America’s Greatest Sin—And How It Sets the Stage for the Antichrist

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If you’re a normal human being of any thoughtfulness, you must be wondering,

Why the heck does everything in American life seem crazy right now?

If you’re like me, you’re trying to make sense of some of the inanity you’re seeing in the news. Heaven knows I’ve been trying to find some common thread.

Take a look at the following and ask what that commonality might be:

  • The ascendency of Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and Bernie Sanders
  • The hunt for the “murderer” of Cecil the Lion
  • The Kim Davis case in Kentucky and the rapid rise in support for same-sex marriage
  • The decline of Christianity in America
  • The failure of the Planned Parenthood videos
  • The pornification of everything

If you don’t see the connection, don’t feel bad. I only just realized it myself.

What ties those six items together is one concept:

Novelty

Let’s unpack this by starting with the last item on the list.

Scientists have studied pornography and its effects on the brain, and they’ve been startled at their findings. Pornography’s addictiveness is linked heavily to novelty. The porn addict is more addicted to the newness of every image seen than he or she is to the actual content of the image itself. It’s why porn addicts can’t be satisfied with seeing a pornographic image; instead, it must be one they’ve not seen before. That portion of the brain that resonates with novelty must be fed.

Internet, novelty

Trump, Carson, and Sanders are doing well in political polls for the very reason that everyone they are running against is a dyed-in-the-wool, tired politician of the kind we’ve all seen a million times before. But that trio is new, fresh.

The reason the Cecil the Lion case blew up is as much about our boredom with hunting down typical bad guys as it was about the actual killing of a notable animal. Ho hum with the mass murder of human beings (boring, old news), but some American dentist shot a famous lion! That’s different.

America’s boredom explains why only Christians interested in fighting abortion were entranced by the Planned Parenthood videos. Abortion? To everyone else, this is a dead horse. One the same “fanatics” keep flogging. Really, time to move on to something new!

Such as same-sex marriage. Soon to be followed by plural marriage. Soon to be followed by whatever new form of marriage we can dream up. Heck, even Christians are spinning this toward the novel when we talk about this being the FIRST DOCUMENTED CASE of Christians (Kim Davis and her supporters) being persecuted in America (which it isn’t, but hey, some of us want it to be).

And on and on.

Novelty. Not just idols, but NEW idols. Every single day.

This obsession with novelty may very well be America’s greatest sin.

When you start to think about it, that sin of obsession with novelty begins to make sense of the nonsensical. It can explain almost everything. Why people stand in line for the latest iPhone. Why you can’t engage people in conversations with any meaning. The enthrall of social media and its cascade of what is happening right now. All of it revolves around novelty.

Give us something new.

Which is why I think, in part, that Christianity is suffering in the West. It’s old, ancient even. Everyone is used to it. Even people who aren’t Christians can spout something about Christianity. And just like Asian religions swept America in the 1960s, Islam (new here, unusual, different) is making inroads in America. This seems otherwise crazy in light of 9/11, but not if novelty is the driving force. This also explains the sudden appeal of atheism. In a world filled with religions, how novel is NO religion?

This is why I believe America is in even deeper trouble than we may understand. It’s why we may be setting the stage for Antichrist or the Antichrist, depending on whether you believe it’s a generalized concept or an actual entity.

Because when Antichrist comes, the characteristic that will most likely define it/him/her will be novelty. It/him/her will gain acclaim for “freshness,” newness, and differentness. The Bible says that Antichrist and the minions supporting it/him/her will be known for the miraculous. And what sucker among us isn’t hankerin’ to see a miracle or two. Because, hey, novel. May even be the top trending news item on Facebook.

God knows we’re primed.

Sleeping with the Enemy, American Church Edition

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church demolitionIt’s hard to know where to begin to unravel the craziness behind the fallout of a Kentucky clerk of court saying she’s standing on the Word and refusing to issue–or let anyone else in her office issue–marriage licenses to homosexual couples. After a while, weariness is about the only emotion one can feel.

Yet not weariness that this has happened, but more the kind that comes from repeated efforts to awaken a sleeper who just refuses to wake up.

Christians who quote the Old Testament a lot are yelling about religious liberty and wringing their hands about the end of America. Christians who like to think they are more New Testament quote verses about obeying government authorities and seem bored with the whole fiasco. Solid Christians inhabit both groups, so it’s sad to see that neither group seems to understand the other.

I sit here somewhere in the middle, wondering if both sides are missing the point.

For me, the distress is not that this is the end of Christian dominance in America. It’s not that various Christian groups can’t come to consensus on the events in Kentucky.

If anything, what troubles me is that no one seems capable of understanding that the government of the United States is not the friend of Christians that Christians have always thought it has been, and that the Church has been doing nothing to distance itself from sleeping with the enemy, nor preparing for that day when the truth about that relationship finally crystalizes.

