Men and Nations

     So I want to ask you all a question. It's kind of personal and I hope you don't mind but I want to ask it nonetheless. Well actually, I want you to ask it of yourself. Just take a moment, quiet your mind, and look deep inside yourself. Ready? Okay. Ask yourself, “am I a jerk?” Do I come across as arrogant, pushy, self-righteous? Do I lord my faith over all the poor “non-believers” around me and complain loudly about every little misstep the world makes in my presence? Do I? If the answer to that is even maybe than you may need to take some time to reevaluate your behavior.

     Let me start by nipping a possible complaint in the bud. I'm not asking you to start accepting sin or to stop proclaiming man's need for salvation. We must never compromise in our lives and it is to God's law not man's that we are ultimately responsible. One of the most compelling ways we can reach others is by a radically different life, one lived honorably and morally in whatever the circumstance. That being said, people won't be able to see the good in your life if you carry it around like a trophy and tell everyone how awesome you are or refuse to shut up about how horrible the world is.

"Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”

(Matthew 28:19)

     When I look in the scriptures I see a call to bring fallen men to God so that He can make them righteous. I see a command to go forth and make disciples, to teach others, and to continue in the faith. I don't see an order to change governments. God doesn't care about nations in the sense of political bodies. He doesn't really want us to care overmuch about what laws are passed, or what the culture supports; all He cares about is the salvation of people. People. Individual souls that are each going to end up in an eternity of punishment if they fail to turn to Him. These people are all around us and do we really care that they are damned?

     I understand, that we don't like the way the world is going. I get that our own culture and even world-wide norms are moving further and further from God's decree. I see all of it but I want you to understand that its a symptom of a greater disease! People are falling away from God because they are already apart from Him. If we want to change the laws, if we want to have a voice in the public square, if we want to see nations founded on the principles of God's Holy Word than we need to get people saved! Those people will then change the laws and the governments and the nations. This idea that we can change a country from the top down is the same fault we keep blaming on “liberal” politicians; morality cannot be legislated and you cannot simply mandate belief.

“As far as it is possible for you be at peace with all men.”

(Romans 12:18)

“Strive for peace with everyone, and for that holiness without which no one will see the Lord.”

(Hebrews 12:14)

     Moreover, we as Christians are given two equally valid commands: to go forth and preach, and to live at peace. We are not to be the agents of strife! I know that Christ said the He came to bring a sword (Matthew 10:34) but we are not Christ and we are to be hated for our stand with God not for our nasty behavior (1 Peter 4). I'm not saying that we need to wrap Christ up in an appealing package for the masses to seek after. I'm just saying that social improvement and activism should not be our primary objective. We seek the salvation of the lost and if we change our little part of the world along the way, then great.

     As citizens we do have a responsibility to be involved with our government (especially my fellow Americans) however, we do ourselves a great disservice if we get caught up in trying to defend the law and the country for God. This is not “God's country.” This is not a special, unique, city on a hill. God has blessed this country but only because we used to honor Him. Ancient Israel suffered the same fate as they fell into decline. So go out and vote on things as you would believe God leads you but don't spend all your time harping on a fallen culture acting like a fallen culture. Care about people and society will take care of itself.

Battling Decoys

     My word do we love a good cause to rally behind! Every day there's some new atrocity to stand against or some new social initiative to support or some unknown injustice to raise awareness of. Social media lights up like a Christmas tree every time one of these things starts making the rounds on the internet. Nearly everyone it seems, likes to jump on the bandwagon of the newest bit of internet activism and we're no different as Christians.

     Let's take homosexual marriage as an example. Many evangelicals today are caught up in the fight to 'preserve' traditional marriage. They rally in town squares, they post long speeches online, they wear cute t-shirts and buttons, and they talk. They talk a lot. Many people also take this issue and just go crazy! They start spewing out hateful language and setting up their opponents as evil tyrannical conspirators out to destroy everything we hold dear. Because that's probably what's happening...sure. (Please visualize a sarcastic, dead-pan face while reading that last sentence.) When did the Christian life become about blasting other people and setting ourselves up as some kind of perfect, holy beings?

