Wednesday, October 24, 2012

THE NANNY STATE:

America's slavery, the Church's opportunity



 The New Colossus
By Emma Lazarus, 1883

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

~ Statue of Liberty Poem

 
"What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ."
~The Holy Spirit through St. Paul

The Nanny State is at it again!  This time it's LSU which used a picture of a well known group of LSU fans called "The Painted Posse".   The group paint their faces and bare trunks for LSU games.
 
"In reproducing the photo for a campuswide email, LSU made the decision to airbrush out the crosses on the students' chests. See, The Painted Posse is a group of Christian-centered Tiger fans, and, well, someone somewhere inside LSU decided not to mix football and religion. (Which is a bit surprising, considering that in the SEC, football IS religion.)"  (LINK)

You may not be able to see it, but on their left shoulders the guys have crosses painted there

Someone at LSU airbrushed the crosses out of the photo before using in an LSU email.

"The school, in a statement, indicated that it was not trying to censor any views, but rather to avoid the appearance of endorsing one. "We don't want to imply we are making any religious or political statements, so we air-brushed it out," the school said in a statement to Fox News. "Only one of the students, who didn't appreciate it, actually contacted us about it. So next time, we'll just choose a different photo."

Bad LSU censors!!  Someone call the Supreme Court!  Someone call Glenn Beck!  Someone call Jerry Falwell!   Oh, wait, Jerry Falwell is dead...er...em...okay, some one call Pat Robertson.  Robertson is only dead from the neck up.   Wow what will we do when Glenn Beck and the conservatives on the Supreme Court are dead??  YIKES!!   Oh I know there will always be some one who will step up to take their places.   There will always be someone who will take up the never ending culture war...  There is simply too much at stake here to stand idly by doing nothing.   So! "Once more unto the breach, dear friends!  ONCE MORE;" 
 
"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive."
~ C.S. Lewis
I've always liked that quote.  But what Lewis says here is a double edged sword.  Is it right to force a non-Christian nation to accept the constraints of Christianity?  Frankly, the argument Christians have every right to impose, what they view as righteous laws, on others has largely been based on the claim the founding fathers meant to found a Christian nation.   Since the founders meant to create a nation built on the bedrock of Judeo-Christian beliefs it's not merely a strongly heartfelt position held, but an inalienable right.  "...Christians have the right to rule their own country," as Jerry Falwell put it.  The first major problem with this belief is Christ is a king, and he has a kingdom he tells us plainly is not of this world.   Of course the argument then shifts from one of the intent of creating a Christian nation to now speaking of a nation founded upon Christian principles.   A Christian nation and a nation founded upon Judeo-Christian principles are vastly different things.   The Christian nation is a kingdom ruled by Christ Jesus, and it is not of this world.  A nation following certain principles doesn't require Christ at all.  In fact a nation founded upon Judeo-Christian principles doesn't follow a Christ centered model.  The model for a nation built upon  Judeo-Christian principles follows more a Moses centered model of ruling.  A nation is given a set of standards which are codified into legal responsibilities for the nation's citizens.   The law of Moses, if broken, carried the most dire of punishments, death and/or being cut off from among the people; what we'd call today 'excommunication'.   Forcing compliance works with the Moses model, but it doesn't work with the Jesus model.   Jesus makes it clear that the keeping of laws is no way to become a citizen in his kingdom.

Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.  Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. 
"The who sins is a slave..."  The religious leaders listening to Jesus teach this wouldn't have problem with what Jesus is teaching.  After all Jesus is teaching what they themselves believe.   At that time one of the most common form of slavery was basically indentured service.  A person who could not support himself could find someone who would care for his needs, train him in a useful trade.   The slave would then work off the debt owed to his master, and upon completion of the service would be freed from slavery.  This kind of slavery was the Roman world's version of welfare.  We all know, none of us is perfect, even the religious leaders knew they weren't perfect, but they thought their efforts to keep the Mosaic laws and their continuous reaching for perfection in practice kept them in good stead with God.   Jesus turns the tables on them when he goes onto say, "...Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever."  OUCH!  Jesus tells them, you don't get it.  "Your relationship to Abraham doesn't make you a son in God's house.  Even if an indentured slave could pay the full monetary worth of his slavery, or even a 100x his indebtedness, he would not be a member of the family.  Adoption is the only way for a slave to become a part of the family he served as slave.   It doesn't matter how hard the religious leaders worked to pay off their debts to God, they would always have the status of "not a member of the family."   Paying one's sin debt to God by keeping laws changes nothing for the slave to sin.  The only thing which changes the slave is adoption into the family.
 
