Barney Wiget's Blog, page 20

Christ’s Bride Needs Marriage Counseling

“Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.” (Ephesians 5:25-27)

Russell Moore says, “The Church is the Bride of Christ. And maybe, in this moment, the Bride of Christ needs marriage counseling.”

Usually, as marital issues are seldom one-sided, couples go in for counseling together. But in this case, if there’s a rift in the relationship, it’s the Bride who needs to do all the changing. Her Groom came from Heaven and has no need for the least bit of adjustment. But where does she go to get the help she needs?

My advice for her is to go to her Beloved, sit at his feet and “listen to what he says” (Luke 10:39). He knows just what she needs to become “a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.” Problem is, she doesn’t know what He knows, so He has to tell her (remember, like Paul, I’m “talking about Christ and the Church.”

I’m afraid much of the Church in America has left her first love (Revelation 2:4) and has replaced it with love of country, self, party, security, prosperity, and any number of other lovers, none of which lead to anything resembling the bliss they promise. We’ve been duped into the very syncretistic religion that we’ve traditionally argued against. We’ve so folded our Christianity into national pride, loyalty to party, and our own self-interest that it now bears little, if any, similarity to the Christianity of the Bible.

Speaking of the Bible, Jesus makes His Bride “holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the Word.” Problem is when we love something or someone more than we love Him we develop our own tidy list of Bible verses that support our idolatry, along with our own favored interpretation of them. We can quote those passages all day long––as did the Pharisees, southern slave owners, and German Nazi sympathizers––in order to justify our ideas and behaviors. Many of us live in such narrow ideological silos with others who believe and behave in our same preferred way, with the sermons and tirades from our favorite media personalities ricocheting back and forth off the walls, that our Groom’s actual words are drowned out.

So… in order to save our marriage to our Heavenly Partner we need counseling. It might involve a third party, like a friend, a pastor, or a trusted mentor, but the most “Wonderful Counselor” (Isaiah 9:6) is also our Groom.

Make the call today.

Baby Steps

It’s not only unnecessary; it’s counterproductive when we turn the fireman’s hose of spiritual verbiage on people who just need to sip the Water of Life. Of course, we want to bring people all the way to a radical conversion on the spot, and there’s nothing better when that happens. But when that doesn’t occur, I consider it a minor victory to be at least one Christian that might not get listed under the heading of “Self-Righteous Know-It-Alls.” If I can’t win everybody to Jesus, I want to at least give him or her no new alibis for rejecting him.

We might do well to celebrate the smaller steps people need to take toward a friendship with God. Remember that we’re not their first clue that he exists (creation, conscience, culture, etc. all beat you to the punch) and we probably won’t be their last. Our passion, then, can be a more patient passion to bring them to Jesus.

– Originally published in Reaching Rahab: Joining God In His Quest For Friends

Somebody’s Watching

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“… even though they do not have the law. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them. ” — ROMANS 2:14-16

God coyly installs invitations inside every person in the form of a conscience. If people have “the requirements of the law are written on their hearts,” Someone must have done the writing! Right? It’s not a perfect rule of thumb because it can be skewed or silenced by relentless inattention. But when it’s in good working order, the conscience points directly to the One who installed it.

I have no doubt that in the quiet of her heart Rahab knew that her trade corroded her soul and that Someone had something more for her than this. When she looked inside she saw Someone looking out.

–…

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To What Kind of Christianity Do You Subscribe?

Jesus said: “Turn the other cheek… Love your enemies… Love your neighbor… Blessed are you when you are persecuted…”

Feucht said: “We’ve got Jesus-loving gun-toting thugs on site. Mess with our worship time and prepare to die!”

Gotta dig the divine love just oozing out here.

So, here’s what non-Christians think when they see stuff like this. Is this how we want to represent Jesus?

Someone else replied saying: “Is it a gun free campus also?” to which “Pastor” Locke replied: “Show up acting stupid and find out!”

Another not-so-veiled threat of getting shot and killed at church!

I’m so glad I met the real Jesus (49 years ago this week) before so many church folk lost their minds, if not their souls.

