Paul's Passing Thoughts

I won’t go completely postal on my fellow Christians because I too once believed that it would be just wonderful if Jerry Falwell was President of the United States. And as a Christian, I have never been interested in Mike Huckabee being President because the world is a dangerous place and the last thing we need is some cornball from Mayberry RFD as leader of the free world.

Let us remember that Jesus could have run for President of the world, and would have won hands down, and could have summoned Michael the archangel to pay the world a little visit if people didn’t like it, but He didn’t. This should cause us to take part in a lost art, especially among Christians, known as “pondering.”

Christians, in our culture, speak out on a lot of things because they are free to do so. America is an open society to everyone. This is not to be confused with democracies that are democratically run by the elitists only. That’s a democratic caste system. In a truly open society, people are free to speak openly whether informed or uninformed. Unfortunately, Christians have cornered the market on uninformed free speech. Worse yet, it’s speech predicated on misinformation concerning what we are supposed to be experts at: the Bible.

As director of the TANC research institute, three years has taught me this: Christians don’t even understand the gospel, much less complicated world affairs. Yet, within Christianity, there is endless debate about various and sundry issues complimented by Scripture stacking along with an absurd claim of societal moral authority. Look, when people in our society have problems, they go to a psychologist or tune into Dr. Phil, and if they go to a pastor for anything more than instruction on what color of car to buy (we wouldn’t want a color symbolic of something we were unaware of), he is going to send you to a psychologist anyway.

This is why being a Christian in America right now is very exciting to me because it’s an adventure, and adventures are always fun when you partake with other people and you experience that adventure together. What is the adventure? We Christians don’t know anything; it’s an adventure of learning. I know, I know, listening to what others want us to know and pulling the rest from where the sun doesn’t shine is much easier, but the results are most unfortunate.

For instance, our research indicates that the VAST majority of Christians do not know the difference between grammatical interpretation versus redemptive interpretation of the Scriptures. These are the only two approaches to interpreting the Bible in Evangelical circles, and yield antithetical results in regard to truth and reality itself. But yet, Christians who do not even know how their own pastors interpret reality are shamelessly weighing in on what they perceive as the exclusive property of Christians: morality.

Why? Because our world is divided between Christians and non-Christians, the former being the only authority on morality. It’s ok to argue about morality in-camp—that’s our way of better defining our “expertise” to the world, and the absurdity of it all is evident. The challenge for Christians is to do life better than the world, but we think we hold that position by default; not so, that is a position earned through wisdom.

Hence, most American Christians think the separation of church and state is to protect the church from the state. State bad; Christianity good. Therefore, if the state is influenced by Christianity, that’s good! This has led to the recent phenomenon of Putinanity, a new form of Christianity:

“Gee-wiz, look, even Vladimir Putin of Russia is reaching out to the Eastern Orthodox Church in his country. I wish our politicians had that much sense!”

And Christians breathe a little easier in regard to Russia accordingly; they think this is like Putin agreeing to do lunch with Joni Eareckson Tada every Monday at noon. What Christians don’t understand is that the separation of church and state was designed to keep the state and the church separate from each other for the protection and freedom of mankind in general.

Church historian John Immel has a superb article on Putinanity that every Christian should read before they weigh in on Facebook. No, Russia is not seizing the international moral high ground from the US because Putin is getting in bed with the church, in fact, as Immel points out in the article, this should send cold chills up and down our spines. Immel lays out the historical background leading up to this contemporary happening that is not an anomaly by any stretch of the informed imagination.

And this is a by-point worth mentioning: Christians do not ask why any event takes place as if events take place in a vacuum. It’s ALWAYS the what, not the why. Example: endless articles concerning confusion over what pastor John Piper does. Some have even suggested that he does these things to get attention. No, if you really understand Piper by following the philosophical paper trail, you know that there is a why for everything he does, and the why may be closer to Putinanity than you think.

Neither is it far from the reality that mass death is always preceded by a promise of paradise. In the same way that a US delegation returned state side and proclaimed Cuba a socialist paradise, Jim Jones promised the same thing until the day 900 of his followers drank from the community Kool-Aid vat. Those who flew from the US to join Jones’ community in Guyana and lived to tell about it, state that they knew they were in big trouble the second they drove through the front gates. Jones was strongly endorsed by Governor Jerry Brown as Jones was part of the San Francisco socialist political machine. In regard to the recent Cuban adoring US delegation, they were called on the carpet by Marco Rubio.

If Christians knew their Bibles better, they would know that God ordained governments to serve mankind for the good of mankind. Government is a servant, not the enforcer of every Christian moralist idea that comes down the pike. The framers of the American Constitution never cited Romans 13 once, but were in agreement with it. Know also that God writes the works of His law on the heart of EVERY person born into the world, and their consciences either accuse or excuse based on that law ( Rom 2:12-15). If Christians aren’t careful, the world can often understand that law better than we do, and that is all too often the case.

This brings me to Arizona bill 1062, and another unfortunate example. Christians weigh in like this: Christian photographers good; homosexuals bad. Government enforcing the right for Christian photographers to refuse to do a homosexual marriage—good, and Putin says, “amen my brothers.” In many countries around the world, homosexuality is a capital offence as well as adultery, and for that matter, my granddaughter would have been put to death in Calvin’s Geneva for throwing a snowball at a pastor’s wife, especially since the offence took place in the sanctuary to boot.

Let me just narrow this issue down to my own family. I am close to family members who are homosexual. We get along great regardless of the fact that they know where I stand. How do they know? They tried to convince me that the Bible condoned it, and that was a conversation initiated by them. I stated my case in no uncertain terms. We get along great because the sensibilities of both parties are respected as a matter of conscience. This is very similar to how Christians who disagree should relate in regard to Romans 14. Sure, the Bible is specific revelation, and conscience is more general, but the latter is why we can live at peace with all men as much as it depends on us.

In fact, NFL players coming out of the closet, which is totally unnecessary, are in one sense demanding the approval of others for their own selfish reasons. Government shouldn’t enforce their supposed right to violate the sensibilities of others by forcing an employer to hire them anymore than Christians should want the Government in people’s bedrooms. So where do you draw the line? Conscience. Most people agree that pedophilia should be against the law, and so it is.

Admittedly, these are VERY difficult questions, but they should be considered by Christians via pondering and not pandering to the dictates of pastors frothing at the mouth while beating their pulpits on Sunday morning. That’s just plain ignorance.

All in all, this post is designed to provoke thought, but there is one place that I can drive a stake: contemporary Christianity is the product of the mindless following of tradition. I believe Bible wisdom is a wide-open frontier in this country. Granted, it is an old frontier, but mostly unchartered by Western bobbleheaded Christians.

Until that changes, we should keep our arrogant despotic mouths shut. Ignorance will not save people from the judgment to come. God does not entrust eternal matters to stupidity.

paul