Tag: American Christianity

Why Capitalism Can’t Be Redeemed

Sojourner’s Magazine has a published a good article by Tylor Standley entitled “Virtue Can’t Redeem Capitalism.”  His argument is built around a critique of Kenneth J. Barnes’ book, Redeeming Capitalism.

You can find an excerpt from the article below.  The entire piece can be found here.  It makes for worthwhile reading.

“The essential virtue, the single most important characteristic needed for

Adam Smith, the father of capitalist economic theory. He gave us ideas like “the invisible hand of the market” and the priority of self-interest

survival in this [capitalist] system, is self-love. As Adam Smith [the ‘father’ of capitalist theory] himself wrote,

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.

“Barnes argues, ‘Capitalism can be changed only through a wholesale change of hearts and minds as people consciously seek to create an economic system that serves the common good.’ But we don’t go to the baker and say, ‘I’m hungry and I need food.’ Instead, we say, ‘I’ve got five dollars, and it could be yours if you give me some bread.’ The baker isn’t expected to care about my hunger; he should care for himself, and I will care about my own hunger. Any social good is secondary; it is a byproduct of the self-love of the individuals who buy and sell.

“Ayn Rand, the philosopher and advocate for capitalism whose writings have enjoyed renewed interest among conservatives in recent years, gave a new name to the concept of self-love. She called it the ‘virtue of selfishness.’ Capitalism, as Rand and Smith demonstrate, has no interest in charity or benevolence — characteristics that Barnes and other virtue ethicists say are necessary for justice. The capitalist system is not designed to make a charitable society; it is designed to make a society of individuals who, above all else, love themselves.

“Capitalism is the single most powerful tool for habit formation in Western society — so much so that our identities are wrapped up in what role we play in the market. We instinctively answer questions like ‘What do you do?’ and ‘Who are you?’ with our job titles. If our very survival depends on putting self first, what sort of habits does that form in us? When grasped by the ‘invisible hand,’ into whose image does it craft us?”

You can find my own critique of free-market capitalism, Ayn Rand, consumerism, and the “virtue of selfishness” from a Biblical-theological perspective in chapter 10 of my book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America.

Kierkegaard on Becoming an Individual, Seriously

Here are two excerpts from Kierkegaard’s 1847 journal, written when he was 34 years old.

Kierkegaard is sometimes criticized for placing too much emphasis upon “the individual,” promoting a brand of individualism that places little if any value in social connections or community relationships.

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

Sadly, Kierkegaard’s philosopher MIS-interpreters have encouraged this common misunderstanding of the melancholy Dane by ignoring, or willfully remaining ignorant of, the centrality of Jesus Christ in Kierkegaard’s thinking.

Here is an example:

“Everyone would like to have lived at the same time as great men and great events.  God knows how many really live at the same time as themselves.  To do that (and so neither in hope nor fear of the future, nor in the past) is to understand oneself and be at peace, and that is only possible through one’s relation to God, or it is one’s relation to God.

“Christianity is certainly not melancholy, it is, on the contrary, good news – for the melancholy; to the frivolous it is certainly not good news, for it wishes first of all to make them serious.”

In other words, no one becomes the person, the unique individual, they were created to become until he/she stands submissively, and lives obediently, before the savior, Jesus Christ.  Only that authentic individual existing before God, who is who she is, who does what she does, who behaves as she behaves and decides as she decides because she lives to serve Jesus faithfully with all that she has to offer Him, will experience the joy of being her genuine, God-intended self.

That is authentic individualism, and it is only attained through the Good News of Jesus Christ.  Only these kinds of authentic individuals can compose a genuine Christian community where brothers and sisters in Christ serve each other freely and sacrificially.

In the American pursuit of secular individualism, constantly affirming the innate wisdom buried somewhere inside our inner rebel, that solitary soul fleeing God’s influence, we foolishly refuse to take ourselves seriously as sinners.

This is the Gospel’s first task:  to make us serious; serious about ourselves; serious about God.

It is the only route out of banal frivolity into eternal joy.

In this light, I suspect that the United States may be the least serious “Christian” nation on earth, nurturing a populous sucking at the teats of the most frivolous media culture – including the supposedly Christian media – ever devised.

Don’t live like the typical American consumer.  Set your sights on becoming an authentic Individual, please, before it is too late.

Class Warfare in America. Whose Side Is the Church On?

(This is the first in a three-part series on class warfare in the U.S.)

Americans have been fighting a serious class war for at least the past 30+ years, and the lower classes, especially the poor, are getting the stuffing beaten out of them.  Few people want to talk openly about America’s class war, but it’s a fact.

The church needs to get to grips with it.

Instead of siding with the rich time after time, the people of God must stand up for the poor.  We need to recognize that our current tax policy, which serve as a major offensive weapon in the billionaires’ arsenal against the poor, is a moral catastrophe.

Trump signs the 2017 Republican tax plan

Did you agree with President Trump’s tax-cut plan passed by Congress last year?  Did you cheer for his budget with its massive increases for the nation’s military-industrial-surveillance complex?

If you said Yes to either of those questions, then you supported a HUGE transfer of wealth that was taken away from the poor and the middle-class, and handed over to the rich and that new class of “people” called corporations.