We have to be better than this.

God have mercy on us all!

“If you confess with your mouth JESUS AS LORD…”

Seems more and more important these days…

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“If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes,  resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses,  resulting in salvation.” Romans 10:9-10

This passage, a favorite of many, I propose is one terribly misunderstood and misapplied for the sake of an easy believe-istic approach to salvation. Just believe that Jesus was raised from the dead, say it out loud and boom, heaven’s your new home! It’s a classic case of tearing the passage out of its historical and theological context like a page out of a magazine.

Paul’s first readers were Roman citizens who were law bound to assert tyrannical Caesar as “Lord” and obey his every dictate or die. Their confession of the Lordship of Christ would then have sounded more like:

“I no longer accept or follow any lord…

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Golden Silence

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I wonder if Job’s “friends” had ever personally sat at the Sufferers’ Club table. If they had never been exposed to their own “valley of shadows,” it’s no wonder that they were limited in their ability to relate to his. They started out well when they “sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.” If only they had remained there on the ground, lips sealed.

There’s nothing like having a friend with whom very little needs be said. Silence, in such cases is “golden.” That’s real fellowship!

– Originally published in The Other End of the Dark: A Memoir About Divorce, Cancer, and Things God Does Anyway 

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Patriots, Christian Nationalists, and Good Citizens

There’s been quite a bit of talk lately about what constitutes patriotism, nationalism, and good citizenship. I suppose any one person could be all three, but they’re not necessarily the same thing.

I love Christ and I love America in distinct and vastly unequal ways of course. That is, I love Jesus in an altogether different way than I love my country. In trying to sort these loves out, the terms patriotism and nationalism come up.

Patriots versus Nationalists

It should be obvious that there are degrees of these. That is, there’s a spectrum for love of country depending on one’s view. On one end is a passive form of patriotism and on the other extreme is a rabid form. And of course there’s lots of space in between. The same goes for nationalism. There’s a mild version versus a hyper-nationalist variety that stormed the capitol on January 6th.

Patriotism is the love of one’s country. Christians should recognize that patriotism is good because all of God’s creation is good and we are mandated to appreciate our particular place in it. Our affection and loyalty to a specific part of God’s creation helps us do the good work of cultivating and improving the place we happen to live. We Americans can and should love the United States, while at the same time work to improve it by critiquing it and working for justice in our beloved country.

George Orwell contrasted the two in terms of aggressive vs. defensive attitudes. Nationalism, he said, is about power and nationalists want to acquire as much power and prestige as possible for their nation. He went on to claim that while nationalism is aggressive, patriotism is defensive. It is a devotion to one’s country but has no wish to impose it on others. 

Patriots bear no ill thoughts about others or engage in hostile actions towards them. It’s when one’s patriotism becomes unbridled and causes one to look down on others and act badly towards them. That is nationalism. It’s a matter of semantics I suppose. Though I can’t claim Orwell’s definitions are correct, I see merit in them.

And then there’s a brand of nationalism that some people are calling “Christian Nationalism.”

Christian Nationalism

Definitions will vary, but my view is that Christian Nationalism is the heretical belief that the God of the Bible especially favors the United States over other nations.  Christian nationalists believe that America has a unique relationship with God and has been “chosen” by him to carry out a special mission on earth. They think our nation is defined by our “Anglo-Protestant” heritage and that we will lose our identity and our freedom if we don’t preserve our cultural inheritance.

The Bible says followers of Jesus are “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession” (1 Peter 2:9). Christian Nationalists tend to think that this describes America as a national identity. Not so.

I’ll grant that God did at one time sanction a form of what one might loosely call “nationalism.” It was the 1500 years or so between the time Moses transcribed the Law and when Jesus began preaching the Kingdom of God. The theocracy of ancient Israel (to be distinguished from the modern day state of Israel) could have been in some ways thought of as nationalistic in its most positive sense. But since Jesus came and brought heaven’s kingdom, while national pride is legit and even recommended, National-ISM is neither legit nor recommended in Scripture for any nation, America included. 

