Life In The Spin Cycle
Robb Hadley
Fayetteville, AR
4/2/97
Life In The Spin Cycle
The representative of a large company was making a statement concerning a change in his corporation’s business practices. He was quoted in the
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette as saying,
It’s not a matter of saving money. It’s a matter of cost containment, really. Once I had stopped laughing, I started thinking.
As we near the end of the twentieth century in America, there is no shortage of job openings for spin-masters — those with a talent for differentiating where there is no difference and dulling sharp distinctions where they do exist. If public discourse were a television, these people would be its out-of-control contrast knob.
Such folks were around long before they were called spin-masters, however. In First Samuel fifteen, we read of King Saul’s disobedience to God’s orders in a battle with the Amalekites. Told to destroy the enemy and all his possessions, Saul instead took King Agag prisoner and returned from battle with the best animals of the Amalekites in tow. When confronted by Samuel, Saul claimed to have brought the animals as a sacrifice to Jehovah and insisted,
I did obey the voice of the Lord. The king took an act of direct disobedience, put a little spin on it, and turned it into an act of holy and sacrificial service to God!
Putting one’s spin on things happens down at church too. I wonder what God thinks when one calls himself
Conservative or
Progressive when his most distinctive trait could best be labeled
Divisive. How does God feel when I ignore a log in my eye while aiming a spotlight at the speck in the eye of another? What is His reaction when I pass off make-believe godliness as pure and undefiled religion?
Having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.
2 Timothy 3.5. If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
James 1.26-27.
God, aware of the human talent for self-deception, instructs us to practice careful self-examination,
examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you--unless, of course, you fail the test? 2 Corinthians 13.5. And to be certain to speak with integrity,
simply let your `Yes' be `Yes', and your `No', `No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one. Matthew 5.37. May we daily strive to do both.
—Robb Hadley
Fayetteville, AR