No matter the intent of the religious leaders of his day, they could do nothing about their status as slaves.  All members of Christ's kingdom are adopted sons/daughters from among a world enslaved to sin.  Christianity isn't a national treasure, Christianity is the adoption by God in his family.  God achieves this adoption by paying off the slaves debt by enslaving his only Son to a Roman cross and finally to the grave.   God then offers adoption, through his resurrected Son, into his eternal family.   Christianity isn't something any human founder or citizen of any nation in the world, can bestow.  Christianity is God's alone to bestow. 
  
In this election season, when we pick our leaders, vote your conscience, but do not say, in any part of your being, "I am doing this because this is a Christian nation, and we need to take it back for Christ."   If Christ wanted this nation he'd have already taken it. 

"Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me."

So what's a Christian to do about this "Nanny State"?   There are so many burdens upon the state, and the children it cares for, like slavery to sin, so extend a little grace.  Stop tying up heavy loads which you drop on men's shoulders, you know religious rules and laws against, say gay marriage, though you will not lift a finger to help them find freedom in Christ.  Keeping laws against gay marriage or even abortion won't change the status of slaves.  Remember you are not of this world, just as Christ is not of this world.  Remember that you are adopted Children of the living God, and the freedom of Christ can't be taken away, even by the most powerful "Nanny State" on the earth.  Seek first to serve God's kingdom and purposes, and then he can show you how best to engage a world enslaved to sin, and the body politic (also enslaved to sin, by the way).
Good, but not God's statute of liberty


God's statute of liberty: Perfect!
 

 







Saturday, October 6, 2012

IT MAY BE MY DESTINY, BUT I STILL DON'T HAVE TO LIKE IT!



 "Every man has his own destiny: the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him."
~ Henry Miller


. . .


GOD'S CALL

 "But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves."



What I believe or you believe is of little real importance to God.   God tells us many things, "love, trust, obey, believe," but he never says "figure me out."  Somewhere at sometime some people decided the Bible was what they said it was, and anyone who dared disagree would suffer God's wrath.  Funny Jesus taught that obedient people would know the truth.  James took that a step further, do or you are deceiving yourself.  I don't know where "obey" was replaced with "believe this way, and only this way about the Bible."  When I want to know the truth of the Bible have no further to go than obedience.  The Bible is true, not merely because I've read it, but because of the times I've done what I read.   The guy God holds up as the "Father of Faith", Abraham, does what God tells him to do, and when he has obeyed God he figures God out.  And here's the thing...Abraham had no written account;  Abraham had no Bible.
 
"By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, “In Isaac your seed shall be called,concluding that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead, from which he also received him in a figurative sense."
 
It took Abraham 3 days to get to the place God commanded him to take Issac to sacrifice.  In that time Abraham came to a startling conclusion, "God is able to raise the dead."  God hadn't told Abraham he could raise the dead, Abraham figured it out, and that was part of God's intent for commanding Abraham to sacrifice his son Issac.  God also means to send us, all of us, a message, "Want to figure God out, then simply obey."  Abraham didn't sit around trying to figure God out, he didn't stand up shake his fist at God and yell, "You promised me, and now look what you're doing," before he obeyed.  Abraham did what God told him to do, and when he obeyed he saw something about God, God had never revealed before.  Today people of faith sit around trying to figure God out, and the end result isn't an understanding of God.   There is a story about comedic actor W. C. Fields, a notorious lush, womanizer, who was completely irreverent, and irreligious.  Someone saw Fields reading a Bible.  "What are you doing, Bill?" came the shocked and incredulous query.  Fields, nonchalantly flipping the Bible's pages, quipped, "Looking for loopholes."  People who want to believe the Bible without doing what it says are looking for ways around God.  God isn't in our debt we are in his.  Those who want to know God have only to do what God says and God will lead them unfailingly to himself, and truth, which makes them free.
    
