Election Blues

I know a lot of good Christians are concerned about the November presidential election and I’m right there with them. I sometimes wonder, though, whether the country would really be the better for it, whether the cause of the Kingdom would be any better served, if everything turns out the way we’d like.

When we have “our people” in power don’t we tend to relax a bit? It’s an unstated assumption, I think, that if we can just get our party in, the group that we think best represents our values and makes policy accordingly, then it can turn our country around and reverse our culture’s moral decline. When this happens, when it goes the way we deem as “ours,” the sense of urgency seems to ebb. It’s a natural tendency. (We show it in our fellowships even. We hire a team of qualified ministers, then kick back in our designated pew, write our weekly check and leave the rest to our professionals.)

This all ties in with something I wrote recently about how political action is truly powerless to bring change in the place where change must occur if it’s going to work its way through the culture – the hearts of individuals.

Make no mistake. I shudder to think that a President of the United States could believe it is morally acceptable to take a premature baby who has survived an unsuccessful abortion, even as it cries for its mother, its tiny lungs filling with new air, and toss it aside to die. For a President to hold this position, invoking the so-called “right” to choose as including its protection, the practical consequences may not be great. We’ve so perfected this cruelest of expedients that it seldom fails the first time. What does this belief say, though, of a candidate’s underlying worldview? It’s frightening. Chilling, really.

But again, God often gave wayward Israel the bad leaders it deserved, men who indulged their own and the people’s lusts for all manner of pagan excess, even child sacrifice. As a nation, we’ve become practised in similar rituals. We sacrifice our children to the god Choice. The altars are built by black-robed men, but to our own specs -- all to ringing chants of “rights” and “freedom.”

The point: If we don’t like our leaders, it may be that we’re getting our just desserts as a nation. As Christians, we should certainly pray for our country. Come November, we should go to the polls and do our duty as good citizens, voting as our consciences guide us. Then, whether we get the outcome we want or otherwise, we should forget about it. Put it out of our minds, for all practical purposes, rejoin our brothers and sisters and get on with the hard task of taking Christ to a country that no longer knows its right hand from its left.

Because it’s in the trenches of everyday life, not the marble halls of power, where souls are won and cultures are changed.

Culture And How To Change It

I notice in today’s paper that one of our Oklahoma state lawmakers has proclaimed herself "a cultural warrior for Judeo-Christian values."

While I have no doubt that she means well, I think her statement springs from a sentiment that has taken deep root among American Christians in recent years -- the idea that the best way to get our morally adrift culture back on the right course is through political action.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be concerned about laws and government and who our elected leaders are; we certainly should be. But if that becomes our central concern, we are focusing on a symptom and missing the real problem, which goes much deeper. Real change for good occurs on an intimate personal level, as individual hearts come to realize their alienation from God through sin and find reconciliation in Jesus Christ. That and only that is how individual souls, and by extension groups of people, will find their bearings.

As long as the individual hearts of our country are turned away from God, it is going to be reflected in their collective whole -- the culture at large, of which our laws and governing institutions are but an emanation. Laws are top-down solutions to problems that originate at the bottom of a society: the individual hearts of its members. Laws are necessary but they are ultimately ineffective at getting at the real source of corruption. Even if you could somehow magically transform all our laws overnight to reflect Judeo-Christian values, it wouldn’t change one single solitary heart and our society’s slow backwards drift into spiritual narcolepsy would continue unabated.

As for this particular lawmaker, whose intentions I’m sure are noble, if she is committed to the cause of Christ, she would serve it much better by spurring her fellow Christians to get out of their church buildings and take their message to the streets, getting involved in their communities through acts of service -- not acts as ends in themselves, but as avenues for reaching individual hearts with the Good News about Jesus.

That, brothers and sisters, is how you change a culture. Anything else is confusing effects for the real cause.

I Want It Now!