Friend Rick I. noted a case of the frankly delusional state of thought by some Christians. From the Answers in Genesis folks behind the Creation Museum (also, coincidentally, in Kentucky) comes this:

“Bowing to the pressure of anti-Christian secularist groups that have actively opposed AiG in the culture, the state was intimidated last year to withdraw a tax incentive for our Ark Encounter project that had already received pre-approval (see www.answersforfreedom.org). In order to receive the tax incentive, the state is now demanding that our future Christian facility open its hiring to everyone (which then would include applicants who agressively oppose the Christian message of the Ark project), and that the gospel message not be presented at the theme park. Christians increasingly are being treated as second-class citizens in this nation. Essentially it comes down to the fact that regardless of what the Constitution clearly states about freedom of religious expression, those who don’t have a Christian worldview will reinterpret the Constitution to make it fit with their own secular worldview. The Ark issue is a battle of worldviews.” (Source: AIG’s “Not Just Acceptance, But Coercion—Christians Now Being Told to Embrace Gay ‘Marriage’ or Else“)

It’s astonishing to me that any Christian organization can go to the government for money and NOT think there will be stipulations. Or that the government might bow to pressures from “enemy” groups. AIG looked for a handout and got its hand slapped instead. Wow, how utterly unexpected.  :-/

The even better question is to ask why a Christian organization is going to the government at all.

Rather than wringing our hands about what was surely the outcome the Bible predicted, why have Christians in America not been preparing for the day when the court of public opinion turns against us?

If we needed any preparation, Roe v. Wade provided the handwriting on the wall. Despite Christian groups’ repeated attempts to leverage supposedly pro-life forces in the House and Senate, Roe is still here, even when those forces held a majority. Despite the heartbreaking Planned Parenthood videos that should have galvanized our leaders, nothing has changed. Fact is, the powers that be don’t want it to change, no matter what they say they believe.

Yet Christians in America remain shocked at this. Shocked. Meanwhile, AIG is PO’ed that they may not get tax money to build their ark. We act as if Jesus never warned us that the world would hate us. That there would be consequences, difficult ones, for our faith.

The next battleground will be tax exemption for churches. I can almost guarantee that exemption will go away sooner than the Church thinks. Again, it was never a guarantee, but we have foolishly acted like it was.

What happens when the spawn of the Church Growth Movement, all these monster-sized churches with cathedral-like buildings sitting on a plethora of acreage, suddenly gets a million-dollar property tax bill?

What does it look like when a church goes bankrupt?

Whatever the outcome, it won’t look pretty.

I’ve been writing this blog since 2003. In that time, I’ve written extensively on the lack of preparedness by the American Church for times of want and for the day of persecution. Regardless of whether you or I think that time is now, we still are not getting prepped.

I’m not sure what it’s going to take, but I’m beginning to suspect the only way to wake up the Church here is the same way you wake of the board of directors of your typical Fortune 500 company: a string of brutal financial losses. I hate to think that for the Church in America it’s all about the money, but nothing else seems to be jumpstarting our efforts to future-proof the best we can.

Perhaps it’s time to sell off massive church buildings on gargantuan properties. Perhaps it’s time to stockpile food. Perhaps it’s time to draw up plans to secret ourselves. In countries where the church is actively persecuted, wise leaders have taken steps to survive. What are we doing here? Better yet, when are we even going to start talking about this in our churches?

Let’s get something straight, too: This is not panic mode anymore than is having a family escape plan should a fire break out in your home. It’s called being wise.

The American Church has slept with the federal government for a long time. Now we’re seeing that the lover is more a frenemy. Soon, the relationship will degrade even further.

Church, how are we being wise in all this? Does complaining about loss of funds for our fake ark really show any seriousness about the future? Yet that is where we seem to be as Christians in America 2015.

Time to wake up and start prepping for something worse.

Wrestling with God—And Why Christians Need to Honor It

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No book in the Bible has perplexed me more than Job. Ever since I got my first Bible, I’ve searched for meaning in the trials of the protagonist of that book. Over the years, I’ve come to plenty of inconclusive conclusions about its meaning.

Now that I’m in my 50s, I think I finally understand why that is.

This is the Book of Job in a nutshell:

Satan appears before God and wants to test the faithfulness of a righteous man named Job. The Enemy thinks Job’s faith is founded solely on his health and wealth.

God allows Job to be tested.

Job loses almost everything. His children die. His riches fade. His health is destroyed. His wife nags him.

Job continues in his faith in God despite his ordeal.

Three of Job’s friends visit. They sit in silence with him for a week because they see how much he is suffering.

Job’s friends finally speak and question Job’s faithfulness. They believe he is receiving tit for tat. Obviously, he did something wrong or else none of this calamity would have befallen him.

Job protests his innocence, both before his friends and before God. He wants God to explain Himself.

God remains silent.

Eventually, God speaks and reminds Job of His mighty works and power over all creation. Job is overcome.

God chastises Job’s friends for their lousy analysis and advice.

God restores everything Job lost and more.

