just a few post election thoughts...

The ballots have been counted, the negative adds are gone, and the world seems a little less politically opinionated than it was yesterday. The 2012 presidential elections have been very thought provoking for me. I can remember listening to a sermon by Francis Chan that both terrified and challenged me. He spoke about a church during the holocaust that was near a rail road track. Sometimes during their services, trains full of people would pass by on their way to concentration camps. When the worshiping congregation would hear the screams and cries of the people in the trains, they’d sing louder to drown out the sound. He also spoke of churches that were built during the dark ages with small slits in them that you could see through from outside. The reason the churches were built that way was because they didn’t want lepers to worship inside and expose the believers to their illness. We look at these examples and are disheartened by the thought of Christians behaving this way. We are astonished that these generations of believers could read the same bibles that we do and violate what God makes so plain in scripture.

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