Another of Jesus of Nazareth's  names is "Faithful and True".  If a person is born again, then that person is kind after Christ's kind.  God is conforming believers into the image and likeness of Christ.  "Faithful and True", are what truly born again people are being conformed to, so I have little choice as regards the service God calls me to do with him.  That doesn't mean I have to like God's call, but I have no choice.  I know God will have his way with me.  God never says I have to like it.  Submission is not agreement.  Submission is doing something even when you don't like it, want to do it, or agree with it 100%.  I didn't like the little "Word of Faith" church, (better known as the "health and wealth gospel")  I attended for 3.5 years.  I don't believe in that "name it claim it, blab it grab it," nonsense, and 3 1/2 years did nothing to make my heart grow fonder of "Word of Faith" theology.  Through all of that I remained faithful in my service in that church.   How could I do such a thing knowing parts of their theology were so completely wrong?   It was only the teachings specific to "Word of Faith" theology which were the problem.  My Rheme Bible College trained pastor, when he wasn't teaching WoF (Word of Faith) nonsense had a pretty good handle on the Bible's great lessons.  I submitted knowing I could never agree with large chunks of the theology, and that is what submission is all about.  Submission is something every believer is called to do.  God didn't call me to attend services at the local Jehovah's Witness's Kingdom Hall.  God didn't push me toward the Mormon temple.
   
When I kick God's call to the curb my reasons are real reasons...okay, most of the time...sometimes I don't like it and I've got no reason.  Most of the time I have really very valid reasons for balking at what God has called me to do.  As I explain in my post, "Why I hate God's call on my life", I had an uncle monster, and instead of protecting me from uncle monster, my human dad all but handed me over to my tormentor.   I have valid reasons to be very afraid of Christians.   I don't function at all when I'm trapped in situations which mirror that anvil (uncle monster) and the hammer (my dad).   I can only sit there and take the beating.  That probably isn't a very good analogy, because someone will say something like, "God is just beating you into something useful."   Um...God isn't responsible for my dad's or my uncle's behavior toward me.  God doesn't promise everything that happens to us will be good.  I've already received plenty of bad from fellow Christians.  
As an adult I asked my dad why he didn't step up to help me as a child.  I didn't bring up uncle monster, I thought that might be too much for dad.  I told him I used to sit just outside their bedroom door, where I could sit unseen and watch The Tonight Show.   I was in most danger when the television went off, so I tried to slip away before that time.  On many occasions the television went off before I could escape, and I'd have to sit silently, for quite awhile before  I could slowly slip off to my bedroom.  Without the cover of the televisions noise I had to move very carefully.   It was during those times I had to sit silently my mother would try to have discussions with my father.  To mom's credit she tried, faithfully and tirelessly, to discuss my troubles with dad.   She'd say things like, "Sam, I wish you would take some time with Lonnie.  He is having a really hard time..."   Dad, was also faithful and tireless in his responses, "Aww! Lonnie's just fine, leave him alone, there is nothing wrong with him."  Dad, to his credit, remembered having some of those conversations...Mom begged, and dad refused, I don't know how many times, for many years, and he now knew I had overheard many of those conversations.  With all of the back story out of the way I asked dad a question, "Dad, why didn't you listen to mom and reach out to help me?"   I wasn't angry, I wasn't accusing, and I wasn't being judgmental.  I knew God had given me forgiveness for my dad, and I simply wanted to give him a chance to discuss it now that I didn't need his help.  He said, "Honey, I didn't know what to do."  I wasn't blown away, shocked, or angry.  I had known for years my dad didn't care about me; didn't care about anyone of us.  The most freeing thing God could do was to show me that my dad didn't care about anyone else but himself, long before I was born.   I was free and I knew it, and I knew without any doubt at all that my dad had never cared anything about me.
  