The toxic repercussions of the extreme version of Christian Nationalism are many.  Paul D. Miller says it’s “an ideology held overwhelmingly by white Americans, and it thus tends to exacerbate racial and ethnic cleavages.” The most obvious example of this was when the Southern states used Christianity as a prop to support slavery and Jim Crow segregation. Today, many advocate for immigration restrictions specifically to prevent a change to American religious and ethnic demographics or any sort of shift in American culture. Some on the extreme of hyper-nationalism argue that American Christians need to prepare for an armed conflict with fellow Americans in order to preserve our country’s identity, an argument that juiced the January 6th insurrection at the capitol.

Paul D. Miller again: “Christian nationalism is taking the name of Christ as a fig leaf to cover its political program, treating the message of Jesus as a tool of political propaganda and the church as the handmaiden and cheerleader of the state.”

During the 2016 presidential race, then candidate Donald Trump said, “We will respect and defend Christian Americans.” Not such a bad thought until he went on to repeatedly preach, “Christianity will have power.” That is Christian nationalism in a nutshell, advocating for Christian power rather than Christian principle. His agenda (whether or not he actually cared about Christians or their faith) struck a deep chord among many white evangelicals at the time, whose decades long hope was for Christian’s to be in power.

It is our Christian duty to be obedient to God and to be good citizens of whatever country we happen to inhabit at the time. It’s the conflation of the two that becomes problematic. It’s dangerous when we assume that the special place we individuals have in the heart of God also applies to Americans as a nation. It’s even worse when we view our Christianity through the lens of the American experiment or when we prioritize our earthly citizenship over our heavenly one.

For instance, “Christians” have been polled with questions like: “Does your faith in God and the Bible impact your opinion on social issues like immigration reform or environmental challenges or race relations or economic equity of opportunity among all Americans?” I don’t have the results before me of the recent poll using these questions, but the vast majority who said their Christianity or their Bibles said nothing about such social issues appalled me!

There was another poll asking Evangelicals to rate their Christian identity versus their American identity. In other words, “Which is more important to you­­––being Christian or American?”

As you can see from the image at the top almost 9 in 10 White Evangelicals said that being an American takes precedence over following Jesus! I can’t even wrap my head around that! How does one claim to follow Christ when, with impunity, they put nation above their devotion to him? Jesus was adamant about us putting him first and foremost even over our own lives and loved ones:

“Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” John 12:25

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14:26

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” Luke 16:13

The Takeaway

If you choose an affection and patriotic-type love for your country and its citizens, so be it. But love and serve the Lord with abandon and sacrificially love and serve your neighbors (wherever they come from and whatever their race, class, or culture). May your citizenship in heaven (Philippians 3:20) determine how you practice your citizenship on earth.

Have you seen the previous post called “Is America Divinely Favored?”

Is America Divinely Favored?

Before liking, loving, or clicking on the scowling face of dissent, please read this post which I’ve written in response to Hobby Lobby’s full-page ad in newspapers nationwide on July 4th. Then, feel free to weigh in with your own thoughts, pro or con.

Among the quotes included in the ad, the one by Justice John Jay is most problematic to me. He said: “Providence has given to our people the choice of our rulers, and it is the duty as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians as their rulers.”

I don’t agree that America is a “Christian nation” or that it is my Christian duty to vote for Christian rulers exclusively. I prefer the sentiment of what has often been attributed to Martin Luther, “I’d rather be ruled by a wise Turk than a foolish Christian.”

But let us not quibble over Luther or Jay but take an intelligent look at the excerpt from Psalm 33 that they referenced : “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.” The rest of the verse says: “… the people he chose for his inheritance.”

The $ million question is, “Is America or any other nation on the earth, past or present, besides ancient Israel, the nation God chose for his inheritance? Is this a generic maxim to be applied to any nation that has a lot of Christian citizens? Has God chosen other nations as his inheritance? I say “No.” Here’s why. (My answer will make more sense if you take the 3 minutes to read the whole Psalm.)

