Tag: Jesus

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True Christians vs Devil Worshippers

Christians

It is a privilege to write about the persecuted church, who are true Christians, and one I certainly do not deserve. I feel that this should be done by someone holy, which I am not. I am an ordinary sinner. Their stories of great persecution and of great faith often reduce me to tears and make me more aware of how much I take my religious freedoms for granted and how undeserving I am of God’s tremendous grace and love.

I desperately want to help them. I would like to reach through my computer screen and lift them out of their misery and restore them in every possible way. On a tangible level, I am limited to giving what I can. I encourage everyone to give generously to the persecuted church. Our brothers and sisters often sacrifice everything to follow Jesus Christ, and they need our help. As Christians know though, our power is really in our prayers and petitions to our God. It is in my prayers for them, which are the most frequent and the most intense of all my prayers, that my hope ultimately resides. I would like the Lord to hear these above all others, hear his people’s tears and suffering, and with his powerful hand do what I cannot.  

Christ Suffered, True Christians Also Suffer

When Christians pray, we often ask for many things. We ask to be granted various forms of aid and to be relieved of suffering for ourselves and for others. This is quite understandable, and we should continue to do so. However, we also need to remember that the story for Christians is the story of Christ, and his story is one of suffering. Jesus died a brutal death, executed by crucifixion under false charges. It was also a death he freely accepted. We can remember his journey and allow his tremendous sacrifice, which is our salvation, to also be our comfort as we endure our own trials and tribulations.

“I Have Chosen You Out of the World”

The following words applied to Jesus’s disciples then and still apply to the persecuted church throughout the world today. Jesus said, “If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love you its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you…. And they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know the one who sent me.” (John 15:18-19, 21)

A Story of a True Christian

There are so many stories of persecution that deserve our attention, and they span the globe, from the Middle East to Asia to Africa to South America. To highlight one story, there is nothing more painful for a parent than to lose his or her child. As shared by Christopher Summers with Open Doors (2019), Neelesh’s 7-year-old Christian son was beaten to death by Buddhist boys at his boarding school in India.

After his death, his depressed father resorted to alcohol to self-medicate and, on one occasion, ran into his former pastor. “Gazing right into my eyes, he said, ‘Neelesh, do you want to meet your son?’ I was so very angry. I said, ‘Are you mocking me? You know he is long dead!’ To my astonishment, the pastor replied gently, ‘If you drink like this and leave Jesus, you will never meet your boy, who is now in heaven.’

‘His answer shook me to the core. Here was the truth! My son was just seven when he died, but he loved Jesus. He sang hymns wholeheartedly whenever I led in worship. My martyred son is surely in heaven. I would never see him if I left Jesus.

‘That night I had a vision. I saw my son playing in a beautiful garden. As I went towards him he stopped me and said, “Dad, you should not come here now. It is not yet your time. See, I am very happy here.”’

Neelesh says that after that night he felt an extraordinary peace in his heart. He comforted his wife and restarted his ministry. ‘It was as if God had revived me totally,’ he says. ‘I moved on with more faith and zeal than ever and have been continuing still.’”

Christians who are born again can often point to a moment when grace penetrated their heart, mind and soul and soon thereafter redirected their lives to fulfill God’s will. This is not to suggest that they magically transform into a different person or that they experience no doubts or spiritual setbacks afterwards but that their faith becomes solidified in a way it had not been before and that they gain renewed clarity and purpose for their lives.

The truth of Neelesh’s life is that his suffering, the loss of his only son because he followed Jesus, could have made him a bitter man, but instead he became a better man and a better Christian through grace. This is what it means to be a Christian.

Desecration of Christians’ Sacred Symbols

It feels almost sacrilegious to write of the holy and the unholy in the same post, but it is important to place them next to each other to see the obvious contrast of true Christians with devil worshippers. It is easy to hold the Bible high, and we recently witnessed this profanity by the dear leader of the devil worshippers, the supposed president of the United States. This sacrilegious act made headlines for all the wrong reasons, yet it was defended by certain people of whom we will speak shortly.

