You Still Don’t Get it?
September 28, 2026 Leave a comment
Everything he does is marvelous!
Marvelous evocative things. People around Jesus saw and heard marvelous things and were overcome with astonishment. They saw and heard evocative things but were not overcome with understanding. Their failure or unwillingness to grasp what was happening had me wonder why as I memorized the first seven chapters of Mark’s gospel account.
“What’s past is prologue”
I would have thought that a people whose whole way of life was infused with redemption history – a history retold in the synagogues with the reading of the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms and rehearsed in rituals and recalled at the feasts and festivals commemorating past events – would have recognized the marvelous evocative things that their God was doing right before their eyes and ears.
Signs and Wonders
Exodus from Egypt was God responding to the people’s outcries.
“The Israelites groaned under their slavery and cried out. Their cry for help rose up to God from their slavery. God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them. (Exodus 2: 23-24)
God told Moses (Exodus 10: 2) that the retelling of the Exodus from Egypt was so “that your children and grandchildren will know how I have made fools of the Egyptians and what signs I have done among them—so that you may know that I am the Lord.” The annual Passover celebration with its rituals and symbolic foods permeated lives with the marvelous evocative things of God.
I would have thought that a people whose God “made known his ways to Moses and his acts to the people of Israel” would have known that their God did not act on a whim like foreign gods.
I would have thought that a people who received the gospel according to Moses – the gospel of great acts of rescue, of grace and redemption, of food and water in the wilderness – would have recognized the gospel of Jesus, announced with the marvelous evocative things he said and did.
Sighs and Willfulness
The Israelites, set free from Egyptian slavery, began their wilderness trek and their “What have you done for me lately?” grumbling and complaining. Some, rejecting a situation and a God of wonders they couldn’t control, wanted to return to the certainty of bondage.
I would have thought that a covenant people would have been sure of God’s commitment to them even in the wilderness.
Exodus Evocation Education
Jesus chose twelve disciples, out of the growing number of disciples, and called them “apostles.” The chosen were to be with him, to be sent out as heralds, and to have authority over unclean spirits. They were to have firsthand experience of the marvelous acts of God just like the twelve tribes of Isreal during the Exodus.
The apostles witnessed Jesus going throughout Galilee casting out unclean spirits and proclaiming good news – the kingdom of God has arrived!
They sat under his authoritative teaching.
They observed him healing the mute, the deaf, the blind, the paralyzed, and those with blood issues. They saw him heal all kinds of diseases.
They observed the wind and the sea being calmed by his command and watched him walking on the water.
They saw the dead being brought back to life.
And, they witnessed Jesus feeding thousands in the wilderness.
Known Knowns Left Unknown
Don’t you remember?
Mark chapter 6 relates that a crowd of well over five thousand came to hear Jesus’ teaching. Late in the day the disciples came to Jesus wanting him to send the crowd away so the people could buy food. Jesus responded “Why don’t you give them something?” The disciples were bewildered by his response.
Are you suggesting that we should go and spend two hundred dinar and get food for this lot?
With just a few loaves and fish available, Jesus feeds over five thousand people in a wilderness setting.
Right after this, Jesus makes the disciples get in the boat and head to the opposite shore. That would have given them time to reflect on what just happened but they were focused on rowing. The wind was against them.
Sometime early in the morning, the disciples see a ghost walking on the water. They are overcome with astonishment when Jesus walks up to the boat, gets in, and the wind stops. The boat makes landfall but the disciples are still at sea about the loaves and fishes. Mark says their hearts were hardened.
As I begin to memorize Mark chapter 8, I encounter an event that parallels this previous marvelous evocative food event and the same incomprehension of what is taking place:
Once again, about that time, a crowd gathered without anything to eat.
Jesus called the disciples.
“I’m really sorry for the people,” he told them. “They’ve been with me three days now and have had nothing to eat. If I send them away hungry, they will collapse on the road. And some of them have come from miles away.”
“Where could you get food for all this lot out here in the wilderness?” the disciples replied.
Again, Jesus feeds thousands of people in a wilderness setting with just a few loaves and fish.
Then, Jesus sends the crowd away, gets into a boat with the disciples and heads to the region of Dalmanoutha. When he arrives, he is confronted by the Pharisees who ask him for a sign from heaven to test him out.
During the time of testing in the wilderness, Jesus told Satan “It is said: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” Jesus refused to perform for the Pharisees. He gets in the boat and sails away.
