Christian Living - Jeremiah's Vow

A Partisan Church: The Effect of Politics on the Gospel of Grace

We can no longer escape the obvious fact that the world has changed. And that it has not been for the better.

The World Has Changed

It’s getting to the point where it is hard to ignore the volume of political speech on social media. I don’t know if you have noticed it. We may have been there for quite some time. We may have just hoped it would trend back in the other direction.

We can no longer escape the obvious fact that the world has changed. And that it has not been for the better. The drift away from faith in God has become more pronounced. More than I have ever seen it in my lifetime. When I look at the world I sense the fraying of edges of our shared experiences. They seem to be fewer and farther between.

The passions of so many are being constantly inflamed, and not in a healthy way. The rhetoric of so called thought leaders is getting evermore hostile, with the stakes being raised everyday. The opinions of an ever growing percentage of the population is solidifying in ways that defy reasonable discourse. Where is all of this leading us? We are beginning to see the first signs of what led to the Tower of Babel. We have started to believe that we are a species on ascendancy. But we are merely laying the foundation of our own destruction.

The Spiritually Blind Are Driving Now

Jesus looked at the wise and the educated of his day and chided them, calling out their hypocrisy. Jesus exposed the duplicity of claiming earthly wisdom as a cover for not having true divine insight. He listened to their bombastic claims and marveled at the the shallowness of their purported knowledge.

1 And the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and to test him they asked him to show them a sign from heaven. 2 He answered them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ 3 And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. 4 An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.” So he left them and departed. (Matthew 16:1-4 ESV, emphasis added)

The same is true today. Too many claiming the name of Christ behave and speak as if they know what is “really” happening around them and in the world at large. But they fail to discern that only God superintends the affairs of men. Just ask Abraham or Jacob or King David or the Apostle Peter if they knew what God was “really” doing? No they didn’t and God was walking with them, talking to them, and they still didn’t understand. They still couldn’t see.

The Church Has Been Enthralled By Another Lover

If that were not bad enough. What is most disheartening is that this trend has taken root in the Church as well. We have begun to measure the “goodness” or “vileness” of a person by what hashtags they do or do not confess and promote. The pithy slogans of divergent factions have begun to affect how the church engages the important questions of justice and reconciliation (to name just a couple).

The modified and augmented versions of these beautiful concepts have shifted the focus from God’s character onto the unbridled sentiments of human imagination. We have substituted the grace of an impartial God for the vengeance of an impassioned politico. Seeming to always question the motives of the former and accepting as pure those of the latter. The people of Israel made this mistake too. They preferred the onions and bricks of their former masters to the milk and honey of the one true God. The pain we know has become better to us than the peace we do not. This is the trap. One that has been sprung on us over and over again.

We are hoping to fashion a new world in our own image. An image we forget the moment we move away from the mirror. We just cannot seem to see that this is a project that has never worked and never will. We are trying to create life with borrowed clay.

The Truth Gets More Painful…the Longer We Wait

Now, I’m not saying that there are not problems that need to be addressed. There certainly are. What I am saying is that any and every attempt made from a terrestrial framework will fail. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But eventually. It will come to a disastrous conclusion. We have an avalanche of historical reference points demonstrating the results of human political and societal ingenuity. They have marked the landscape of history with the bones and graves of the countless nameless dead.

And this is the problem and outworking of Adam and Eve’s sin. They thought that because physical death did not meet them at the moment of sin and disobedience, that somehow they had outwitted God. That they had outmaneuvered the omniscient Creator. This is the great folly of sin. Punishment delayed is not punishment denied. The day of reckoning will come.

No dear friends, you have not outsmarted God. I have not.

The unfortunate trajectory of a politicized Church is an impotent and neutered “gospel”. That is to say, there is no gospel at all. And the fact that the Gospel shall endure is not because of any strength in us. No, it is by God’s good grace that the Church will not die, even if it finds its numbers contracted for a time.

I cannot sustain the Church. Only God can do that.

I cannot grow the Church. Only God can do that.

I cannot improve the Church. Only God can do that.

We must stop behaving as if we are not contributing to the decline. The problem plaguing the Church is not what we are being told by the mouthpieces of our culture. The loudest voices are not the most correct. They are merely drowning out the still small voice of God.

The problem the world is facing, the church is facing, is in fact not something new. It is the only problem that has hampered the human race from the moment of creation. We like to think we are like God. That we can eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and suffer no consequences.

It May Be Too Early To Agree, but it’s Not Too Early to Tell

Am I overstating the situation? I don’t think so. I may only be saying it too early. There are still too many who want to give this old approach a new try. Always with the same refrain: “Our predecessors just did it wrong. But we have learned from their mistakes.”