THAT, my friends, is class warfare waged through the utterly undemocratic processes of Washington D.C., where the majority of our politicians are bought and paid for by millionaires, billionaires and corporate lobbyists.  They don’t represent you and me.  They represent big money.

We all need to get over the long out-of-date Cold War fear of saying anything that might sound even slightly Marxist (oooohhh, the big, bad boogy man…) and recognize that our society has been viciously twisted by a brutal 30+ year, class war being waged from the top down.

That war has empowered America’s richest families and biggest corporations to stomp the needy into the ground – not only in this country, but around the world.  (Read John Perkin’s book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man; The Inside Story of How American Really Took Over the World, to learn about just one example of the international scope of America’s economic war against the poor).

As I demonstrate in my book, I Pledge Allegiance (see pages 155 – 157), it was not Karl Marx but Jesus Christ who insisted on building a just society – beginning with the Christian church – where everyone’s needs could be met, and no one need go without.  Ages before Karl M. was even a glimmer in his father’s eye, Jesus’ church was living by a definite code: “from each according to your ability; to each according to your need.”

That’s right.  Marx was ripping off Jesus.

Recently, the newly elected Congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, suggested raising the upper tax bracket to 70%.  Naturally, like robotic guard dogs hardwired for mindless assaults against anything that threatens their gold-plated, private communities and the corporate powers-that-be, the usual conservative, Republican and DINO (Democrats in name only) suspects have uniformly attacked this young, bright politician.

Paul Krugman (a Nobel Prize winning economist) is absolutely correct in applauding Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s view of taxation.  Take a look at his latest editorial, “The Economics of Soaking the Rich.”  Below is a brief excerpt, but you should read the entire piece:

“I have no idea how well Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will perform as a member of Congress. But her election is already serving a valuable purpose. You see, the mere thought of having a young, articulate, telegenic nonwhite woman serve is driving many on the right mad — and in their madness they’re inadvertently revealing their true selves…

 “The controversy of the moment involves AOC’s advocacy of a tax rate of 70-80 percent on very high incomes, which is obviously crazy, right? I mean, who thinks that makes sense? Only ignorant people like … um, Peter Diamond, Nobel laureate in economics and arguably the world’s leading expert on public finance…And it’s a policy nobody has ever implemented, aside from … the United States, for 35 years after World War II — including the most successful period of economic growth in our history.”

Did you know that during the post-war period Krugman refers to, the upper

Professor Paul Krugman

tax bracket in this country was 90%?  That’s right.  The richest Americans paid 90% in taxes on a portion of their income.

Many people fail to understand this point, and the pundits who feign moral outrage at such suggestions will never explain this point in public.  After all, they are not trying to inform; they are working to protect their own financial interests.

When someone like Rep. Ocasio-Cortez suggests implementing a 70% tax rate, it does not mean that every American would pay a 70% tax on every dollar earned.  Not at all.

It means that the wealthiest Americans (and corporations) in the highest tax

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

brackets would pay a 70% tax on a portion of their total income.  What portion would be decided in negotiations over the subsequent budget changes.

That’s called “from each according to your ability.”  I also call it good sense.

If Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican president, could smile on a 90% tax bracket fueling a healthy post-war economy, then why can’t today’s Congress embrace a 70% tax bracket; especially when we are repeatedly told that our current economy is booming?

Simple.

First, far too many of our elected representatives are millionaires or richer!  The typical member of Congress is 12x wealthier than the typical American family.  Time Magazine referred to Congress as the millionaires’ club.  How enthusiastic will these people be at the thought of raising their own taxes?

Second, Washington D.C., and the American public, continue to be mesmerized by the dark enchantment of a mythical, fire-breathing monster called “trickle-down economics.” This farcical tax policy was conjured up from the pit by President Ronald Reagan, the national bamboozler-extraordinaire.  Others have relabeled it supply-side economics or Reaganomics.  But call it what you will, it remains the same destructive strategy for continually enriching the rich while further impoverishing the poor.

Only one thing “trickles down” from the powerful billionaires standing on top of you in this class battle.  Take a guess at what it is.  (I’ll give you a hint:  it ain’t well paid jobs or affordable health care.)

Here is some more analysis from a real economist, Paul Krugman.  Also, please look at the impressive graph included in this part of his article:

“You see, Republicans almost universally advocate low taxes on the wealthy, based on the claim that tax cuts at the top will have huge beneficial effects on the economy [the supposed ‘trickle-down’ effect]. This claim rests on research by … well, nobody. There isn’t any body of serious work supporting G.O.P. tax ideas, because the evidence is overwhelmingly against those ideas…[emphasis mine]

“Why do Republicans adhere to a tax theory that has no support from nonpartisan economists and is refuted by all available data? Well, ask who benefits from low taxes on the rich, and it’s obvious.

“And because the party’s coffers demand adherence to nonsense economics, the party prefers ‘economists’ who are obvious frauds and can’t even fake their numbers effectively.”

Yes, the multi-millionaire, Ronald Reagan (worth $10.6 million in 1981 dollars when he took the president’s office) launched a new, immoral class war against the poor and the middle-class.  Reagan whipped up irrational – even racist – hostilities against “big government” and supposedly ghetto dwelling “welfare queens” in order to sell his political snake oil dressed up as a tax plan.  However, the real goal was producing a vast economic benefit for Reagan’s friends and campaign donors, members of an exclusive club I call the Triple-Bs:  Billionaires and Big Business.