Mark tells us that the disciples had sailed off and forgot to get bread. They had only one loaf on board. (Rowing requires carbs and there’s a lot of rowing in the Mark’s gospel account.)
Anyway, Jesus sternly warns them to “Watch out for leaven – the Pharisees’ leaven, and Herod’s leaven too!”
Clueless, the disciples mumble to each other thinking this has something to do with us not having bread.
“Why are you mumbling about not brining bread?” said Jesus, who knew what they were thinking. “Don’t you understand? Have your hearts gone hard?
“Can’t you see with your two good eyes?
Can’t you hear with your two good ears?”
-and don’t you remember? When I broke five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken bits were left over?
“Twelve,” they said.
“And the seven loaves for the four thousand – how many baskets full of bits were left over?”
“Seven,” they said.
“You still don’t get it?”
Jesus, twice the provider of food to thousands in the wilderness, is in the boat with them! And they speak of leftovers! They won’t go hungry!
The Obdurate, the Obtuse, and the Ornery
They took offense at him.
Jesus encountered in the people around him the same heart attitude that Moses and the prophets had to deal with: stubbornness, thickheadedness, and disagreeableness.
Early in the gospel account (chapter 2), Mark relates a paralytic being lowered through the roof to get access to Jesus. When Jesus tells the cripple “Your sins are forgiven,” the legal experts grumble about some guy forgiving sins. Jesus heals the crippled man to show them he could do both, but the legal experts didn’t jump for joy.
Why be callous, stupid, and bad-tempered when marvelous evocative healing grace appears?
In chapter 3, Mark relates Jesus healing a man on the sabbath. Those assembled in the synagogue were watching to see if Jesus would heal a man on the Sabbath. They wanted to frame a charge against him. Jesus senses inflexibility and asks the synagogue assembly a couple of questions.
“Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath or to do evil? To save life or to kill?”
The people remained silent. Jesus was deeply upset with their hard-heartedness. He “looked around at them angrily.”
Jesus heals the man with the withered hand. But those with a frame of reference that precludes anything outside of established patterns of behavior plotted to do away with the disrupter.
Why be unyielding, indifferent, thoughtless, and cross when marvelous evocative healing grace appears?
Mark goes on to relate in chapter 3 that Jesus’ relatives thought Jesus was out of his mind because of what he was doing and saying. And legal experts from Jerusalem were saying that Jesus cast out demons because he was possessed by an unclean spirit.
Jesus spoke to the experts in pictures. He made clear that their accusations made no sense. Then, in no uncertain terms, he warns them about blaspheming – calling the Holy Spirit an unclean spirit.
Why be inflexible, rash, and difficult when marvelous evocative saving grace appears? Why use ad hominem?
In the next chapter, Mark recounts Jesus speaking to a large crowd in parables. The parable of the Sower and the Seed describes the effects of sown seed – his words – on four types of soil – people.
Bystander types hear what he says and immediately the Accuser comes and takes away his words. Does the Accuser say “You have what you need”? The result – no connection whatsoever. The Accuser says there is no beginning and end, only today.
There are the rocky-soil types. The short-tern enthusiasts receive the word with excitement and take it in. But there is nothing below the surface to support its growth. They quickly become disillusioned (shrivel up) when the word brings them trouble or hostility. The word has not taken root.
The thorny soil types are those who hear his words but the overgrowth – the worries of the present age, the deceit of riches and the desires for other kinds of things – chokes his words and no fruit comes out of them.
And there are the ones who hear the word, take it in and produce a harvest with yields in some cases 30-fold, in some cases 60-fold, and in some cases 100-fold.
Later that same day, Jesus explains to those around him that the mystery of God’s kingdom had been given to them but for those outside, his words are in parables. This, he says, was so that outsiders may look and look but never see and hear and hear and understand, otherwise, they would turn and be forgiven.
The Sower Seed parable sorts out what grows and what doesn’t grow in the Kingdom of God before the harvest mentioned in his latter example of the kingdom of God.
When Jesus returns to his hometown synagogue (Mark 6), people are astonished with his teaching.
“Where does he get it all from? What’s this wisdom he’s been given? How does he have this kind of power in his hands?”
They take offense at the messenger.
Why be repulsed by a local man with a good reputation, good words, and good works?
The Stoney Hearts Club
Don’t you understand?
