The proper battle, well fought

The Charlotte, NC, police department has joined the ranks of the PC, at the urging of our good friends at the ACLU.  The officers that volunteer as chaplains at public events have been told not to pray to Jesus at invocations.

A pastor/officer named Terry Sartain got the phone call from Major John Diggs, who said it was a matter of respecting "all denominations".  Terry asked, then, how was he supposed to pray?

"Pray a secular prayer," he was told.

sec·u·lar

   /ˈsɛkyələr/ Show Spelled[sek-yuh-ler] 

adjective

1.

of or pertaining to worldly things or to things that are not regarded as religious, spiritual, or sacred; temporal: secular interests.

2.

not pertaining to or connected with religion ( opposed to sacred): secular music.

 

 

“Even when I wasn’t a Christian – in my past – I didn’t even know what a secular prayer was,” he said. “Why even pray if it’s to the one who’s in the room? That could be anybody.”

 

How easy it would be just to comply- to avoid naming names.  To put in phrases that convey the meaning without saying.

 

The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart”(that is, the word of faith which we preach): 9 that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. (Romans 10:8b-10)

 

Do you think that the atheists and the ACLU don't know this?  This is another attempt to get Christians to gut their own faith in order to "conform".

 

When the Tao is lost, there is goodness.
When goodness is lost, there is morality.
When morality is lost, there is ritual.
Ritual is the husk of true faith,
the beginning of chaos. (Tao Te Ching 38)

 

You can look at the ACLU's attack on Jesus as "the defense of unbelievers against the society's dominant religion" if you want.  Or you can say, well, the Jews will just ignore them and the Muslims would kill them, so the Christians are the only "good target".

Or you can look at it as Satan manipulating the faithless to attack the one true faith.  Why else is it so important to remove the Name of Jesus?

 

So Sartain asked the police department to withdraw his name from consideration for future public prayers.
“I didn’t really need to do that as a chaplain,” he said of the public prayers. “I still wanted to have the influence with the police officers and their families.”

In other words, better to serve Jesus Christ with integrity than to bow to those who want a faithless faith.

No protests, no banners.  No lawsuits, no scenes.  Just a decision to serve God as God wants to be served.  It's a skill, as I've said before, that we have lost to the TV generation.

We burn Korans rather than teach the Bible.
We defy the government to put nativities up, and string our houses with colored lights surrounding a tiny ceramic creche.
We mail death threats to doctors and stand with pickets at abortion clinics rather than teaching our children the value and meaning of human life.
We pour Holy Water on roads rather than pouring prayer upon the travellers.
We keep one eye on the dates some "christians" give for the end of days rather than opening the Book and seeing that no one knows the date, only the Father. (Matt. 24:36)

Our weapons are not, nor were they ever supposed to be, protest signs, cigarette lighters, hateful letters, or ceramic dolls.  Our weapons are to be poorness of spirit, sorrow for others, meekness, a taste for righteousness, mercy, pureness of heart, peacefulness, and the ability to take insults and persecution in serving Jesus.

 

Sartain said it’s apparent that “Christians for the most part are targeted in these days that we exist in.”
“As Christians in the United States of America – what we are saying as believers – is we want the same rights and privileges as everybody else,” he said. “Let the playing field remain level.”