The working poor, the needy, the destitute, and even the middle-class, have been losing ground ever since.  That lost ground includes their homes, jobs, savings accounts, educational opportunities, health care and government assistance.

It is long past time for the conservative church, all those who consistently vote Republican, to wake up and smell the coffee.

You have been naïve (perhaps) but not guiltless co-conspirators in the heartless exploitation of America’s poor and needy, our children, our sick, and our elderly.  It is time to rip off the cruel partisan blinders, repent of our selfishness and confess, “Yes, we need the politics of Jesus!”

From each according to your abilities.  To each according to your needs.

Has Jerry Falwell Jr. Embraced His Inner Dispensationalist Cult-Member?

Perhaps you have already heard about the latest brouhaha generated by Jerry Falwell Jr.’s interview with the Washington Post.  Aside from the

Jerry Falwell Jr.

political hypocrisy strewn throughout the entire piece, two points, in particular, have gained significant public attention.

If you have been following this controversy, you may want to skip down and begin reading at part two of this post.  Otherwise, beginning with part one will catch you up on the issues involved.

Part. One:

First, when asked, “Is there anything President Trump could do that would endanger that support from you or other evangelical leaders?”  Falwell flatly answered, “No.”

Falwell’s response unveils his cult-follower mentality when it comes to all things Trump.  Ruth Graham at Slate Magazine explains the ridiculous, idolatrous illogic of Falwell’s answer:

“His explanation was a textbook piece of circular reasoning: Trump wants what’s best for the country, therefore anything he does is good for the country. There’s

Ruth Graham, journalist

something almost sad about seeing this kind of idolatry articulated so clearly. In a kind of backhanded insult to his supporters, Trump himself once said that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” without losing his base. It’s rare to see a prominent supporter essentially admit that this was true.”

I will go one step further and suggest that not even Jesus Christ himself demands such blind, a-moral loyalty.  At least, the apostle Paul admitted that he stopped short of offering that brand of devil-may-care devotion to Jesus Christ himself!

In 1 Corinthians 15:12-19, Paul seems to suggest that there is at least one thing the man from Nazareth could have done that would have caused Paul not to believe in him.

Jesus could have stayed dead.

For Paul insists:

“…if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised.   For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either.   And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile…”

Not even the Lord and Savior of the universe demands the type of undiscerning, a-moral devotion that Falwell has placed in Donald Trump.

Folks, Falwell expresses a truly idolatrous brand of politics.

Yes, I realize that sorting out this issue requires a conversation about the relationship between faith and historical evidence, but we don’t have time for that discussion here.  I suggestion that you take a look at my book, Encountering Jesus, Encountering Scripture and then follow up on its bibliography.

The second point of controversy was Falwell’s defense of his position by referring to his “two kingdoms” theology.  He explained:

“There’s two kingdoms. There’s the earthly kingdom and the heavenly kingdom. In the heavenly kingdom the responsibility is to treat others as you’d like to be treated. In the earthly kingdom, the responsibility is to choose leaders who will do what’s best for your country.”

I won’t bother to address the problems created by Falwell’s two kingdoms theology – though I have serious doubts about Falwell’s ability to express an informed opinion on Lutheran theology — since I have critiqued Luther’s own application of his two kingdoms theology, its dangerous uses in 20th century history, and explained what I understand to be the New Testament’s teaching about God’s kingdom in my book, I Pledge Allegiance.

Part Two:

So…this brings me to the thoughts motivating me to add something further to the conversation surrounding Falwell’s interview.  Others, like Professor John Fea (here and here), have covered the issues well, but I suspect there may be another suggestion yet to be explored:  the possible influence of dispensational theology in the age of Trump.  If this term is new to you, start with this Wikipedia page and Google on from there.

Not long ago I came across a separate interview with Jerry Falwell Jr. where he said that he “did not look to Jesus” for guidance in his politics, but was directed instead by his concerns for “a law and order candidate.”  (Unfortunately, I have not been able to relocate the source for that interview.  Any help out there???).

Here are the two interesting puzzle pieces that got me thinking.

 One, Jesus’ life and teaching, items such as Jesus’ own pacifism, the Sermon on the Mount and the rest of our Lord’s ethical instruction, have no role in forming Falwell’s view of Christian politics.

 Two, he believes that Christian values in this “earthly kingdom” are separate and distinct from God’s values in the heavenly kingdom.

Well, it just so happens that those two positions were (are?) identifying characteristics of the earliest, die-hard advocates of American dispensational theology — a stream in which I suspect Liberty University is squarely planted.  Though I can’t cite a scientific poll to prove it, I am reasonably certain that dispensationalism (in one or another of its various forms) is the most commonly embraced “theology” in North America, especially among those who are theologically unaware.

American dispensationalism is the fuel that feeds the raging fire of U.S. Christian Zionism.  That alone is enough to make it highly suspect, as far as I am concerned.  It is also one of the several reasons I abandoned my youthful dispensationalism long ago.

Lewis Sperry Chafer (1871-1952), the founding president of Dallas Theological Seminary, which remains the Mecca of dispensational thinking to this day, was the first American systematician of dispensational thought.  His 8-volume work of Systematic Theology, first printed in 1947, remains in print today.  (My father gave me a complete set as a college graduation present.  Yes, I was, and probably still am, a nerd).

