Response: Hosea 4:1-10ish

Sorry for my lack of blogging last week...I had good intentions...no, actually, I didn't. I knew I should read my bible and meditate on what it said, but I didn't. I skipped out. I watched TV instead. I read stupid gossip columns online. I avoided.
So now I'm confessing it to you guys. If I miss a week again, you guys have full permission (in fact please do) to email or call or blog me and say, "HEY! You know you need to read God's word! Quit hiding out!" And I will receive it and heed it (hopefully) in love and you will have held me accountable to reading God's word.
It may sound silly, but at this point in my life, this blog is really my only "regular" bible reading/study/discussion. It's a bit pathetic, but at least it's a something. So there is some confession for you.

Here's some of my thoughts on this passage:
Verses 1 and 2 seem to describe what I see on TV/in movies all the time. Just watch any episode of CSI, and I bet you'll see all of these things: cursing, lying, murder, stealing and adultery. I think the media has a serious influence on society. It reflects where we're going, but I really think it's also driving the bus that's taking us there (or at the risk of sounding like a self-righteous conservative, the media is carrying the handbasket that society is going to hell in).
I am very affected by the TV and movies I watch...if a movie is sad, I will feel sad for a while because of it ("Blood Diamond" left me in a funk for a week!). I'm operating on the assumption that other people are the same way...so, no wonder our world is increasingly full of cursing, lying, murder, stealing and adultery - that's what we're being fed.
I think I'm on a tangent...all I'm saying is, I see those things in the media and therefore accept that they are true and then go out and do them.

Verse 3 really intrigued me:
"the beasts of the field and the birds of the air and the fish of the sea are dying." - That sounds like extinction...how many animals do we have on the endangered species list now?

Verse 6:
"So my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge." My study bibles says this is "partly because the preists had failed to teach God's word to the people." I think that is definately happening today. Churches aren't teaching God's word, they're teaching self-help. Or they're teaching politics. Or they're calling themselves "churches" and teaching something that sounds an aweful lot LIKE the gospel but isn't (cultural reference here).
And in my own life, I fail to teach myself what the word of God says. It is much easier to be led astray when you don't have knowledge of God's word to keep you firm.

Verse 7:
"the more the priests increased, the more they sinned against me; they exchanged their Glory for something disgraceful."
This sounds like the power and authority pastors (and leaders and "lay" christains and everybody) get, and how it changes them (us). I certainly can't make a blanket statement that mega-churches are bad, because I do believe there are churches out there that are "mega" but are still on-track and teaching the gospel. But I believe there are plenty that aren't, too. Alot of churches (and people) have traded their "glory" (meaning, I think, humility, servanthood, love, charity, poverty) for "something disgraceful" (power [financial, political, etc.], recognition, comfortable living, etc.).

I think what chapter 4 has describe so far has been happening all the time. It sounds a lot like what was going on in the 1200's (as described by the book I'm reading about St. Francis). The state of the church was certainly what is described in chapter 4. The pope had ultimate spiritual, but more important, political, authority, the church had launched all sorts of crusades against people, priests were all about material gain instead of the spiritual lives of their people, etc.

But I also think that a passage like this should cause me to compare my own life to Israel. Have I or am I "rejecting knowledge" (verse 6)? What does it mean to "feed on the sins of my people and relish their wickedness" (verse 8)?