This past Monday, David Brooks had a wonderful op=ed piece in teh New York Times. Summarizing, this is what he said,

His central theme is best summed up by a quote from John Adams at the beggining of his piece,

Human nature, in no form of it, could ever bear prosperity

He correctly talks about how the people who should have helped to change the moral economic fabric of the country (evangelicals) were too busy " fighting a culture war about prayer in schools, “Piss Christ” and the theory of evolution. They were arguing about sex and the separation of church and state, oblivious to the large erosion of economic values happening under their feet."

He says that there is a theory that the first stage in great nations is
one of energy and toughness. That leads to wealth an dprosperity which leads to affluence and luxery which finally ends up in decadence, corruption and decline.

The last comment of the article argues for the solution, but Americans really do this?

A crusade for economic self-restraint would have to rearrange the current alliances and embrace policies like energy taxes and spending cuts that are now deemed politically impossible. But this sort of moral revival is what the country actually needs.



Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/29/opinion/29brooks.html?_r=2&ref=opinion

125th

My church celebrated it's 125th annivesary yesterday. The church started in my suburb (actually it's a city in its own right) of Los Angeles in 1884. For Southern California, that is V...E...R...Y....OLD! Almost nothing dates back that far here. A former assistant pastor came back to preach from his pastorate in Colorado and the church was filled. It's sad to see the church down to 200 people when it was 1200 when I first came 11 years ago. But when you present a fuzzy gospel and begin to bring in postmodern doctrine (i.e. a bit of emergent and some occultic contemplative spirituality) into a church, this is what will happen eventially. We are looking for a new pastor and hopefully the next one will help to resolve this dilemma. I doubt it though as the church keeps saying we will get the pastor God wants for us. That isn't what God told me. He said to me that the church will get the pastor they want. Yes, God gives us what we want often. So, it so vitally important to ask God who we really want and if that matches what He wants. Thinking He will automatically bring who He wants IMO is presumption.

After church many of us went to the 125th luncheon celebration at a golf club. A man who had been a member 11 years ago came as the MC. He's a Christian comedian. I had a really good time.

But, I wonder what people like Martin Luther and Jonathan Edwards would think of a Christian comedian and lunch at a golf club when a church is in such straits as ours (I haven't even mentioned the $400,000 debt yet). Perhaps we should have had a lighter lunch at church (i.e. fasting) and gotten on our knees to ask God what is going wrong in our church. Don't get me wrong. There is a time for feasting and fun, but perhaps not when your church is under judgement and on the downgrade road, to quote 19th century Charles Spurgeon.

But not to worry. Our elders are telling us they have some nifty new programs to help the church. Hmm........I think I've heard this before.......

Are We Creating a Godless Nation?

I've studied Hitler and the Third Reich for over 30 years now. I've also studied other dictatorships, mostly communist. In all of these countries there was no majority Protestant (and I emphasize Protestant) Christianity.

When you have other belief systems then people in those countries follow those systems. Which brings me to what I and others are seeing today here in America. It's not good and that is putting it mildly. I and others too, see the very same characteristics here that we've seen in other dictatorships where Christians are badly persecuted. Here is the latest one I've read about this,


Create a Godless Nation? YES! WE! CAN!.

Finally....Maybe It's Over!

I think I've been waiting for this day for a long time. Leadership Journal has an article tht warms my heart. It's entitled, Is the Era of Age Segmentation Over?, an interview with Kara Powell, executive director of the Fuller Youth Institute at Fuller Theological Seminary. Here is the essence of the entire article and I agree wholeheartedly that churches MUST begin to do this NOW!


...we've ended up segregating—and I use that word intentionally—our kids from the rest of the church. Now we tend to think that we can outsource the care of our kids to designated experts, the youth and children's workers.


Here was a great question for Ms. Powell: What is the long-term impact of segregating teens?

A lot of kids aren't going to both youth group and church on Sundays; they're just going to youth group. As a result, graduates are telling us that they don't know how to find a church. After years at the kids' table, they know what youth group is, but they don't know what church is


Once the youth get into church, Ms. Powell is asked,
"Let's start with worship. What does intergenerational worship look like?"

First, it needs to be theologically driven. This is far beyond any kind of politically correct appreciation of diversity that includes age diversity. God intends for community to be diverse in race, gender, and age. First and foremost, then, a church needs to be committed to being a hub where 16 year olds can have real relationships not just with peers but with 36 year olds and 66 year olds. How that works out in practice will be different in every church.


