others.
Fools take into account a wrong suffered,
They justify unrighteousness, not recognizing the truth;

Fools won't carry their own weight, fools believe only what they wish, 
Fools destroy hope, and run from the slightest shadow.
Fools fail. 

 Replacing 'love' with 'fool' and then stating the opposite makes surprisingly good poetry! 

The Lesson

The lesson is that if you should pound the fool in the mortar among the grain with the pestle, his foolishness would not depart from him.  The grain represents the fuel of life; it sustains health. Pound it into a fool until every cell in his/her body comes in contact with the bread of life, and he/she will still be a fool.
KatieLyn won't believe that Joe heard God. And when I say "won't believe," I mean that she, as an act of her own intent and volition, wills to disbelieve that Joe heard from God.  The very behaviors that she has exhibited since she ran back home in the middle of the night lend weight and support to the fact that Joe did hear God clearly because she acted like someone who was running from God, not to Him. For example, she is quite obstinate about it even though she has yet to articulate a reason that makes sense. The main issue of her behavior since she ran away, (her insistence on triangulating,) surpasses 'unbecoming' and 'unkind' and is abusive, heading for psychotic.