Open your eyes

There are times I really regret living in this world.  All we do is fight and drift farther from any kind of agreement.  And the thing I regret most about the fighting are the armies of Christian Brethren marching under a banner, fighting to "turn the tide", trying to carve a kingdom on earth out of the dust.

Hop in my tardis; let's go back a ways in time.


In the three hundreds AD, Constantine turned the world upside down by making Christianity Rome's official religion.  Did he really see the vision, "In my name, Conquer" at the Milvian bridge?  Or was he just latching onto to a sociological fix for the cracks threatening to tear the Roman world asunder?  I cannot answer for the soul of the Emperor, but there is one thing I do know.

When Christianity entered the government of the world, it ceased to be Christianity.

Thirteen hundred years were spent proclaiming Jesus as wanting to conquer the Holy Land, favored one royal family over another, condemned men who saw Him in a way the Holy See did not.  By the time Luther's teachings set off one last religious war in the 1600's, the only one whose honor was not being defended by force of arms was Christ.

Paul appealed to Rome.  Did he appeal over the right to not have to make tents emblazoned with "Eat at Jupiter's"?  No, the only right he appealed for was the right to preach Christ Crucified.

Jesus overturned the tables of the traders at the Temple not once, but twice.  Did He do it to force a change in the government, to win a victory over the unfair, pagan Romans or the Jewish elders who clung to the Romans like remoras?  No, His beef was the disrespect being shown to God.  Period.

But here we are, fighting over what fraction of money we make but never see goes into paying insurance for women who may get abortions, but may not.  Making a big deal over whether we have to sell flowers to a wedding we don't have to attend.  I have said over and over again that we as Christians fight the wrong battles- petty little skirmishes that test our ability to make humorous memes and enable us to stand up to the wicked judges of the world.  But now, I'm going to move this one step farther.


It is time for Christians to prepare for life in a world where we don't make the rules.

We have had it so good here in the western world.  Laws have been based on the legendary "Judeo-Christian ethic" for a few hundred years now, and now we have a pretty big sense of entitlement.  We fight legal battles as if the Kingdom promised us was the kingdom based in Washington.  We stand in our statehouses calling down fire from heaven, forgetting totally what Jesus said when James and John tried the same thing.

But the thing is, as I've said before, government is SECULAR.  It is for the non-believers.  And the non-believers have figured it out.  Some people might say I'm overreacting.  I say- go look up what is said by the members of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.  You'll quickly figure out their goal has nothing to do with equal rights, it has to do with destroying the Christian faith.  Again I say, go look 'em up if you don't believe me.  I have done battle with atheists who believe that the only difference between the ethics passed down by the faithful of God and those expounded by Satan is the name on the letterhead.  No ultimate good and evil, just a different set of rules.  I have done battle with LGBTs whose most civil and intelligent response to my opinions is to call me a "vagina lover".

But they are just the obvious ones.  How many more tear at the walls of God's will by patting themselves on the back for being "tolerant", protecting "civil rights", calling for everyone to just get along.  There can't be anything wrong with that, can there?

These political battles are a losing effort.  LOSING.  Does that mean I advocate rolling over?  No, as always I am advocating, choose the right battles.  Why fight abortion law in Indianapolis when you aren't teaching your children why they should save themselves for marriage?  Why fight for whether I should eat a chicken sandwich or not when you should be showing your youth how to help others BY THE WAY YOU HELP others?

It used to be the thing to wear those WWJD bracelets.  I wonder how many who wore them ever really ASKED the question.  The day is coming, and is nearly here, that we will have to live that question as the battle for Christian rights recedes from Facebook forums and becomes a very, very personal thing.  Do you not GET IT?  The days when everyone stood against believers is returning.  Instead of appealing to Rome over what kind of wedding cake we can make, it is time to be thinking about what we are going to do when Rome no longer hears the appeal.