My dad was a very intelligent man.  He knew a lot about firearms, history, pharmacology (he was a pharmacist), our family history, Dale Carnegie's training based on his famous book, How To Win Friends and Influence People.   He took the Carnegie course 7 times.  He wasn't at all interested in winning friends he wanted influence over people.  Dad would have taken the course many more times, but the trainers/facilitators knew dad wanted to manipulate and control people and started working to stop him.  What dad cared about he went to obsessive extremes to learn everything he could.   Dad had a massive library of porn, but not one book, class, or even a conversation about how to parent.  If dad didn't know something he didn't care to know about it.  All of this isn't evidence of bitterness toward my dad.   I say all of this to now say, "For the last 22 years, all of my Christian walk I've asked Christians over and over again, "Why doesn't anyone in the Church ever reach out to sexually/relationally broken people."  I knew the answer to the question, before ever asking the first Christian.  I started asking Christians why they wouldn't reach out to sexually/relationally broken people, because I already knew the answer.  I'd already lived the answer in my own life with my own dad.   And I didn't simply ask Christians why they didn't reach sexually/relationally broken I asked very specifically, "Why don't Christians reach out to LGBT people?"   For 22 years I heard the same exact excuse my dad gave me for not reaching out to me, as my father.   I started asking Christians, not for my information, but so Christians incriminated themselves before their heavenly Father.   It was utterly and completely reprehensible that my human dad had neglected all of his family.  It was worse that he had handed his youngest son over to a cruel teenager, and the only thing he cared about was that the screams for help from his youngest son were disturbing his evening's television viewing.   Do you think God will hold believers any less responsible for their excuses? 
  
I have always known the call of God on my life.  I never knew all the details, but I knew I wasn't going to like it, and I've kicked against it.  I knew God was calling me to serve the Church.  I don't mean the call was to serve "in" the Church, but to serve the Church, in a very specific way.  I'll get to that in due time.  My defense has always been the same defense... Get Christians to answer one simple question:

"WHY WON'T YOU REACH OUT TO LGBT PEOPLE WITH THE FREEDOM OF CHRIST?"

I have always known the answer I would receive.  I knew because I've seen the same kind of disinterest and coldness in Christians I saw in my dad.  "The problem homosexuals have is they need to make different choices."   I knew the Christian argument from late night after the TV went off.  "Aww!  There is nothing wrong with Lonnie, leave him alone, he's fine."   There is no real problem, you just think there is a problem.   Of course neither my dad nor any Christians I've known took the time to look into what they were denying.  Dad never once asked me if I needed help, and I've never met a Christian who ever asked me that question when they learned about my past in homosexuality.   The greatest evidence that Christians have not and will not take the time to investigate their accusations, that LGBT people have nothing harder to face than a choice, is their confession:  "We don't know what to do."  Knowing what to do would have taken, at least, some steps to investigate the claims of LGBT people.  "You don't know what to do, because if you spend time considering homosexuality, it is only to make useless and baseless assumptions and accusations. 

Some of you have spent thousands of dollars, years and years to understand your theological and historical approach to what you believe.  Many of you have spent thousands of hours and dollars to learn about and disseminate knowledge about Christian America and why America should turned back to Christ.   You have poured your hearts into all that is near and dear to your hearts, and many of you have told me how near and dear I am to your hearts.  You and many others have spent a lot of time understanding and defending the Bible's condemnation of homosexuality, but you have spent no time, EVER, learning to understand the road to freedom which leads to the this verse in 1 Corinthians 6...

"...and such were some of you..."
 