This is such a great article in a magazine that frankly, I stopped after only a few issues because it was almost wall-to-wall emergent. So, I'm sure glad to see this type of writing. The article is long--5 pages--but worth the read, especially if you are in church leadership (that includes elders too. IMO elders need to take a more pro-active interest in the Sunday school classes in their churches, both children and youth classes, as well as adult ones.

The Basis for the Word of Faith Teaching

I often grieve at the poor understanding of the foundations for the Word of Faith teachings. I think there are three reasons for this although there are probobaly more that I haven't thought of yet.

First, the WOF teachers themselves have not communicated well at times. Sayings like "We are little "gods;" Name it and Claim it; "The reason you are not healed is because you don't have enough faith," and so forth isn't helpful IF explanations for those terms are not forthcoming immediately after the statements. To their credit, the major WOF teachers have explained but often after floods of criticism have been leveled at them. And sadly, those who criticised often do not hear the explanations and so keep on criticising. The WOF'ers have also failed to reach a middle class audience which now automatically turns them off because they cannot relate to the southern and midwestern rural culture and idioms presented by most of the WOF teachers and pastors.

Second, there are many varieties of faith teachers, some of whom probably shouldn't be. I've heard now that Joel Osteen, Paula White and Benny Hinn are part of the Word of Faith group. Oh really? I rarely hear WOF teaching from White or Osteen anymore, although in the beginning of their ministries I did. As for Hinn, at times you do but he seems to be in his own world with his own theology which changes from time to time. So, Kenneth Hagin seems to be the primary one we need to read and listen to in order to find out what the real WOF teaching is all about. After that, I would suggest the two who were his disciples and propogated it--Kenneth and Gloria Copeland and Pastor Frederick Price. I would strongly suggest that when you get into people like John Avanzini, Paula White and Joel Osteen, they are not representative of good WOF teaching. However, you need to listen and read the Copelands and Price carefully as there are certainly some errors.

Third, most of the critiques I've read or heard are really not familiar with the true WOF teaching. I rarely if ever hear any critic talk about the foundation of WOF. And no, it's not Kenyon. The foundation of Word of Faith teaching is the mediatorial and substitutionary work of Jesus at the cross. It is also covenantal. In fact, as I've noted here before, I think the WOF people are closer to Reformational doctrine of the cross than almost any Pentecostal or Charismatic group I've seen. Every teaching--healing, faith, our righteousness before God and yes, even the awful propserity teaching is based on our covenant with God obtained for us by the atonement of Christ Jesus. Now, if you want to debate if healing is in the atonement, fine; but first, learn what that means. If you want to debate prosperity teaching fine, but first learn why they are teaching it and what Scriptural doctrine they are basing it on (yep, if you haven't guessed it, they base it on the convenant. They have been studying up on the covenantal benefits of the OT Jews). You may disagree with their interpretations and that is fine, but please learn what they are doing first, before disparaging it. By the way, the WOF'ers are the first people I ever heard that challenged me to stand in faith for money specifically to help others. Most Christian leaders just say to help others the best we can, but "the best we can" doesn't go far enough. It's sad that this prosperity message has gotten so far off, and it has. One part of it is wonderful and necessary to teach in our churches but the part that says "every Christian should be really rich" is really stupidity at its worst because it makes no sense and doesn't agree with teh NT Scriptures.

So, I don't mind if you want to critique the original Faith teachers, but please do read up and know what you are talking about. Who knows, in your study you may just learn something new valuable from the WOF'ers. That doesn't mean you won't find errors or shouldn't expose them. You should and I certainly have here. But let's be fair and informed, OK?

Meanwhile, I continue to ask God to raise up a New Kind of Faith Teacher. See Peter Smyth's blog for an example of one of these.

Great Blog Posts in the Bogosphere This Week

From time to time I like to post really great blog posts I've come across. I read 11 blogs a day and often other posts from links on these blogs. The weekly Christian Carnival also provides some good stuff and today two of the blogs are from this week's carnival.

So here goes,


This week's Christian Carnival provided me with an introduction to the following blog and now it will be one of my 11 daily reads. He has some great posts on the need for atonement and how sin played into this. You can read this post at the Weblog of a Philosophy Student blog.