Mariann Budde, the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, wrote on June 4, 2020, “I was outraged by…Trump’s use of the Bible and the backdrop of St. John’s Church for his political purposes. I was horrified to learn that while he was threatening to use military force across America, peaceful protesters were being forcibly removed from Lafayette Park so that he might pose before the church for a photograph. I wasn’t alone. My phone lit up with messages from people across the country who, like me, couldn’t believe what we were seeing. But if we keep the focus of our outrage there, we allow ourselves to be distracted from the issues that are compelling Americans to take to the streets in large numbers. I wonder if that’s the intention.”

Indeed, the nation is wondering a good many things. Predominant among them should be: how did we get here, where a satanic cult leader is also the leader of the free world? Perhaps the most important reason is: the “Christian right.”

The Opposite of Christians – Devil Worshippers

The Gospel Coalition recently wrote a piece on QAnon, which they described as a satanic cult. Carter (May 20, 2020) wrote, “As Adrienne LaFrance writes, ‘To look at QAnon is to see not just a conspiracy theory but the birth of a new religion.’” Indeed. That new religion is a satanic cult that bears no resemblance to Christianity. Carter follows with, “(…Trump has frequently retweeted QAnon-related accounts on Twitter, and some parenting and lifestyle ‘influencers’ promote the views on Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook.) Although it’s still on the fringe, Christians should be aware of the threat this political cult poses to the global church.”

What The Gospel Coalition and Carter should have said is that they are actually describing the “Christian right,” i.e. self-proclaimed “Christian conservatives,” although there is nothing either Christian or conservative about them, and that QAnon is just a more extreme expression of the very ideas and the culture that is mainstream in their churches. The “Christian conservatives” will take great umbrage at this characterization and protest (of course, they doth protest too much), but it is an accurate description.

As just one example, Eric Martin (August 2020) wrote, “One of the alt-right’s biggest political influences is former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, communications director under Ronald Reagan. He and fellow Catholic Joe Sobran served as inspiration for a blog referred to as ‘the alt-right’s favorite philosophy instructor,’ and his comments on immigration and questioning the Holocaust are the type of kinder, gentler white nationalism that provides oxygen for the more obvious forms. Buchanan has claimed that Jews hold the ‘real power’ in the U.S., that not as many died in the Holocaust as reported, and that ‘this has been a country built, basically, by white folks.’ When an interviewer suggested that white people had held power in the U.S. for years, Buchanan bristled. ‘I don’t know where you grew up,’ he retorted. ‘I grew up in a Catholic ghetto.'”

As another example, Franklin Graham is the son of Billy Graham, and he has inherited a legacy he does not deserve. What was the supposed high priest of the “Christian right’s” reaction to the repugnant desecration of a church? Franklin Graham took to Facebook with the following message, “President Donald J. Trump made a statement by walking through Lafayette Park to St. John’s Episcopal Church that had been vandalized and partially burned Sunday night. He surprised those following him by holding up a Bible in front of the church. Thank you President Trump. God and His Word are the only hope for our nation.” What would compel Franklin Graham to defend the indefensible?

Simple. Franklin Graham does not worship Jesus Christ. He worships himself and Donald Trump. He is power hungry. Similarly, Eric Metaxas does not worship Jesus Christ. He worships himself and Donald Trump. He is a careerist. Another, Jerry Falwell, Jr. does not worship Jesus Christ. He worships himself and Donald Trump. He is an opportunist. The list goes on. They worship false gods. They are devil worshipers since they all worship Donald Trump. They are not Christians, and they need to stop claiming to be Christians. Do not be led astray by these pretenders, these worshippers of false gods.

