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Opinion

Are Modern Christians Church Men Or Church Mice?

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Where are the world-changers and cultural firebrands?

In a piece in The Stream, Albin Sadar, producer of The Eric Metaxas Show asks, “Is it possible that modern day Christians are more like church mice than church men? Is that what the Church has become? Instead of leading the charge, is the Church hiding under the pews?”

He begins his piece with a common situation many Christians today find themselves in — they’re out of step with their fellow brothers- and sisters-in-Christ on cultural and political issues.

Many Christians know that if they shared what their actual thoughts are on Critical Race Theory, trans-ing the kids, the mRNA “vaccines” that don’t do what we were told they would do, or simply that the world just seems to be spinning out of control, their fellow church-goers would silence and shun them immediately.

That’s not how things were just a few years ago.

Many pastors saw their role as equipping the saints to influence the culture with the Gospel in every realm of life.

I was a member of a church years ago where the pastors pounded home the message that they were building and planting churches to influence the culture with the Gospel, an influence extending into media, into arts and entertainment, into race relations. Individuals were told that the truth of the Gospel should penetrate every aspect of an individual believer’s life, too, how a person lived day to day, where they chose to work, who they married. Everything the Holy God looked at in a Christian’s life, we were told, belonged to Him. He made us and we are His, to “glorify Him and enjoy Him forever,” as the Westminster Catechism tells us.

Now we are being told by some in this same well-intentioned crowd that Christians need to stay out of politics because we don’t want to ruffle feathers, and thus end up spoiling our message of “Love.”

This new “don’t rock the boat” attitude has permeated many churches and is antithetical to the roots of the Evangelical movement and especially the stated calling and vision of many churches just a few years ago.

Things have changed rapidly — culture and politics are now intertwined in a way that they weren’t just a few years ago.

Unfortunately, many churches have decided to go along to get along.

The late Andrew Breitbart once suggested that “politics was downstream from culture.” In other words, if you want to change politics, you need to change the culture. That may have been true when the words were first uttered, and perhaps even for many years thereafter, but today culture is politics, and politics is culture. The two have morphed into one. If you’re not woke (that wretched stepchild of political correctness) you are informed that you must not have any political power whatsoever. Period.

So, churches that say, “stay out of politics and be good little Christian boys and girls” somehow still believe they’re going into all the world to preach the Gospel. But, as Sir Thomas Moore pointed out, “Silence gives consent” — if you don’t say anything about the horrific trends of the day, you’re silently giving your approval.

Sadar then includes a timeless quote from the 1800s philosopher John Stuart Mill:

Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.

Sardar then concludes, “Evil people use their influence to fundamentally transform this country; why wouldn’t good people get involved to stop them?”

This is an excellent question.

He adds that there are pockets of places where Christians are taking a stand and we need to recognize that God is ultimately in control.

He has called us to “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel” but some Christians believe that we should not bring God into politics — when the word itself comes from the Greek and means the “affairs of the city.”

Does that mean that bringing the Gospel into “all the world” excludes the “affairs of the city”? How does that work?

One problem that Sardar cites is that many Christians have forgotten what Paul wrote to Timothy in 2Tim 1:7, “God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.”

In that verse alone we learn that we should be bold because we believe in the power of God (not in our own awkward, inadequate, sniffling weakness); that how we speak and confront should be done out of God-based love, sacrificial even, with a desire to make a change for the good, and with a mind that thinks with the wisdom of God, not chasing after or conferring with the “wisdom of the age,” which today is thoughtless and foolish.

He also adds that we are told in Romans 12:2 that we are not to be “conformed to this world” but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Yet, some churches are conforming to the world by going “woke” on political/cultural issues.

Sardar writes, “if pastors in particular truly believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, what need do they have of turning their churches into Woke Jesus churches?” He said that the church he went to used to preach that Jesus was all you needed, “Everything necessary for life and godliness was found in him and the book about him. Now we’ve entered a world-influenced Church of, “’heaven knows, anything goes.’”

Remember the encouragement found in the first chapter of the Book of Joshua: “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”

Engage in politics, the affairs of the city.

At the end of the day, the battle belongs to the God who loves us. And we who believe in this loving God must be engaged in the battle in any and every way we can, so “that this nation, under God,” as President Lincoln said at Gettysburg, “shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Source: The Stream

Amen!

The entire piece is definitely worth a read you can find it here.

Dear Christian: Your Fear Is Full of Crap

by Doug Giles

Beginning in March 2020, many Christians went into lockdown-freak-out mode.

They “socially distanced” themselves from corporate worship and from pretty much everyone and everything else, except, of course, liquor, and grocery stores.

Uncut, irrational, unbiblical, and not to mention, unconstitutional, fear gripped many churches and church leaders.

Should pastors publicly repent if they obeyed Fauci in regard to how they conducted their ministry instead of adhering to the clear commands of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords?

That’s a legit question, eh?

Get your copy of Dear Christian: Your Fear Is Full of Crap now. Better yet, grab an extra copy for any petrified pastor who dutifully put obedience to the unconstitutional edicts of Mayor McCheese ahead of obedience to the explicit commandments of the LORD God Almighty.

K. Walker

ClashDaily's Associate Editor since August 2016. Self-described political junkie, anti-Third Wave Feminist, and a nightmare to the 'intersectional' crowd. Mrs. Walker has taken a stand against 'white privilege' education in public schools. She's also an amateur Playwright, former Drama teacher, and staunch defender of the Oxford comma. Follow her humble musings on Twitter: @TheMrsKnowItAll and on Gettr @KarenWalker

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