If you've read my blog for a while you'll know that I often talk about the insane generational wars and segregation going on in our churches. So, when I read this at this week's Christian carnival, it sure resonated with me. I think minority thinker did a great job in describing this huge problem at the blog, minority thinker.


One of my favorite blogs is the one by Peter Smythe because he falls under my classification of the New Kind of Faith Teacher. I used to teach in a Faith school and saw kids pray for each other for healing very naturally, so it warmed my heart to see this post at his blog entitled, Kid's Healing Service.

Another blog I've found recently that I added to my list is the one by the author of the Young, Restless and Reformed book. This post segues very nicely with the ones I've done lately on social justice. The name of Kevin Deyoung's post is, Social Justice and the Poor. In this post he goes into the Jubilee and the difference between what God did for Israel and what God is doing today.

Bob's Day

Bob is the Bob at the Onward, Forward, Toward blog, and today I will quote some good things he has pointed out, both at his blog and in the comments section on this blog.

In my post, More on How to Really Help the Poor, Bob made this comment concerning what I said about the new evangelicals regulating the poor instead of empowering them,

There is a fear of empowering people and the fear of that person doing greater things than the person who does the empowering.

I thought that was an excellent observation. Yes, we don't want the poor surpassing us, now do we?


And on Bob's blog, he has a recent post entitled, Time To Stop, Time To Leave. Here is a snippet from that post which is about all-night prayer vigils where he asks the question, "Do they really accomplish anything?"


....many of these all night prayer rallies consist of ....1 Chronicles 7:14 rallies where they confess everything even inventing sin in hopes of getting God to change his mind and do what they want......The real tragedy is that the more they cry out ‘change’, the more it has remained ‘the same’ as the west side of town still has a high crime rate and vice crimes are still active, their children still make C’s in school, and Roe vs. Wade is still not overturned.


Don't ya just love the part where he says, "getting God to change His mind and doing what they want? [empahsis mine]

Yes indeedy. Welcome to the current version of American Christianity.

Horton Nails it Again

One of my very favorite authors is Michael Horton. I have come to understand the Reformed view from him without a lot of the "pain" you might find in other Calvinistic writers. Yet, he doesn't compromise his strong Calvinistic beliefs. I'm not quite a five-point Calvinist (yet); probably a two and a half one....if such a creature exists. In the recent issue of Modern Reformation magazine, Horton really tackles the emergents' obsession with social justice and good works. As I've pointed out here before, the good works doctrine of the emergent "Christ- (or Jesus-) followers is simply another works program to achieve God's pleasure in you, thus substituting the logocenter with works, and throwing out to the margins (if at all) a Christ-atonement-bearing-our-sins doctrine that should be at the center. Then everything else comes out of that center. For those who want to be the good works boys and girls, I want to see how your good works are doing. Are they really accomplishing what you think they are? Are they really enough and of the quality to please God? Or are you even interested in pleasing God and being right with Him? That is the central question to ask emergents, instead of just throwing Scripture at them all day long. They will just tell you (as Tony Jones did to a Calvinist radio host) that "you are doing violence to the text." That is postmodern lingo for "you aren't interpreting the text the way I do."

So, here now are some excerpts of this great article by Michael Horton,

He cites a qote by emergent Mark Oestricher saying, "My Buddhist cousin, except for her unfortunate inability to embrace Jesus, is a better 'Christian' than almost every Christian I know. If we were using Matthew 25 as a guide, she'd be a sheep; and almost every Christian I know personally would be a goat."

To this Horton replies that we must understand the context in Matt. 25. But since emergents probably won't accept the "normative" interpretation it's useless to even go into this IMO, except to let non-emergents know what it means. But the second point he makes is what I want you to see. Here it is,

The assumption here [regarding Oestricher's remark] is that Christian identity is determined by a generic moral behavor rather than the faith that bears its own kidn of fruit. Ironically, this assumption is too narrow with respect to the morality of non-Christians and too broad with respect to Christian identity.

