We read some recent stories about the continued decline in membership in most churches throughout the country. And we have long known about the prevalence of voter apathy over the last several election cycles. We submit that the reason is that we have lost sight of the basics in both cases.
Let’s start with the church. The ideal church in the Book of Acts is described as follows: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.”
So given the fact that there is rising poverty and growing wealth inequality in this country despite the fact that we are a predominately a Christian nation, it is obvious that the church has lost sight of its primary mission – to focus on God and to provide for its members. There are many reasons for the decline of membership in the churches today, but we submit the primary reason is that many people simply don’t see the church as relevant for their lives anymore. And more and more people are having to work 10 or 13 hours a day, 7 days a week just to survive and pay the bills, leaving no time for church or other activities.
Nobody is in the clear in all this. The liberal “social gospel” wing of the church holds the form, but denies the power of God. Many see the resurrection not as something that actually happened, but a mere symbolic metaphor.
Isaiah gave the clearest sign possible of the power of God over the idols made by human hands which represent gods wealth, materialism, lust, and all the other human vices. The difference between God and idols is the ability to foretell the things to come. And Isaiah specifically foretold the captivity of Israel following by the restoration by the Persian King Cyrus, specifically named nearly 200 years before the actual event. Yet the liberal “social gospel” wing chooses to claim, without factual basis, that this part of the Bible was actually written by a “Second Isaiah.” We realize that science and archeology provide a lot more insights on the Bible, but this is mere human conjecture, not science. And this conjecture flies in the face of the evidence, seeing that the Book of Isaiah was intact in its present form as early as 200 BC based on archeological finds.
The fundamental question is this – if this is mere myth on a par with the Greek mythology that is being taught in our schools today, then how is it relevant to peoples’ lives today?
The fundamentalist wing of the church is not in the clear either. The problem is that too many national church leaders confuse following the commandments of God with the platform of the Republican Party. When we go to church, we expect to hear a sermon about how to live a better Christian life. And all of our local pastors are very good about preaching such sermons. Yet when we hear preacher after preacher on national platforms reciting the talking points of the Republican Party, the church has shut out over half the country right off the bat. We expect to hear sermons about getting closer to God, not the latest GOP talking points. If we want to know the latest GOP talking points, all we have to do is look up one of our right-wing friends or turn on KFEQ.
And so when we hear a preacher on national TV threatening Vice President Joe Biden with hell fire because he is pro-choice and not anti-abortion, then it is obvious why people were put off and voted for Obama for a second term despite the tanking economy. Last time we checked, Jesus told us not to judge.
We get the pro-life position. One of the best presentations we saw regarding the pro-life position was one on EWTN (a national Catholic cable channel) about the pre-born Jesus in Mary’s womb. In a nutshell, in the book of Luke, we are told that Elizabeth’s (Mary’s sister) baby jumped with joy in the womb on hearing Mary. Abortion was practiced in the 1st century like it is today and it was just as hotly debated in Roman and Jewish circles.
And yet Mary never even contemplated having an abortion despite the social stigma of being pregnant outside of marriage. Back in those days, women were considered property, first of their fathers and then of their husbands. A common practice, as we learned in a BBC documentary about the life of Jesus, was for fathers to throw daughters into deep wells if they brought shame and dishonor on the family if they became pregnant out of wedlock – even if they were raped.
But here is the catch – Mary accepted the calling of God to bear Jesus for 9 months willingly, without any compulsion on her part. That is why she is venerated in the Roman Catholic Church today. Take away the free choice on her part and the virgin birth is not nearly as meaningful.
This means that people have to accept the moral teachings and precepts of the church willingly, not out of any compulsion on peoples’ part. That is why we support Roe vs. Wade, for instance. To enlist the government in a wholesale assault on peoples’ privacy by snooping on personal private medical choices is to show the same sort of dependence on government that the Republican Party says that they’re against. The government needs to trust the people of this country to make right moral choices. This applies both ways. Obama should respect the right of business owners and religious organizations to follow their consciences in deciding whether or not to cover abortion or contraception as long as they are up front with their employees about it. The church should present its moral vision of the pro-life ethic clearly, yet trust the people to make the right moral choices for themselves, not depend on the government to do it for them.
Which brings us to the government. Our political system has lost sight of the principles found in the Declaration of Independence when it declares that all people are created equally in God’s eyes, or the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. We have a fundamental right of privacy that is contained in the Constitution. But when we have the government prying into peoples’ medical decisions, then it is only a small step from that to the Patriot Act passed by George Bush to Obama’s enlisting the NSA to pry on our phone conversations and e-mails.
We are not worried about the kinds of choices that our friends and neighbors make regarding their personal lives. I may not agree with your personal choices or lifestyle, but I’ll defend your right to live it. We are much more worried about the police state that is emerging and continuing to grow. And the best way to combat the police state starts with respect – respect of other people to make their own choices. Whether it be immigrants who come to this country to live a better life, someone wrestling with major medical and financial decisions regarding their pregnancy, someone choosing their lifestyle, or someone choosing to use a gun to defend themselves, we can’t depend on the government to make those sorts of choices for people.
The government says that we need the NSA to snoop and pry on your personal life in the name of stopping terrorism. I submit that when we trust on God to protect us, we have much more security. When the Israelites depended on God to protect them, they were safe. But when they trusted in their own strength, as even their good kings did sometimes, then they were not.
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