You’ll notice that the poet does exhort “all the earth” and “all the people of the world” to obey the Lord. He says that the Lord “sees all mankind,” “watches all who live on earth,” and “considers everything they do.” But does any of that equate to favored nation status for any country? Or are these poetic assertions intended to be set in contrast to his claim that there is a nation “whose God is the Lord,” the only nation (ancient Israel) that he “chose for an inheritance.”

I say that applying this to America is not only bad theology, but may lead to the dangerous ideology some are calling “Christian Nationalism.” You don’t have to time travel further back than to the infamous January 6th for one of the most odious examples of the danger of thinking America is chosen by God as his inheritance. That is not to say that all the insurrectionists that day were professing Christians, but many were and most if not everyone that day displayed a particularly toxic version of nationalism.

I’ll talk more about the dangers of “Christian Nationalism” in future posts, but for now I simply encourage you to read the Bible more carefully and do your best not to interpret its teachings through the lens of your political preference. Rather, develop your politics through the lens of Scripture.

Until next time, as this Psalmist exhorts at the end:

“Praise the Lord… for the word of the Lord is right and true; he is faithful in all he does… [he] loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love.”

It’s Madness!

When Jesus healed the man with the withered hand in the synagogue on the Sabbath the religious leaders were livid (“filled with senseless rage” – Luke 6:11 NASB).

About half of the English translations of this passage render it as “madness.” Jesus does a radical miracle in front of them and instead of celebrating the man’s healing, because it was done on the wrong day of the week they were filled with a mad rage! The Greek term here literally means a lack of thought or in the vernacular, to be out of one’s mind.

Their fury led them to caucus to determine what to do about it. Some versions say they “communed with one another,” that is, in their crazed anger they found common ground, a sort of fellowship with each other. Church folk have fellowship talking about their love for Jesus over cookies and coffee, theirs consisted of making a plan to get rid of him. And they weren’t talking lawsuits or censorship. They plotted his assassination.

It’s madness! 

The only other time this term is used in the New Testament is when Paul described a decidedly inglorious version of Christianity in the “last times” (2 Timothy 3:1-9). He issued a long list of traits of so-called Christians whose ideas and behaviors are off track and self-destructive.  

They love themselves instead of God, they love money, they don’t love what’s good, and in terms of interpersonal relationships they are loveless. They’re boastful, proud, and abusive. They slander people and have no self-control. They’re treacherous, rash, and conceited. Their minds are depraved. Like earthworms they wriggle “their way into homes and gain control over the gullible.”

Furthermore, “they will maintain a facade of ‘religion,’ but their conduct will deny its validity.” (Phillips) Their lifestyles reek of such madness that Paul warns his protégé to steer clear of them altogether!

He likens them to the magicians who momentarily plagiarized Moses’ plagues on Egypt. If there’s a positive note, he says “they will not get very far, for their meaningless nonsense and ignorance (i.e. madness) will become obvious to everyone.” (Amplified Version)

Unfortunately, we don’t have to ponder long to identify contemporary examples of this senseless rage in our country. But the one I’m most concerned about these days is the madness of Christians (so-called) who call for a violent uprising against fellow Americans whose politics are different than theirs. We saw it up close and personal on January 6th when a bellowing, weapon-wielding, sign-carrying mob broke into the capitol, many identifying themselves with religious messages. It was the “Jesus Saves” signs set alongside a gallows erected on the capitol steps calling for the assassination of Vice-President Pence that I found most disturbing!

It’s madness!

By now everyone has seen dozens of videos capturing their mindless rage when they stormed the building with Congress in session in order to turn over the election. I can’t get over how many of them did so in the name of Christ! When they broke into the Senate Chamber many removed their hats, bowed their heads, and called on the name of Jesus as though he led them there and sanctioned their crimes.

After injuring 150 police officers and leaving 5 people dead, Jake Angeli, QAnon shaman shouted to his fellow insurrectionists, that had fought their way into the room: “Look at you guys, you guys are f-ing Patriots!” Then leading in prayer from the dais he thanked God for “filling this chamber with Patriots who love you and love​ Christ.”