Christians’ One True God

Let us return to our one true God. Jesus fulfills the word, and what he said of the unbelievers who knew Moses’s laws and words and could recite them quite well but never understood their meaning still applies today to other self-proclaimed “believers.” Jesus said, “’I do not accept human praise; moreover, I know that you do not have the love of God in you. I came in the name of my Father, but you do not accept me; yet if another comes in his own name, you will accept him. How can you believe, when you accept praise from one another and do not seek the praise that comes from the only God?” (John 5:41-44)

The false prophets do not love Jesus or the Father, and they do not have the love of God in them. We know this because if they did, it would show clearly to the rest of us. Instead, when we hear them or see them, we cannot see Jesus because he is not there. Jesus is one of the most loved and admired figures in the world. Even those who do not believe in his divinity can see his goodness because it is clear who Jesus loves. He loves the Father and us. He is one with the Father, and every word he spoke and every action he took reflected who he was and who he loved.

When in the garden at Gethsemane, Jesus says, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me; still, not my will but yours be done.” (Luke 22:42) This is what real love of God looks like, and it is also obvious in the persecuted church. Do not mistake false prophets for men of God. Men of god love God; they seek his praise and his love; they seek to do his will. In Neelesh, we can see Jesus. Summers writes, “The anguish of losing his son has not passed—and never will—but the hope has returned. ‘I have made up my mind now,’ Neelesh says. ‘I will live for Christ and if He wants, I will die for him. Because what I lose for Him, I will actually gain in the end.’”

Martin Luther King, Jr.

In Martin Luther King, Jr., we can see Jesus. In his famous, I’ve Been to the Mountaintop speech, he said, “All we say to America is be true to what you said on paper….  Somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for rights….

We’ve got some difficult days ahead, but it really doesn’t matter with me now because I have been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place, but I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will, and he’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the Promised Land. So, I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” He was assassinated the next day.  

The “Christian Right” Are Not Christians

Instead, what do people see when they look at the “Christian right”? Nothing holy and nothing resembling Jesus. There are so many damning statements. I am surely missing some of the most biting, but here is a sampling nonetheless.

“Evangelicals use the cloak of Christianity to disguise their true nature like klansman use their hoods. They share the same God, a racist vengeful God, a God made in their own image, a God who supports their worst fears, hate and prejudice. They see trust and love as an abyss.”

“A Born-Again Karen…”

“Jesus wasn’t white or American or Republican. Something tells me you’d be less enthusiastic if you met him in the flesh.”

“The fact that so many conservative Christians have interpreted many people’s desire to eradicate white supremacy as a precursor to canceling Christianity in America is incredibly telling …”

You get the idea. It is like trying to escape one’s racist past while still being racist in the present. No amount of cute marketing gimmicks, such as “weird [insert denomination or denomination] Twitter,” can change that.

The Satanic Cult Leader

Christianity Today’s retired editor in chief Mark Galli (December 2019) wrote a powerful statement regarding Trump’s impeachment, in which he declared that Trump should be removed from the office because of his character weaknesses and his conduct. Galli’s statement took courage, and he deserves credit for it. However, you know what else was powerful? The backlash against it from white evangelicals and other “Christian conservatives.”

More recently, Christianity Today published a piece that wholly lacked Galli’s moral clarity. Jayson Casper (June 30, 2020) wrote, “… ‘Trump’s executive order will make the commitment to international religious freedom more robust,’ said former congressman Frank Wolf, arguing the Trump administration has been markedly stronger on the issue than those of either party. ‘If you care about religious freedom, this is an issue to vote on.’”

Indeed, if you care about religious freedom, it is an issue to vote on, but it would be decidedly against Trump, the man who gave the green light to Xi’s concentration camp for Uighurs, in which all manner of evil occurs including rape. Religious freedom means religious freedom for all, not just for Christians.

