On the first day you are to take choice fruit from the trees, and palm fronds, leafy branches and poplars, and rejoice before the LORD your God for seven days. (Leviticus 23:40 )

God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.  (Genesis 1:25 )

Joel 2:23 Be glad, O people of Zion, rejoice in the LORD your God, for he has given you the autumn rains in righteousness. He sends you abundant showers, both autumn and spring rains, as before.

Psalm 136:3 Give thanks to the Lord of lords: His love endures forever. 4 to him who alone does great wonders, His love endures forever. 5 who by his understanding made the heavens, His love endures forever. 6 who spread out the earth upon the waters, His love endures forever. 7 who made the great lights– His love endures forever. 8 the sun to govern the day, His love endures forever. 9 the moon and stars to govern the night; His love endures forever.

I began thinking about all this “Political Christianity” stuff with the scandal in the Catholic Church regarding sexual abuse and how it’s been handled, or rather mishandled.  Then there’s the whole politicization of refugees, climate, shootings, etc.  Add on top of that Supreme Court machinations and midterm elections and one thing is crystal clear:  We’re drifting.  We need Reformation.

The battle for the soul of the Christian Church is being waged full-throttle in the spiritual realm, and casualties are the churches.  Those with a cross on the outside and white hair on the inside may still have sound doctrine, but they’re dying off… as people do.  Many younger congregations—in an effort to be relevant—hire pastors with energy and enthusiasm and the ability to speak the language of designer coffees and sports.  I’ve seen plenty–both young and old–hang gay pride flags on their church front signs and a few brazen enough to display them beside or even on the Cross.  Their world experiences have been formed in the public schools and codified in today’s seminaries which have, for decades, been in the cross-hairs.  If only we’d paid attention…

I know I’m making a few of you very uncomfortable but closing our eyes to the spiritual battle doesn’t make it go away.  We need to confront it if we’re going to have a new Reformation bringing the Church back to her high calling.

It’s devastating whether it’s the Catholic seminaries with an undercurrent of homosexuality or so many Protestant seminaries teaching an outright rejection of patriarchy. (Oh, you mean like the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?  Yeah, that patriarchy, the one Jesus acknowledged.)  So, I’ll say it again:  As go the seminaries…so goes the Church and so goes the culture. 

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Chances are good that your Christianity is too political if you refuse to go to church because you’d rather blame God than men.

Think about it: 

• The scandals in the Catholic Church happened because people, the Pope included, looked the other way while priests under their authority sexually abused children, mainly boys.  Politically, the Pope and other clergy don’t want to rock the boat because they don’t want the gay community beating up on the Catholic Church.  No one calls it what it is.  There is “The Elephant in the Sacristy” we’ve known about for decades as the seminaries became a refuge for homosexuality.  Before you think I jump the shark from homosexuality to abuse, please…please, if you get a chance, I’d highly recommend reading, at least skimming this article linked above from 2002 with an editor’s note from 2018.  It’s not from some weirdo publication but the Weekly Standard and is a profound piece of writing–important if we’re going to experience Reformation.  
• Instead of the seminaries teaching what the Bible says about this controversial topic, many normalize it and an increasing number ordain it.  They celebrate it with its own day, week, colors, and Facebook themes, complete with “pride/like” buttons.  Churches hire them to teach the congregation what the culture long ago embraced but the Bible does not teach. Romans 1:32 “Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.”  What had to go by the wayside in order to do that?
• What is it going to do to the Catholic Church and other churches if we continue on this path? 
• Should it take a sex abuse scandal involving children to move us to action?

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Lord God, through the power of Your Holy Spirit, please reveal our guilt.  Bring us to confession and repentance.  Heal our shame.  Convict us of the need to reclaim and reform the Church so she is a suitable Bride for the Bridegroom.  Help us to elevate purity and to protect our children, the most vulnerable among us.  Help us to see that You cannot be blamed for the sin of man and we can admit that You call it sin.  Help us to see that Church is the best place to be because we’re near to You, not a place to be avoided (or punished) by withholding our presence from the community of saints.  Nor is the Church a place to be accused and punished for our sins, but a place to humbly admit them so that we might find forgiveness.  May we come to the foot of the Cross, grieving for the state of Your Church, and have confidence to draw near to You because of Christ’s sacrifice, and to know there is grace enough to approach You without fear.  Help us to boldly, yet lovingly, address our culture and to comfort those who have lost their way from here to eternity.  Help us to love one another, knowing how deeply You first loved us.  In Jesus’ Name.  Amen.

The midterm election results are being tabulated and soon we will know the various outcomes.  Red or blue?  Political outcomes all, no matter the color.  Some races will be tighter than others, but one thing I hope we can all address:

A sign that your Christianity is too political is if you’ve been more concerned with getting migrants across the border, or voters to the polls, than getting people to the Cross to know the Savior. 

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I’ve been very sad at so many seminaries, theologians, and pastors focused on feminist theology, social justice, liberation theology and all the other flavors of political Christianity that simply refused to accept prior election results as being valid.  I hope tonight’s tabulation will be different and the same Christians resisting, persisting, and every other -isting will finally join hands with those who accepted the results last time and be unified toward the one purpose every Christian should have.

