Relative Values

SUN., JULY 5, 1987, 6:20 AM
FARM, STUDY

Some who are in the “Christian fold” feel very secure that this religion based in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit is one based on absolute values. Such folk also feel comfortable in bad mouthing relative values as being weak and certainly inferior to these eternal, absolute ones. Since My basic criterion is that you must be faithful to Me, this is as acceptable a path as the one you are on. Yet yours does see values as more relative, so hear a lesson that should help to clarify and substantiate your understanding.

The Scriptural root for relativity is “For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.” This speaks to you clearly, and I have helped you understand it better than would be possible on your own. The most difficult of these to accept is that “There is a time to love and a time to hate.” The absolute value is that I want you to love at all times, as I do. The balance is that love should be, by far, the dominant state of being, but certain conditions arise that deserve to be hated. The New Testament adds to the picture of Me as Almighty God rather than presenting a “new and improved God.” The Old Testament has many references to My displaying hate for certain people and circumstances. Yet the dominant attitude throughout the Scriptures is love. If you know this it comes forth as you read the whole story.

It could be said that I valued gentleness over violence in My earth life as Jesus. Mostly I was gentle. I was not willing to become a military leader and put down the power of Rome with the power of God (though that would have been possible… as possible as leading the Jews out of Egypt). I did not encourage My disciples to defend Me with violence as I was arrested in the Garden. I turned away, with gentle but powerful words, those who would, in righteousness, stone the woman caught in adultery.

Still, you remember My anger and violence toward those who bought and sold in the temple, as well as My verbal lambasting of the Pharisees, those righteous churchmen of My earth time. There is a time for toughness as well as one for gentleness. Yet it is difficult to assume that “toughness” should be the dominant value, let alone the absolute. It is interesting to Me, then, that many who hold strongly the commitment to absolute values are very supportive of an expensive military program and of the necessity to take military action, even against much weaker “opponents”.

Those who hold to absolute values are most certain that there are such in relation to sexual behavior. The most severe interpretation is that there should be no sexual relations, giving this up for a closer walk with Me. This, of course, would mean the eventual end of the human species, so the next absolute is sexual relations only with one’s spouse. Originally this was only for procreation; then the man’s pleasure was accepted, and, reluctantly, that the wife might also enjoy. When enjoyment is accepted, then the whole issues becomes more relative. For it becomes very difficult (a relative term) to absolutize enjoyment – deciding what I want everyone to enjoy or not to enjoy.