What Christianity and Christians Look Like

While the “Christian right” morally contorts themselves into pretzels to avoid what is clearly a difficult choice for them between Jesus and Trump, the persecuted church has no such difficulties. They, like Martin Luther King, Jr., like the recently deceased John Lewis, like Elijah Cummings, like so many good Christian men and women around the world choose Christ over everything including themselves. That is love for and faith in our Lord, Jesus Christ. That is what Christianity and true Christians look like. Do not be deceived by anything or anybody else. Look for the Lord in those who claim to be Christian and if you cannot find Jesus, you could very well be looking at the devil in disguise.

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Jesus’s Power Is the Antidote

Power
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Many of us might feel understandably powerless right now, as we face numerous hardships. A dangerous pandemic is costing hundreds of thousands of lives. At present, there have been at least 240,000 deaths from it worldwide. Our democracy is slipping away. The person who has taken over the White House is evil, greedy, corrupt and traitorous, as are his cronies, who have taken over our government.

Many institutions, such as the Justice Department, the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, among numerous others, have become corrupt in whole or in part due to the present administration. (See the latest development in Barr’s corrupt Justice Department.)

The economy is being destroyed, as Cohen and Hsu (2020) report, “more than 33 million people have joined the unemployment rolls in seven weeks…. [E]conomists expect the monthly jobs report on Friday to put the April unemployment rate at 15 percent or higher — a Depression-era level.”

Our planet is also being destroyed by greed and consumerism. Global climate imbalances are yielding strange results, such as plagues of locusts, murder hornets, and a polar vortex is forecast to hit the Northeast in the next couple days while the West is set to experience record heat.

White “vigilante justice” seems to go unchecked while black men are being subjected to modern-day lynching. More generally, the lives of black and brown people are being valued less than others. They are being treated as second-class citizens and have to operate under a different set of standards than other Americans.

Our social fabric is being eroded in other ways, as people have abandoned religious institutions, many of which have forsaken the path of Jesus and instead of worshiping God have been worshiping worldly things. Their hypocrisy and the general misguided nature of secularism has driven people into the arms of other false gods, such as paganism, scientism, or cult-like leaders, such as Richard Dawkins.

Younger people, in particular, are frustrated, as the changes they want are frequently thwarted often by older people, the people who should care about them, or the political or economic establishment, the institutions that should care about them. These are dark times for the nation and for the world, and it can all feel so hopeless.

Jesus’s Divine Power

However, for Christians and for the world, there is one great hope, one eternal light to which we can fix our fortunes and our spirits – Jesus Christ. Mathis (2020) writes, “In the final tally, Jesus stands alone. No other human has left such a deep and enduring impression on the world, and he did so in only three years of active public life.” This is an indisputable truth. No other person has had anywhere near the impact that Jesus has had.

Where did Jesus’s power come from? As Christians, we would answer from God, as he is one with the Father. For non-Christians, the broad details of Jesus’s life are the following. He was a poor Jew from Galilee, who was born in Bethlehem. He had a mere 12 Apostles. He had no social media platform, with no hoard of followers. He wrote nothing, not a single word. He had no degrees or certifications. He had no worldly titles, wealth, power or prestige (aside from being of the line of David). Jesus spoke words, and he performed miracles. He was crucified, and he rose from the dead.

Those who believe him to be a mere mortal might ask: how could his one life have transformed the world more than any other, and what insight might that provide regarding our current challenges?

Man’s False Power

The reality is that those with power now, like the Caesars of their day, will be largely forgotten or will become a cautionary tale for others aspiring to be like them and for those who are inclined to be seduced by them. None of us can predict the future, but one thing is certain: no human present or future will compare at all with the power Jesus has now and will continue to have.

Some Christians are handwringing about the state of the faith, its trajectory, particularly in the West, and the rise of secularism. They have little faith and need to have more of it in God’s plan. They need to trust him more. They need to focus on glorifying God and not themselves. They need to stop compromising their morality and Christianity for political expediency or a false sense of power. Real power rests in Jesus, in God, and we only have access to real power when we rest in him.