An important feature of Chafer’s dispensationalism was his emphasis on the postponement of Jesus’ ethics.  He taught that when Jesus said the kinds of “irrational” things we find in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere, he was speaking solely to the Jewish people who were supposed to receive him as their messiah.

But since the majority of Jesus’ contemporaries rejected his messiahship, the implementation of that ethical teaching was deferred, postponed until the future arrival of the “millennial kingdom” when all of Israel will finally recognized Jesus as the One they have been awaiting.  (For more detail, check out this page published by someone called The GospelPedlar.  It has a good summary with citations explaining Chafer’s theology of “Postponed Ethics.”

So, for old-time dispensationalists like Chafer and his modern devotees, Jerry Falwell Jr. is reflecting sound dispensational, theological conviction when he ignores Jesus’ ethics while deciding his politics.  For this frame of mind, the church does not now inhabit the proper kingdom age for the application of Jesus’ teaching to the Christian life, certainly not to a Christian’s politics.

This earthly kingdom is not the correct kingdom for Jesus’ ethics to be seriously applied, across the board, to all of Christian living.  Although Chafer’s dispensationalism has nothing to do with Martin Luther’s two kingdoms theology, we can see an important convergence of ideas at this point.

Arriving at the same place by different routes, both groups (Lutherans and dispensationalists) endorse the idea of different kingdoms in different spheres with different behavioral expectations for God’s people.

I admit that I have not called Jerry Falwell Jr. and asked him whether his political thinking has been self-consciously shaped by Chaferian dispensationalism.  After all, he is a lawyer with a B.A. in religious studies from, you guessed it, Liberty University.  Are my prejudices showing?

Maybe I should give him a call someday, but he probably wouldn’t talk to me. (See his refusal to talk with people like Shane Clairbone here, here, here and here.)

What I DO know is that ideas matter.  They matter a great deal.  Theological ideas matter supremely to God’s church.  (Any believer who is anti-theology doesn’t understand what he/she is saying.)  We don’t have to know their source or history.  We don’t even have to be able to articulate them clearly, much less expound upon their ramifications, whether intellectual or behavioral.

We simple breath in the lingering aroma of influential ideas, assimilating

Liberty University

them unwittingly from our (church) environment.  And the American church offers an environment seeped in the aroma of old-time dispensationalism.

As I continue to ponder the damning conundrum of America’s conservative/ evangelical/fundamentalist  church offering up its overwhelming support to Donald Trump, I can’t help but wonder if this is another part of the dispensational legacy fallen like poisoned fruit from the American tree of unbiblical theology.

What is Christian Worship? Part 5  Dispelling Two Common Errors

We have come to the end of this study in New Testament worship vocabulary, but I cannot close without taking note of two common obstacles that frequently hamper leaders who wish to act on the theology we have discovered by putting our theological conclusions into practice.  Perhaps you would like to review that theology in parts one, two, three and four.

 The key theological issue at stake is the New Testament’s elimination of the Old Testament distinction between the sacred and the profane (recall, especially, part four in this series).

Jesus Christ has made the Old Testament/Covenant idea of special/sacred space (a temple), personnel (priests), and activities (ritual offerings) obsolete.  The New Testament even goes so far as never to identify baptism or the Lord’s Supper as acts of “liturgy” or “worship,” as surprising as that may be.

But, for some odd reason, many churchgoers prefer living in a quasi-Old Testament world. Here is where we encounter the first obstacle.

Perhaps many churchgoers secretly prefer the idea of living life day-to-day as a truly profane existence.  After all, stepping in and out of God’s presence, spending the majority of our time free from the presence of God, seems preferable for those who don’t want to deal with Christ’s Lordship.

In any case, humanity’s predilection for an obsolete manner of religious thinking appears in our need to invent new ways of importing Old Testament structures into the New Testament church.  It happens all the time in every tradition.  Think of the many ways we reinstall the

Cathedral of St. Mary

sacred/profane distinction into the Christian life.

We create uniquely sacred people with ordination ceremonies.  We even call them “priests,” as opposed to all of the other Christians who become the “laity.”

We Christianize sacred spaces via grand cathedral/church architecture, and we then refer to these places as “God’s house.”

We elaborate uniquely sacred acts through sacramental liturgies that may only be performed by the appropriately sacred personnel (i.e. the ordained) inside the proper sacred space.

All of this, every last bit of it, is absolutely wrong as far as the New Testament is concerned.  All I can say is, thank God that the grace of Jesus Christ is so bloomin’ big that it extends even to wrong-headed people like us.

The second obstacle issues from the first.  It becomes the rational justification for the ecclesiastical mistakes described above.

One of my former colleagues loved to repeat this standard rationale, imagining that he had slain his opponent (usually me) with a single thrust, “If everything is sacred, then nothing is sacred!”  Have you heard that one?

In other words, by this logic we’ve got to create ‘special’ moments/places/personnel in order to preserve some sense of the divine majesty.  Otherwise, familiarity will breed contempt, and it’s only a matter of time before any sense of awe before God is melted away into the mundane mix of inattentive daily living.

Right?  If so, let’s reintroduce Old Covenant thought and its priestly structures from stage-right.

No.  This is exactly the wrong thing to do.  Let’s think about it for a moment.

The first flaw in my friend’s argument is a matter of simple logic.

