Deuteronomy – the second giving of the law.  We get bored with books like this.

I’m not bored.

Chapter 13 talks about the possibility that someone might try to entice you to follow other Gods.  It may be a false prophet, but it may be the wife you love, your son or your daughter.  Should they try, there is only one choice, they have to die.

On paper, this sounds fine.  Nothing comes between me and my God.  But then I hold my beautiful grandchildren.  I laugh and feel that sense of pride as I watch my sons becoming men.  I kiss my wife and talk with her.  Should they lead me from my God, could I kill them?  Could I be the first to pick up a stone and throw it at them?

I don’t think so.

That’s probably what happened, what happens.  Something has a little more wow, a little more yeah than the stuffy gods of our religions and we move, imperceptibly at first but our hearts are drawn away.  And we would never confront this with a ferocity that would kill those we love.  

So God is sacrificed.  But in the end, so are our children.

I’m not trying to get you to kill your kids.  I think what God, through Moses, is trying to say is that I need to take it seriously how I lead them, that I lead them.  The same admantiam will that would stone my child is what I need to sacrifice my self, my flesh.  The same ferocity that attacks the sin in others is what I need to attack the sin in me.

Either I lay my life down or I lay theirs down.

I look at my body, my finances, my talents and it is obvious that I am no paragon of self-discipline.  But the blessing is, I’m not dead yet.  And God is calling me.  Calling all of us.

“He is no fool who give what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”  Jim Elliot