The Benefits of Jesus’s Power

The benefits of Jesus’s power as it resides in us is peace and hope. In our darkest hours, we can turn to him, to our Lord and our God, and know that we are loved. If we entrust in him our lives, his power becomes our power. One might ask: how does this translate in practical ways in the real world?

A feeling of peace and hope helps one continue to fight another day. One needs to keep the faith and fight the good fight until the end. God gives us that resilience. Our faith in Jesus is our strength, and as Christians, we should never forget that. We should also share his power manifested in us with others during our shared trials and tribulations. With this, we will be and will do what we are called to do – be the salt and light of the world.

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:13-16). Amen.

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On Defining Oneself by the Negative

negative
Caleb Minear on Unsplash

A person in a negative is hard to see. Similarly, a person defined in the negative is hard to understand. To be simply and honestly Christian is to define oneself in a straight-forward and positive way: we are Christ-followers. Define who you are by defining what you are for. Are you for Jesus? If you say “yes,” then he has to be at the center of everything in your life. By everything, I mean everything.

Not in the Negative – Christian in the Positive

In this essay, Mattson (2020) highlights what we should all know and be clear about as Christians. He writes, “One of the hallmarks of following Christ is emulating his life. And this is what Christianity essentially is: Jesus. Christianity isn’t a political ideology, or a sovereign nation, or a set of laws legislating values or enforcing a society’s preferred brand of morality. Christianity is centered upon Christ.”

Instead of a positive self-definition, many Christians have fallen into this trap of negative self-definition, often leaving Christ behind as they refer to the world in which they are too much involved. Some are opposed to abortion and same-sex marriage. Some are opposed to immigrants and non-whites. Some are opposed to, more generally, “liberal culture.” The list is long, tedious, and unhelpful.

Jesus denounced immorality and hypocrisy, but he was not defined by his opposition to these things or to the Jewish religious establishment and its corruption. Instead, what defined him was what he advocated, what he taught, what he asked of us, what he said and did. This is what we follow and try to emulate.

If you are about children and families, as most people are, by the way, then actually support families. Help poor families raise their children out of poverty. If you are about a certain cultural position, say traditional marriage, then support that cause. Broken black families, in particular, could benefit from real support from Christians, meaning financial, psychological and spiritual support.

Instead of chastising others who do not fit your worldview – help those that do. If you are opposed to immigrants and non-whites, you really need to revisit Jesus’s teachings because there is no support in them for those positions. If you are opposed to “liberal culture” or “conservative culture,” how do you define those cultures? This one exercise in definition might not be as straight-forward as you might expect.

The Negative Is More Dangerous for Non-Christians

For non-Christians, the negative trap is even more dangerous. There is no one example to which they can set their compass, no star of Bethlehem, as Christians have in Jesus. They are stranded on a vast ocean, water everywhere yet not a drop to drink. What good is water if one cannot drink it, if it cannot sustain life? We have the water of life. We just have to have faith in the Word, and it will flow.

Non-Christians have to not just define themselves in the positive, as we do, but first, they have to determine what the positive actually is. What does the positive look like? Some atheists say that they do not like organized religion because it makes people into robots. Having a clear and positive self-definition as Christ-followers have in Jesus is not turning someone into an automaton. Instead, it is similar to the difference between a photo and its negative.  

We are made in God’s image, and we have a clear image of God as man – an image in the positive. As any good Christian knows, emulating Jesus is hard. We will fail and fail again. We ask our God and each other for forgiveness. In this process, we become more aware of our own particular weaknesses and vulnerabilities, which we also take to the Lord in prayer to help us overcome them. There is nothing robotic in this lifelong spiritual journey. It is as individual as the prints on our hands and feet, as we are.

What is robotic, however, is looking to a stronger central government for direction on personal conduct, which really needs to be developed the hard way, that is character formation through individual introspection and reformation, and in the aggregate, a cultural unity that is as thin as the government’s decrees.