Notice that my colleague’s objection to the New Testament perspective on worship must assume the continuing validity of the sacred/profane distinction in order to make its point.

In other words, it ignores the very assertion it pretends to refute.  To put it another way, it tries to dismiss New Testament teaching (i.e. there is no more sacred/profane distinction for those who know Jesus) by keeping its feet firmly planted in the Old Testament framework (i.e. we must observe the sacred/profane distinction if we want to truly worship God).

The next time you hear someone using this invalid claim calmly inform them that you reject the premise of their conclusion.  Ha!  Not really.  They probably won’t know what you mean.

At the end of the day, this “sophisticated” sounding refutation of New Testament teaching is really nothing more than a stubborn refusal to come to grips with the newly redeemed creation awash with God’s unfettered grace now available through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

While I certainly understand the pragmatic concerns that lead people to cling to Old Covenant distinctions, I remain convinced that any practical decision contrary to biblical teaching, no matter how “helpful,” will ultimately prove crippling to God’s people.

It is better to wrestle with the difficult implications of sound theology than it is to ease the burden of church leadership by choosing expediency.
Yes, the innate limits of the human attention span may well require that we demarcate certain times and places for special events, i.e. a designated place…at a designated time…to gather together…for particular events and practices…as a community of faith.
BUT let’s never confuse the pragmatic needs born of human limitations with the proper theology of the New Covenant.  We do such things to accommodate human weakness, NOT because there are any real differences between different times, special places, or specially ordained people.

Christian worship, New Testament worship, is an obedient lifestyle where every day is received as the gift of God’s holy presence, personally indwelling us through the Holy Spirit, conforming us to the perfect image of His one and only eternal Son as we sacrifice ourselves in following His call.

Live out THAT life and you will worship and glorify our holy God all day every day without fail.

Meanwhile, Over at the Babylon Bee…Missionaries for Trump

Missions Trip Successfully Converts Entire Village Into Republicans

“UNDISCLOSED—A missions trip to a remote tribe in an undisclosed closed country has successfully converted the entire village into conservative Republicans, sources from the missions team confirmed Friday.
 
“After contextualizing the basics of right-wing beliefs to the culture of the tribe for several months, the missionaries finally made a breakthrough as they communicated to the group their need for conservative political philosophy to save them from their sins. Finally, missionaries gave a moving altar call Thursday evening, and the village elders responded in faith, accepting Republicanism as Lord of their life.

“The rest of the village soon followed.

“’When the people saw the glory of our savior Donald Trump, they erupted into spontaneous celebration,’ one of the American missionaries said in an emotional video uploaded to Facebook. ‘It was so great to see these people finally abandon their un-American culture and embrace the gospel of the United States, forever changing their eternity.’

“At publishing time, missionaries had confirmed there was still much work to do, such as converting the village into middle-class white people.”

If you are not familiar with “The Babylon Bee” check it out here.

Not only is this funny, it is all too true.

Years ago I was investigating the claim that missionaries with Wycliffe Bible Translators had worked with/for the CIA.  I discovered that it was true.

As I rummaged around old Wycliffe literature, I also discovered a lesson-planning book from the 1960s describing scenarios to be translated into native languages, once the alphabet had been created, and then used to teach students how to read their language.

One lesson went like this, complete with cartoon characters in frame after frame:

Traditionally, an Indian went fishing.

Caught a fish.

Took it back to the village in order to share the catch with everyone.

This is bad.

Instead, when you go fishing.

And you catch a fish.

Bring it back to the village and sell it for money.

Then you have money to buy new things.

And your neighbors learn that they must work to earn more money for themselves.

I kid you not.  Think about this…

Fact: Most Political Violence Comes from the Right. It Must Be Confronted

In April 2009 the Department of Homeland Security issued a 9 page report entitled Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.

The report summarized a number of government intelligence assessments and warned that a growing movement of “right wing extremist movements” posed the greatest threat of political violence and domestic terrorism in the United States.

As soon as the report was made public (which was not its original purpose), Republican Congressional leaders, together with a litany of conservative commentators, raised a hue and cry condemning the report, lambasting the DHS, and screaming for the heads of anyone — especially “liberals” or Democrats — who tried to engage in a serious discussion of the report’s findings.

Congressman John Boehner said the report was “offensive and unaccceptable.”  Fox News insisted that the DHS owed the entire country an apology.

Sadly,  none of  this was the least bit surprising coming from the conservative-Republican establishment which remains anti-science, anti-evidence, anti-logic, and anti-anything-that-calls-for critical self-assessment.

Of course, the DHS report was  immediately suppressed.  You probably have never heard of it.  As a result, the nation never had an open public conversation about the rising terrorist threat in this country, and why it was emanating from the right-wing.

It is impossible to have a productive conversation when one side can’t stop denying the facts, as Sarah Huckabee-Sanders continues to do almost every day.

Then in 2017 the Anti-Defamation League published another study, bulging with copious evidence and citations, stating similar conclusions.  A Dark & Constant Rage: 25 Years of Right-Wing Terrorism in the United States  opens by stating:

“Right-wing extremists have been one of the largest and most consistent sources of domestic terror incidents in the United States for many years, a fact that has not gotten the attention it deserves.”

Facts cannot be ignored.  They will eventually have their own way, whether we like it or not.

