Lookahead: No one mourned his death, but he did receive a moment of silence in his Las Vegas casinos. Time magazine said: “Howard Hughes’ death was commemorated in Las Vegas by a minute of silence. Casinos fell silent. Housewives stood uncomfortable clutching their paper cups full of coins at the slot machines, the blackjack games paused, and stickmen cradled their dice. Then a pit boss looked at his watch, leaned forward and whispered, ‘Okay, roll the dice. He’s had his minute.’”4
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.” But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin. James 4:13-17
Note: This passage is sandwiched in between the judgment verse bookend (that consumed the last 3 posts)…and the wealthy oppressor verse bookend, i.e., (5:3,4) You have heaped up treasure in the last days. Indeed the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. (BTW, this is the 3rd time wealthy people are targeted in the Book of James…after (1) don’t be pridefully rich, and (2) the wealthy do not deserve special favoritism in the church. Plus 3,4 which (3) enjoins wealthy people against greed and avarice.) Back on track….
James 4:13,14 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. (underline is mine)
In reading these scriptures, Howard Hughes immediately came to mind:
When it came to making a profit, Howard Hughes was a sheer whiz, with unrivaled business acumen during his hey day. “Hughes was a true entrepreneurial genius who achieved remarkable accomplishments as a movie producer, an aviator and an industrialist. He inherited a fortune, and over several decades, transformed it into one of the most diverse empires in the annals of American business.”1 However…
“When he died in the air over northern Mexico in April 1976, he was malnourished, dehydrated and overmedicated on codeine. And although there were several other people onboard the plane, he was, in most senses of the word, alone. He had no direct descendants or immediate family and, while his estate was worth $2.5 billion ($11 billion in today’s dollars), he didn’t leave behind a will.”2
In an article entitled, Howard Hughes the Tortured Aviator, Ed Hind wrote, “We brought nothing into this world and it is certain that we can carry nothing out”, intoned Reverend Robert T. Gibson during Howard Hughes funeral at Houston’s Christ Church Cathedral. Howard Hughes was baptized in an Anglican/Episcopal Church, married in an Anglican/Episcopal Church, and buried in an Anglican/Episcopal Church. He was truly part of the hatched/matched/&/dispatched crowd…Howard Hughes, as North America’s first billionaire, had everything, and yet was deeply lacking. Brilliantly gifted technologically, he was profoundly crippled in his abilities to sustain the very relationships that make life worth living. Tragically enmeshed in his mother’s apron strings well after her death, Hughes was never able to leave and cleave, never able to commit to a lifelong relationship…Kathryn Grayson one of his Hollywood paramours said that Hughes seemed to be ‘the loneliest man in the world.’”3
In the end, Hughes ended up being a spot-on case study of a person who demonstrated the ethereal nature of human life–which barely has the effect of a radar blip on the cosmic screen before vanishing: “No one mourned his death, but he did receive a moment of silence in his Las Vegas casinos. Time magazine said: ‘Howard Hughes’ death was commemorated in Las Vegas by a minute of silence. Casinos fell silent. Housewives stood uncomfortable clutching their paper cups full of coins at the slot machines, the blackjack games paused, and stickmen cradled their dice. Then a pit boss looked at his watch, leaned forward and whispered, ‘Okay, roll the dice. He’s had his minute.’’”4 (my underline)
But what’s the alternative option according to James? James 4:15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.” So what do we come away with if we live a life that is surrendered to God’s will? Well, if this is an area in which you have a genuine interest, I have a 32-post series called “Kingdom Living” that you could peruse through. But in sum, you get joy…and Shalom (the peace that surpasses understanding)…and Agapé LOVE. You’re never lonely and your future couldn’t be rosier! In the end, Howard Hughes was a major germa-phobe–which, in my view, connotes a fear of death and dying. When we live in the center of God’s will, all fear of death and dying is eradicated, because we know that we know that we will spend eternity in heaven with Him.
James 4:13-17...to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.
But what about people who say that they have an intrinsic awareness of what is good, and are compliant with their internal moral compasses…basically they rely on the conscience? So in their view, they might be godless heathens, but they don’t view themselves as sinning because they have met James’ criterion. Their argument? They would say, “I know that I should do good, and I…do…good. I follow my conscience.” 🙂
In yet another blessed coincidence, I happened to tune into a vintage Billy Graham TV sermon this week, just as he was expounding upon the conscience. When this sermon was preached, probably 30 years ago, Dr. Graham referred to a governmental Conscience Fund that people contributed to anonymously if they had cheated USG on their taxes, etc….I wiki’d it and it’s still active! People were “motivated” to contribute everything from the price of an 8 cent postage stamp to tens of thousands of $ for back taxes. Dr. Graham then went on to discuss the downside of governing one’s life by the conscience. The problem, as he saw it, was that people often choose to ignore what their conscience is telling them, with an increasing frequency of occurrence. The more they do this, the greater the chance of reprogramming or modifying the dictates of the conscience.
