Everything MUST Change...Back

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Everything Must Change...Back.

You are away on a business trip. The presentation went well, and you think you've got the sale. To celebrate, you and the rest of the sales team go to the bar down by the lobby in the hotel to have a beer. You usually only drink one, because you used to be a heavy drinker, and don't want to go down that road again. A new commitment to family, new job, and a new church meant a new start. Things got a little rowdy tonight, and with a little prodding a round of Screaming Nazis is set before you and the guys. Your head begins to swim, and the commitments made just a few months before seemed so far away. You barely notice the fingernails laid gently on your shoulder.

Today I met with a group of ministers associated with the movement I am a part of. I was glad to have met with them. Walking into this, I know who I am in their eyes; I have no delusions of grandeur. I am a young, inexperienced, overexcited, youthful Pastor who will someday learn the hard lessons that they have long since come to grips with. In some ways, this is absolutely the case.

I brought up that I would like to start a cooperation with our local brotherhood of churches, empowering families in “Conservative Biblical Principles”.

You would have thought I wanted to write, “God hates fags” on the sides of our churches.

“Conservative principles,” they said, “carry with it some political implications that we are not willing to come out and support right now. We might lose a lot of people in our churches if we were to come out and support anything known as 'Conservative'. Words like 'fundamentalist', and 'conservative' have such negative connotations, and we are not comfortable getting behind that right now.”

“I had a woman come forward the other day,” one of the most experienced of the group said. “She was a stripper, and she gave her life to Christ at the invitation. But I knew that's how she fed her family, and I was not going to confront that sin in her life. There may come a point where she would need to be counseled in how to live scripturally, but I didn't want to heap too much on her all at once.”

You stumble up to your room. It was innocent really. You just want to lay down, and the footsteps behind you seem to quicken as you near your room. You fumble for your room key, slip it in, and the green flashing light beckons you enter. It was not until then that you are fully aware that you are being followed...

I cannot, for the life of me, believe my ears. I am trying hard to maintain composure through the heat filling up my head, and blood squirting from my eyes.

The truth is, these kinds of meetings are infiltrating churches of all denominations. A book or two is read from the perspective of secular humanists/Christian hybrids, and all of a sudden, the bedrock on which we take our stand becomes so large, nearly anyone can fit. The road that Christ described as narrow and the gate that is described as scarcely found is re-paved and updated to provide for all those willing to give ascent to the idea of Jesus is their best pal.

You look...In a red sequened dress she slinks past your line of vision. The light glints from from the shimmering gown of jewels draped ever-so-pleasingly over a capturing frame. The night is young, the lights are low, a candle light flickers a yellow warmth around the hotel room. A shudder runs through your body as you reach out...

This is the churches struggle with secular humanism.

We all want to be relevant, but what you and I must remember is that relevance from a Biblical perspective is to give people what they need, not necessarily what they want.

The world will not be reached by melding the church into culture. The church may well be reached in some kind of twisted reverse proselytization, but that is not good news-that is not the gospel message. Many ministers of the gospel have a desire to see their churches grow, to reach people for Christ. Digging through the local Christian bookstore, there are a lot of books on just how that should be done. Sadly, I see a trend toward blending Christianity with secular humanism, making Orthodoxy Generous, and putting social justice ahead of personal repentance. The glitzy shimmering attraction to acceptance of pop-culture and seduction to an increasingly godless society is something we must take a stand against. Some have said, “Wasn't Jesus a progressive?” Sure. He was God. The next time God is physically incarnate in you, you can be progressive as well.

I submit to you that Orthodoxy is not generous, Christians cannot be humanists, and personal repentance is the only true beginning of a relationship with Christ. The way is narrow, His people are few, and the time is near. To be a conservative is to look back on the teachings of the whole of Biblical Scripture for daily life. To be a fundamentalist is to believe in the fundamentals of that Scripture.

We must realize and actualize the faith with the understanding that it will not be popular, it will be persecuted, it will be polarizing and it will carry heavy implications.

So be conservative. Be a fundamentalist. Don't let culture define you. Let the scriptures do that.

Is God Still Relevant In Today's America?

“Christianity is a statement which, if false, is of no importance, and, if true, of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important.” -CS Lewis

One of my favorite bands from the past is Creed. They had a great jammin sound and their lyrics were thoughtful. In the song, “In America”, Scott Stapp cries out to his audience:

What is right or wrong
I don't know who to believe in
My soul sings a different song
In America

The question, “Is God Relevant in Today's America?” echoes the sentiment of many in today's society.

To determine if God is relevant to todays America, we must establish whether the absence or presence of God is pertinent to the ability for Americans to fulfill their basic and assumed liberties as human beings.

These liberties hinge on at least two principles: Morality, and Purpose.

Before I begin to lay out my argument, I must preface everything I will say with the fact that these questions are not new. Generations upon generations past have been asking these questions, and AA's from these decades past have militantly reacted to faith as they are doing today. The fact that we are asking the question, “Is God Relevant in Today's America?” gives the AA's too much credit. The “free thinkers” of todays' America are held captive to the rusty old ideas put forth by the Stoics and the Gnostics of long ago. I would also like to say that I feel their frustration at times, and feel their need to ask questions. That being said, let's put forth a reasonable response:

I think life is similar to a game of Plinko. Everyone is represented by a disc. The game itself is life. We are each picked up and dumped in without any choice in the matter whatsoever. Each peg the disc bounces off inside the game are different ideas and our choices do make a difference as to how many and which pegs we bounce around. Eventually the object is to get to the bottom where we fit neatly into one of the spaces of belief. There are many ideas that the discs develop on the way down. For example,

Fundamentalism says, “There is only one path down to the bottom.”

Modernism says, “There is only one expedient way down to the bottom.”

Postmodernism says, “What right do you have to say that there is only one way to the bottom?”

Mysticism says, “There is no bottom.”

Today we are plagued by a society that is heavily leaning on the ideas of post-modernism, and Mysticism. The major problem that these two philosophical stances are that they fail a very important test of truth. IS IT LIVABLE.

Morality could be the most important element to creating order from chaos. If we get really honest with ourselves, we will have to acquiesce to this fact. Since we are being honest with ourselves, we will also have to come to grips with the fact that morality does not exist without God. As was once masterfully put by this guy named Fred Wolfe, “Morality exists. In order to have morality, you must have right and wrong, in order to have right and wrong you must acknowledge the distinguishability of good and evil, in order to have good and evil you must have a definition of good, as evil is the absence of good, and that definition of good must be perfect, and since perfection does not exist in this world, it must exist in another world, and the only reasonable explanation for that perfection is God.” Without God, America and the rest of humanity would be purposeless, chaotic, meaningless. God is all too relevant in today's America.

Purpose is connected to morality in that if one has a purpose determined by perfection, then to turn from that perfection and live contrary to our purpose is immoral and creates chaos. Our faith in the perfect purpose giver is the quintessence of existence. It explains the fabric connecting morality, purpose and nature. Without purpose, we are chaotic, meaningless, immoral. Again, God is all too relevant in today's America.

A.W. Tozer once said, “Much of our difficulty as seeking Christians stems from our unwillingness to take God as He is and adjust our lives accordingly. We insist upon trying to modify Him and bring Him nearer to our own image.”

The irrelevance of God fails the “LIVABLE” test. Man cannot live without God!