The Church’s Message is Not the World’s

“But if I am delayed, I write so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.” 1 Timothy 3:15

If the Church is the pillar and ground of the Truth, we may reasonably conclude that if there is any great area of moral truth in which she is deliberately silent, society will be forced to be content to sit under the canopy of darkness. As the pillar of that sacred deposit divinely bestowed to her from grace alone, the world of unbelievers without the light of the Church are at best only able “seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him.”

This is exactly the case with the Church and the matter of race in the 21st Century. When the pillar is missing, or worse if the ground itself is like shifting sand, is there any wonder that American society’s understanding about race is like a condemned structure tottering on the verge of collapse? There are a number of truths that the American churches ought to be thundering from the rooftops at this time, and yet why they do not, we can only guess:

One among them is that God has made “from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings.” Acts 17:26. This means that the naturalistic explanations of the origins and evolution of human race are wrong.

While the Church’s labors against Darwinism are admirable, she has had little impact convicting and rebuking the gainsayers in the actual ways they are applying this error to race. I am not speaking here of social Darwinism, as manifested by the Nazi scourge of the 1930’s. That is a horrible error that does indeed grow out of that false doctrine. But this is no longer a serious challenge to the Church. Liberal unbelievers that have no regard for the Scriptures whatsoever will denounce that error in terms as harsh as most Christians. The Church must meet the challenges it faces today, and not reminisce about the battle lines of the last century.

Under the influence of postmodernism, today human evolution argues that since all human beings are merely highly evolved mammals, one race is no better than another. “The puddle of ooze your race emerged from is no better than mine.” Human beings are equal because the origin of one race was as undignified as another.

Now any fair-minded person can see that this error has been the launching ground of virtually all the woes in the modern era. Arminianism (the reprobate are equal to the elect), feminism (women are equal to men), gay rights (homosexuals are equal to heterosexuals), and multiculturalism (non-Christians are equal to Christians) all draw their strength and are bound by this unholy thread of egalitarianism. Yet when the push for civil rights (non-whites are equal to whites) is advanced by unbelievers within the same vein of the exact same philosophy, the Church puts her hand over her mouth. And what is worse, because she supposes that she is not opposed to their ultimate and impossible objective of racial equality in this fallen world, she mistakenly assumes that their battle is actually hers and proceeds to yoke herself with the enemies of her Lord.

Friendship with the world is still enmity against God (James 4:4). That which is esteemed highly of men is still an abomination to God (Luke 16:15). We still may be taken captive through the philosophy of men and empty deceit (Colossians 2:8). Christ does not authorize His bride to form unholy alliances with liberals and Marxists that still have no earthly idea what authentic Christian love is all about. While we believe that all racial hatred is wrong, it is gross folly when those who maintain no pretense in keeping the first and greatest of the commandments (to love God with all their hearts, souls and strength) are held up as models and heroes of keeping the second (to love one’s neighbor as himself). Our Lord taught that the first was like unto the second, and so we deny that civil rights leaders can be found absolutely devoid of one and yet worthy of our emulation in another.

If Truth is to be revealed regarding race in our generation, it must come in the same manner it always has in every generation: the Church heralding the doctrines of the Bible. The notion that Truth can spontaneously spring up from some inherent sensitivity within unbelievers to injustice is an affront to the teaching of Scripture. The Church should unapologetically call the world to sit at her feet to learn of brotherly love, not wax cowardly introspective and seek to make its sandy foundations her resting place. She should boldly expose the civil rights movement for the atheistic, humanistic endeavor that is was and still is. She should assail the comfortable place of moral superiority that it lords over our society through the tyranny of political correctness.

If the Church does not do these things now, future generations will be called on to do it with much greater difficulty. She will likely forsake the objectives Christ has appointed for her or hopelessly entangle them with the objectives of transient political movements and liberal social causes for which Christ has offered no promises of success. Those things are already beginning to happen.

Backroom deals

The Republicans are complaining that the President and the Senate Democrats are striking deals in order to bring the health care issue to passage.

Well of course they are. That is how government works in Washington, and has for over a century and a half now. Did they think that this push to “reform” health care is actually about helping people?

After what happened with Mary Landrieu, other senators would be cheating their own states if they did not hold out their hands as well. As a state senator from my district used to say, “Somebody’s gotta feed them hogs.”