Then Horton goes on to say that it is assumed that moral people are righteous before God. This is the mistake even many evangelical Christians and churches are making today about people like Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Henri Nowen and Thomas Merton. It isn't that these people aren't "good." I was good growing up in liberal Protestantism. But I wasn't going to heaven or really very helpful in the long run to my neighbors BECAUSE I wasn't converted and therefore, there was NO CHANGE inside of me. As a footnote, it's interesting that in her writings to her superior, Mother Teresa didn't seem to know where she was going to be when she died either, or if she pleased God with, the indication that she wasn't sure of her own righteousness before God. How sad it is that Roman Catholics and liberal Protestants rarely, if at all, hear about "sola gratia" (by faith alone), "sola fide" (by faith alone) and "sola Christus" (by Christ alone). I know I didn't until someone TOLD me (see Romans 10:14).

Horton continues with more brilliant observations and commentary,

It is not a mark of faithfulness but of worldliness to identify Christian discipleship with emotional experience or a moral or social activism that eschews doctrine. It is not a sign of maturity when Christian communties no longer wrestle with the uniqueness of Christ and the objectivity fo a gospel that can only be proclaimed and defended because its content is Christ's victorious life and obedience rather than ours.......Jesus Christ lived the law and bore its curses for us. Therefore, there is no "gospel" for us to live at all. Rather, we live in the light of the gospel that we have all heard, with faith toward God and love and service toward our neighbors.


To end, here are two more gems from this great article,


Anyone can rise to the occasion and help to make the world a better place, but only through faith in Christ can a sinner be united to Christ and bear the fruit of the Spirit, whose fragrance penetrates this passing age with the scent of the age to come


and,


Out Buddhist cousins, muslim neighbors, and burned-out church-goers need to encounter disciples of Christ who point away from themselves, witnessing Christ as the Savior of sinners--even [the Savior of] hypocritical Christians. And, ironically, when we are seeking Christ rather than generic social and moral impact on the society that we could have apart from Him, something strange happens. A communion emerges around the Lamb, drawing people together "from every tribe, kindred tongue, people and nation" into a "kingdom of priests to our God" (Rev. 5:9).

More on How to REALLY Help the Poor

As I've reported here before, there are two things that irk me about the current push of many evangelical churches, epseically the younger ones. The first irksome thing is replacing the Christian center of the cross and atonement with the Liberal Protestant gospel of helping the poor. This isn't about NOT helping the poor. This is about what the center of the gospel should be. Like the proverbial horse and cart, helping the poor as the center, and the atonement as either an afterthought, or worse, no thought at all, is like putting the cart in front of the horse and asking the horse to push it instead of pulling it. Helping the poor should be an outcome (i.e. in sanctification) of the atonement, not something replacing it.

The second irksome thing to me is the vagueness of all the "helping the poor teaching." I've written here that too many Christian leaders do not understand how to really empower the poor; they want to regulate them, often with a "hit-and-run" approach. And, they often do not include the poor as equal, or even main voice in decision making. The other day, I reviewed a book that actually teaches Christians how to cooperate with and empower the poor. You can read that post here.

Today I want to review an article I read in this month's (Sept. 2009) issue of Christianity Today magazine. The article is entitled, "More Than Profit: A Business Plan with a Divine Edge has an Angle on Fighting Poverty."

On Wednesday mornings several women in the Philippines gather together for prayer, singing and a Bible study. Afterwards they discuss their small (mostly small stall retail-type) businesses. They make microloans, encourage each other and have teachings on sound business practices. Notice that no missionaries or church leaders are involved although it could be that churches are supportive in vaious ways. No westerners are going in on a short-term missionary activity and giving people money, erecting and fixing buildings, and then leaving. What the book and article talks about is the type of organizational structure and activity I want churches to start talking about. How can we cooperate with the natives, but allow them to take the lead and (at least eventually) make the important decisions. How can we halp them organize? Can we begin the teaching of good business practices and then eventually they will take over? Can we help them solve other problems, BUT with them actually doing it, rather than sitting around watching us do it? Good things to think about and a good direction to go in IMO.

Quote of the Week

All the programs in the world won't create a [church] family

___Pastor of Lake Avenue Church, Pasadena, California

Christian Carnival CCXCIII

Welcome to Christian Carnival CCXCIII. And away we go.........................


*Teresa at the New Mercy blog writes about a family breakup and also being in debt that made her feel embarrassed and unworthy. The thing that got her through all of this was Scripture and that put things into perspective. She tells us about this in her post, Honor and Shame.

*Is someone watching you? Actually, yes. To find out who and what to do about it, read the post entitled, We're being watched at the In Him We Live and Move and Have Our Being blog.