The rank cowardice displayed by the mainstream and the right-wing media guarantees that the public remains steeped in ignorance on this issue.  Daily we hear the mindless, false equivalencies and bogus comparisons.  Pundits insist that both sides are to blame; everyone needs to compromise; the right and the  left must meet somewhere in the middle.

The Republican party moves in a more and more extremist direction, yet anyone who points this out is accused of polarizing the debate.

What absolute rubbish!  It simply is not true.

The right-wing is to blame.  It is a fact, plain and simple.  No one benefits from a lie.

There is something about conservatism and its social, political rhetoric that, especially when taken to an extreme, becomes fertile soil for unstable people prone to violence.

We all — but especially God’s people — must be more concerned with the truth than we are with partisan defensiveness.  This means being open to correction.  Being willing to learn.  To admit when we have been wrong.

And most of all, we must be willing to change.

Tragically, evangelical Christianity persists in unapologetically identifying itself with a right-wing political movement that has blood on its hands.

Yes, that’s right.

Congressman Boehner, Fox News, and every other conservative spokesperson who helped to muzzled the DHS warning in 2009, who plugged their ears to the ADL report in 2017, who still refuses to admit the self-evident connection between Trump’s violent rhetoric — which has repeatedly embraced and advocated more violence — and the racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant terrorism dragging itself mercilessly across our country, all have blood on their hands.

God’s people cannot be a party to any of this.

Has Seeker-Friendly Worship Become Seeker-Unfriendly?

Recently, a gentleman by the name of David Murrow offered a blog post at Patheos entitled “Why Seeker-Friendly Churches are Losing Seekers.” He explains why he believes many so-called “seeker-friendly” churches are seeing a decline in the attendance of unbelievers.

Since I have long thought about, but never followed through on, writing an article about the Willow Creek seeker-targeted church strategy, and the vastly more popular compro mise dubbed seeker-friendly services, I decided to chime in on the subject here rather than procrastinate further.

Unfortunately, Mr. Murrow does not offer any evidence or citation substantiating his claim.  But, for the moment, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and accept his claim.  He does offer some good observations and sound advice.  I recommend the article to anyone involved in a “seeker” ministry.

Mr. Murrow’s puts his finger, perhaps unintentionally, on the fundamental flaws found at the core of so-called seeker-sensitive church services, flaws which have given rise to serious misunderstandings about what it means to be a seeker-driven church.

I attended numerous leadership conferences at Willow Creek in the 1990s.  I always took a team of church leaders with me so we could strategize together about the best ways to transform our church community back home into a church that grew by evangelism.  We wanted to see people come to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and then grow as committed disciples within our church community.

I was raised in a fundamentalist tradition that prized its annual week of Revival Meetings.  Year after year the church brought in a visiting evangelist who spoke every evening for a week as the center piece for our revival meetings.  Church members were strongly encouraged to bring their “lost” friends so that they could hear the Good News and “be saved.”

As I learned about the origins and goals of Willow’s seeker-targeted church strategies, I soon recognized that by following in the long, innovative tradition of Youth for Christ, Young Life and similar evangelical organizations from the 1940s and 50s, Willow Creek had simply devised a new way to conduct old-fashioned revival meetings.  Except these evangelistic meetings happened weekly instead of annually.  The evangelist was the teaching pastor.  Instead of a tent with a sawdust trail, the gathering site was in the church building.

Here is the key:  In a true seeker ministry the Sunday morning seeker-service (or seeker-targeted service) is an evangelistic meeting.

Its primary purpose is to create a place where Christians can bring their non-Christian friends to learn about Jesus Christ and his church.  A seeker-service is not designed for believers.  Let me say that again.  A seeker-service is not designed for believers except as they become evangelists themselves, bringing their friends to hear the pastor/evangelist talk about the real-world relevance of the gospel.

Whenever I wrote seeker-targeted messages I told myself that I was going to talk about life with respect to the Bible.   My seeker messages were typically topical.

Christians who were church shopping often disapproved of our seeker services, saying they weren’t “worshipful” enough.  But, frankly, since the service wasn’t designed with them in mind, I never let those criticisms bother me.

Eventually, seeker-targeted churches must develop a second schedule of services for worship/praise/body-life activities that will meet the spiritual needs of disciples.  Christians need regularly to praise Jesus, glorify their heavenly Father, confess their sins, thank the Lord for answered prayer, and a million-and-one other things besides.

We typically call this a “worship service.”  Seekers can’t worship Jesus Christ because they don’t know him yet.  So, nothing in our worship services was designed specifically for “seekers.”  When I wrote a message for our worship services I told myself that I was going to talk about the Bible with respect to life.   My “worship” messages were typically expository.

Worship services and seeker services are two very, very different beasts.  They have different goals.  They are intended for different audiences.  Seekers don’t/can’t worship God, so don’t ask them to.  Believers, on the other hand, need more than a weekly “revival” meeting, so don’t limit their diet to evangelistic milk.

Leaders at Willow Creek regularly warned us visiting pastors about the challenges waiting to ambush anyone hoping to move their church out of its traditionalism into a seeker-targeted method of ministry.