Oh!  you were happy God had done it in my life, and you were happy I was doing something about it!!  Even when I've been harsh and profane, in the past, some of you almost went overboard to slap me on the back with the hardiest, "ATA BOY LONNIE!!  GET THOSE GAY AND GAY LOVING CHRIST HATERS!!   At first I thought, "Maybe I could make a difference here, with what I know, maybe they'll listen and go into action."  That hope didn't last long.  So I kept writing and y'all kept cheering me on (There were a few of you who stood up to me at times, and many stopped coming around because they knew something wasn't right, though they couldn't have known what it was).   But I knew something none of you ever considered:  You liked me, some of you loved me, as a Christian, but if you had known me before Jesus Christ you'd have nothing to do with me.  You liked me because I upheld your beliefs, and fought against those bad old gays.  You'd never have liked me if you'd thought I wasn't what you wanted me to be.  What you didn't know, but what I have always known is:   Every time you cheered me on, you were condemning yourselves.  I may not be standing in front of God while he's judging you on judgment day, but all the words of support you tossed my way were going to bite you square in the butt, when you faced Christ's judgment.   I knew I was also in for some judgment for some of it, but I was pretty sure I'd be better off than any of you.  See all that support so many of you gave begs the question, "If God has done such a great job with Lonnie, wouldn't he do it for people who had been like Lonnie???"   You could approve of me, as a Christian, but Christ died for me before I ever came to him.  God, on the grounds of Christ's shed blood, on Calvary had every reason and right to pursue me until he caught me.  All of you pursue me because of what I am now, but you would never, like Christ, pursue me and draw me into loving relationship.  When you get Lonnie, you get what God will do in all those bad old gay people.  Get Christ into them and you'll like them just fine.  When you praise what God has done, but you yourselves will not lift a finger to help, you are guilty of disobedience to Christ.  Because God did good to me, he killed his enemy, me, and recreated in me, his friend and son.  What I am, all of those LGBT persons are when God kills his enemy by making him/her his friend.  It excites me when I meet a hooker, atheist, gay person.  I know God has a plan and a purpose to be their friend.  I don't know how he wants to do that, and I don't have too.  I simply approach them relationally, "Hey, how are you today?"  There is always something I see in or on every person I meet.  I can kick off a conversation on something I notice about or on a person.  Once I have made a relational approach the desire to continue building that relationship grows with each moment I learn about that person.   Early in my walk with Christ, every halfway good looking guy became an object of lust.  God taught me to approach and begin the process of relating.  When I speak to a person that is a relational or relating act.  Once I've begun to relate then the desire to relate to the person overcomes the lust to use that person for sex.  God's overcoming power is in relationship, and as I relate that power to draw that person into relationship becomes stronger and stronger.  The more I grow to care about a person the less I lust.  When I begin relating, sex can't compare to the power of the desire to befriend and then want to see that person become an eternal member of the family.  When I'm filled with the desperation of God's love and desire for relationship, LOOK OUT WORLD...YOU ARE GOING UP ON THE CROSS WITH CHRIST AND COMING UP A NEW AND ETERNAL LIFE!!!!  I start relating and God can do anything he wants, and often does.  Talking to people gives me all the ammunition to pray for them later, and sometimes I run into them time and time again.
 
When I was a kid, visiting family in Tennessee, in the Summer, we'd catch June Bugs, tie a string around one of their back legs and they'd fly in a circle because they're tethered to the thread.   I could let out the thread or take in the thread to bring the bug in closer, and it would fly faster and closer until I'd pulled the bug back into my hand.  Sometimes it's like God ties a string to me, and onto the leg of some lost person, and then he just pulls the string in tighter and tighter until he brings them in through me.   God is so in love with hurting and lost people, and he loves flying them right into Christ.   See, when you obey Christ it's almost impossible not to draw people in.  Of course if you are fighting God's call the process begins breaking down.  And when you want to show God he shouldn't call you, because Christians won't ever do what he wants them to do no matter what he has accomplished in and through me.   Then I start setting Christians up so they cannot fail to bring judgment on their own heads.  I don't want to bring destruction to Christians, but I've always wanted a reason to keep them away from me.  Hey, you don't want to be around me anyway.  All Christians want from me is to give them a place to send those gay people who bother them.  Christians don't care if I kick their butts or draw them toward Christ as long as Christians don't have to get their hands dirty on "those" people.  Christians like it when "those" people come to Christ, but not because of love.  Christians simply don't want to deal with those people, just like my dad didn't want to have to deal with me.  
So what is Lonnie's call exactly??? 

WHAT IS THE REAL DEAL I'VE BEEN TRYING TO ESCAPE??   HOW HAS GOD BEEN PULLING ON THAT STRING TIED TO HIS FINGER AND MY LEG UNTIL I'M AT THE DEAD CENTER OF HIS CALL??