This is where Europe went astray. Its people, tired of the religious wars and their religious institutional failures, effectively abdicated morality to the government. However, governments are ill-suited for a task so complex and profound and are also even more prone to corruption than the church is while lacking a stable corrective mechanism as the church has. As argued here, Jesus Christ’s teachings are indelible and immutable; a nation’s laws are not. Once a bad leader rises to power, the country’s laws can be changed, and the leader can be hard to overthrow.    

It is tempting but unproductive to define oneself by everything one is against, that is in the negative. Define what you are for, and then do the hard work of committing to those things and fighting for them. Put your time, talent and treasure into those efforts. This applies to Christians and non-Christians alike. The difference is that, for Christians, we have a clear picture – in the positive – of what that should look like.

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Eternal Truths: Grief, Death and the Cross

Grief
Photo: Priscilla du Preez on Unsplash

I won’t pretend to speak about grief with any real knowledge, as I have never experienced it on a deeply personal level. However, I find Good Friday the saddest time in the liturgical calendar and, for me, it best approximates a feeling of grief. Like the rest of us, I know how the story ends, it ends joyfully with Jesus’s resurrection on Easter Sunday, yet it is so moving and hard every time.

Harrell writes, “the manger is not the central symbol of our faith. The empty tomb isn’t either. Christians decided early on that the sign of their faith would be a cross.” He goes on to say, “We hang on to our crosses, even at Easter, because it is in the hard places of life where Christ’s presence with us proves most holy.”

Grief and the Passion

I agree, but I think that Christians chose the cross to symbolize them and the faith because the crucifixion is the most selfless aspect of Jesus’s life. It is an incomparable sacrifice, and if you have the courage to engage with the Passion fully, it can bring you to your knees, maybe to the ground completely.

During Catholic masses on Good Friday, priests will lie prostrate before the altar, above which often hangs a cross or a crucifix. Just to watch that act of devotion and humility can bring one to tears. Theirs is a gesture of grateful submission that invokes Jesus’s gracefully submission to God the Father’s will.

This is also why Christians around the world literally walk Jesus’s path, the Stations of the Cross, year after year. They want to remember his pain and suffering, his divine grace, his love and compassion at the most difficult moment of his life, at his death.

To remember Jesus’s beauty in death is also a way of vicariously engaging with our suffering and our mortality. When death calls us, will we respond with bitterness, resentfulness, anger, fear, or depression? Or will Jesus’s steps to his Father remind us that we can bear the momentary weight of the cross because each step ultimately brings us closer to another life, one free of everything that burdens us in this one.       

Grief and the Coronavirus Pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic has not fundamentally changed death’s calculus, as it is always and forever a possibility. Really, what has changed is our awareness of the possibility of death or serious illness and our daily lives. As a thought-exercise, imagine if the probability of death were always at a relatively heightened level, as it is now. Imagine that it were even higher, such as during the Bubonic plague.

If this were “the new normal,” would we alter our lives permanently? Constantly hiding in our homes, practicing social distancing, or would we just resign ourselves to a lower life expectancy and a higher likelihood of death, and simply change psychologically or spiritually instead? Would we make peace with death?

If it is the latter, what would the shape of the peace be? Would it take the shape of the cross? Ultimately, the death that awaits us is unlikely to be anywhere near as hard as Jesus’s. And for many people around the world, they might view death as easier than their present lives.

For all of us, Jesus’s life and death is a source of comfort. In our darkest moments, we can find him there, or we can choose to go to him. To kneel in a quiet church, alone, staring up at the cross with his dead, tortured body hanging from it, and in our gratitude and submission, we can escape everything else because, ultimately, nothing else really matters.

I have no standard words of comfort to offer those in fear of death or those in grief, no angels or other well-meaning but essentially hallow allusions. I have only the truth, Jesus’s truth, and I hope that in his divine truth, one can find the shape of peace. It is the shape that Christians everywhere wear with pride, strength and full knowledge that the way, the truth and the life leads one out of this world and into the next.