Spiritual Warfare

Fear: The Ruination of the American Church

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fearIf someone were to ask me what emotion best characterizes the American Church in 2011, I’d have to say fear. Everywhere I look, some self-styled church leader is playing the fear card. Christian bloggers blog about issues that instill fear. Average Christians in the pews lament the continued American downslide and point trembling fingers willy-nilly at whomever/whatever they believe the cause to be. Christian survivalists are building their stashes to weather the coming apocalypse. I can’t tell you how many believers lately have told me they are considering, for the first time, buying a gun.

Talk to any of these folks and they’ll all tell you they are simply proving themselves ready. This is a commonly cited parable:

“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise answered, saying, ‘Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.’ And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’ Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.'”
—Matthew 25:1-13

The wise ones in the above parable are wise because they are ready for the bridegroom. But what does that readiness look like?

Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. “Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his master has set over his household, to give them their food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes.”
—Matthew 24:44-46

Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people.
—Titus 3:1-2

And he called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. And he said to them, “Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money; and do not have two tunics. And whatever house you enter, stay there, and from there depart. And wherever they do not receive you, when you leave that town shake off the dust from your feet as a testimony against them.” And they departed and went through the villages, preaching the gospel and healing everywhere.
—Luke 9:1-6

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. ”
—Matthew 5:38-48

Does being ready consist of stuffing a basement full of freeze-dried food to ride out Armageddon? Buying guns to protect that food and oneself? Can anyone find that in the Bible? I sure can’t.

Or does being ready mean fulfilling the Great Commission, doing the work Christ called us to, and living at peace with all men? When the Bridegroom returns, which servant will hear the “Well done,” the one tending to the homeless or the one tending to his Mossberg to protect his home?

Here’s a question we must all ask ourselves:

So we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?”
—Hebrews 13:6

It seems that for many of us, the answer to the question is “Mess with my lifestyle and take away my stuff.”

This explains the fear:

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.
—1 John 4:18

Fear has to do with punishment. Fearful Christians, sadly, reflect the idea that they are being punished when their stuff is taken away or messed with. None of that fearful thinking reflects a born again experience of Christ, though.

Here’s the truth:

You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.
—1 Corinthians 6:19b-20a

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
—Galatians 2:20

But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.
—Galatians 6:14

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
—Colossians 3:1-3

The fact is, if you have been truly born again, you died. Dead people, by all legal terms, own nothing. In Christ, you don’t even own yourself. Everything that you were and are now is Christ’s.

You can’t harm a dead person. A dead person doesn’t care about earth-bound people messing with his lifestyle. A dead person doesn’t care if you take away his stuff. A dead person doesn’t care about dying; he’s already dead.

Fearful Christians are that way because they haven’t died to self. They have no sense of the world to come, which is why they want to hold onto THIS world so badly.

Fearful Christians think that by their own efforts they will stave off whatever is to come. The Bible says differently:

If anyone is to be taken captive, to captivity he goes; if anyone is to be slain with the sword, with the sword must he be slain. Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints.
—Revelation 13:10

Do we understand this? I don’t think we do. Instead, we bunker down and kick against the goads, desperate to save ourselves.

Christian, learn to die. In place of embracing fear, learn to love God. There is no fear in love, because perfect love casts out all fear.

Love casts out the fear of THOSE PEOPLE and their GODLESS AGENDA.

Love casts out the fear that THEY WILL TAKE AWAY OUR STUFF.

Love casts out the fear that THEY MAY EVEN KILL US.

Love of God takes away that desperate voice that so clings to what is passing and replaces it with love, which endures through all eternity.

Christian, your life is to run counter to the lives of those who hope in this world alone. Your is not to horde but to give freely. Yours is not to worry but to remain steadfast. Yours is not to plan your own means of escape, but to give direction for escaping the wrath to come to those who do not know the Way. Those who seek to save their own lives will lose them. Do not be deceived and fall into that enormous trap, as so many others will.

A life of fear can never reveal the life of Christ.

Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.
—1 Peter 3:13-16

When the Devil Seems to Win

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A little country church tucked just off Main Street, Trinity Fellowship had served the community for years and did it well. They had experienced growth over the last year—eight new families—but they had also experienced something less encouraging.