*At the Christian Personal Finance blog, BWL gives us a very interesting verse in Jeremiah about how to prosper in his post, Seek first the Kingdom of God and then….

*This has to be one of the most unusual blogs I've seen. It's called Fancy Vintage. How do I explain this one to the men? Well, here goes......there are catalogs and magazines out there that talk about and show things from the past. In her post entitled, Training, Caring for, and Rearing Children, Savannah tells about a class given on child rearing in 1955. It's very short but comes complete with Scriptures. You ladies (and men too...perhaps) might like to look through her blog at her other posts. Lots of neat vintage furniture and stuff there.

*I found this post very inspiring. I would call it, "Get off of your duffer-for Christ." Dora of the Close 2 Him Blog blog gave it a better name.....in her post entitled, Whatcha Going to do?.

*He who is kind to the poor lends to the LORD, and he will reward him for what he has done. That is the theme at the Free Money Finance blog in the post entitled, Thinking of the Poor.

*We have another Bible study, and the one for today is: Matthew 5:3-12, Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy. I was particularly interested in the part of this post describing Jesus' view of mercy against the backdrop of the Roman Empire view. You can find this interesting study at the Bible Study Lessons blog in the post entitled, Beatitudes:Blessed are the Merciful.

*Tom of Thinking Christian reviews N.T. Wright's book, The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is in his post, The Resurrection of Jesus Christ (Part One).

*John at Light Along the Journey has written a post entitled, Jesus Won’t Make Everything Better (or will He?) in which he challenges much of the American Christian belief in everything going great in our lives as God's will.

*This is a fascinating account of how President Obama said one thing about the funding of embyronic stem cell research and then signed a bill that did the opposite. You can read the full account of this at Parableman in his post entitled, Obama's Widely-Unpublicized Backtrack on Stem Cells.

*Perhaps you have heard about the new "missionology." As I read Heart, Mind, Soul, and Strength's blog, I realized that I was looking straight at an example of this in the post entitled, Admiring the Tao?.

*To the answer of How Many Churches Are in Santa Barbara?, Ridge of the American Missionary Fellowship blog answers............(I'll leave you in suspense, so you'll have to read it).


*What exactly is Biblical counseling, and what isn't it? Barry of the who am i? blog tells us in his post entitled, What Biblical Counseling Isn’t?.

* I think we all question whether our motives for ministering are pure. Michelle of Thoughts and Confessions of a Girl Who Loves Jesus ponders this while she also reflects on Galatians chapter 5 in her post, 09.05.09.

*I wondered if anyone would wade into the Obama education speech foray and someone did - the FIRE BREATHING CHRISTIAN. He did a great satire with a serious ending in his post, Stupid, Racist Parents Resist Messiah’s Address to Obama Youth.

*I find forgiveness to be a difficult topic to read about. And I have to say that most books and articles I've read are fairly shallow on the subject. However, I must tell you that Brain Cramps for God has written an excellent more-in-depth treatment of this vital subject in his post entitled, Little Twists of the Soul.

*And my contribution for this week's carnival is entitled, The Center. This about the postmodern shift in the evangelical church from the cross to social justice. But, as I point out, that is no "justice" at all.

Review of "When Helping Hurts"

Well, I promised you I would review the book about helping the poor that I've been reading for the past month. I've finished it now and so am going to report on it. The title of the book is When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor and Yourself by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, professors at Covenant College and associated with the Chalmers Center at Covenant College. I'll give the links to the book page as well as the Chalmers Center page at the end of this post.

The reason I happened to buy this book is because for some time now I've been concerned with the obsession to help the poor among our younger evangelicals. Having seen this with the liberal Protestants and how they regulated the poor, instead of empowering them, I've become very concerned tht the younger evangelicals are falling into the same trap. So, I want to find resources to help us with two things:

1) empowering the poor instead of regulating them and creating their dependence on us
2) making sure we can share the gospel; not just helping the poor and then walking away.

In the first section the authors spend a lot of time helping us to understand the viewpoints and cultures of the poor. Broken worldviews and broken societal systems demand that we cannot simply walk into these systems and put our "program" on them and then walk out. The authors present four distorted worldviews that all of us probably have, but they talk about these concerning the poor:

Distorted worldview concerning God
Distorted worldview concerning Self
Distorted worldview concerning Others
Distorted worldview concerning the Rest of Creation

While helping the poor, the authors tell us we must repair and instruct about these distorted worldviews and that will lead those we are working with into the gospel presentation.