This is neither patriotism nor Christianity. It’s madness! Senseless, mindless, madness!

Someone might say, “What’s the point now? It’s over. Those kooks did their craziness, many of them are in jail, but it’s history. What’s the point of bringing it up again?” I wish it were just history, but perhaps you didn’t know that there are still thousands, if not millions of so-called believers in Jesus who hang on to every word that QAnon-inspired “prophets” are preaching about the need for another civil war in America.

Rick Joyner, for example, says:

“It will be a civil war, and it’s going to be increasingly worse with the increasing time it takes for Americans to stand up and push back against this evil that has taken over our land. … You know, there’s a time for peace and a time for war, it says in Ecclesiastes. Well, we’re not headed towards peace right now … and we need to prepare for it. We need to put out the word that people need to be prepared… Militias will pop up like mushrooms and it was God. These are good militias… The Lord has seeded our country with veterans from our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and should be joined by armed Christians!”

He went on to say that a new civil war is necessary from heaven’s perspective because the Revolutionary War and the Civil War did not fully accomplish their goals.

It’s madness!

So what? I’m a Christian and I’m not joining a paramilitary militia, so what’s the point of worrying about a few kooks and outliers? First, it’s not a few kooks and outliers. Groups like The Three Percenters, Oath Keepers, Boogaloo Boys, Proud Boys, Patriot Prayer and many others (some estimate more than 200 militia groups) are alive and well in your state, especially if you live in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Idaho, and Oregon. Beside the capitol insurrection, everyone remembers the recent militia’s attempt to kidnap Michigan’s governor in response to coronavirus lockdown.

Second, though your personal slant on religion and politics may not be as outlandish as some of these groups, many Christians buy and sell their rhetoric. 

It’s not one size fits all. Each group has its own distinct identity and ideology, and most of them don’t identify monolithically as “Christian,” yet have many Christians involved in their orbit.

“It’s hard for us to believe in a Jesus who would rather die than kill his enemies,” says Brian Zahnd. “It’s harder yet to believe in a Jesus who calls us to take up our own cross, follow him, and be willing to die rather than kill our enemies.”

Jesus said “Take up your cross,” not “Take out your sword”! The cross isn’t a weapon we wield against our enemies. (Someone should have told this to Constantine!) It’s the perpetual reminder to love them. Between cross-carrying and sword-wielding Christianity there is no contest. 

Zahnd also said, “The road of ‘God is on our side, and he shall surely smite our enemies’ is a wide road. A lot of parades have gone down that road. It doesn’t take much courage to travel that road; just fall in step and follow the crowd.”

Some reading this will object to my recurring stern criticism of Christians or those who claim to be. Why not just overlook these infractions in the Church and build up the reputation of the Body of Christ instead of rebuking our family of believers in front of the world?

First of all, I critique the actions of these false prophets as a warning to reasonable Christians to steer clear of them. It’s not like Rick Joyner or other well known spiritual propagandists read what I write. The Bible is replete with warnings against errant teachings and false prophets (Deuteronomy 18:20; Ezekiel 13:9; Jeremiah 14:14; 23:16; Luke 6:26; Matthew 24:24; 2 Timothy 4:3-4; Acts 20:28-30; 2 Peter 3:14-18; Matthew 7:15-20, etc.).

Secondly, though my tiny audience is primarily made up of professing believers, there are a few pre-christians listening, and the madness they observe in the Church acts as a repellant to faith. They’re not blind. They see the senseless rage and cry, “Madness!” I consider it my duty to inform them that not all of us are proponents of the craziness and that there’s a version of Christianity that actually practices love of neighbors as well as enemies (at least we do our best to).

Tune Up and Play Better

“Church History Is a Beautiful Melody Imperfectly Performed… Rejecting Christianity based on the terrible performance of some Christians is like dismissing Bach after hearing my feeble attempts to play his Cello Suites. … The original message of Christ resounded through the centuries like a beautiful melody, even as many Christians failed to play in tune.” Christopher Reese

That said, Christians, we must tune up and play better!