Today, I wanted to reflect a little on why I started this blog. I've commented before on the significant change we are seeing in the world we live in. Yesterday, a commentator mentioned that the "Boomer Generation" is on the way out. This is one way to look at it, but more importantly the America we have lived in, and whose history we know, may become a new creation in the next few years.
We owe our existence to the mercies of God and He has used this nation in important ways, both as to the spreading of the gospel of Jesus Christ and stabilizing a world that naturally would gravitate to hate, murder and tyranny. The proclamation of that gospel is infinitely more important than any nation's existence and my concern for America is, admittedly, self-serving to a degree. I struggled with the temptation of combining the two.
Ultimately, I realized that sitting back and letting evil rise is incompatible with a Christian's responsibilities in this world. Few will read this blog and it will have no significant influence. It is written as a conversation with anyone that happens to stop by. I do have a "pet project" and that is the issue that is known as "a la carte cable" television. I truly feel that if Americans are given a chance to bring only the television networks that they want into their house, that over a short period of time, the intellectual and spiritual integrity of that portion of America will strengthen, for we are in bondage now to the cable package that is too great a temptation of sitting at the feet of predators of the mind.
I also want to give advice on how to handle conversations that inevitably come up on issues that dictate where America will go. I want to give a perspective on Christianity that the media is unaware of because the church has become overwhelmed by a theology that has accommodated itself to the times we live in and whose failure to proclaim Christ "alone" as our hope has taken away its power, hence influence.
So here is my summary of where we (the church) are and where we must go. We need a combination of confidence in what we believe and humility that admits that we are still sinners and that our righteousness is"imputed" as money would be in a bank account and not "infused" as if we in ourselves are now visibly righteous. This must come from the pulpits and be evidenced in our conversations. We must come to realize that it is the essential doctrines of Christianity that unites us as brothers and sisters in Christ and that non-essential doctrines where we differ are always going to be there. This must come from our Sunday school classes and our own search to find biblical truth. We must come to a stark realization that we are prone as anyone else to over estimate our own interpretive powers and fail to see our prideful desires that, all to often, lead to following teachers that Jude described as "waterless clouds, swept along by winds, fruitless tress in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted, wild waves of the sea."
These teachers are numerous on television and on best-selling book charts. We need to settle for nothing less than Christ being preached from our pulpits for therein is the power that is meant for us. On the temporal level, we need to influence our nation through the voting booth, fully cognizant of and openly proclaiming that we are not trying to make others live in a Christian nation but that this nation, if it rejects the God that our founders acknowledged and whose providential care they relied upon, will indeed fall. We need to understand the postmodern mindset that is becoming increasingly averse to any absolute truths. Rather than argue issues with postmoderns, we must confront, with logic and reason, why those we talk to have moved into a realm of thought that they may not even know exists.
Various prophesy teachers have relegated the Christian position of the second coming of Christ into a running joke where a rapture will take all the Christians from the world and then there will be "hell to pay" for those who didn't become like us. The turmoil and destruction that this world faces in this atomic age should alone be enough to place before those who refuse to believe that though God is long sufferring, His arm will not be stayed forever against a nation or a world that boasts its immunity from punishment.
We owe our existence to the mercies of God and He has used this nation in important ways, both as to the spreading of the gospel of Jesus Christ and stabilizing a world that naturally would gravitate to hate, murder and tyranny. The proclamation of that gospel is infinitely more important than any nation's existence and my concern for America is, admittedly, self-serving to a degree. I struggled with the temptation of combining the two.
Ultimately, I realized that sitting back and letting evil rise is incompatible with a Christian's responsibilities in this world. Few will read this blog and it will have no significant influence. It is written as a conversation with anyone that happens to stop by. I do have a "pet project" and that is the issue that is known as "a la carte cable" television. I truly feel that if Americans are given a chance to bring only the television networks that they want into their house, that over a short period of time, the intellectual and spiritual integrity of that portion of America will strengthen, for we are in bondage now to the cable package that is too great a temptation of sitting at the feet of predators of the mind.
I also want to give advice on how to handle conversations that inevitably come up on issues that dictate where America will go. I want to give a perspective on Christianity that the media is unaware of because the church has become overwhelmed by a theology that has accommodated itself to the times we live in and whose failure to proclaim Christ "alone" as our hope has taken away its power, hence influence.
So here is my summary of where we (the church) are and where we must go. We need a combination of confidence in what we believe and humility that admits that we are still sinners and that our righteousness is"imputed" as money would be in a bank account and not "infused" as if we in ourselves are now visibly righteous. This must come from the pulpits and be evidenced in our conversations. We must come to realize that it is the essential doctrines of Christianity that unites us as brothers and sisters in Christ and that non-essential doctrines where we differ are always going to be there. This must come from our Sunday school classes and our own search to find biblical truth. We must come to a stark realization that we are prone as anyone else to over estimate our own interpretive powers and fail to see our prideful desires that, all to often, lead to following teachers that Jude described as "waterless clouds, swept along by winds, fruitless tress in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted, wild waves of the sea."
These teachers are numerous on television and on best-selling book charts. We need to settle for nothing less than Christ being preached from our pulpits for therein is the power that is meant for us. On the temporal level, we need to influence our nation through the voting booth, fully cognizant of and openly proclaiming that we are not trying to make others live in a Christian nation but that this nation, if it rejects the God that our founders acknowledged and whose providential care they relied upon, will indeed fall. We need to understand the postmodern mindset that is becoming increasingly averse to any absolute truths. Rather than argue issues with postmoderns, we must confront, with logic and reason, why those we talk to have moved into a realm of thought that they may not even know exists.
Various prophesy teachers have relegated the Christian position of the second coming of Christ into a running joke where a rapture will take all the Christians from the world and then there will be "hell to pay" for those who didn't become like us. The turmoil and destruction that this world faces in this atomic age should alone be enough to place before those who refuse to believe that though God is long sufferring, His arm will not be stayed forever against a nation or a world that boasts its immunity from punishment.