I cannot recall ever hearing a leader at Willow Creek encourage church leaders purposely to develop a compromise called a seeker-sensitive service.  Such services were described as hybrids, a compromise, or a short-term transitional strategy used by churches having difficulty moving fully to a seeker-targeted ministry.  But I cannot recall ever hearing anyone at Willow encourage leaders to develop seeker-sensitive services for Sunday morning as a permanent part of their strategy.

Sadly, for whatever reasons, it appears that the majority of churches, whether they have ever been to Willow Creek or not, have opted for seeker-sensitive worship services today.  Precious few congregations have made the effort or taken the risks to create both worship services for believers and seeker-targeted services for unbelievers.

Unfortunately, it didn’t take long before people were promoting this compromise by writing books and offering seminars about the benefits of “worship evangelism.”

What a shame.

Too many church leaders have taken the easy road of becoming all things to all people gathered together in the same place at once.  In my experience, that rarely works, and even when it appears to work, it is not in anyone’s best interests.

 Anyone trying to become all things to all people becomes nothing special to no one in particular.

Remember that in the Old Testament, Yahweh spoke to the prophet Balaam through a dumb ass.  But Balaam did not spend the rest of his life loitering around barn yards, waiting to hear his next word from God.

The Lord can certainly use Christian worship to call sinners to Himself.  The Holy Spirit blows where he wills, as he wills, whenever he wills.  I know a woman who surrendered herself to Jesus while listening to me deliver a message about tithing from the book of Leviticus.  But that didn’t cause me to write books about the wonders of “Levitical-Stewardship Evangelism.”  (No. Please. Don’t go there).

The surprising movement of God’s grace is never a sufficient reason to promote new strategies for dumb ass church services.

I am afraid that the fear and half-hearted commitment found at the origins of so many seeker-sensitive services are significant factors in the gross levels of spiritual childishness crippling large swaths of American evangelicalism.

Too many Sunday messages soft-sell the radical demands of Jesus and his gospel, for fear of offending visitors.  (This should never be an issue, not even in seeker-targeted services).

Just as too many offerings of “praise music” make no attempt whatsoever to lead God’s people into the unnerving, overwhelming presence of the Lord Almighty, to whom the angels sing, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord who sits on His throne.”

The real problem is not simply that seeker-friendly churches may lose their appeal to seekers, as Mr. Murrow warns.  These services also consistently fail to produce mature disciples who walk faithfully as citizens of God’s radical, upside-down kingdom on earth.

That’s a spiritual double-whammy from which no church can recover until we come to our senses and abandon the conspiracy of half-measures that make “seeker-sensitive worship” the liturgical monstrosity that it is.

The ICEJ Promotes Zionist Propaganda and Shares the Guilt

Today I received a fundraising email from the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem.  The ICEJ is a American based, Christian Zionist organization that spreads Israeli government talking points, whatever they may be.

Here are the letter’s first two paragraphs:

“In the last 3 months, more missiles have been fired at Israel than in the last 3 years combined.  About 600% more! Night after night, families have been awakened by the piercing sound of warning sirens, knowing they have only seconds to scramble for cover, fearing their home will be the next one destroyed…

“Terror kites and incendiary balloons have filled the skies over southern Israel for months, burning over 8,500 acres of crops, trees, and nature reserves and filling homes and communities with choking smoke.”

Let’s put this letter into perspective.

Israel has unilaterally confined nearly 2 million Palestinians within a 141 square miles (approximately 25 miles long, averaging 6 miles wide) area called Gaza.  The people of Gaza are fenced in, trapped, and they are not allowed to leave.  Even those suffering from serious medical conditions are commonly prevented from traveling by ambulance to the nearest Israeli hospitals.  All the Gazan hospitals have been bombed.

The Gaza fence is not Israel’s southern border, as Zionist propaganda claims.  It is a tightly controlled prison fence, guarded by the Israeli military.

Until 2010 it was official Israeli policy to control food imports into Gaza in order to maintain the entire population at the borderline of malnutrition.  The Israeli government calculated that each Palestinian needed only 2,279 calories/day.  Available food stuffs were restricted accordingly.

Fishing is/was a major industry for the Gazan economy.  Since Israel imposed its blockage against the Gazan people in 2007, fishing areas are severely restricted by the Israeli navy.  Israel arbitrarily limits Palestinians fishermen to a 6 mile fishing zone.  But even within that narrow limit Israeli naval vessels regularly attack fishermen and destroy their boats.

Israel arbitrarily declared a 300 meter wide “no man’s zone” extending from the fence encircling Gaza.  It is now a free-fire zone, where anyone — man woman or child — can be shot and killed.  Besides shrinking the size of Gaza dramatically, all of this land is private property, much of it farmland now made inaccessible by Israeli fiat.

Beginning this past March, thousands of Palestinians began making weekly marches at the Gaza fence, protesting their imprisonment.  Israeli soldiers use live ammunition to kill, maim and cripple innocent Palestinian civilians every time they march.

Thus far, Israeli soldiers have killed at least 130 people (including journalists, medics and children).  They have seriously wounded, crippled and maimed at least 20,000 people.  Let that sink in.

But such bloodshed in Gaza is not unusual.

Israel’s last concerted attack on Gaza in 2014, called Operation Protective Edge, inflicted massive civilian casualties.  According to the United Nations Office on Humanitarian Affairs Israeli bombers, missiles and planes killed — do I need to remind my reader that the Palestinians have none of these weapons? — more than 2,250 people.  At least, 1,462 of them were civilians, 551 children, and 299  women.