In the second section the book challenges us to an analysis of whether those we are helping are in one of three stages - Relief, Rehabilitation or Development.

Relief happens with those who have gone through a disaster, like a tsunami.
Rehabilitation happens where the emergency is basically taken care of and now the rebuilding back to the pre-crisis conditions of their communities occurs.
Development brings the helpers and helped together to work together to maintain what was done in the relief and rehabilitation stages.

At each stage the authors emphasize that we need to always involve and listen to the poor. After all, the poor know their communities better than we usually do.


The next part of the book discusses the problems with Short Term Missions. They recommend strongly that these missions are connected to well-developed long-term ministries that understand how to work with the poor, instead of the usual Short Term "we are going to help the poor--aren't we wonderful" attitude.

The last part of the book discusses various loan programs for the poor, mainly Micro-Finance and local Savings Credit Associations. Micro-Financing usually comes from an international ministry while the Savings Credit program is simply the local poor (there are various levels of poor from destitute to those living at a sustainable margin) pooling their money and then loaning some out to others at low interest. Each member of the savings association gets dividends at the end of a specified time, usually 6 or 12 months.


While the authors did include a few examples about poor people in America and how we can help them, I wished there was much more about this as I find it difficult to get information on this vital topic. They did point out that here it is job training and creation that is the central focus. I agree as I've often thought about how micro-financing might not be feasible here. For example, giving money to buy chickens to someone in a housing project won't work for many reasons. First, they aren't usually allowed in housing projects and/or cities with zoning restrictions; and second, those types of "businesses" cannot possible support anyone here with the high cost of living compared to a Third World rural citizen where micro-financing works a lot better.

Here are the links to the book page and then after that the Chalmers Center.

http://www.chalmers.org/when-helping-hurts/book.php

http://www.chalmers.org/

The Center

In postmodern philosophy there is no stable center as the center keeps changing. Postmodern Christians tend to not obey this as they do have a center--social justice. What should be the center is the substitutionary atonement (how penal you want it to be is up to you), and THEN social justice flows outward from that. But when you rarely or never talk about the cross and what Jesus accomplished there in relation to bearing our sin, any social gospel will soon fall apart. Check the liberal Protestants who made that their center. How are their churches and denominations doing? And how are the poor they "helped" all of these years doing?

I visited two churches this summer. I was a member of one and visited the other one twice in the 1970's. Both were gospel preaching churches. This summer all I heard in these two churches was how we need to help the homeless. That was it. Nothing about salvation or sin or anything for any non-Christian that might have been present. Nothing. I am not against helping the homeless but without the cross, it's really not going to work well. It's sad that now still another generation of young adults - and this time evangelicals - are being so hoodwinked into believing this stuff. By the way, I mentioned a while back that I am reading a very good book on how to really help the poor. I will report on it as soon as I finish reading it.

This Sunday I am going to visit a church that I hear really does preach the gospel--and reaches out to the community too. That will be refreshing--IF it's true.

Andrew Strom's Email about what the REAL problem in America is.....It's not Obama

Andrew Strom has put out another very good email which I copied below. I've been saying this same thing since 1978 when I saw the Christian Right go in the very wrong direction of trying to change people through political laws and legislation instead of evangelistic conversion. By the way, I am a conservative (an original Goldwater conservative--not a neocon) so it's not that I disagreed with the Christian Right's political positions. In other words, that's not why I'm saying this.

Here then, is Andrew's email.



"IS OBAMA REALLY the PROBLEM??

ARE WE BEING DISTRACTED From THE REAL FIGHT?
-by Andrew Strom.

Years ago a friend of mine, Robert Holmes, saw a vision of
Christians leaving the Harvest field to go and join in with a "Civil
War". They were leaving their primary mission (the gospel) to go
and make war against their own countrymen. What does it mean
and why would they do such a thing? -This was unclear.

Like a lot of you, every day I get bombarded with the latest emails
against Obama - and what he is up to. I can truly understand this.
Unlike a lot of overseas Christians who can't comprehend this kind
of American political partisanship, I truly get it. I lived in America
for four years, and one of the things I saw clearly while living there
is that America is at WAR with itself. And it is getting worse. Right
against left, liberal against conservative. And there is no doubt that
as an evangelical Christian, I am truly a "conservative" myself. But
there is a lot that troubles me about what is going on.

