In the blanks below write the two most significant statements in today’s reading assignment. Be prepared to discuss why the statements you chose were significant to you.
“Tragically, the child training responsibility is approached with the same mentality as is the pile of dirty dishes on the kitchen counter. Instead of attending to them on a regular, systematic basis, they are ignored until they are out of control. Then both the dishes and the children are handled with grudging disgust.
“When we who lead are indulging in the flesh, not only do we hurt our impact by our poor example, but we also do not smell the fleshly indulgence of our children or those whom we disciple.”
What manifestations of fleshly chaos use seeing people’s lives in the society around you? Example: fights and riots at sporting events.
“Road rage; lots of truTV brawlers, partiers, and drivers; neighbor feuds.”
What is the attitude of most citizens, even many believers, to the terms ‘law’ and ‘order’?
“(Some are fans, others of us have never watched the show/aren’t fans of courtroom dramas 😉 jk, lol. But seriously, a great many appreciate law and order when it protects us from violent crime, but get annoyed when it tells us what to do and not to do.”
Do your discipleship efforts with others – perhaps your own children – reflect godly ‘flesh sniffing’? Or are you guilty of being a ‘smoker’ (i.e. flesh indulger) yourself and therefore do not smell ‘smoke’ (i.e. the fleshly indulgences of others) very effectively? 
“Sadly, the latter, I suppose.”
Dearest Rachel –
You’ve got a lot of references to television shows in this set of answers, honey. Perhaps you (or we) were watching something when you filled this out?
But in all seriousness, it’s true that there are plenty of that sort of dramatic collapse of order out there for us to point to and say “yep, that’s fleshly chaos.” From things like World’s Dumbest to Bait Car that we used to watch, to the “reality” television of things like Real Housewives of [fill in the blank; it doesn’t really matter] or WifeSwap of a generation ago (it’s weird to realize it’s been that long), dysfunction has been the order of the day for a very long time. And while you may make a wisecrack about Law and Order, the show, that basically represents the moment when that dysfunction crosses the line into what we consider to be criminal behavior.
As long as we have these images confined to a box in the living room – or dancing on a screen in any room in the house, for that matter – it’s safe for consumption. The chaos on the screen, when viewed from a distance, is a prime source of entertainment for the rest of us to gawk at. We take comfort in the fact that, whatever our own personal failings may be, at least we’re not as bad as those people – seldom considering that, in the eyes of God, the distance between us and them isn’t all that far. We may not be bad enough to be entertaining, but we’re not good in and of ourselves.
Your other remark on law and order acknowledges this; for all that we may appreciate the ‘thin blue line’ holding back the criminal element from running wild in our neighborhoods and lives, there are edges where its existence and enforcement starts to chafe us. Phrases like ‘police brutality’ and ‘fascism’ have been applied to law enforcement for so long, so often, and to so many things that the terms start to lose their meaning from semantic satiation. Which is weird, since the people often being objected to aren’t the ones who made the rules – their job title is law enforcement, not law creation – if we truly objected to the law, we could elect people who would change things so that the law that bothers us could be taken off the books or modified such that it would be less onerous. Somehow, that rarely seems to happen, though; I’ll leave it to you to decide what that means. Of course, when it comes to God’s laws, the question becomes. “Who are we to say we know better than Him? Who are we to think we could persuade God to change His mind?” At which point, we really have to stop and think as to why we’re objecting to the supposed burden placed upon us; what do our objections say about us? Are we really any better than the folks on these crime shows?
Even your conclusion was a reluctant “no.” Not reluctant insofar as you couldn’t see it or admit it, but insofar as it was painful and embarrassing to admit. No one likes to acknowledge that they’re in the wrong. But when it gets in the way of being an example to others, it has to be admitted and addressed, lest we become much as the spiritual leaders of Jesus’ time, who He described as blind guides, who lead their followers into ditches that neither of them could escape.
You’ve mentioned in previous entries about ‘spiritual lumberjacking,’ and how we need to take logs from our own eyes regarding sins and other failings; but this example describes something more insidious. The faults we can’t see in ourselves, and thus cannot aid others with, because the whiff of sin is such that you can’t tell who is even belongs to. Or worse yet, the scent so permeates our lives that we’ve gotten accustomed to it, like smog in L.A., and just assume that’s how things are.
At some point, we need to figure out how to get that to dissipate, with God’s help, and once we can breathe cleanly, we can, like passengers on a plane with oxygen masks, begin to help others to catch their spiritual breath in turn.
Letters to Rachel 