The Company You Keep: A Proximal Relationship

I don’t generally like to oversimplify things for people because it makes them lazy but critical thinking skills seem to be in short supply in the world and what I wish to communicate needs to be heard. I try to lay things bare to the point that my readers can forward the idea on without much commentary. 

Simply put…

There is something strange afoot in society. Everyone can see it too. For some its just below the surface out of sight, barely perceptible or ethereal. For others it is a punch in the face. Obvious as the sun in the sky. It goes beyond the self-righteousness of the political Right. It goes beyond the moral depravity and corrupt minds of the political Left. At face value it is on the world level. The realm of physicality. The empirical. We see it. We can even sometimes quantify it but it’s not a thing per se in the physical world. All of it is sin and its root cause is spiritual, but it manifests in the spiritual and physical world as decrepitude. All the moral and ethical wrongs we all see in the world around us.

We’ve heard it said often over the last few years, “Things have gotten bad.” It also comes out as, “Things seem like they’re upside down. They’re confused.” That’s what evil and sin does. It corrupts. It flips things. It confuses things. Makes what should’ve been easy to understand disorganized and corrupted. God is a God of order. There is no confusion in His nature. Then why the disorder and confusion. Because the Lucifer and evil are parasites. They seek to undo and disorganize that which is. Discontent. Destruction. Disharmony.

Our society gives honor to that which is clearly wrong. Lawlessness in our cities. Claims that the inner cities like Washington DC are safe when it is clear the leaders of that city lied and falsified numbers to make the city appear less violent than it actually is. So violent that the National Guard needed to be called to put things back to order. Then made the people that were trying to restore order the villain or bad guys. Calling the friend a foe and the foe a friend. Absurdity.

A society that honors the killing of the unborn and calls it healthcare and then violently protests to get it when they are refused it as if it is a God-given right to murder one's child. Then those in support call the violent protests mostly peaceful. Literally using equivocation in their language calling things the exact opposite of their nature just as Isaiah predicted of a fallen and corrupt society.

Isaiah 5:20 Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!

The very nature of these behaviors is what will prevent these very types of people from getting the justice they so unrighteously demand because they themselves are so unjust. Do unto others as you’d have done to yourself or the sins you do to others will inevitably be visited upon you. The next passage gives us the hint at why this happens too.

Isaiah 59:1-10 But your iniquities have built barriers between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He does not hear...

 ...your lips have spoken lies, and your tongue mutters injustice. No one calls for justice; no one pleads his case honestly. They rely on empty pleas; they tell lies; they conceive mischief and give birth to iniquity...

...Their feet run to evil; they are swift to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are sinful thoughts; ruin and destruction lie in their wake...

Therefore, justice is far from us, and righteousness does not reach us. We hope for light, but there is darkness; for brightness, but we walk in gloom. Like the blind, we feel our way along the wall, groping like those without eyes. We stumble at midday as in the twilight; among the vigorous we are like the dead.

They are far from God and society will inevitably suffer as consequence… as these are the people that make up that disorganized and destructive society. The Bible goes to great lengths to explain why these people are distanced from God. They, in effect do it to themselves. Romans states clearly that. Romans 3 reaffirms Isaiah 59 in an Old Testament, New Testament corroboration.

Romans 3:13-18 Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.” “The venom of vipers is on their lips.”  “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”  “Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery lie in their wake, and the way of peace they have not known.”  “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

If this sounds like what is going on in American society, it is because it IS what is going on. The Bible plainly states the two truths about us that are causing it in Isaiah and Romans.

God is distant from us (Isaiah 59)...because there is no fear of God (Romans 3) before our eyes. No fear meaning no respect of God. No obedience of his statutes and commands. Statutes and commands that were given to help us not restrain us. Help us prevent sinning, not enslave us. A lack of reverence of God distances us from Him has it makes us unholy. Why? It is because we can only get holiness from him, there is no other source. Remove that source and we are unholy. Therefore, we become all the things God is not as He is too far away from us to draw on Him as the source.

We are then left in a time of judgement or, in the Bible, in the time of the Judges. Judges were sent when the people of God went completely rogue and distant themselves from God and his Word/Law. What did people do during these times?

Judges 21:25 In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

Even psychology agrees with this concept of nearness and proper wholesome relationship. It is a phenomenon where people are more likely to form relationships with those who are closer to them. An intimacy at relationship level requires detailed knowledge of the other person...or its not really a relationship per se. That familiarity understood properly actually forms a bond of love that is shown in the actions of the person. With God it is a desire to please Him. To be righteous... holy in obedience to His Wordand to His Son.

Therefore, because many do not have this proximal relationship with God and His Son we have the current American condition succinctly explained from the three (3) previous passages in the Bible. At its core, a repeat of history. At its core, satanic and lacking God. At its core, not of God, unholy and apart from Him. Instead of a relationship with God, a relationship with their true father, the Devil. Your relationship is directly effected by what you are proximal to. As a man thinks, so is he. You are the company you keep.