MaxedOutMama: The Fallacies Of Our Own Culture
Robertson’s statement may be shocking, but it is only words and advocacy, and Robertson has no secular scope. Robertson should be rebutted in words. The actions of far too many of the mainline Protestant churches against Israel are actions. They are both advocating and pursuing disinvestment in companies that do business with Israel, on the grounds that the state of Israel is doing immoral things against the Palestinians. Well, this is not a valid Christian position either.
… they continue to feed the source of the current conflict, and instead of achieving peace they will end up fueling and justifying conflict, death, suffering and disease in the Palestinian population.
….Why have all too many of the mainline Protestant churches done this? I would submit that it is because of seeking approval from secular aspects of our society such as the university fools
…..The west must face the fact that our joint institutions, such as the UN, have become corrupted. Many of our internal political leaders in the US are batting around advocating factionalism and self-interest. Parts of our political system have clearly been systematically corrupted. Many of our churches are hardly speaking any real religious truths, and those that are doing so are being singled out for attack from the secular culture and churches that seem focused on secular goals. The genuinely humane voices of Europe that played such a huge part in setting up the UN have mostly been silenced in favor of a form of elitist isolationism. The secular humanist voices of the left have become elitist self-serving communities.
We live in times which challenge our own personal integrity and demand the most rigorous self-scrutiny if we are to avoid accidentally encouraging the unthinkable.
Maxed Out Mama further explored the whole issue at hand as raised by the Pat Robertson comment incident. It isn’t just Pat Robertson as a person, but it is the whole direction many different forms of Christian leadership have taken. A direction away from the commands of Christ and influeneced instead by their own forms of worldly wisdom.
I want to make clear that in no way do I despise Pat Robertson. He is a bona fide Christian in my estimation ( not that that counts for anything in the eternal, but there it is). He has, unfortunately, exemplified the excesses of many Christian-leader personalities. And Maxed Out Mama has drawn the connection of this to what we have seen the Mainline churches doing in toto.
This is the type of thing to which the whole fundamentalist movement has responded at its inception. I hope all that are convinced that Christians should participate in the public forum are paying attention to this. I hope they are not busy making excuses and saying “my leader right or wrong”. If we wish to make an impact we must assiduously check back with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Maintain our base. Is this not how we should live in all respects? But more particularly as lived out before a watching world? Shouldn’t our main concern be the welfare of souls…. and actions based within the confines of Christ’s example?
I don’t remember Christ advocating the assassination of anyone, not Herod or the Chief Priest….or anyone. I do remember the report that he healed the ear, that Peter in zeal, sliced from a Roman soldier.
I believe that God’s Word holds a balance. We can uphold the sword of the state, and we can pour in the oil and wine of mercy. As Christians, though, we must be careful of our zeal, to not misplace it through our own shortsighted vision.
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I appreciate MoM’s addition to the dialogue. If you haven’t blogrolled her yet… what are you waiting for ? A voice from heaven?
You wrote: “I believe that God’s word holds a balance.”
That is so true, but it only does if we let it hold sway over us. That’s why we have to be so careful of straying away from it. The balance is not in us because we are believers, but in us because we heed God’s words as a result of being believers.
This is the message that the extremely messianic churches tend to understate.
I think we have come upon differing definitions, here. If I look at the word “messianic”, I would say all truly Christian churches are messianic, as Christ=Messiah. I doubt if you had that meaning in mind, but perhaps you hesitated to use the word “extreme”?
And my own assumed understanding of the phrase wasn’t clear when I said “balance in God’s Word”.
I didn’t mean precisely that it creates a balance in us, although it would if given your qualifying terms… what I had originally meant by the phrase is the God’s Word has an internal balance- it’s own defining facets of meaning that give the whole of the intent. That we may understand what God’s intent on a matter is by finding the balancing communications on it.
The sword of the state and the ideal of giving mercy are two seemingly incompatible matters, but by finding where each is applied, and the purpose of each we can integrate both into our actions, and policies.
Well, I am talking about the type of church that tells people that you just have to accept Jesus as your personal savior and then you will get your new car, get out of debt, have your marital problems solved, etc.
I think the doctrine of Christianity is quite radical, and this doesn’t disturb me at all. I don’t consider such ministers “extreme”, but rather to be preaching partial truths. And they are the partial truths that tend to send people away from God in the end, because unless they happen upon the rest of it they become disappointed because those promises don’t appear.
You’ve raised some interesting points here.
I come from the other side of it, so it means I have to twist my thinking around to view it from that aspect. One of the things I would ask myself is in your statement,” partial truths that tend to send people away from God in the end,” is it the teaching or the situation of how peoples hearts respond to teaching?
The reason I have a question is due to how Jesus approached this in his seed sowing parable. It wasn’t the teaching but the state of peoples hearts that led them away. The ears that itch to hear what they want, the rocky ground that holds no deep roots….
I have been in churches that had their time with the Faith teachings (what you describe), and I went through my own journey on that, and it is my experience that it is more the way the teachings are taken than what is taught… although there are those preachers who twisted it in the way you describe.
For me, this is a much more complicated and inflected topic. Too often, I find the factors reduced down into simplistic terms that don’t relay the full situation. It would be hard for me to post on…. those in the Faith teachings have mostly moved on into two different streams. One is the sheer positive thinkers, others matured into a more balanced view. But there is still lots of collateral damage from the misuse of the teachings.
In the mainline Churches I see a much clearer line of cause and effect. Perhaps fundamentalism is going through further condensing and refining to manifest its own cause and effect lines…