11,231 Gazans were injured, including 3,436 children and 3,540 women. Over 1,500 children were orphaned.  18,000 housing units were demolished.

From July through August, the Israeli military carried out more than 6,000 airstrikes on Gaza, many of them hitting residential buildings.  The army reported using 5,000 tons of munitions, including 14,500 tank shells and 35,000 artillery shells.  These figures do not include precision-guided missiles or aerial bombing.

So, it is not surprising that the people trapped in Gaza, who are regularly used for target practice and shot like fish in a barrel, protest their captivity.  Wouldn’t you?

Some of them build home-made rockets and fire them into southern Israel.  These are not “guided” missiles.  They are generally very short range, and Israel boasts that the majority of these missiles are intercepted by their “Iron Dome” anti-missile system.

But, of course, they can still be deadly.  Between 2001 and 2014, 44 Israelis (30 civilians and 14 soldiers) were killed by rockets and mortars fired from Gaza.  I don’t know the cumulative figures since then.

Every Christian must condemn violence, whatever form it takes.   We grieve for every Israeli, especially unarmed civilians, killed or injured by Gazan rockets.  God’s people are called to be instruments of peace in this violent world.

Yet, who grieves for the Palestinians?

Apparently, not the ICEJ.  Nor the millions of other Christian Zionists in the west who never give a second thought — in fact, they never give a third, fourth or fifth thought — to Palestinian suffering.  We are morally incurious, never bothering to learn about the inconvenient millions who  happen to stand in the way of Israel’s plan for a purified ethnic state forever populated by a Jewish majority.

How blind God’s supposed people can be.

It is a profound spiritual blindness that reveals the truth about the hearts of American evangelicals.  Our hearts are hard.  Hard as granite.

We raise our hands in church and shed tears of joy for ourselves whenever the Lord seems to answer our self-centered prayers for excess.  A bigger house.  A better job.  A pretty spouse.  A longer vacation.  You name it.

And all the while we are applauding and helping to finance one of the more horrendous crimes against humanity in the modern world.

The typical evangelical would rather go to Israel as a tourist, walk where Jesus walked, get weak in the knees over a visit to the Western (Wailing) Wall, and never give a thought to the weekly slaughter of innocent human lives occurring only a few miles south of Jerusalem.

Neither do the majority of tourists ever think to worship with their Palestinian brothers and sisters in Christ who weep and suffer every day beneath the massive boots of Zionist thugs.

We are those thugs.

The boots are ours.

Palestinian blood stains the American church indelibly.  The Lord Jesus will not forget our guilt.  He will judge us all when The Day finally arrives, saying:

“Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.  For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink,  I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.”  (Matthew 25:41-43)

 

When Disobedience is a Virtue, 5 — Principled Individualism Builds Better Community

This final installment of “When Disobedience is a Virtue” is another excerpt from my book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America (Eerdmans, 2018), page 112.

If you know me personally or are a regular reader of this blog, then you know that I am a non-conformist.  Part of this is my personality.  I have always questioned authority and wondered (often out loud) about the real evidence behind public statements of “fact.”

But the greatest influence pushing me further and further into the arms of non-conformity has been my faith in Jesus Christ.  Every true disciple is a non-conformist to the ways of this world.

That includes pushing back against the various ways that this world sets up shop inside the church, selling God’s people worldly rubbish like a rogue sidewalk vender hawking enticing chili dogs without a license.

 “There will never be a sufficient consensus on anything in this life—including biblical interpretation and social activism—to eliminate all of life’s uncertainties. If we act only in the absence of uncertainty, then we will never do anything but wait and invent new excuses for our inactivity. Living a biblically directed life is the only way to deconstruct the false moral universes erected by this world and replace them with the moral universe created by the kingdom of God. Of course, as long as we remain in this world, we are partially blinded and crippled by the misshapen universe we are working to leave behind, so our interpretations and conclusions must be held lightly. But they must be held. Uncertainty never justifies apathy.

 “Second, there comes a time when the individual must act and act alone if necessary, while being prepared to accept the consequences of those actions, whatever they may be. It is no accident that Peter Haas introduces his discussion of Germany’s Christian rescuers by saying: “A common feature of any principled dissent . . . [is] that the rescuers are deviants, people who are misfits in their society. . . . [Their actions] grew out of the rescuer’s experience as social and political outcasts.”  Principled individualism, what the status quo will always condemn as the deviant behavior of misfits and outcasts, is the distinguishing characteristic of Christian faithfulness in this fallen world.

 “Unfortunately, there are many pious voices that want to sedate this brand of individualism by wrapping it up tightly in the maudlin, anesthetic gauze of “community life.” Christian gatherings easily become the most repressive, stultifying crowds that squash the last vestige of creative individualism from its members: Never act alone. Never step out of line. Never speak when others are quiet. Never question authority. Never doubt what everyone else believes. Never question the way it has always been done. Never try to think outside the box. These are the conformist platitudes repeated by the crowd in its self-serving attempts to constrain passionate individuals, preventing them from acting for the sake of conscience.  At times the Christian church has become the most oppressive, do-nothing herd of them all.

 “So we must learn to discern the difference between a fellowship that participates in God’s kingdom and a collective that exists only to replicate carbon copies of the citizens of this world.”