In our "what's in it for me today?" society, we have been conditioned to solve all problems in the space of a half-hour sitcom and look for immediate success in every endeavor, lest we be viewed as a failure. Christians -- just like the world --are a "want IT now" kind of people, whether "it" is the latest gadget, a bigger house, a newer car, or immediate success in our latest personal or church venture. Is such thinking Scriptural? Is it even rational?

Examples of this "right now" philosophy are apparent everywhere you look. Newly married couples, just graduating from college, are buying homes bigger than their parents have ever lived in. Car payments today are more than mortgage payments were 20 years ago. Our financial sector leads the way with this type of thinking. Wall Street demands that company results improve quarter after quarter with no slack or slip. And why not? Mega investor shareholders want a return on their money RIGHT NOW. No longer can Americans "build a great company" that provides stable, measured earnings over the long haul. Profits must increase quarter after quarter at all costs. Any deviation from this expectation is met with harsh, immediate action in the form of lay-offs, spin-offs, mergers and other forceful action in the public eye. Unfortunately, hidden in the executive suite, leaders are often pressured to falsify statistics, hide expenses, and keep two sets of books in order to maintain the appearance of ever-improving "shareholder value". Slow, steady improvement is sacrificed for the sake of the appearance of bold, immediate results. Nobody in America is immune to the "I want it now" mindset.

As I said previously, we're guilty in the church of demanding immediate, successful results in all of our endeavors. Every year a new set of programs is implemented with the expectation that these innovations will attract and keep an ever-growing number of people; have to pay for that new building, you know. The mass market, "want it now" mindset has invaded -- yea permeated -- the thoughts and actions of the church. As one preacher said, "We spend what we don't have, to buy what we don't need, to impress people who really don't care." How do we, as Christians, stop this madness?

Read the Scriptures.

Jesus spent 30 years preparing for a 3 year ministry. The Old Testament prophets spent most of their lives preaching to a nation that wouldn't listen, and would kill these mouthpieces for God. Hear Stephen in Acts 7:52: "which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute..." The apostle Paul spent all of his adult life preaching Christ, with the constant fear that his converts would fall back into the world. At the end of his ministry he wound up a martyr. Peter, James and others are said to have been similarly executed. Did their "success" come immediately? Were they even successful in the world's eyes?

My view of Scripture is that the church of today (collectively and individually) needs to re-examine how we define success. The world defines success in terms of fine clothes, leather upholstered automobiles, square footage, executive titles, and stock portfolios -- all things that give an impressive appearance FROM THE OUTSIDE. Our love of these things is an abomination to God (Jas. 4:4).

God measures success from the inside - out. Personal success (in God's eyes) starts with a humble walk before Him (Micah 6:8). We must take ourselves off of the throne. We must remove ourselves from the center of our universe. We must recognize who and what we really are. Isaiah characterized himself as a man of "unclean lips" living among a people who were the same way (Is. 6:5). Paul -- the greatest ambassor for Christ the ever lived, called himself a "wretched man" (Rom. 7:24). Instead of comparing themselves with our neighbors, we should become like these servants of God: comparing ourselves with God's ideal and seeing ourselves for what we are: miserably flawed people with no hope outside of God's undeserved grace.

Today, we need to recast our vision of ourselves as both individuals and congregations: we are works in progress, slowly learning and growing day by day. Paul's admonition in Romans 12 to become "living sacrifices" is totally at odds with the language and philosophy of the world. We need to become honest with ourselves and with each other: "transformed by the renewing of our minds" in order to "confess our sins to each other" and not to "grumble against each other" (James 5:9).

At the Open Door church, we are blessed to have two ministers that strive to preach, teach and live God's Word out on a daily basis for our benefit. They are not perfect men, but they labor in trying to teach us how to become like Christ (Rom. 8:29). Spiritual success will be measured by individual transformation, community service and souls knit together in love. Don't you know that a congregation on such a journey will be a light to the world? It might take years to make this journey, but God doesn't measure things in years like we do. Let's get back to the Bible way of doing things. Let the Scriptures define success. Let's be patient and appreciate God working with us as we make the journey.

