Ah, Malachi. His words — at least some of his words — would most likely end up in the "books to be banned" department. The little scrap of scripture can be found in my brother-in-law's and my choice of biblical passages we always wanted to preach, but were afraid to try. "Why did Saul go into the cave?" "Keep your hands to yourself, woman." And our favorite, "David's hot water bottle."

Here goes.

Malachi tells his people that God considers what they do in worship and sacrifice is no more than dung (look it up) and that He will wipe it on their faces. He got their complete attention. Simply speaking, God has declared that their offerings and worship services resemble fecal material, the waste of the body, castoff, because it has no use, because the priests and their piety are nothing more than a sham, a false appearance, a coverup to what is required and true.

"You have corrupted and so I make you despised and dirty before all the people."

They gave nothing more than an intellectual idea of God's love, a sort of "great, you are forgiven. Just visit the temple more often and raise your gifts to a more acceptable level."

Come on, folks. It feels good to be loved and forgiven, but it's another story when the next part of being loved is to return that love in very concrete and demanding ways. Let's call this "partiality."

In the biblical sense, we can merely accept God's word intellectually, which would mean that our Christian duty would be to read the Bible, study it and memorize some of it. Another way of being partial might be like saying, "I believe, accept and am saved and one day I'm going to wear gold slippers, shuffle through the pearly gates and live in a mansion and all that good stuff."

We've missed a whole lot of instruction about what we're to do in the meantime.

But worst of all, we might decide that our way of believing is the only way, and the right way, and all the other believers who worship on the corner, across the street or in those little tiny churches in the wild woods are wrong.

If you haven't understood Malachi by now, let's make it very clear, "there can be no partiality with the Word of God, there is no piece-meal puzzle, it is an all or nothing totality. God's Word can be comforting and scary. It is personal, demanding, time consuming, accountable, just plain old final.

Jesus Christ never allowed His flocks to go away, sit down and choose the portion they liked and discard that which was disturbing. His teaching was to the heart, surrender and obedience, doing and obeying. We are not to sit down and discuss how wonderful our world would be if only. Nope. His words are, "Get on with it!" Now what?

Our new self is truly free and that means we are free to choose which Master we will follow. When our choice is Jesus Christ, then we are bound to Him, not partially but totally.

There is no partiality! There is only totality!

Thanks, God!