Something is off here.

This picture is very interesting.  It would seem that this house was built terribly crooked.  The truth is that whomever took the picture stood the camera on the street in San Francisco and tilted the camera so that its perspective was the same as the angle of the street.  This makes it appear that the house is crooked when it is in fact the street and the cars parked on it that are crooked.

Our society has become much like the picture except that the picture was taken just to show how crooked things are.  Many in our society WANT people to think that what is straight and true is actually crooked and that what is off from true is what is straight and right.

Just going from the picture, from the perspective which we are given to look through, it can be pretty hard to tell.  A great many people might genuinely come to believe that the house is wrong and the street is right.

There is a simple way to know which is true.  A plumb line.  A plumb line is simply a string or thin rope with a weight tied evenly on the end of it.  If you hold it up, gravity shows you immediately which things are straight and which are crooked.  In Amos 7:7-8 he, a prophet of the Old Testament, talks about God holding a plumb line up to judge Israel because it would show what is crooked and what is true.

The plumb line is the standards of right and wrong which God himself holds up.  It is held up when we are given skewed perspectives of what is right and wrong and it shows what is crooked and what is true.  That is why people who are crooked and twisted hate the word of God.  They don’t like anything to show how crooked they are and that the perspectives that they have been giving us are false perspectives.

Interestingly enough in Amos 7:10 the priest who had been teaching crooked teachings writes to the king that they have to get rid of Amos because he is showing people what the problem is.  Those who are enjoying being crooked never, ever want a plumb line held up so that all the world can see just how off from true they really are.  Things do not change in this regard.

If you try to hold up the straight and true standards of God as a plumb line from which to judge if something, or someone, is crooked or straight, expect those who are crooked to be angry at what you are doing.