Interested in joining us? Come and see.

The Kings Who Would Be Boys

“I will make boys their officials. Mere children will govern them.” -- Isa. 3:4

I wanted to draw your attention to this easily overlooked passage from this week’s Daily Bible reading. What God, through the prophet Isaiah, describes here is clearly an inversion of the proper order of things. Part of God’s punishment for his people’s continuing disobedience, it seems, was to give them, in essence, the leadership they deserved.

“Mere children will govern them..." Sound familiar?

We live in an age where boys rule. Whether it’s in our adolescent-driven, "gimme-gimme" consumer culture or our appalling lack of mature and principled leadership in the public square, we are a childish people.

It hasn’t been this way throughout our history. I’m reading David McCullough’s stirring biography of second president John Adams. The book and the HBO miniseries based on it are both marvelous on many levels and I wholeheartedly recommend them. As I read, I find myself comparing the leaders of that era with those of more recent ones and the differences are glaring.

One difference -- and it’s perhaps the central difference from which all others spring -- is this: The leaders of Adams’ day had a firm sense of the proper order of things. And at the top of that order was a sovereign God, a supreme judge to whom everyone would ultimately answer for how they used the gifts he’d given them, whether standing up for the true, the good and the just or in pursuing their own selfish ends. Even those, like Thomas Jefferson, who had unorthodox ideas about the creator, still acknowledged Him and ordered their lives accordingly.

Not to romanticize the past. These were flawed men who regularly failed to live up to their principles and often disagreed fiercely with each other. But their principles -- and the fact those principles were grounded in a transcendent moral order -- showed in their leadership.

We live in an age ruled by childish fantasies, one where extending adolescence indefinitely is for many the chief goal in life. Our leaders, with some exceptions, reflect this. Whether that’s God’s direct punishment or the natural byproduct of decades of bad choices or both, I don’t know. But I think we can be sure of one thing. Like the people of Judah and Israel, we are getting the leadership we deserve.

Fish tales

Before I launch into this, one disclaimer:

If you have one of those Ichthys fish on your car, I don’t have a problem in the world with it. There’s not anything inherently wrong with sticking a shiny Ichthys emblem on your bumper. It’s a symbol and conveys something about what you believe, similar in that sense to wearing a cross around your neck. You may fail to live up to your symbols, just don’t bow down to them. Our fellowship is using a symbol of its own, an open door, to send a message about what we believe, who we are and what sets us apart. But Christians, we’d all agree, should be known primarily for their words and actions, not by an insignia.

And that’s just where the fish gives me pause.

While there are more fish emblems and other assorted Christian symbols out there than ever, it doesn’t translate to a rise in Christian influence. Whatever the symbol means, it doesn’t appear to mean we’re changing anything. Starting humbly, from a few fishes and loaves, Christianity converted the Roman Empire from the ground up. Now our civilization is busy converting back.

That’s the irony of the fish. Centuries before some marketing savant foresaw a fast buck in it, it served as an identifying mark for first-century believers, allowing them to find each other when dangerous times demanded secrecy. As such, the symbol was a harbinger of a coming revolution.

With its modern reemergence, however, if there’s a revolution afoot, we’re on the wrong end of it. Christianity is rapidly losing its influence in the West. If it sends us back to our roots, though, the decline may not be an altogether bad thing.

The Spirit-driven early Christians won the west for Christ through words and deeds, one pagan heart at a time. The difference today, I believe, is while our emblems are everywhere, we don’t back them up with the words and deeds. We can pepper the world with symbols, but it’s no substitute for salt — for the purifying, redemptive influence only the Spirit-led sons and daughters of the King can bring.

At Open Door, with our focus on that first-century spirit, I think we have a clear grasp of this and are demonstrating our faith by keeping words and actions central. Let's pray we continue.