They Hated the Prophets!

Micah was the prophet who never had anything nice to say......gee wonder why! LOL

Are you accused of being negative all the time, do people avoid you because you are always correcting or spouting irritating Bible verses?
 
You are in good company, all the prophets were hated continually.

The Pack Mentality

A clue about a family structure of narcissism, is that all those who hear the gossip or hold grudges on behalf of others, never care about finding out the truth, they prefer to believe the gossip.
When asked to say why they are angry at their target they refuse to divulge the reason for their anger and contempt, probably because they are not sure they have a reason, but they want to be friends with the narcissist.

Please don't agonize over the loss of a friend who will listen to gossip without bothering to come and talk about it. How they come makes a difference too. If they love us they will come in humility desiring to hear our side of the story. If they are evil, they will come in an accusatory tone, hoping to catch us in something. Those who come in an accusatory tone, are not interested in finding truth, but only interested in injuring you further.
 

There is a pack mentality in human beings too. We seldom see a person who is willing to stand against the pack, never mind whether what they are doing is right or wrong. We see this in politics, families, churches, nearly every institution we deal with there is a pack mentality.

Pack Mentality: "1.The tendency for groups of individuals to act together without planned direction."
Mankind has a tendency to feel the need to fit into the pack. When the pack is doing something wrong, those who have somewhat of a conscience, will not want to do the evil, so they will sheepishly stand back to allow the pack to proceed, but never say a word to discourage the pack.
These spineless people are more concerned about being accepted than they are about truth and righteousness.

In the Psychological industry these followers of the pack who do not discourage the evil, are called "flying monkeys." They do whatever others want them to do, except when it may get them into trouble, then they employ a tactic called "plausible deniability." They do nothing to stop the pack, they do not leave the pack, but they stand in a corner as though they are not involved, able to say at the end of it, "I wasn't involved."

My take on the flying monkey, is this; if they are there and they said and did nothing to stop evil, then they are culpable for all that happened.

How Serious is Dishonor of Parents?

Often adult children base their contempt for parents on what they perceived to be wrong when they were small. I was accused at times for being mean because I didn't want my children to go to bad movies. I expected them to pick up after themselves, help with yard work and other normal activities, often met with anger and contempt for having to do these things.

Because of the rebellion, they concocted in their heart that I was mean without remembering why they felt that way at the time they were young. When parents have boundaries and standards, in a culture that mocks them, then the children will think the parent is mean, when it is the society that is wrong.

Interestingly, many adult children have forgotten all the sacrifices and efforts to protect and help them learn, that the parent spent, what seemed like a lifetime, their lifetime, doing.

When a culture reaches the point that adult children are commonly rejecting the parents, their wisdom and their instruction, we have reached the point of no return as a nation.

It is impossible to train, teach and influence a rebellious people who have turned their back on their parents. It is a direct and explicit command of God to honor them without conditions associated to it. These same rebellious generations will have no more respect for God than they do their parents. The mentality of rebellion against authority does not end with only parents, it spills over onto anyone who will expect accountability.

Many adult children today have an idea of how they want their parents to act, that may not even be Biblical, it is their idea rather than the principles of Christ that motivate them to disregard and demean their parents. They are living in a world of self aggrandizement, elevating their own ideas above God and above the many years of life experience of their parents.

Little do they understand that God takes this horrific rebellion against parents so seriously that death was the punishment before the age of grace. After the age of grace, the intensity of the evil didn't diminish, it remained the same, however the way we deal with it is different. In the OT dispensation we are told to have these rebels stoned, but in the age of grace we are to remove ourselves and let God deal with them. In 2 Timothy 3:1-5 we see that God no longer tells us to destroy the adult children who act rebelliously, we are to leave them to God, but the command in verse 5 is to remove ourselves from them.

2 Timothy 3:1-5
"3 But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.
2 For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy,
3 unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good,
4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,
5 holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these."

Proverbs 30:17 "The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it."

Ungratefulness is rampant in our culture in this generation of entitlement. When we think we deserve something, there is contempt toward the one that will not give us our desires or the one who requires accountability and respect.

Proverbs 28:24 "He who robs his father or his mother And says, "It is not a transgression," Is the companion of a man who destroys."

Proverbs 30:11 "There is a kind of man who curses his father And does not bless his mother."

Deuteronomy 21:18-21 ""If any man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father or his mother, and when they chastise him, he will not even listen to them, then his father and mother shall seize him, and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gateway of his hometown. "They shall say to the elders of his city, 'This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey us, he is a glutton and a drunkard.' read more. Then all the men of his city shall stone him to death; so you shall remove the evil from your midst, and all Israel will hear of it and fear."

Exodus 21:15 ""He who strikes his father or his mother shall surely be put to death."

Leviticus 20:9 "'If there is anyone who curses his father or his mother, he shall surely be put to death; he has cursed his father or his mother, his bloodguiltiness is upon him."

Deuteronomy 21:18 ""If any man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father or his mother, and when they chastise him, he will not even listen to them,"

Micah 7:6 "For son treats father contemptuously, Daughter rises up against her mother, Daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; A man's enemies are the men of his own household."

I fear that our culture does not take sin seriously enough and because of this, the culture is becoming more wicked with each new generation.