No, we have not learned. The well-intentioned goals of broken people mean nothing when built upon the faulty foundation of human will. The human being simply does not have the moral engine required to move the sin-soaked-souls of men one molecule in the direction of righteousness.

Yes, I am speaking too soon. There are not enough ready to hear what I am saying. Too many have vested too much of themselves into their “side”. A side that stands in opposition to the character and will of God. I may be speaking too soon, but I am not getting the result or effect wrong.

As a Christian, it is important to not lend our allegiance, whether actively or passively, to anything that clouds our witness. Anything that blurs the work of Christ is not worthy of our overt or tacit approval. It does not matter how well-intentioned the cause, the cost is too great.

The current cultural climate has highlighted several important realities. Realities that have been dismissed but cannot be denied any longer. I will simply list them without much commentary.

Political speech is always partisan. No one who is political can be objective. That is a convenient lie we tell ourselves to assuage our consciences, but it is grounded in self-righteousness, not true holiness. Our politics are more transparently visible than we think. And some are too comfortable with that.
Professional political pundits are not as good at what they do as they think. (See #1 above). What makes us think we can do it any better? We are far worse at it than we may wish to believe.
We risk more of our witness than we can calculate when we enter into an arena in which we have no reason to be. (See #4 below).
The truth of God supersedes the politics of our current national affiliation. If we claim to be Christians, we must remember we are not citizens of this world but of the kingdom of God. This means that we should not speak politically, but prophetically. (And if you can’t tell the difference refrain from doing it until you can. And if you think you can, you are probably wrong.)
This one is directed specifically at pastors. You can be a pundit or a pastor, not both. Thinking you can be is part of the problem. If your punditry is more important to you than your prophecy, it may be time for a change of vocation. Punditry is a seductive harlot and she ravages all who entertain her advances.

A partisan church is not the church of Jesus Christ. We must accept this to our shame and to our peril if we do not.

I offer this prayer in conclusion.

Eternal God, in whose perfect kingdom no sword is drawn but the sword of righteousness, no strength known but the strength of love: So mightily spread abroad your spirit, that all peoples may be gathered under the banner of the Prince of Peace; to whom be dominion and glory, now and for ever. Amen.
# 27, For the Peace of the World
A Book of Prayer and Order (2020), pg. 408

Book Review: #OrganicJesus

It is helpful to look at things from someone else’s vantage point.

#OrganicJesus by Scott Douglas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Irreverant. Funny. Provocative. Sincere. Challenging.

The Good
Scott Douglas does a great job of keeping you on the edge. He says things in a way that challenges you to think more deeply. He has a knack for seeing the ironies and the humor in the Christian subculture. But, he does this while a committed member and defender of that same community.

The Bad
There is not a lot. This book is not about theology per se. It does tackle some theological topics in general terms. This leaves the reader wondering what they should believe on the matter. It would have been nice for there to have a been a nudge toward other resources to dig deeper. But, in the end, this is not the purpose of the book.

View all my reviews

4 Ways The Walking Dead Prepared me for the 2016 Election

I was not a fan of The Walking Dead when it started. I am not a horror, scary movie kind of person. As a matter of fact, I hate being startled. Just not my thing. But, I was looking for something to watch on Netflix and I thought, “Let me give this show a chance.” I didn’t know what to expect, but I started to really enjoy the characters and the story. Story is a such an important thing for me. If there is a good story I (usually) will watch or listen. Continue reading “4 Ways The Walking Dead Prepared me for the 2016 Election”

4 Steps to Achieving an Increase in Faith

**This was orginally a sermon [Original title: Why the Mustard Seed?] and was first given in May of 2005. It has been updated here.

⁵ The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” ⁶ And the Lord said, “If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.

⁷ “Will any one of you who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and recline at table’? ⁸ Will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, and dress properly, and serve me while I eat and drink, and afterward you will eat and drink’? ⁹ Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? ¹⁰ So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’” (Luke 17:5-10 ESV, emphasis added)

Continue reading “4 Steps to Achieving an Increase in Faith”

1 John 1:6 | We walk in Darkness

⁶ If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. (1 John 1:6 ESV)

After declaring and defining that one of God’s clearest characteristics is “light” in verse 5, John turns in verse 6 to an implication of this reality, of being in the light. It is the first of two that he provides in this paragraph.

John wants to highlight and contrast a contradiction between our confession, of being in fellowship with God, with our actual positional relationship with God. Now, it is important to maintain the argument John is making here. The power of the argument is that it forces us, as readers, to assess our own lives against the truth that John is bringing to bear. And what is that truth? It is that light and darkness cannot and will not coexist.