     Lets just say this right off, homosexuality is just not Biblicaly supported. We have plenty of verses against it. That being said, we have plenty of verses telling us to love our enemies, to spread the gospel (which in case you missed it, is the GOOD news), and to be humble. We have a whole lot of instruction to go forth and tell people about God and we have pretty much none at all about decrying social evils. Why is that? Well because as a Christian we are supposed to understand that the world apart from God -is- evil. We can't expect evil people and evil institutions to understand and desire good things. What we end up doing is raising our weapons and spending our energy fighting decoys and battling dummies.

     Immorality isn't the issue, homosexuality isn't the issue, homosexual marriage isn't the issue, the breakdown of the family unit isn't the issue; SIN is the issue! We live in a fallen broken world and no matter how much we rattle and rail against these social and societal wrongs they will remain unchanged so long as the people remain unchanged! We don't need to see congress enact laws protecting 'traditional' marriage, we need to see human hearts and souls saved for Christ! And yes, we need to stand up for the Kingdom and defend life as God see's it, but our primary concern is the salvation of the lost. All these other issues will dissolve and fade away when people are brought to repentance. Christianity was never about forcing change on the world but about God changing the people -of- the world.

Dual Citizenship

     I love my country. I thank God that He has so blessed me that I live in a place that -at least officially- recognizes personal liberty. Where I can openly practice my beliefs and share them with those around me. A nation where I need not fear violence should I speak out against the common beliefs of society. I am blessed that I may seek my future as I see fit, where I may read what I want, say what I want, and think what I want. I am blessed to be so free. I am free to worship my God how I so chose. I am free to gather with my brothers and sisters in the Lord every Sunday. I am free to choose the path of my life and the path of my soul. I am free.

     My country is not perfect. Like every earthly institution it involves people, and people are never perfect. Those in charge of our governance have made mistakes and many of them quite public and quite tragic. Those who did the best they could are intermixed with those who simply did what they wanted. We have held up the noble as heroes and cast down the innocent as villains. My country is not perfect, but it has such great potential. At its heart is the Constitution, a document that outlines a government protected -as much as possible- from strife and greed and power-mad fools. Our laws were drafted with God in mind, for a nation of people who knew that God ruled His creation and that leaders were at best delegated ministers. We have made mistakes, we have made poor choices, but we try. We try our best to do our best, and as a whole we have done rather well.

     I love my country, but my country is not my home. These green fields and busy streets, these blue skies and lofty buildings, these empty plains and busy cities are not my destiny. This beautiful land where nature takes the stage and man's ingenuity raises lofty structures high into the clouds is not enough for me. This land, that I love, is not my final home.

     I am a Christian. This life you see is an illusion, for I died long ago. My heart may keep on beating but I laid myself down on the alter of heaven and died along with Christ that I may live with Him as well. This life, this soul, this existence has been bought and paid for by the sacrifice of one far greater than I. His blood, the blood of Jesus, has paid my way out of darkness and into light. My name has been written down in the records of a higher citizenship. My home is with the Lord. When the grand display of this present world is faded, when Christ returns to claim His own or when my time has run its course and I am left an old and failing form, when every one of our grand designs has crumbled into dust, then I will find the pathway to eternity open and the doors to heaven waiting for me at last. I will walk the streets of gold and follow the pathways of the stream that flows from the throne of God. I will know peace, for heaven is my home.

     I love my countries. This nation that God has blessed me to be a part of is a wonderful earthly place, imperfect and flawed but granted such grace. My heavenly home will be the fulfillment of our every dream. I love my country, but I know this place is not my home. I will fight for its honor, I will support its good and I will decry its evils, but most of all I will hold to it with a loose hand. Every rolling hill and vast city, every reaching mountain and endless suburb will fade and come to its end in due time. My God has blessed me with this nation and I thank Him for it, but I will not cling to it nor let it distract me from the forever that awaits. This whole wonderful terrible world we live in has a deadline, an expiration date, an end; I will keep my eye on the endless.

“For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ...”