Scripture provides an honest assessment of human nature. Examples of willful hardheartedness include Cain, Pharaoh, King Nebuchadnezzar, and the children of Israel. The prophets, speaking for God, gave appraisals of the stubborn people of God. Jeremiah:
From the day that your ancestors came out of the land of Egypt until this day, I have persistently sent all my servants the prophets to them, day after day, yet they did not listen to me or pay attention, but they stiffened their necks. They did worse than their ancestors did.
The prophet Ezekiel said that God was willing to do heart surgery for the sake of his holy name:
A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
Don’t you remember?
The gospel according to Mark further details people’s unwillingness to receive what God was doing and saying. I would have thought that the people around Jesus would have carried forward in their hearts the words of Psalm 103: “God works vindication and justice for all who are oppressed.” The people of God, invested with knowledge of God’s marvelous acts, didn’t realize the Exodus taking place in the person of Jesus.
Have your hearts gone hard?
Humans can be unresponsive, indifferent, stubbornly resistant to persuasion, unyielding in thought and feeling, unwilling to change, have little to no flexibility, and be irascible, calloused, and rebellious.
Humans can resist understanding.
Humans can be driven by selfish ambition rooted in pride.
Humans can refuse accountably.
Humans can compartmentalize and hide their true nature to preserve reputation.
Humans can prioritize control over connection and refuse to be part of another’s life.
Humans can be unwilling to reconcile and seek redemption.
Humans can renew vows of hatred every day.
Humans can keep from letting God “takes us out of ourselves” (C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy).
Humans can maintain a frame of reference that is utilitarian coupled to the material and which avoids the transcendent.
Humans can live with a worldview that elevates “science” as the only means by which truth and reality can be known.
Humans can lack imagination and the willingness to embrace literature, art, music, and myth that conveys truth.
Humans can embrace the leaven Jesus spoke of. Humans can be puffed up with an inflated self-perception.
Mentally lazy humans with no depth of soil and no rootedness can sit under spiritual leaders who embrace a shallow “fluffy” feminized type of spirituality “where the existence of Christ is unknowable and all human spiritualities are equivalent made-up mythologies that attempt to understand man’s role in the cosmos.”
Humans can listen to sermons and teaching that repeats what they know and never grow in wonder and trust.
Humans can fixate on machine-like digital technology that defines everything in terms of data – ones and zeros, black or white, either/or.
Humans can give themselves to an ideology like Marxism that shuns all thoughts and understanding but its own.
Humans can lie to themselves.
Humans can be pig-headed and feel sure of themselves.
Humans can decide not to be teachable.
“Can’t you see with your two good eyes?
Can’t you hear with your two good ears?”
~~~
Scripture continues to warn about resistant, closed off, and unresponsive attitudes:
Romans 1:28 – Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done.
Ephesians 4:18 – They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.
Ephesians 4: 30 –Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God.
1 Thessalonians 5:19 – Do not quench the Spirit.
Hebrews 3:8 – Do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the wilderness.
~~~
The apostle Paul was a devout and learned man. He knew Jewish history. He knew the Torah. Yet, he didn’t recognize what God was about and who Jesus was. Paul hardened his heart against any new thing until one day on the Damascus Road. His eyes were opened.
After that day, Paul went away into the Arabian desert (Galatians 1) probably for three years. He spent time with the Lord and re-studied the Torah and history that pointed to Jesus and the gospel he announced with marvelous evocative words and deeds.
Later, when writing to the church at Corinth, the apostle Paul spoke of his head and heart transformation: “As a child I spoke, and thought, and reasoned like a child; when I grew up, I threw off childish ways.”
Growth and maturity and no more stomping of feet to get your way. And, once you move into maturity and into a deep conversion that “gets” Jesus, there will be a painful tearing away of the scaly dragon skin produced by a hard heart.
The arrogant, whiny, and self-centered Eustace Scrubb in C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia knows all about this.
The childish and intractable, who “still don’t get it,” will continue to live in dragon skin.
~~~

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Tech bros and government leaders are saying AI will inherit the earth. Jesus taught that the meek, the teachable, will inherit the earth. Find out what that means.
~~~
“You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words “compelle intrare,” compel them to come in, have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.”
― C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life
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If We Don’t Do Anything
October 26, 2026 Leave a comment
Your country has a long history of battling the sea. Around 26 percent of your land is at or below sea level. Authorities who oversee flood control and water quality go back and forth on water management. A folktale embodies your country’s relationship with water.
A young boy, not the water board, acts to avert a catastrophic flood in his town. The boy sees a leak in the dike while returning home. He plugs the leak with his finger and stays there through the cold night until daybreak when villagers notice him.