When the US conservatives elected Bush, a lot of the world could
not understand it. I understood it completely. America is at war
with itself and Bush seemed like the most robust campaigner
against the liberal agenda. It did not matter that he was not the
"smartest" guy. He was strongly on "our side" in the culture
war - and that is what mattered: Homosexuality, abortion, taxes,
health care, and so-on. To a lot of US Christians, politics has
become THE main arena where they fight and take a stand. So if
I am a conservative myself, why am I so troubled by a lot of this?

Well, let me ask you some questions and hopefully you will see why:

-Is "Politics" the arena that Christians are supposed to be putting
so much time and energy into fighting? Is that what the early
church did?
-Aren't we supposed to be more passionate about prayer and the
gospel than we are about pulling the "liberals" down?
-Couldn't this be a total distraction from our real mission?
-Doesn't a lot of it amount to a giant "smear" campaign of rumor-
mongering that should be beneath Christians to participate in? -In
other words, isn't the way we are speaking often gossipy, slanderous,
mocking and ungodly?
-Why are prayer and the gospel taking a backseat to Obama-baiting?
-Is the Christian community in any country supposed to become
a "voting bloc" for one particular party?

I think those are pretty important questions. And I think a lot of
Christians may have trouble answering them.

The fact is, I get more "political" anti-Obama emails from US
Christians every day than 'spiritual' emails. What does this say
about conservative Christians? It says they care more about politics
than the gospel. That is the conclusion I have to come to. And I
believe this is Idolatry - pure and simple. Politics has replaced the
pure milk of the word for a lot of Christians. They are on a "campaign"
alright, but it is not a campaign for Jesus. And they devote hours
and hours to it. They are feverishly checking out the "latest dirt" on
Obama every night and hungrily devouring Fox News (which makes
more and more ratings dollars as it drives every fresh controversy).
They love it! There is only one problem: It is not Jesus, it is not the
gospel, and a lot of it is simply not godly at all. In fact, it is
replacing Jesus and replacing the gospel.

If I was the Republican Party or Fox News or Talk Radio (each
hungry for more ratings and dollars - these are not Christian
organizations at all) then I would absolutely LOVE the fact that the
Christians are so easy to whip up into a frenzy of Obama-rumors
and Obama-trash-talk. But none of this is godly, is it? It is not
remotely Christian. The early church would have renounced it
utterly. They took no interest in politics. They only cared about
Jesus and His simple gospel. And that is still the only thing that
can save America today. We are being sidetracked.

But the frenzy continues. "Did you hear the one about Obama
being likened to Hitler?" 'Did you hear the one about Obama's
birth certificate?' 'Did you hear the one about Obama's "death
panels"? 'Did you hear that there are really demons in the Swine
Flu vaccine?' (canned laughter please).

A lot of this amounts to a kind-of Christian "smear" campaign. In
politics much of it would be considered in the 'dirty tricks' category -
the kind of thing you do when trying to ruin someone's reputation
with sick rumors and innuendo. No matter if it's true or not. As long
as it does the job of "smearing" the person. Is that the kind of thing
Jesus would want us involved in?

Here is the truly major thing that I believe the devil is trying to do
in America today:
-He is trying to create division so bitter and so extreme that both
sides literally start to fight one another with guns drawn. He is
trying to tear America apart.
-He is trying to sidetrack the one group that truly has the answer.
He is trying to wrap them up in fighting politics, so they will forget
that the pure GOSPEL is the only real hope for America today.

I believe the devil is truly succeeding in both of the above aims.

To conclude this article, I would like to ask some questions of
the Christians who spend so much time on this "Obama War":

-Do you spend as much time spreading the pure gospel as you
spend spreading stuff about Obama? Why not?
-Is your mind and your energy and your passion more focused on
getting the true gospel out - or defeating Obama and the liberals
in politics?
-If you were asked to turn off Fox News and delete the "Obama"
emails and turn off Talk Radio, etc, could you bear it? Or are
you more-or-less an "addict"?
-Do you really think it is right for this to be the big focus of your life?

I truly believe these are huge issues and huge problems in the
American church today. But I guess I can expect a wave of angry
disagreement in response!

Please send feedback to- prophetic@revivalschool.com

God bless you all.

Andrew Strom."