Suppose a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father or mother, even though they discipline him. In such a case, the father and mother must take the son to the elders as they hold court at the town gate. The parents must say to the elders, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious and refuses to obey. He is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of his town must stone him to death. In this way, you will purge this evil from among you, and all Israel will hear about it and be afraid. (Deuteronomy 21:18-21 NLT)
In the Old Testament, there are over 28 crimes that attract death. It is no surprise to me because the Justice of the law, directly and indirectly, dictates that if you hurt person or property you must in one way or another be hurt or subjected to some kind of pain too. How right this is, will be for another day.
Today, I want you to imagine a scene where parents who have been disobeyed by their child, do not merely spank the child but have to gather the entire community and stone the son to death. The communication of this justice is a simple one.
The obedience of a child to their parents is more important than the child himself. No wonder the fifth commandment adds a close that says: “that your days may be long”. In other words, the life of a child depended solely on his obedience to the parents. Let me ask: What really is more valuable and important between a CHILD and OBEDIENCE?
If you asked the cult of Judaism, the answer is OBEDIENCE but if you asked me, I can assure you, the life of Divine (my son) matters than his obedience to me. Your values are the things that you believe are of eternal importance. How we think and behave always matches our values.
One’s satisfaction, content or frustration depends so much on whether what they are doing aligns with their personal values. The beliefs that affect an individual’s judgmental faculties about what is good or bad is what we call; Values. The manner in which these values are acted out is what we call; Ethics.
Ethical behaviour is acting in ways consistent with one’s personal values and according to the cult of Judaism in the Bible, stoning a disobedient biological child was a product of a value system. One’s value system is the campus guiding their behaviour.
A set of intentional and consistent ethical values are the measures and framework within which individuals and groups make decisions and act. Your value system is your core ideology and you knowingly and unknowingly act it out.
Today the majority of our world today run what I call a PROPERTY VALUE SYSTEM (PVS). In November 2016, a young man around Lugogo shot another to death because he had scratched his car.
Kanyamunyu went to prison, Akena the shot went to the grave, and both cars remained. Today September 10, 2018, in Nansana a man (Gerald Kayondo) had his Prado scratched by a taxi driver (Richard Seruga) and the brother, after a verbal scuffle entered his Prado, got his short-handled Hoe and hit the other man (Taxi Driver) on the head. The Prado man survived the angry mob; he escaped and was saved from the angry mob by the police.
The mob burnt his car, the taxi driver was rushed to the Hospital (alive or dead, God knows). Notice that in 2016 the killer had the weapon in his car, and here we are in 2018 the killer also had a weapon in the car.
Again both of them had to choose between an injured PROPERTY (but fixable and replaceable) and to injure a PERSON (unfixable and irreplaceable) and they both chose the property. The choice of this Prado driver has cost two innocent families.
The family of the killer suffers and the family of the killed suffers too. Just because one actor valued property over person. Now before we conclude that these are emotions, I would like to inform you that our emotions reference our core ideology (Value system). Anger is not water that rains on us, anger is water stored in us for a long time that we release.
Today everywhere you go, you are told how property is valuable and how you should work hard to get property and protect property. Parents sacrifice their children in the name of wealth. People do atrocious things to make sure they get property…and gradually they establish a Property Value System that has no space for any person that threatens their property.
Today when you go 97% of Churches and listen to what they are preaching, it is property, not people.
Preachers are not emphasizing LOVE ONE ANOTHER (John 13:34-35) but they are teaching us to LOVE PROPERTY AND BE BETTER THAN OTHERS. This is how our value system has been built for time and when we act emotionally, we draw from this system built in us knowingly and unknowingly.
Brothers and Sisters, I want you to know that Jesus at the cross, did not die for property, neither did he even die for angels. Christ died for us human beings. We are the only creatures created in the image of God. We cannot even be compared to property. Bible says we were not ransomed with property (1Peter 1:18-20).
A human being is the only value and nothing else matters. Always keep that in mind. The Bible says: For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And some people, craving money, have wandered from the true faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows. (1Timothy 6:10 NLT).
Let us work hard, let us pursue our dreams and let us gather as much good precious property as we can, but we must protect ourselves from FALLING IN LOVE WITH PROPERTY. Property should be limited to something we WANT, not something we LOVE. We should tell PROPERTY that I WANT YOU, but tell PEOPLE that I LOVE YOU.
God bless you and: THINK & UNDERSTAND (2Tim 2:7 NLT)
Pr ITM WHITE
The Gospel Hawker
iTiS Well of Worship Fellowship (John 4:24)
iTiS Well of Worship Fellowship (John 4:24) 