Let’s look at it more closely. John begins by asking, in the form of a conditional statement, where we stand. “If we say we have fellowship with [God],” this is our confession, “while we walk in darkness…,” this is the reality of where we stand. Now, it is important that we do not miss the contradiction here. The contradiction is that we are believing one thing and yet doing the opposite. It is not that we are just a little bit off. We must remember that John is using an undeniable contrast. When God is light and we are in darkness, we are left with an unbridgeable divide.

This is the problem and challenge John highlights. We are actively saying we are in fellowship with God while at the same time walking apart from him. What this means is that we are deluded and blind to the reality–and the danger–of our position.

Once we understand the conditions of our dilemma, we can better understand the conclusion that John draws. John says that when I, as an individual, exist in this state described I have two problems. First, I am a liar. Whether it is intentional or out of ignorance makes no difference. I have become a liar because my confession and my conduct do not agree. Second, and this may be more damning, I have physical evidence that I am a law-breaker because I am not “practicing” the truth. Every action I take that maintains the contradiction is another step toward bondage and away from freedom.

Application

Whether I can see it or not, if I do not understand that the contradiction exists I may never be able to break free from the cycle. Only the light of the truth of the Gospel can release me from this blindness.

What we may not want to admit, and what may even be closer to the truth, is that we already know that the contradiction exists, but we are unwilling or unable to stop being liars and failures as practitioners of the truth. We must hear the truth and allow that truth to be the light that illuminates our way out from the darkness of sin.

Six Strings and a Pick: How Playing Guitar Helped Me See The Risk of Plateau

Over the last year I have been playing regularly with the worship team of my church. This has been less out of some burning desire and more because of a need for a guitarist on the team. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy playing, however, I am not a big fan of playing (or singing for that matter) in front of people.

I have always wanted to play the guitar. My grandfather used to make guitars until he became ill and was unable to do so any longer. There were a couple of samples of guitars that he made in his home and I remember admiring them every time we went to Puerto Rico to visit. There is something about the sound a guitar makes that I just love.

Over the years I have played with moderate measures of satisfaction. I would pick it up for a few months and then quit. Then the urge would hit me again and I would work on developing those calluses again. That is always the toughest part, getting your fingers used to the strings. But, after about a week the focus shifts to playing rather than surviving each practice session.

This last go round I have been playing consistently three to four days a week for about an hour or two each time. That is a lot of playing. The reason I share this brief history is due to a conversation I had with the worship pastor of our church. We were talking, and as most good conversations go, we touched on a variety of subjects. As we talked we were discussing the reasons why people do things in life and the catalysts for growth in our individual journeys.

Then, it hit me. The reason I was getting better was not because I was playing more. This does contribute, but that was not a sufficient explanation. I realized that the longer we do something the easier it gets to do. However, to limit any improvement to time served, as it were, would be somewhat shorted sighted. There were two fundamental reasons I was getting better. First, I had to. Second, I wanted to.

Why did I have to? The needs of the worship team required a better guitarist. In order for that to happen, I had to play more and practice more. I had to learn Solfège, songs in two languages and work with two different worship teams because I was it. I had to get better otherwise the worship experience would have been more distracting than uplifting. This is as well and good.

The second reason that I was getting better was because I wanted to. This was the realization I had not considered or recognized until that conversation the other night. Now, this may sound silly, but I hope you understand why this was surprising to me, and should be to you as well. The better we get at something, the greater the desire to be challenged. I did not realize how valuable it was to be confronted with my own growth and realize that there is more to do, more areas where I can experience growth, more opportunities waiting to be explored. I am not going to be a recording artist or impress anyone. I am just trying to push myself a little further. I did not realize that the greatest motivation comes from within us, when we see that there is still untapped potential to be discovered.

What I have realized is that the better I get at anything I practice, the more I am confronted with the risk of plateau. We have to decide if we are satisfied with where we are. We may not even be satisfied with it, but we may be more afraid of changing what we have for something we do not fully know.

The bottom line is this, if you are satisfied with where you are, then stay there. No one is going to get you to move if you don’t want to. No one was pushing me to get better, they were just glad I was doing something. That just wasn’t enough for me anymore. If was fine at the beginning. But the more I played and the more things made sense, the more I began to understand. The more I wanted to improve. I wanted to become a better steward of my time and more effective in my practice. The more I played the more I wanted the play. And the more I wanted to play the better I wanted to be.

There are two question we all have to ask ourselves. They are these: 1.) How long is it going to take for me to realize there is more to learn? And 2.) How intently will I strive to learn it when I do?