When Isaiah beheld the Lord in the temple he despaired of life proclaiming that he was a man of unclean lips among a people of unclean lip.
What that EXACTLY meant is a matter for debate (though I think it may have been something like Christ talked about, that people were loose with taking oaths and such) but I do think it safe to say that Isaiah recognized that things he previously though okay were not ... and these were “unclean lips” and he deserved to die for it.
Now, Isaiah was as a pretty big deal as those under the Law went. As a ministering priest he had ceremonial / official holiness that even ordinary Jews could not claim. He was probably also pretty righteous as men go (though obviously he himself recognized that he fell short in the Lord’s company).
Not long ago, at least compared to Isaiah, we find CS Lewis writing of his own experience of being exposed to a better class of society than he’d ever known, how it shocked and challenged him.
But Isaiah was introduced to the Lord’s presence, which is THE better class of society, not something relatively trivial as Lewis experienced. Still there is a commonality, or rather a continuity here.
How does this apply to this thread?
Well, our culture is beyond mere unclean lips, and I would say it’s an unclean “what have you got?!?” where that’s spoken in eager anticipation to get the right sense of moral depravity that is common.
Yet despite that I get the feeling that many folks today would expect if they were to be placed in Isaiah’s position they would get a pat on the back for being such hoopy froods. Our culture is “nice” and “tolerant” and “kind” in its own estimation. People judge themselves by others, congratulate themselves that they aren’t the bad people, and have almost no sense of sin save what are social sins.
Is it any wonder that so many are in a state of free fall?
My thoughts exactly!
Another way of looking at this situation is in the words of MacArthur. He said the children of wrath take pride in their shame.
They take pride in their shame because they see it is as a badge of their victimization at the hands of white oppressors whose morality has prevented them from actualizing self, meaning their evil side.
With their evil unleashed they are in a very serious state of free fall, which they (mis)interpret as freedom but which is really the highway to hell.
Comparing ourselves with ourselves is foolish as we can always find that we are better than the next guy. And these days, it seems like it’s easier and easier to do because the evil is so rampant.
But God doesn’t care how we compare to each other, but to Him.