2625AFC061926 – Culpable Deniability ← PODCAST LINK 🙂

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Matthew 10:32-33 – ³² “Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; ³³ but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.

Psalm 69:8-9 –
⁸ I have become a stranger to my kindred,
    an alien to my mother’s children.

⁹ It is zeal for your house that has consumed me;
    the insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.

Romans 5:14 ^c–15 (GNT) [1] – Adam was a figure of the one who was to come. ¹⁵ But the two are not the same, because God's free gift is not like Adam's sin. It is true that many people died because of the sin of that one man. But God's grace is much greater, and so is his free gift to so many people through the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ.

Jeremiah 20:10 ^a –
¹⁰ For I hear many whispering:
    “Terror is all around!
Denounce him! Let us denounce him!”

Aloha nui loa, ʻŌmea! Grace and Peace to each of you from God our Father and our Lord, Jesus the Christ, in the Power of the Holy Spirit. Before we get into the meaning of today’s topic, I am going to ask you to once again fire up that little movie screen on the inside of your forehead. Maybe you’ve watched a home-video on TV of a child who is calmly sitting in the kitchen with chocolate cake all over their face, and mom is asking her/him,
“ Were you eating the chocolate cake?” And then the child replies,
“ No.”
“ Are you sure you weren’t eating the chocolate cake?”
“Yeah.”
“Then why do you have chocolate cake all over your face and hands?”

“Um, a monster came over and picked up the cake and pushed it on my face so I had to try to take it off with my hands.”

We often laugh away the consequences of a “cute little episode” like this, even though we can clearly see that the child is lying. What’s most important, though, is it the child knows he or she is lying by denying the obvious, and then attempting to shift the blame for the crimes committed – stealing cake, lying about it, and then blaming someone (or something) else.

How do “innocent children” learn to lie so effortlessly?!? Sometimes that question reignites the debate over nurture or nature. I think most of us would agree that no parent would intentionally teach or model lying as an acceptable practice for their child. That just leaves nature, and we have to confess that it is in our nature to lie. Very often we lie to avoid culpability, the blame for doing the wrong thing, and the punishment for the culpability. This brings to mind one of my favorite sayings: “There are no inconsequential acts.”

Do you remember the game show on TV called “Truth or Consequences”? Contestants would be asked a series of oddball trivia questions. If they answered correctly – “told the truth” – they would win a modest cash prize. If they answered incorrectly, "Beulah the Buzzer" would sound off and they had to perform some off-the-wall consequence. Usually it involved performing some ridiculous task like moving a ping-pong ball toward a target by waving a sort of paddle over the ball instead of moving it by hitting it or picking it up. There were some rare occasions when the consequence turned out to be a heartwarming reunion with a long-lost friend or relative, or the return of a loved-one from a military deployment.

Now, why did I bring that up? It goes back to the statement “there are no inconsequential acts.” Whether you tell the truth or whether you tell a lie, there is a consequence attached to each. Lying is denying the truth. That bears repeating: Lying is denying. The guilty little cake-covered kid tries to deny even touching the cake. This brings to mind the first lies in Eden. The Serpent asked, “Did God really say you shall not eat from ‘any tree’ in the garden? Eve came back with a fresh lie claiming,” God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’” (See Genesis 3:1-5) that little embellishment I underlined was Eve’s lie. Later, when God had caught them out of the lies, Adam claimed plausible deniability – “The woman gave it to me, so I ate it.” (The first “Yes, Dear” moment!) Adam assumed, wrongly, that God did not know he was standing next to Eve as the Serpent was speaking. It was like, “I didn’t know the fruit was from that tree! I wasn’t directly involved in that conversation.” He was hoping for the sort of deniability which is an attempt to successfully deny involvement due to a lack of evidence. Our First Parents should have known better than to lie because they had consumed the knowledge of good and evil – and they chose the Evil of lying instead of the Good of repenting.

Inasmuch as lying is denying the Truth, we hate the suffering we have to endure when others lie about us. It’s bullying, and nobody likes that – except the bullier. When someone uses lies, or strength, or intimidation, or physical harm because they perceive us to be weaker then they are, that is bullying. When persons in powerful positions mock and threaten persons they rate as “LESS WORTHY THAN I AM,” then what sort of foolishness it is to deny the One who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life! Let’s see some of the things Jesus said about that.

Matthew 10:32-33 – ³² “Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; ³³ but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.