(Philippians 3:20)

True Good and What Matters Most -Part 2-

(This is the part two of my discussion of the article found here: http://sojo.net/blogs/2014/08/18/what-saved-my-faith

You can read part one >here< 

From the Article:

“My faith was threatened as I began to question what else had been wrong about what I had been taught. As I edged closer to the perimeters of the church, all the time being drawn and inspired by the beauty and unconditional love (which I was told only existed within Christianity) I saw outside of her, the light from beyond cast even more shadows on the church. Darkness existed in the forms of misogyny, empire-building, anti-intellectualism, and systematic marginalization of GLBT persons; they were injustices coated with spiritual language — wolves in sheep’s clothing. I suffered through severe storms of righteous rage. I wept with the pain of marginalized peoples against the church’s exclusion”

     I'm bothered by the phrase “what I had been taught.” A Christian is taught things, of course, but we come to know more as we commune with God in His Word. I can't really know, but it just doesn't feel like the author has a relationship with God. The language of the article speaks as if Christianity was simply an organization or a movement (She even calls it a movement at one point). Everything we see, every feeling we have, every idea that is presented to us or pops into our minds needs to be taken to Scripture and analyzed. The author constantly refers to “the church,” but doesn't ever mention the Word or God. The church, its membership, and its activities are not what we reference for truth and they are not what we hold up as our standard. God has revealed in Scripture and through His Son what we are to be. It is through that light that we look upon the world.

     “The light from beyond cast even more shadows on the church.” Satan was an angel of light, and he works in distractions and misinformation. He deals in lies and untruths. That light may cast shadows but it's a pale sickly light when understood. You say you see misogyny? The Bible speaks against that. You see 'empire-building' and 'anti-intellectualism'? God tells us to love Him with all of our mind, soul, and strength and think of others more than ourselves. You see the church marginalize the 'GLBT' folks? Well what do you mean by that? Do you mean that we exclude them from church? Do you mean that we refuse to allow what is clearly a sinful life, one repeatedly denounced by God in His word into the body of Christ? Then yes, that is there and it will remain for everyone who holds the Bible to be true. We must love these people, they are no different and no more fallen than any others but sin is sin and we do no one any favors by playing nice and trying to 'reinterpret' the Bible.

From the Article:

“You see, I want all of the beauty. I want the irreverent, gritty honesty out there AND the deeply mystical sacred prayers in here. I want the pragmatic, scientific solutions for the world’s problems out there AND the earnest faith for the impossible in here. I want the big, huge tent that welcomes everyone out there AND the narrow road of life giving sacrifice in here. I want to glean the wisdom of the world AND own Jesus’ beautiful vision.”

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

(1 John 2:15)

“Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”

(James 4:4)

"The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”

(Proverbs 9:10)

Co 1:20 Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?

     What honesty does the author think she'll find in a world of lies? Not that everyone is constantly telling lies but the prince of this world is the father of lies and humans speak his native language! Furthermore that 'big, huge tent that welcomes everyone' does not welcome true Christianity, it never has. Try it, go to that tent -so to speak- join in the hand holding and smiling, and then tell everyone that there is ONE way and one way ONLY that man can be saved from his sin. Tell them that the ONE true God CONDEMNS their sin and is right to PUNISH them. Tell them that despite that He sent His Son to die on their behalf and all we need to do to enjoy His grace is repent and OBEY. See how long they welcome you. This world hates us, some more than others, but all of it the same. We are not of this world and should not seek inclusion in it. We desire a oneness, we desire unity, but unity in Christ and oneness of Spirit. The kingdom of God is not one that exists on earth, at least not yet. The kingdom is not one we bring about, it is not one we help at all. God will do His work and we have the privilege of coming along for the ride. We do not seek a “better world” or a utopia, we seek Christ and Christ alone.

From the Article:

“The paradox in my spiritual journey is that beautiful people, ones who are overly kind, extravagantly generous, yet remain unassuming and humble — they threaten my faith and simultaneously save it. My faith, it teeters on again and off again, never secure, keeping me on my toes.

I will never stop being drawn outside of the faith circle, because selfish person that I am: I need to have all of the beauty. I can’t ever go back to the safe kind of faith, the one that is full of certainty and claims beauty only for itself. I want my faith to be fragile and vulnerable and dangerous, because without the risk of losing my faith, there would cease to be any need to save it.”