I hope I did that summary justice, but the book is worth reading. Many scholars claim it is the oldest book in the Bible and a beautiful example of Oriental wisdom literature.

The odd thing–to me at least–is that it was never clear what the wisdom was in the Book of Job. You have this strange contention between God and Satan, Job defends himself against his friends’ accusations of wrongdoing, Job pleads his case before God, and after a while God overwhelms Job with human insignificance in the face of the Almighty’s works.

I mean, what the heck? Where’s the moral of the story?

For a moment, let’s move to another man-God faceoff:

Jacob Wrestles AngelThe same night he [Jacob] arose and took his two wives, his two female servants, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and everything else that he had. And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the day has broken.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” And he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” Then he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.” Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.”
—Genesis 32:22-31

And one more:

Then the LORD said, “Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave, I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me. And if not, I will know.” So the men turned from there and went toward Sodom, but Abraham still stood before the LORD. Then Abraham drew near and said, “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city. Will you then sweep away the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to put the righteous to death with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” And the LORD said, “If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake.” Abraham answered and said, “Behold, I have undertaken to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes. Suppose five of the fifty righteous are lacking. Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five?” And he said, “I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there.” Again he spoke to him and said, “Suppose forty are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of forty I will not do it.” Then he said, “Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak. Suppose thirty are found there.” He answered, “I will not do it, if I find thirty there.” He said, “Behold, I have undertaken to speak to the Lord. Suppose twenty are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of twenty I will not destroy it.” Then he said, “Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak again but this once. Suppose ten are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of ten I will not destroy it.” And the LORD went his way, when he had finished speaking to Abraham, and Abraham returned to his place.
—Genesis 18:20-33 ESV

Going back to Job, the one sure truth that emerges from the book is that it ends inconclusively. Job never receives an answer as to why he suffered what he did.

Likewise, God wasn’t happy with Job’s friends’ deficient “comforting.” They were fine so long as they sat in silence with their beleaguered comrade, but the moment they began reasoning with him, they blew it.

If you’ve been around the Church long enough, you’ve probably heard this:

God said it. I believe it. That settles it.

I’m beginning to understand why such a view is naïve. Or at least incomplete.

The story of Job makes it clear that Job did not sin during his ordeal, despite his questioning God. In the end, God blessed Job with even more than Job started out with.

When God said He was going to destroy the entirety of Sodom and Gomorrah for their wickedness, Abraham would not take that for a final answer.

Jacob, wanting more out of life, would not relent when faced with a fearsome “wrestler,” and it took a little “cheating” on the part of his foe to end the confrontation.

All three of those great men of faith appeared to have problems with God that maintaining the religious status quo simply could not resolve. God said it, and these men were not exactly happy with it. They wanted a different outcome. So they fought for it.

I think the story of Job (and of Abraham and Jacob) carries with it some profound wisdom regarding wrestling with God:

1. Sometimes, God blesses those who do NOT take His actions and pronouncements at face value.
There was no “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.” in these cases. These faithful men would not allow what God was saying or doing to be the end of the matter. They wanted something more. And God blessed them for their discontent. Now, read that previous sentence again.

2. Sometimes, silence IS golden.
Job’s friends were fine in God’s eyes—until they opened their mouths. We don’t have to have an answer for everything. We don’t even need to have a Bible verse for everything. Part of wrestling with God is not having answers to every last event/situation/question in life. Sometimes, the best response to another’s wrestling is no response at all.

3. Sometimes, the prevailing wisdom isn’t.
When Job’s friends finally did speak, they beat him up with the wisdom of their time: Good people receive good and bad people receive bad. Sadly, that’s the same view of life you hear out of some Christians. God was not happy with that response, though. I think God is not happy with a lot of the responses we Christians beat others with, whether our beating is an effort to prove ourselves biblically correct (and therefore—as we reason it—the rightness of Christian belief) or because we feel we MUST say SOMETHING Christian or else we have not done our Christian duty. Either way, perhaps we need to refrain from speaking until we have all the facts and God says it’s OK. Otherwise, we may very well be throwing our bulk into someone else’s wrestling match, one that isn’t ours to fight.

In the end, wrestling with God is messy. Christians today don’t want messy, though. We want a systematic faith built on systematic theology that produces systematic answers to life.

Bzzt. Thanks for playing.

Instead, God wants people who tussle with Him. Messy people with fierce questions that make others uncomfortable and that defy simplistic answers. He blesses such folks, despite what we may think of them.

Now before someone wants to use that reality to question everything all the time, notice that word sometimes in the three-item list above.

Jesus is Lord. No point in questioning. Your wrestling and mine will not change that truth. Other immutable truths exist.

But life has gray areas. Recognizing them and wrestling with them is warranted. Perhaps if we recognized that God blesses those who wrestle, then we wouldn’t be so quick to speak the prevailing wisdom and would instead find a second or third way that would bless not only us but the rest of the world too.

So, wrestle with God. And may all of us receive the name Israel.