Proportion: Not Celebrating Superficial, Trivial Things Like They Are High Value

When Jesus said, repeating Old Testament law (Ex 21:24), eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth (Matt 5:48), some might call that overdoing or extreme.  They mock scripture.  In fact, God was modifying the typical overreaction to personal wrong.  If someone takes an eye, you don't get to take a head. The response must be just, equal.  Taking the head instead of the eye might be what you want to do when you look in the mirror and see with your remaining eye that the other one is gone.  This speaks of proportion that is built into the perfection of God's law.

Some hate the law of God unless it benefits themselves.  They don't want it as it applies to their keeping it.  It serves as their own Gumby® toy to twist into what they want God's law to be.  Millennials don't often walk about quoting with warm embrace, honor thy father and thy mother.  Many of them hate that law and refuse to keep it.

Proportion is a scriptural principle.  God's law brings proportion.  With proportion, what's important, what's of greatest value, is what gets the most accolades, mentions, time, energy, and love.  Giving in the Bible is proportional.  God wants the firstfruits, the first ten percent, of what we earn.

A reason that God does not want to be represented by images, either drawn, painted, or sculpted, is their lack of proportion to His majesty.  God can't be contained in human devices.  God is greater than any of these things, so He designates the only means of revealing Himself:  Jesus Christ Himself in the flesh, symbols His has ordained like the Old Testament system of worship, and the Word of God.

99% plus of social media elevates the superficial to important and what or who is the greatest in value to almost nothing.  It is the worst kind of lie, as it fools people in a more effective manner than someone just saying that God or His Word are insignificant.  In the latter, at least God gets a mention.

The Lord Jesus communicates proportion in Matthew 12:41-42:

The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.  The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here.

There is Jonah, Solomon, and then Jesus.  Nineveh repents at Jonah's preaching.  The queen of Sheba repents at Solomon's preaching.  First century Jews in Israel reject the greater, Jesus.  The judgment is proportional to the greatness of the Spokesman and His Message.

When someone talks about himself, herself, entertainment, television, sports, a house, a car, hobbies, music, recreation, trips, or just jokes with rare to no mention of Jesus Christ, that isn't someone who loves Jesus Christ.  Proportion communicates this reality, loud and clear.  The Lord Jesus brings this truth in His warning to the Pharisees in Matthew 23:17, 19:

Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold? . . . . Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifieth the gift?

The gold and the animal brought to the temple and altar became greater than the temple and altar itself.  The temporal worldly things take on an unproportional significance in relations to God.  Proportion says the church is no longer about worship of God, but about self-help, about good feelings, about success, and about looking good and fitting into the world.  Proportion communicates through the sheer number of mentions, enthusiasm, excitement, and superlatives for what is meaningless, banal, and even profane in comparison to the paucity, near silence, and dullness of expression for the greatness, goodness, wonder, beauty of the holiness of God.

To expose missing or lack of right proportion, sometimes extreme forms of exposure of this wrong are required.  Elijah mocked the prophets of Baal for them to see that there was nothing beautiful or reverent about the religion of Baal.  When a friend or loved one loves something that is not lovely, sometimes the most helpful thing to do for him or her is to expose his or her beloved or revered thing to ridicule. God does this to and for Israel in Isaiah 44:9-20 (click to read).

The psalmist writes in Psalm 48:1:

Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness.

God is great.  He is to be praised in proportion of what He is.  Professing Christians miss that proportion in a number of different ways.

One, they don't talk about God with a biblical, accurate representation of God, partly because they lack in knowledge of God.  The Psalms give us a credible expression of God that should be reviewed so that God will get the proportionality He deserves.

Two, they don't talk about God enough.  If He is Who He is, which He is, then He deserves the greatest percentage of a true believer's conversation.  

Three, God isn't praised with commonness or profanity.  The world's music does not give Him the solemnity or reverence He deserves.  Much Christian music is trite and banal and with poetry on a level that is unproportional to God.  Some of it is after the nature of the world, which falls far below God, even contradicts God.  This isn't great.

Four, they pray to God in a different way than the model prayer.  Their prayers don't befit God.  The ones I hear in churches are not majestic in their nature.  Some might criticize and say that God wants to hear something less.  God wants to hear what He says He wants to hear and the model prayer gives it.

"The mountain of his holiness" above gives imagery to the monumental nature of God.  The heavens declare the glory of God.  I'm not saying that we can reach the level of that, but we should be looking to what God expects by using the psalms as a model.  The history of Christian hymnody and music (think 16th to early 19th century) points to that which exalts God and is proportionate as an expression of His nature.

The biggest reason professing believers can't give God proportion is because they have their faces, their noses, their lips, their fingers, and their minds in the gutter of this world.  They can't find the greatness of God.  They can't give God what He deserves, because they aren't reading, studying, and meditating on His greatness. Instead they are admiring celebrities, trash, sin, and other ways that disallow them from proportion.  Sometimes they are actually tipsy or drunk with alcohol (cf. Eph 5:18), but even greater, they are drunk with the wine of this world, like John writes in Revelation 18:3:  "drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication."  This is spiritual fornication, where the individual is intimate with Babylon, Rome, Las Vegas, Nashville, or Hollywood, whatever they're pouring.

Trivializing God and the things of God, that is, missing or lacking proportion in relation to God, is idolatry.  It is covetousness.  This describes most professing Christians today.  These covetous and idolaters will not enter the kingdom of God.  Why would they want to?