That purpose?  It’s getting people to the eternal finish line of faith in Jesus Christ. 

Because when Christ returns, it’s not to decorate heaven in blue or red or any other color.  He cares far less about your political party than how you’ve treated others, particularly those of the family of faith because that family, His Bride, the Church is who He will bring to be with Him forever.  Those who don’t follow Christ won’t have lost just an election…they’ll have lost everything.  Forever.

Christians ought to agree with each other in honoring Christ our King:  “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.  You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth.” (Revelation 5:9-10)

Think about it: 

If we cannot agree on the very simple thing of accepting that God installs leaders for blessing or judgment as it clearly says in Romans 13:1 “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God”…how will we ever agree to the unity that attests to our following Christ?

Today’s prayer is from the lips of our Savior: 

John 17:20 “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: 23 I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” 

Yes, the Church needs a new Reformation, one with a better understanding of the Image of God.  That is why a myth worth dispelling is that “Christian Truth Doesn’t Apply to Politics.” 

Our whole Christian worldview—with God as our focus—is supposed to be lived out, not just observed as a museum exhibit, open on Sundays.  

Returning to Pastor J. D. Greear’s commentary, he paraphrases “Thomas Sowell [noting], the Christian worldview teaches incredibly unique things about the nature of man, the value of life, the principles of justice, and the dangers of power. We assume most of those now as givens, but they aren’t. Other worldviews come to different conclusions about all of this, and the vision for public life is accordingly different.”

Different is a kinder word.  A world of decreasing Christian understanding and of theological misapplication is a downward spiral toward hate.  A melting pot world with many true religions leads people away from valuing the Christian worldview.

The social justice movement in our seminaries causes some like a national pastor to ask whether Jesus would be more at home in the migrant caravan or at a Trump rally (seriously, are those my only two choices???) to which the echo chamber proudly proclaimed in reply after reply, “The CARAVAN!”  (I’m trying to wrap my mind around sinless Jesus storming the border of Mexico and Guatemala to force His way in.)

This social justice movement clouds people’s vision.  Consider a woman I’ll call VM who chastised me, “You are delusional because you are blinded by your white fragility and white centric worldview that bars you from seeing clearly…You are misreading scripture!  Perhaps you need to bone up on your hermeneutics.”  (ouch!)

In one of the articles I was reading, a pastor named Lee Hull Moses wrote,

“Can we call ourselves followers of the Prince of Peace and not condemn violence born of bigotry and hate? Likewise, I don’t see how we can read the story of Jesus welcoming the children and not have something to say about the migrant children separated from their parents at our southern border.” 

All this to say that the social justice movement in our seminaries has caused people to focus on the red-and-blue wrong things (skin color, gender, nationality, political beliefs, etc.) and not on the right things (Christ, sinless, perfect sacrifice for sin…for Jew and Gentile alike).  They turn Jesus into another migrant crawling under barbed wire and giving sin a pass instead of a sinless Savior providing atonement.

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Worth asking is how we’ve come to believe a person has more (or less) of the Image of God based upon such dividing points.  It’s not just liberal theologians and shallow thinkers… (to be continued)

Think about it:

• If we saw the Image of God in our fellow man, how would that help us to love our enemies?  To forgive them?  To show them grace and point the way to Christ?

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I pray for today’s election, Lord God, that Your will would be done on earth as it is in heaven.  I pray that all true Christians would have sought Your perspective as our King before voting and would have confidence in You alone.  Help us to take refuge and comfort in Your Word and to live out the high calling to love others as You have loved us.

Luke 6:22 Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. 23 “Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their fathers treated the prophets…27 “But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you…31 Do to others as you would have them do to you. 32 “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ do that. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ lend to ‘sinners,’ expecting to be repaid in full. 35 But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.” 

Help us, Lord, to remember the depths from which we have been rescued.  Amen.

So many recent articles have broached the topic of whether the Church should be political.  I read opinions from pastor after pastor of why or why not as well as the no-debate-pastors who simply say we must because it’s a spiritual battle for the survival of the Church.

I tend to agree with Pastor J.D. Greear who writes, “The question of politics has always been a tough one for me. On one hand, I often feel guilty for not doing more. Doesn’t obedience require standing up for truth and justice? But on the other hand, as a Christian leader, I often feel guilty for having said too much. Am I putting too many obstacles in the way of the gospel?”

Ultimately it involves having–and practicing–a highly developed, theologically grounded, and carefully guarded biblical worldview about controversial topics and political ideas in all sensitive areas of our cultural existence.

One such topic used to be called “Abortion” and is now called “Reproductive Justice” thanks in large part to “Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies” at universities like Yale, seminars on women’s equity at Yale’s Divinity School, and at seminaries like Union Theological Seminary whose President Serene Jones tweeted the following:

“Do not trust folk who tell you reproductive freedom isn’t truly on the line” as a follow-up to her tweet “I’m just so sick and tired of men appointing men to strip women of our rights. Lord, deliver us from evil. #SCOTUSPick.” 