But slowing my roll, what is a conscience?
Per http://www.gotquestions.org: The conscience is defined as that part of the human psyche that induces mental anguish and feelings of guilt when we violate it and feelings of pleasure and well-being when our actions, thoughts and words are in conformity to our value systems.
National Library of Medicine: The concept of “conscience”, as commonly used in its moral sense, is the inherent ability of every healthy human being to perceive what is right and what is wrong and, on the strength of this perception, to control, monitor, evaluate and execute their actions5
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Through our individual conscience, we become aware of our deeply held moral principles, we are motivated to act upon them, and we assess our character, our behavior and ultimately our self against those principles.6
Christian perspectives: Conscience is a New Testament word used in the Synoptic Gospels and epistles–Strong’s: συνείδησις syneidēsis the soul as distinguishing between what is morally good and bad, prompting to do the former and shun the latter, commending one, condemning the other
Although the word “conscience” does not appear in the Old Testament, Paul did give us some OT context:
For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year. Hebrews 10:1-3
“According to Vine’s Dictionary, the Greek word for conscience (suneidesis) literally means to possess ‘co-knowledge’ of something resulting in one’s ‘sense of guiltiness before God.’ Thus, we were created with a unique and intrinsic faculty that gives us a kind of third-person perspective on the rightness and wrongness of our actions…In the physical realm, the conscience is comparable to the human nervous system. When a person is wounded, he feels pain—the body’s inherent means of alerting him that something is wrong. Likewise, when a person sins, the human soul has a warning system that sounds an alarm because the person’s actions have wounded him spiritually. This soul-alarm trumpets, ‘Mayday! Mayday! Something is wrong!’ He senses that his actions are not only wrong but will also result in destructive consequences.” But what about if, in the Billy Graham scenario, someone’s conscience is not tender? “Paul spoke of a seared conscience. The apostle Paul had a clear understanding of the damaging effects of sin on the human heart. He spoke insightfully of those who were “seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron” (1 Timothy 4:2), and those who “because of the hardness of their heart (have) become callous.” (Ephesians 4:18-19)”7
Finally, Morli’s Take: It’s what we got when Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
My theory, without God we won’t get it right. We may start out with good intentions, but eventually we will succumb to evil influences. If we take this full cycle, there is an auguring-in process in which we cross a line of no return and reject God entirely.
For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking and darkened in their foolish hearts. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools, Romans 1:20-22
Left unrestrained, the natural law of entropy takes over…
…they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images of mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the desires of their hearts to impurity…They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is forever worthy of praise!…For this reason God gave them over to dishonorable passions….Furthermore, since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, He gave them up to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant, and boastful. They invent new forms of evil; they disobey their parents. They are senseless, faithless, heartless, merciless. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things are worthy of death, they not only continue to do these things, but also approve of those who practice them. Romans 1:23-32
Best case, it may simply be a matter of turning up the enemy’s volume (lies) and turning down God’s. People define “a law unto themselves,” which is a distortion of moral principles from God. I’ve been watching an American FBI TV Series about a secret, deep-rooted organization of extremists who are plotting all kinds of dirty bomb explosions, using dark web hackers to kill the national power grid, and coldly “dispositioning” anyone who gets in their way. Their top leader is trying to “cleanse the FBI” and install a new echelon of hand-picked leadership. Why? To save the country and restore the moral governing principles of America’s founding fathers. Despite the carnage, the rationale is that the few must be sacrificed for the many–even when that includes their own blameless children. In reality, the top leader is a killing machine with strong sociopathic tendencies…yet constantly justifying their actions by implying that they are basically a good family person and loyal citizen.
So although the intentions may not be nobler, without God in the loop, it won’t end well…with everything from Solomon’s hopeless disenchantment and barren bitterness about life…to homicidal tendencies.
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1 https://www.entrepreneur.com/growing-a-business/howard-hughes/197646
2https://history.howstuffworks.com/historical-figures/howard-hughes.htm
3https://edhird.com/2010/08/17/howard-hughes-the-tortured-aviator/
4https://www.proclaimanddefend.org/2016/04/07/dying-words-the-blessing-of-hope/
6https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/conscience/
7https://www.purelifeministries.org/blog/the-searing-of-the-christian-conscience
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