Rebecca Simms worried that her youngest daughter would end up in jail. She did.

Mike Travers heard about the layoffs a month ago. The pink slip came yesterday, his third in three years.

Emma Andersen, two semesters away from graduating from college (the first in her family), got that fated letter saying her full-ride scholarship money had dried up due to tough economic times.

Bryan and Lydia Preston found out two weeks ago they were expecting their first child. This morning, they learned something was wrong with the baby.

Between the six people on the leadership team at Trinity, they suffered a miscarriage, cancer, a bankruptcy, the suicide of a child, crippling depression, and an affair that led to divorce. Three are no longer in ministry and may never return.

Last Sunday, Daryl Wells, the worship leader, led a song that contained a lyric out of Isaiah 54:17: “No weapon formed against you shall prevail.” More than one person singing that morning wondered if the words were true.

Sometimes, the Devil seems to win.

Trinity Fellowship and the people who comprise it are the product of this writer’s imagination. But they might as well be real, because their stories are. Every Sunday in America, someone, somewhere, is sitting in church wondering how it all went wrong. For some, it’s a question asked many times.

It’s not enough to say we live in a fallen world. That brings no comfort at all. Nor does it make sense of the mountain of Scriptures that say that God rescues His people from calamity. Let’s be honest here: More than once, you’ve wondered why the Scriptures don’t line up with your experience of life.

I’m not wise. I make a lot of mistakes wise people wouldn’t make. But several decades of observation take me back to the same answer for this issue.

The Devil seems to win for one major reason: We don’t pray.

I think we’ve all learned that when someone says he will pray for us, he probably won’t. It’s not a malicious promise, though. The intent is there, but we all know how life intrudes and the best of intentions remains nothing but intentions. Angelic warfareIt seems to be the human condition.

Succumbing to the human condition is not what the Church is supposed to be about, though. Our God is not a god of settling.

I used to think that my condition was largely due to my own prayers—or the lack of them. I don’t believe that anymore.

Sure, what we pray for ourselves matters. But God means the Church to be a Body, a collective, a community that lives and dies by what the whole does. If I’m not praying for you and you’re not praying for me, then the Devil wins.

Several years ago, I attended a Christian Camping International conference, with Leighton Ford as the keynote speaker. He told us about a flight where he sat next to a man who prayed the entire flight. Ford assumed the man feared flying, so he broke in at one point to offer some comfort. Only then did he notice the sheet of paper the man clutched. On it were the names of many prominent Christian leaders. When Ford questioned him about this, the man confessed that he had been praying for the downfall of the people on the list.

Ford informed us that, with the passage of time, all but one of those leaders had seen their ministry—and their personal lives—destroyed.

I don’t think Evangelicals take the Devil seriously. We don’t see life as a battle. We blithely float here and there, mostly prayerlessly, and let the river carry us wherever it may. Then when we wash up on the rocks, we wonder what happened.

It’s not enough that we pray for ourselves. We need others to watch our backs for us, because many times we are too close to our own lives to see where we may be exposed to enemy fire.

People in ministry positions are the prime targets of the Enemy. Take down a pastor and an entire church can go down with him. I recently heard that a thriving, well-known church my wife and I visited a few years back blew up entirely after the pastor screwed up. And don’t think that doesn’t wreck a lot of bystanders, because it does. Maybe not at first, but that kind of disaster eats at people’s spiritual guts, fosters corrosive cynicism, and does enormous damage.

Really, how hard is it to pray for others in our churches, especially for those in prominent roles? Isn’t it much harder to fix the craters and wounds from shrapnel when a life blows up due to the lack of a prayer covering?

Kind of a Pentecostal term there, prayer covering. Regardless of whether or not it’s Christianese, it’s reality. When bad things happen to people, be they lost or saved, the holes in their prayer covering—if they even have a prayer covering at all—may explain everything.

I’m to the point in my life where I honestly believe that almost all of the hardship we see in life is due to a lack of prayer. Those Scriptures that don’t align with life don’t because we’re just not taking prayer as seriously as the Scriptures do.

The Christian, Rage, and Powerlessness

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It started with a lack of bacon.