     The beauty she claimed to see outside, as if it only exists out there, is a facade. It's a remnant of the fact that as God's creation we can never be fully removed from the evidence of His work. I would ask why seeing people do good threatens her faith? Why does an atheist at a soup kitchen drive her to doubt? Is it because they're not a Christian? Is it because they're doing things she, for some reason, thought only Christians could do? The Bible tells us that all of our righteousnesses (apart from Him) are as filthy rags. It does not say we have no 'goodness', it only says that our 'goodness' is not ultimately good and by comparison is not very good at all. Frankly I'm concerned for her, with her faith so fragile as she says. We should not allow doubts to linger. When we doubt we need to use that doubt to drive us to deeper understanding. We need to strive for the death of doubts, not hold to them as some sort of indicator of higher truth. Our faith does not require saving. We do. I feel as if the author needs to be reminded that we hold to a faith that is sure in the storm, steady on the sea, and firm as a house built upon stone rather than sand. We cannot be led astray by the beauty of this world; a lost man can be confident but following him still gets you nowhere.

“For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the latter end is worse for them than the beginning.”

(2 Peter 2:20)

Apolitical

     We Americans have a hard time separating different aspects of our beliefs. This is a good thing in a way since we as Christians should know that our position in Christ effects our position on everything else. That being said, we also need to remember that this is not our home. We have the habit of identifying our political or social beliefs so closely with our spiritual beliefs that when they get attacked we respond as if they were attacking God Himself!

     We worry about the state of our country, and rightly so. As citizens of this country we are granted the special gift and heavy responsibility of being directly involved with our government. Many of us have some pretty strong opinions about how things should be done and many of us (myself included) feel that our spiritual beliefs greatly inform those opinions. The problem comes when our side of the debate loses popularity, as it is today. So many of us begin to simply freak out and start worrying, fearful of what the future holds. Let me be honest here, you're sinning and you need to repent! This country, though great, is not our primary concern. These laws, though important, are not the laws of God. This culture, though woven inside us, is not who we truly and ultimately are. All these things will fade away in time and we are promised nothing more than that God will be with us through the good times and the bad. Do we need anything more? When you allow the issues of this world to damage your calm, to push you into worry and fear you are going against the direct command of Christ!

“Then He said to His disciples, "Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; nor about the body, what you will put on. "Life is more than food, and the body is more than clothing. "Consider the ravens, for they neither sow nor reap, which have neither storehouse nor barn; and God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds? "And which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? "If you then are not able to do the least, why are you anxious for the rest? "Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. "If then God so clothes the grass, which today is in the field and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will He clothe you, O you of little faith? "And do not seek what you should eat or what you should drink, nor have an anxious mind. "For all these things the nations of the world seek after, and your Father knows that you need these things. "But seek the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added to you. "Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

(Luke 12:22-32)

     Our political landscape is constantly shifting and public opinion along with it. Many people today are concerned with what will happen should our people and government turn against Christianity, what will we do? Well I can tell you one thing, we'll probably explode in population and spiritual strength. We don't like to think about it but persecution has proved to be one of the great driving forces of Christianity. When Christ ascended He commanded that we go out into all the nations, but the early church mostly just huddled in Jerusalem and the surrounding areas. They enjoyed their communion and aside from a few exceptions (I'm looking at you Corinth) were fairly obedient, but they weren't 'going forth'. So what happened? Rome decided it was done with Israel and burned the place to the ground driving the early church along with the Jews out into the world. Instead of wiping out the new church it served to spread it further than ever before! Take a look at the Church in China today: though oppressed and hated by the government it is growing, and growing fast! Remember America is not in the Bible, few of our modern nations are. We don't need a country that agrees with us, we don't need a comfortable environment, we don't need an easy lifestyle, we just need Jesus.

     So be thankful for the lives we have, that we in America and other western nations aren't actively persecuted and attacked. Praise God for his Grace in allowing us this position of safety from which we can support and encourage our less fortunate brothers and sisters. In a way though, many of them are the more fortunate. Reading stories from “third world” countries and the Christians there will often show a picture of people who have a much stronger faith and a closer walk with God than many of us. They have little and so they can rely on and focus on God all the more. In a way, all of our blessings are just in the way. I like this quote from G.K. Chesterton:

“Meaninglessness does not come from being weary of pain. Meaninglessness comes from being weary of pleasure.”

     Remember, we work for a 'better world' because our opinions are informed by our beliefs. We cannot however, allow ourselves to be completely wrapped up in what the government or the culture or the world is up to. Everything that is not of God is against Him, we should not be surprised when they make decisions contrary to His word. Look forward to our Heavenly home and remind yourself that you're only passing through.