God’s Hidden War on Pop-Christianity
I’ve been agonizing lately over our Western spin on Christianity. We seem to be stuck in an either/or construct, limited to a strange view of Creator God as a victim of time and space. God is away in heaven somewhere but here in our hearts somehow. Jesus arose from a grave “here” but is now “there”, expecting us to prepare this earth for His return. Where is love in the equation?
John 14:23, however, offers a linkage of love to obedience: “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word; my father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him.” If I understand this correctly, the presence of God in the life of the professing Christian becomes manifest in keeping faith with the word of Jesus. That “word”, we are led to believe, is to “love God with all our heart, soul and mind and our neighbor as ourselves” (Matt 22:37-39). Love of neighbor begins with love of God!
Time to Get Out of the Manger and Into the Resurrection!
I had a brief Facebook encounter with one of those Christian Nationalist evangelical leaders this week whose public image seems to be of one who has dedicated his life to pointing out OPS (Other People’s Sins) and advocating to correct them through the force of law. Whew! That’s a pretty common message in this day of love as an optional command. Do you think it may be time for us to move out of the manger and into the Resurrection?
All this posturing, we are told by a courageous few followers of Jesus, is destroying the fragile faith of millions of Americans and leaving behind a poor witness to the power and glory of God! I will be writing more on pop-Christianity in the near future, but I wanted to share with you a bit from my book, “Let My People Go: Following Jesus into Our Jails and Prisons.” It is a study guide intended to help floundering Christians like myself move away from what we are trying to do for God toward what God patiently waits to do through us:
Call to the Resurrected Life:
“Let My People Go!” is more than a call to discipleship. It is a call to the resurrected life of the Church of Jesus Christ. The resurrected life rises into action by looking around our congregations to see who is sitting in the back row and learning from their witness as well as from their pain. It is a life in admission that the loud, bellicose, wealthy, and perhaps even apostate may be drowning out the faithful and thereby squelching the witness of the Church.
Here is how it plays out through 12 lessons:
To the organized church that continues committees long since irrelevant, burdening its members with meetings and duties, “Let my people go!”
To the liturgical church that burdens its people with ritual, special days, and formality but without a call to discipleship, “Let my people go!”
To the Democratic Party that enlists advocates for social justice separate and distinct from personal faith, “Let my people go!”
To the Republican Party that has joined forces with Wookie Evangelicals to create its corrupted version of the Kingdom of God on earth, “Let my people go!”
To Evangelical leaders who have rallied believers in support of morality instead of righteousness, “Let my people go!”
To the evangelists among us for whom professions of faith in Jesus are more important than cross-bearing, “Let my people go!”
To the Christian Zionists for whom the Promised Land is a place of Abrahamic borders rather than the inherited New Jerusalem, “Let my people go!”
To the leaders of the Prosperity Gospel, for whom suffering is a sign of unbelief rather than cross-bearing, “Let my people go!”
To the suburban ghettos of America that protect their residents from the realities of shattered lives, “Let my people go!”
To the public schools in America that now schedule on worship days what they have run out of time for on other days, “Let my people go!”
To those in prison who profess belief in Jesus Christ as Lord but who pass judgment on their brothers and sisters, contributing to their misery, “Let my people go!”
To those in prison who profess belief in Christ but who encourage hatred of staff and neglect to pray for their keepers, “Let my people go!”
Let it be said, as well: To those Christian bloggers, like myself, who delude themselves into thinking that they have a special corner on the Truth, “Let My People Go!”
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