Reply #74: I'll give you more to work with on this (warning - long and has Scripture) [View All]

Any Christian who prays for judgment, who believes himself saved by grace, is in effect saying that he has exhausted his own capacity for mercy and grace. I'm sorry, but I don't see Jesus anywhere in that remark. I believe that a Christian who genuinely loves his neighbors asks for more time for them and intercedes for them in prayer and in deeds. For myself, I know what mercy is because I have received it from kind people when I didn't deserve it. Knowing this, I wouldn't be anxious to ask for judgment on anyone, even someone who persecuted me, because I know what judgment means, and it is far more horrible than anything we're putting up with now.

Any Christian in this country who believes himself persecuted for his beliefs needs to get a grip. Let these folks try being missionaries in, say, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Iraq, Haiti, or Sudan. (And let them reflect then on the effect of the policies of the people calling the foreign relations shots back here.) The bravest Christian missionaries on earth are about to find themselves in a Vietnam of their own - sent to fight a battle in faith, then hindered and left high-and-dry by the very leaders, if not the people who sent them, without adequate support in desperately hostile lands. May God help them, for most of them are genuinely kind, selfless and very giving people who honestly want to lift up the very people who threaten and despise them.

Any Christian who votes against aiding the poor and refuses to work with the poor in his community stands in violation of most of the New Testament and a good chunk of the Old Testament as well. Most Christians know what God did to the Philistines when David led them, but what they don't recall is that God delivered the Israelites up to the Babylonians - a people God Himself wasn't fond of - for 70 years. Why? Because every seventh year was ordained by the Lord as a year of Jubilee, in which debts were forgiven, slaves and prisoners freed, and old grudges reconciled. The Israelites ignored Jubilee for 490 years - 70 times. God got His own back - and he used the enemy of Israel to do it. Christians, ignore God's fiscal policies at your own peril!

Any Christian who believes it is moral to give to wealthy institutions while voting to increase the tax burdens on people who already teeter on the edge of poverty has no conception of what God wants for His people to be doing.

Last time I checked, the Book of James was still in the NT. If you read it, you'll see real quickly where this is headed.

And for those of you out there who are Christians, read I Peter 2:20-23: "Of course, you get no credit for being patient for being beaten if you are doing wrong. But if you suffer for doing right and are patient beneath the blows, God is pleased with you.
This suffering is all part of what God has called you to. Christ, who suffered for you, is your example. Follow in His steps. He never sinned, and He never deceived anyone. He did not retaliate when he was insulted. When he suffered, he did not threaten to get even. He left His case in the hands of God, who always judges fairly." There is a strong contracdiction between this admonition - which is in the middle of a passage of how Christians of all types should live - and the kind of reaction we see here now.

A teacher I had in Sunday school some years back once told me that when God acts in a nation, He begins by cleaning His own House (meaning His people). The far right would argue that the non-Christians are being swept out to make room for Bible-believers. I don't buy that, because you know people by their works. A leader who engages in a fiscal policy that aids the rich while burdening the poor, who spends money he doesn't have and passes the debt to his descendants, who attacks his neighbor without provocation, and who threatens all who oppose him, is not acting with direction from God. By their works shall ye know them.

I will close this post with a final warning from Zephaniah 3:1-4.
"Its leaders are like roaring lions hunting for their victims - out for everything they can get. Its judges are like ravenous wolves at feeding time, who by dawn have left no trace of their prey. Its prophets are arrogant liars seeking their own gain. Its priests defile the temple by disobeying God's laws."

Maybe it's just me, but when you consider the Carlyle Group, Halliburton, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Gharib, and some of the more strident leaders of the Religious Right, this sounds like what's happening now. Some decades after Zephaniah delivered this warning, Jerusalem was sacked by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar, beginning the 70-year judgment. Oi vey.

Mac in Ga.