The quick-witted Dutch boy demonstrated true activism with resourcefulness and determination. The individual agency of the boy embodied self-sacrifice and bravery. He knew what was at stake for his community if he didn’t do anything.
Water Management
The opening of the creation account in Genesis (Genesis 1: 1-2) presents a primordial scene. The earth, formless and empty (tohu wabohu), was completely covered by a deep (tehom) sea. The sea, here and elsewhere in scripture, symbolizes non-order, chaos, danger, and the unknown and uncontrollable aspects of nature.
When God answers Job, he speaks of setting boundaries for the ocean, commanding it to stop at specific limits. The sea, chaotic and powerful and going where it will, is brought under control. The primeval waters are restrained. Non-order is ordered.
Job 38: 8-11
“Or who shut in the sea with doors
when it burst out from the womb,
when I made the clouds its garment
and thick darkness its swaddling band,
and prescribed bounds for it,
and set bars and doors,
and said, ‘Thus far shall you come and no farther,
and here shall your proud waves be stopped’?
The psalm about creation, Psalm 104, also speaks of God ordering the watery chaos in vs.5-9:
He set the earth on its foundations;
it can never be moved.
You covered it with the watery depths as with a garment;
the waters stood above the mountains.
But at your rebuke the waters fled,
at the sound of your thunder they took to flight;
they flowed over the mountains,
they went down into the valleys,
to the place you assigned for them.
You set a boundary they cannot cross;
never again will they cover the earth.
Deliver Us from Evil
The Lord saw that the wickedness of humans was great in the earth and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.
When mankind’s disorder, chaos, and evil covered the earth (Genesis 6), God, faithful to his creation and knowing what was at stake if he didn’t do anything, removed the threat of destructive evil by releasing the primeval waters of chaos (Genesis 7).
“The waters of the flood are understood as the primeval waters of chaos or the waters of the abyss (Gen. 1:2; 7:11), which God in creation had restrained and held at bay, but had not abolished (Gen. 1: 6-7). They symbolize the power of nothingness to undo creation, a destructive potential which remains to threaten the created universe with reversion to chaos.”[1]
The punishment fits the crime. Order is restored through a faithful remnant.
Destroying the “destroyers of earth”
The judgement of the Genesis flood account is alluded to in the Revelation of John (Rev. 11):
The twenty-four elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God, singing, . . .
The nations raged,
but your wrath has come,
and the time for judging the dead,
for rewarding your servants, the prophets
and saints and all who fear your name,
both small and great,
and for destroying those who destroy the earth.”
At the end of the Revelation of John (Rev. 21) there is talk of a new heaven and a new earth and . . .
“The waters of the primeval abyss, that represent the source of destructive evil, the possibility of the reversion of creation to chaos, are finally no more.”[2]
The sea symbolizes disorder that God controls and brings order to, reinforcing His authority over creation.
~~~
Staying Above Water
The Little Dutch Boy Who Saved Holland “effectively depicts the Dutch spirit of resilience and ingenuity, emphasizing their continuous fight and victory over the unyielding sea. The narrative of the little Dutch boy stands as a profound metaphor, symbolizing the nation’s persistent struggle with water and their unwavering efforts to safeguard their land and people.
It also highlights their innovative water management systems, a testament to Dutch resourcefulness and determination.”
Behind the 1965 folktale by American writer Mary Mapes Dodge is the reality of the Netherland’s “complex network of dykes and flood barriers, demonstrating the country’s proactive water management strategies . . . [the Dutch are] globally recognized for their pioneering flood control techniques, embodying the same spirit as the little Dutch boy who protected his homeland from imminent catastrophe.”
The folktale goes beyond the Dutch relationship with water and the need for water management. It represents a national identity of resilience in the face of adversity and communal responsibility. It is everyone’s legal duty to maintain the edge of the land touching the water.
The folktale embraces moral wisdom: bringing order to non-order and averting a potentially chaotic and deadly situation. The Dutch boy’s “finger in the dike” reminds us that small actions can prevent great disasters.
~~~
Holding Back or Holding Back?
I remember a bumper sticker from my church days: “Some people are so heavenly minded they are no earthly good.”
The gospel, as I was repeatedly reminded growing up in Bible churches with countless altar calls, came down to accepting the formulaic four spiritual laws by which one could go to heaven when you died. The mission henceforth was to evangelize with the four spiritual laws and get people to heaven and rapture ready. But the Bible’s gospel, the Bible’s good news, is first and foremost this: Jesus is Lord.