Dr. Jones is but one of many “progressive theologians” who have capitulated to the culture and of course, you know what I say? 

As go the seminaries…so goes the Church and so goes the culture. 

But a biblical worldview recognizes that God values the life He gives us because He values the Image of God in which every human being is created. 

God said, “Let Us make man in Our Image” (Genesis 1:26 ) and

The LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7) 

That’s why God cares more about the most basic of rights—life itself—than He does about any court-derived human right for a woman to do what is right in her own eyes…and with her body what she alone wants.

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Chances are good that if your politics of red-and-blue about abortion do not first yield to the Royal color purple of the King of Kings, your worldview lacks eternal standing on the Eternal Word and is sadly, too political.  Ah, but it’s not just women in the seminaries and it’s not just Presbyterians…(to be continued)

Think about it:

• On Yellowhammer, interviewer Tom Lamprecht asks Dr. Harry L. Reeder III (Senior Pastor of Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham) about a Pew Research Study: “Harry, I look at this list of the different denominations and those who support abortion. Presbyterian Church in America 54 percent, Southern Baptist Convention 30 percent, Assemblies of God 26 percent. Assemblies of God have the best numbers but, still, a quarter of the membership of that Bible-believing denomination would support abortion. Where do we go when our evangelical churches are so lost on this issue?”  Good question. 
• How about this one: Where is God’s purple Justice in a red or blue “Reproductive Justice”?
• Which justice is more like real Justice?  And whose have you been considering in your vote?

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Lord Jesus, please forgive us for exalting human rights in a superficial Christianity that doesn’t revere Your righteousness and Your supreme rights as our Sovereign.  Forgive us for minimizing Your Image present in the unborn, the poor, the sick, the unlovely, the alien, and the elderly.  Forgive us for seeking gods of selfish freedoms, voting outcomes we want, and political figures we like to satisfy our ears instead of prayerfully seeking You, the One True God, the Desired of Nations, and the Living One who satisfies our souls. 

I believe the Church needs another Reformation.  Now. 

If the first Reformation had to do with Church playing internal politics, enriching, empowering, and protecting Church elites, and the issuance of indulgences, this new Reformation also will need to address that same precarious intersection of faith and culture.  It’s still politics.  It’s still promoting an elite group but instead of a hierarchical elite, it’s a culturally-sanctioned mindset, and instead of indulgences, political correctness.  Suddenly what one believes politically (red or blue) is what makes someone moral.  That is being preached in churches all over America. 

That mess is precisely why among Martin Luther’s theses (#54 in his day) was “Injury is done to the Word of God when, in the same sermon, an equal or larger amount of time is devoted to indulgences than to the Word.“

I might argue that a single word change modernizes it: “Injury is done to the Word of God when, in the same sermon, an equal or larger amount of time is devoted to politics than to the Word.“  Or a few words,

Injury is done to Christianity when, in the same life, an equal or larger amount of time is devoted to secular than to the Savior.“ 

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What sent me over the edge to write about this was the feeling of incredible grief I’ve had at what Christ must think of what’s become accepted by, and lauded in, the seminaries and in the pastorate. 

After all, God told us:  Deuteronomy 6: 18 Do what is right and good in the LORD’s sight, so that it may go well with you.”  The Israelites failed miserably, and we do too.  We need to think in purple, knowing that the King of Kings died because we failed to do right and needed a Savior. 

How Christ must grieve over a Presbyterian minister shouting: “We welcome everyone!”  And in the same rant at our President who came in order to honor the dead at the Tree of Life Synagogue where 11 people lost their lives, she cried out in rage, “This is our neighborhood…you are not welcome here!”  (begins at the 6:32 mark)  Imagine how the world would view it if this pastor had shouted that same rage at “migrants.”

She probably didn’t come out of the womb with such insults to others made in the likeness of Christ. She was trained into blatant unforgiveness.  “Surely not!” you say.  Surely yes.  What began as a coddling of social justice in the seminaries is now bearing fruit as injury to the TRUE Gospel in our day.    

As go the seminaries…so goes the Church and so goes the culture. 

It’s not just women in the pastorate and it’s not just Presbyterians…(to be continued) 

Think about it:

• Does the sermon you hear each week focus solely on the Word of God, is it a lecture as a mix of politics and history, or an exposition of the pastor’s opinion on world events?
• How much time do you get in God’s Word each week versus how much do you find news/social media in which to become immersed?

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Lord Jesus, please forgive us for dishonest Christianity that doesn’t revere You as Lord, as King, and the only Righteous One.  Forgive us for minimizing Your sovereignty and ignoring Your will.  Forgive us for seeking gods of news sources, voting outcomes we want, and political figures we like to satisfy our ears instead of prayerfully seeking You, the One True God, the Desired of Nations, and the Living One who satisfies our souls.  

’I will shake all nations, and the desired of all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory,’ says the LORD Almighty.” (Haggai 2:7)