We call these times “post-Christian” because Christ’s Gospel was abandoned over the last many decades by, of all people, pastors with weak faith. Such feeble shepherds of the flock have confused social reform pushed by Godless political activists with social reform preached by the Son of God. Instead of taking God’s Word to heart and mind, such religious leaders have let word snipes like “rigid,” “backwards,” “outdated,” and other excuses for ignoring Christ’s teachings make a mess of their mission. This carelessness has made them and those they serve open up to moral indifference, believing they have opened up to God. They have accepted progress without God, never once considering the damning consequences of that choice.
Such delinquent pastors have fallen for lies regarding Christianity, such as the one that says that since God’s love is unconditional, sin is forgiven with no further accounting. According to this take on Christianity, sin is an obsolete concept having no relevance to today’s people. So, doing what you desire is equal to doing what you ought. There really is nothing special you need to do for your path to heaven except “make a difference” (according to the media, of course), write checks, and wish everyone a nice day.
This gospel of indifference permits skipping the Commandments, for starters, and allows religious leaders to adapt scripture to “the times,” making it possible to follow one’s inclinations without reference to morality, rather than follow the will of God. What could be wrong with this putting self ahead of Christ? Well, smack off the bat, it obliterates the most precious relation there is to one’s Creator. And it makes you think that God changes his mind, from time to time, about the most important things in life.
I’ve said this before, even to pastors, and I repeat: God does not change; people do not change; what God stands for does not change. Trying to make Christianity “compatible with the times” is a futile exercise that violates divine purpose and blocks the way to real human progress. Distorting Christianity may win people, but to what? Does it make people flock to a Heavenly Shepherd or to an earthly disarray of Pied Pipers?
How did we get so far away from the faith?
Decades of layman research let me offer the following brief account. In the formative years of this country, prominent Unitarians, New England transcendentalists, and kindred elites of the mind busied themselves spreading notions of heaven-on-earth fit more for novels than for actual consumption. These intellectual aristocrats rejected ideas for societal reform that challenged their “inner goodness of man” take on idealism. I sometimes think that we might all be better off today if these pie-in-the-sky pundits of reform had instead been “men of the world” and canny about people as Homer who recorded that “men grow tired of sleep, love, singing, and dancing, sooner than war.” (I sense the need to eliminate sin in the philosophy of such reformers.)
It’s difficult to exaggerate the hubris from these New England Brahmins, filling heads with ideas out of the range of reality. They were joined by other utopian romantics who, while not openly professing atheism, were bent on establishing their pet notions for a better world. The varied approaches to global reform without the aid of God settled into a hybrid theology with some of the flavor of Christianity and none of its substance and vitality. It bamboozled many. And it provided faithful Christians with ammunition and targets for fighting a holy war in modern times. (It is ongoing.)
The theology of “reformed Christianity” flooding the mainstream churches over the past many decades featured core elements of secular humanism and it included Liberation Theology, both ideologies rejecting a divine Creator. The general ignorance regarding the Marxist character of Liberation Theology made that Godless ideology enter the church through the back door.
The persistent, ongoing inattention to Christ’s teachings, for which his disciples dedicated their lives to make known and bequeathed us a Gospel for that purpose, has created many Christians-in-Name-Only, whether they are aware of it or not. Among the vanguards of Gospel deniers are ex-Communist and leftover Sixties political rebels, now collectively called the Left, sexually disoriented bullies pushing their perversion, and mercenary moguls waving “Christianity” like a flag to gain support.
The scriptural insight that the poor will always be with us matches the truism that the wicked will also always be with us. The one calls for action that comes from the heart; the other calls for a change in heart — in all who habitually harm others regardless of reason. This violates the call of Christianity to treat our neighbors as ourselves. When this elemental requirement of Christianity is snubbed even by those who claim to be Christian, then true Christians must press for an unqualified return to the faith established by Christ in its original fullness.
Where is that never-surrender attitude that once made faithful Christians stand down opponents of the faith and made many sing “Onward, Christian Soldiers”?
The prayers of a great many have apparently been answered in the recent presidential election, with the return of a fighter possessed of the daring of a David against a Goliath. Whatever the outcome of Trump’s Judeo-Christian reset of the political and social scene, his God-driven call for sanity and justice should rouse many to their senses and lead to reforms that respect the Word of God.
Americans of divergent origins, customs and persuasions, who in the last election spoke loudly and clearly enough to upset and upstage the plans for a world order without God, have demonstrated the resilience and the power of all who stand with this great nation’s motto: In God We Trust.
American Thinker
Jesus Christ is King
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