That confession is both personal and political. There is no salvation if that gospel is not accepted. There is no “Thy will be done in earth, as it is heaven” if that gospel is not accepted. Escaping to heaven doesn’t accomplish the Lord’s prayer.
Where am I going with all this?
Could it be that an estimated 40 million Christians typically sit out elections?
Could it be that you, Christian, for whatever reason, do not participate in elections?
When did you decide to let foreigners, fraudsters, and fanatic Islamists and socialists take over your country, your state, your community, your neighborhood, your schools, and your tax dollars?
When did you decide that justice meant letting violent felons back on the street to kill and rape again?
When did you decide that your hard-earned tax dollars would be spent to fund all manner of evil?
When did you decide that election integrity was a threat to “Democracy?”
When did you decide that speaking up and even joking was “hate speech?”
When did you decide that it was OK for the DSA to overthrow our Constitutional system?
When did you decide to let America die?
When did you decide that wet noodle fey men should represent you?
When did you decide to define social justice in terms of diversity, equity, and inclusion, inclusion, and inclusion without regard to what that would mean?
When did you decide that the migrant/Antifa-style riots in France and Italy need to come to the U.S.?
When did you decide to hold back from holding back chaos and the destructive forces of evil?
When did you decide that your Christianity was too good for creation which, as scripture reveals, God wants to deliver from evil?
Go Vote on or before Tuesday Nov. 3rd and put a stop to the chaotic and destructive flood waters called the Democrat Party! What If We Don’t Do Anything!
Added 10-27-2026:
Here’s what happens when Democratic Socialists aligned with the CCP and the Soros anti-nationalist clan are “elected”:
Flávio Bolsonaro said the unhinged socialist regime under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had seized his passport and banned him from leaving the country on the orders of regime favorite Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes.
“Democracy Has Failed”: Bolsonaro Says Lula’s Socialist Regime Seized His Passport
“They’re calling it an upset. But nobody — nobody — should be surprised that Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was “re-elected” to a fourth term as Brazil’s president in a stunningly irregular vote Sunday night.” – Scott McKay, What Happened in Brazil on Sunday Was Absolutely Outrageous | The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
And, in France . . .
“The deep-seated hostility toward free markets and enterprise derives from the French passion for philosophers, clowns like Michel Foucault, a pseudo-philosopher, and others who taught “nothingness” as a value system. Those clowns were venerated by leftist media and publications and taught that history was false, all lies in order to exploit the people. The only joy, according to those false prophets, was the criminal act.” – Taki Theodoracopulos
The Left Wants America to Look Like France – The American Conservative
Gavin Newsom Calls DSA ‘Mainstream Democratic Movement’ Heading Into 2028 Presidential Election
Added 10-28-2026:
The Left’s Playbook: Seize and Desist
Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan said that if Democrats win the House in the midterms, they should “go after” Trump administration staffers. She added that Democrats’ efforts should have a “deterrence” effect on college graduates seeking to join the federal government during the Trump administration.
Slotkin’s goal would be to make it clear to anyone seeking entrance to the federal government that upon joining they would be “buying [themselves] a ton of problems.”
Why Slotkin’s Threats To Trump Staffers Are Likely Unconstitutional
Added 10-30-2026:
What If We Don’t Do Anything!
~~~~~
The DSA Plans To Incite Violence Ahead Of 2028 Election
This Is Perhaps The Most Dystopian Thing Ever… | ZeroHedge
French PM Puts Telecoms On Alert For Nationwide Social Media Blackout As Far-Left Riots Spiral | ZeroHedge
Report: Thousands of new docs point to a diabolical CIA color revolution after midterms… – Revolver News
Paris Is Burning. Is Washington Next? | The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Is Europe Doomed? – The American Conservative
Italy unleashes huge military force to save Milan from rioters and violent migrants… – Revolver News
Paradise From the Wall Socket: Why the Left Is Winning the Young, From Berlin to New York › American Greatness
My Message To All Americans
[1] Bauckham, Richard. (1993/2018). The Theology of the Book of Revelation. Cambridge University Press, 1993. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511819858. PP 53
[2] IBID, PP53
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Filed under 2026 Current Events, 2026 Election, Christianity, Political Commentary, Politics, Progressivism, The book of Job Tagged with Bible, Christianity, faith, Genesis, God, Voting, Elections, scripture, Christianity, Evangelicals, Politics