After looking at my Twitter timeline and the responses on Facebook
to the elections, I couldn’t help but to consider MY generation. What will
future generations read in Christian literature about us? Will their jaws drop
in amazement as they wonder how we could have read the same bible they're reading
and make the decisions we've made/are making with a clear conscience? My grief is not so
much over who was elected as president (though I disagree with many of his
policies), it is more pointed at the responses of those who call themselves
Christ followers. Am I out of line to believe we should be more vocally
disheartened with society’s warm embrace of things that offend God than we are
vocally glad with seeing the political result that we want? I don’t think
anyone would be out of line if they equated that kind of gladness with
wholehearted agreement. Don’t misunderstand me. I am not a democrat or a republican
and I believe that no matter who wins, our hope is in God and his sovereignty.
He has proven time and again that he’s able to use crooked sticks to make
straight lines. I’m just a man who
strongly believes that our agreements and affiliations should be shaped by the truth
of scripture. I believe that “When your values are clear to you, making
decisions becomes easier.” This election has spoken volumes about what many “evangelicals”
actually value and believe about God. There’s so much more I could say, but I want
to be brief…
This seems a bit incomplete, but I don’t really know how to
end it… sort of just typing what’s on my heart at the moment. I’ll continue to
pray for our President and I hope you’ll do the same. I guess I’ll end with this long but appropriate
quote from Art Katz:
“I know that I have not yet recovered from a recent overseas
trip which continues now traveling through the States in the homes not only of
Christians, but ministers, to learn that the basis by which their important
decisions are made is not the Gospel but the values of the world. You parents
that are sitting in this auditorium tonight – on what basis have you determined
that your kids, when they graduate high school, shall go on to college or
university? What is the basis by which you decided to enter the business or the
vocation that you are in? Have any of the real decisions of your life – though
you may speak generally about ‘the Lord’s will’ – how much more true is it that
the decision is predicated on the values of the world that have to do with
comfort, convenience, security and the like?...
In a word, our Christianity is degenerating into a
middle-class culture, a sanctifying cover-up for the status quo, a vacuous praise
club, an equating of ‘gain as godliness’, a comfortable religiosity that leaves
our real interests unchallenged and undisturbed in the avoidance of the Cross
of Christ Jesus. How many professing Christians live effectually as atheists,
having no substantial difference in their lives from those in the world
anywhere about them? Somehow am I naive to think that we ought to look
different, think differently, act differently; that there ought to be such a
savor and fragrance about us of Christ that it’s a savor of death unto death to
some and life unto life to others?
The fact that the world can so easily tolerate us, the fact
of the almost complete absence of reproach (let alone of persecution) is itself
a shameful testimony that we are so like the world that we cannot be
distinguished from it, and that despite the things that we verbally profess,
our lives are lived hardly any differently from those that are effectual
atheists. We ought rather to be citizens of another Kingdom, citizens of
Heaven, but there is just simply no way to get there except through the Cross.” -And They Crucified Him -by Art Katz