Too many people at Wendy’s ordered items with bacon, so the crew had to cook more. The bacon lovers in line were told it would be six minutes, so we gathered calmly off to one side and began to chat. EnragedOne man steered the conversation to politics. In minutes, I wondered if a riot would break out.

While people were willing to wait patiently for food items filled with bacony goodness, patience is in small supply when it comes to waiting till November to “throw the bums outta Capitol Hill.” People aren’t just mad at the condition of America 2010, they’re downright enraged.

People are livid at overreaching government, at seeing their tax dollars given to scoundrels, at watching themselves move down the class ranks, at losing their jobs, at losing their homes, at losing out on every dream they once had.

They seethe because the gulf fills with oil while the people responsible for the disaster lie about its severity.  Companies that created the economic mess ask for more aid and then give it as bonuses to leaders responsible for the mess. The country has lost control of its borders. Nuts and flakes in Iran build the Bomb. Corporations lay off hardworking people and reward sloth because the slothful know where the skeletons are buried. Health insurers begin terminating policies, arguing that Obamacare will take care of everyone—some day—leaving the average Joe buried in debt as he pays either outrageous costs for replacement insurance or nightmarish costs for  health care, living in dread that he may one day get sick and need medical attenti0n that will  cost him all his savings, his kids’ college funds, and even his home.

The inability to stop this downward spiral breeds fear. Like a tapeworm, powerlessness eats at people’s guts. They can’t stop the insanity; they can only be carried along with it. And that spawns this stark rage that many feel.

I have known Christians who seem to escape these trials. I have known Christians who have been buried by a relentless series of landslide-like events. Both groups have been faithful, yet one seems to attract trouble like a bare bulb at night brings in the summertime moths.

And it goes much deeper than just calamity or human failings. I was talking with a friend on Monday about the way we live our lives, and it seems to both of us that trying to fall back to a more sane position only creates chaos in the poorly thought-out systems we’ve created for ourselves. Eating locally grown food sounds like a wise idea, but what instabilities are created by a large-scale move away from food trucked in from long distances, instabilities whose ripple effects can’t be predicted easily?

It is one thing to pray that God will deal with the wicked people who knowingly hurt others in the pursuit of cold, hard cash. But what of the janitor who cleans the wicked people’s buildings? Is he in collusion with evil? And is he us?

And how does one pray about entrenched systems that are not so much empowered by evil principalities but by mistaken notions that were innocent five decades ago but which have now bred dependencies from which we cannot escape readily? Are all wrongs rightable? And was that wrong truly wrong at the time of its conception? What do we do when black and white have dulled over time to gray?

If others are like me, then I suspect more and more people wake up feeling inadequate to the task. In simpler days, choices seemed to come easily. Now, though, it feels as if every decision that life presents is like a bucket of murky water with something awful lurking at the bottom out of sight. We have made everything in life so complex that any simple act of deciding is fraught with danger, consisting, in many cases, of wondering whether the potential sea snake hiding in one bucket is more lethal than the possible blue-ringed octopus in the other.

What this means for modern Christians is hard to fathom. Are we immune to bad outcomes? If not, how then do we navigate the complexity of modern life? How does one break out of the system when one is a product of that system? Would Jesus even have us attempt to break out? Or does conformity and relenting not matter in the wider scheme of things? Is powerlessness good or bad? And is numb consent to the downright infuriating aspects of life a sin?

We in America are definitely control freaks; we want everything just so. That’s not of faith. But then the counter to that is to wonder whether simply allowing ourselves to be swept along powerlessly is not of faith either. And if it isn’t, where is the happy medium?

As a Christian, my tendency is to immediately answer by saying that faith,  prayer, abiding in Christ, and Bible reading are the answers. Certainly, faith brings us through all trials. Yet what is the faithful answer to a nuclear Iran that will certainly attack Israel? How do we meet the health care needs of people without bankrupting our country? Does every issue have a solution, or are some problems destined always to diminish us?

And most of all, how should you and I, such small people, live in the face of these issues?

I feel for angry people. I truly do. Jesus has an answer for them. My deficiency is that I don’t always know what that answer might be or how to bring it about. And I believe that if we were honest with ourselves, many of us will realize that more and more issues are harder to resolve than we might think—that is, if we are thinking at all.