The Desperate Need for Statesmen

Standard

So a Republican whose major claim to fame is going nude in Cosmo is the new senator from Massachusetts. And conservatives everywhere are rejoicing.

Forgive me if I don’t blow a horn and wear a silly hat.

No, I can’t get pumped about yet another political lightweight who drank the party-line Kool-Aid and talks about real change. Frankly, the Democrats and Republicans are true to one goal only : their own political ambitions.

Can I ask a simple question? Here it is:

Where are the statesmen?

America is in bad shape. Honestly, I think the collective wound is deeper and more threatening than anyone in D.C. cares to admit. And that wound is only going to get deeper if we don’t throw the bums out and put some serious people on Capitol Hill. People who do what is right, not because it is makes the bigwigs happy, but because they fear God.

What we need are statesmen. Folks who don’t go all weak in the knees when the GOP party chairman calls ’em up on the line or Barney Frank blows ’em a kiss. People who remember the point of this country. People who don’t pass laws just because. People of deep convictions that can’t be sold to the highest bidder. Intellectuals with big hearts, who are widely read and understand history. People with a spine, who can stand up to dictators around the globe and not flinch (or bow).

We need guys like Henry Clay and Daniel Webster. Remember them?

And this terrible lack of statesmen applies to the American Church. The national stage of Christian leaders is littered with lightweights who have the wrong motivations, wrong answers to difficult questions, and no vision.

Jesus called Simon a rock. He said He would build His Church on a rock like that.

But where are those rocks today? Where are those kinds of Church statesmen in America 2010? Seriously, can you name a half dozen Christian players on the national stage today considered to have a brilliant mind and a heart of compassion?

I admit that part of the problem here is that the kind of personality that makes for a genuine Church statesman is the humble one that stays out of the limelight and isn’t listening to himself on Christian radio.

Still, desperate times call for humble, nameless Church statesmen to rise up.

Call them prophets if you will. Call them the mighty heroes of old. But for all our sakes, someone, anyone, please call them! We need Christians like that from every profession and walk of life.

And we need them now.

Unhinged

Standard

We interrupt the end of the world for this news bulletin…

Have you been receiving some of the same emails I have?

You’d recognize them if you saw them. They come from Christian parachurch ministries. They come from ministry leaders who are not yet somebody on the national stage but who hope to be some day. They come from friends you’ve known for years.

What they all have in common is their begging. Not for money, but for you to do the right thing come Election Day.

When you lean into those emails and take a whiff, can you smell it? The fear? It’s all over them.

In fact, it seems to be all over everything nowadays. The Christian blogosphere reeks of fear. The media. Your neighbors. Maybe even you.

But it’s about more than just the election. People seem to be panicking everywhere I look over any old thing. Seems like someone called a run on the national storehouse of pins and needles. And that panic results in ramblings and ravings that make no sense to those who fit this truth:

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
—2 Timothy 1:7

Many of the most revved up writings I see lately are coming from people entrenched in the modern prophetic movement. Though I consider myself a charismatic, I have yet to see any fruit coming from the self-appointed prophets who litter the charismatic landscape.

Lately, much of the prophetic talk has centered around a particular vice-presidential candidate. Or it’s a rant about Supreme Court judges. Soon to be standard issue...Or the need for us to kowtow to what the national Christian “leaders” say we believers MUST DO—OR ELSE. Most of it contradicts itself. And sadly, it contradicts the Bible more than anything else.

I could reproduce some of the “words” going around out there, but you can see an example in one of my previous posts: “Only One True Kingdom.” Truth is, that “word” is tame compared with some of what is making the rounds.

Here’s my word for the state of things today: Unhinged.

Recently, I read a book that discusses how people react during disasters. A quick look around shows all the signs:

  • Numbness
  • Denial
  • Hysteria
  • Depresssion
  • Rationalization
  • Obedience to small, daily routines despite emergency conditions
  • Sudden onset of blindness

While that final one may not be literal in this case (though it does happen in disasters), it sure satisfies the figurative element for what is going on in our country at the end of The Year of Our Lord 2008.

But it shouldn’t. The Church, especially, should be calmer, wiser, and more discerning than this. That same disaster book discusses how it’s the small people who step up (such as the busboy who saved hundreds during the Beverly Hill Supper Club disaster that occurred in my community), the nobodies, the normally powerless, who can make all the difference. Isn’t the Church supposed to be filled with small, powerless (by the world’s standards) nobodies who end up leading others to safety?

The world doesn’t need a Church that has gone nuts. It needs levelheaded people who stay true to the Word and Spirit.

So if you’re one of those folks sending me emails featuring the kind of stuff I’ve mentioned here, I have a not-so-prophetic “word” for you: Stop.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled apocalypse, already in progress…

Burned

Standard

When I read the big news on Tuesday, I planned to keep mum. I didn’t think the failure needed any commentary. But now that the editor of Charisma magazine, Lee Grady, has spoken, I think I need to say a few words.

Please read this.

My first words will be that anyone can pile on the individual discussed in Grady’s piece; I’m not going to. I’m not even going to mention his name. I wrote “Dropping Our Stones” the other day, and I meant what I shared. There’s not a person reading this who is not capable of falling down the same well—or worse.

What I cannot understand is the shock, the awful “Was it all just a trick?” feeling, the taste of ashes in the mouth that so many people will be left with in the aftermath.

When Grady asks the gullibility question, it just sticks in my craw. Why? Because Discernment 101 could have warned ANYONE willing to step back for a second and think. In many ways, this didn’t even require the gift of the discerning of spirits. Yet so few insiders said, “Ya know, there’s something not right here.” Instead, they fell for the “Look over there! There He is!” trick so quickly they got prayer rug burns.

That charismatic civil war? With this latest revelation, the last volley may already have been fired.

Honestly, if I were a leader of a charismatic church or parachurch ministry and I jumped on board this latest “move” with a whoop and a holler, I’d humbly resign, appoint a successor and go out at an opportune time, or take a l-o-n-g sabbatical.

In fact, I think the strongest proponents of this debacle need to suck it up, fall on their swords, and do just that. Time to get out. At least until they can do some deep soul-searching and come out the other side. In other words, if you were Blue in the civil war, time to think Gray. You were in the wrong army, man.

Honestly, if Charisma has even a dozen ads they can rub together for their next issue, they should be ashamed of themselves. And so should the advertisers.

Barking like dogs, laughing hysterically even as the world is dying to hear the Gospel, showing off our gold teeth while we dance around in showers of gold dust and press angel feathers into our Bibles, kicking the dying in the guts in the name of the Lord and calling that healing…is that the legacy? Man, we can be truly proud of that title CHARISMATIC now, can’t we?

In the end, it doesn’t matter that some of us didn’t walk the primrose path, that very wide, follow-the-leader road. The aftermath of this is going to hurt us, too.

Look, I’m not out for blood here. But the legacy of the present charismatic leadership, the current crop of faces on Christian TV and behind the podiums at the Mega-Healing conferences, the oracles in the traveling “prophetic” carnivals, the people pushing the New Apostolic whatever down all of our throats…you rushed in where angels fear to tread, so maybe it’s time for you to exit stage left. The children’s sermon is over. Time to let the adults lead. You know, the people who graduated from Discernment 101 with at least a “D” average.

Then, at some appointed time in the future when you get your heads on straight, come back. We’re willing to forgive because the Lord we serve is greater than your foolishness and mine.