Mark 8:34-38 – ³⁴ He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ³⁵ For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the Gospel, will save it. ³⁶ For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? ³⁷ Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? ³⁸ Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” (See also a parallel passage in Luke 9:23-26)

2 Timothy 2:11-14 – ¹¹ The saying is sure: If we have died with him, we will also live with him; ¹² if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he will also deny us; ¹³ if we are faithless, he remains faithful – for he cannot deny himself.

Here is something many people find surprising: God has faith in us. God knows we can choose to repent and obey. We can turn away from sin and turn back to God. (← Music Link) Sometimes when we try to turn away from sin we turn back to ourselves instead of God. “I know I messed up, but I also know I can fix this.” God patiently, lovingly, faithfully waits for us to repent – right up to our last moment in this world. At that precise moment, we receive the consequences of our obedience or disobedience. (CCC 1021-1022 The Particular Judgment) Once again: There are no inconsequential acts. If every act has a consequence, then all our acts should be Good instead of Evil because we never know when the next act will be the last act before the Curtain of Death closes around us. We’ve mentioned this before – we are to be wholly Holy as Our Father in Heaven is Holy. “Impossible!” we say. God says, “POSSIBLE!”

How?

In our Key Verse from Psalms, we see a familiar phrase – “It is zeal for your house that has consumed me.” This passage is recalled when Jesus went after the merchants and money changers in the Temple. What is zeal? It is passionate participation, enthusiastic devotion, and it is the intensely joyful commitment Our Heavenly Father has for us. We recall Exodus 34:14 and El Qanna (← follow the link) – the Jealous God אֵ֥ל  קַנָּ֖א – but not jealousy like coveting, but rather a passionate Holy zeal and expectation of complete and utter devotion to God who claims us as his people. He fiercely guards us against the bad consequences that are the natural result of our bad choices. In return, God has faith that we will willingly return to him with our entire heart, mind, and strength.

HOW?!

The Apostle Paul has a pretty good answer about how to overcome our heritage of Original Sin. Adam was a figure of the one who was to come. ¹⁵ But the two are not the same, because God's free gift is not like Adam's sin. It is true that many people died because of the sin of that one man. But God's grace is much greater, and so is his free gift to so many people through the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ. God gave me, gave you, gave all of us Life. All he wants is for us to give it back to him in the form he originally created it. The “how” is through the free Gift of Grace. There’s always one last act, and because God is so Good, there is always one last chance. Like we say here in the Islands, “Try chance it.” (← Click Link) But what if we blow our last chance and fail to return to the Lord?

Then we turn to Malachi 4:1-2 ^a – ^[a] (← Click Link^[a]) ¹ See, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. ² But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings. There’s a really good example of bad and good consequences. It is our choices that convict us. The choices others make for or against us have little to do with our own Day of Reward. When we are denounced, mocked, hated, spurned, ostracized, assassinated, treated with ruthless cruelty – those who carry out such actions on us receive their own moment of judgment. We need not – indeed must not – fear them. We must not fear what they say to us or about us. We must fear only the Lord our God with a Holy F.A.I.T.H. in his Promises. In our Key Verse from Jeremiah, he cries out to the Lord about the persecution he must endure because he obeys God and prophesies against the evildoers surrounding him. He is a Witness, a martyr, for God; yet he also knows that his actions are righteous and expects to see the Lord’s vengeance on his persecutors because they have denied God the homage and reverence he deserves. They are guilty of denying God. Only they are culpable for their sins. God's Grace is still available to them just as it is still available to us. They, and we, can take it or leave it.

Do we behave like Adam and pretend that God isn’t looking? That is denying God. There is a very uncomfortable consequence for that. “Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; ³³ but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.” There is no excuse for not taking responsibility for our own sins by refusing to repent and return. There are last acts, last consequences, but there are no last excuses unless they come to us by the Grace of God. Culpable deniability means the we have earned and deserve blame for doing what is wrong when the option to do what is right was always open to us. We chose that on our own. It was “on our watch,” even if we weren’t watching, and yet we also assumed God wasn’t watching either. We can claim we didn’t see it going down, but that’s often a lie. Lying is denying, and that’s a tough last act to follow because it ends up in a really uncomfortable space. Let’s agree to make all our actions positively consequential. The Truth is, and Truth should be our last act in the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Amen?

Whatever, whenever, wherever, whoever, however, if ever, forever —
at your service, Belovéd!

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