Christianity's Mother Sin - Boredom with Jesus

The Super Bowl will occur this weekend, and the tide of emotional intensity over a ball being carried, thrown or kicked across a field will be off the charts. Yet, instrumentally, apart from the insanely huge amounts of money to be made by sponsors, players, and media, what real life significance will occur from this event? Will our families be altered permanently? Will our nation undergo an unalterable change? Will the economical, political, geophysical, astronomical realms be shaken and altered? Not even a little, yet we will undergo an emotional tsunami over who handled the ball slightly better - that's it. Sunday night we'll pillow our heads, nothing changed except perhaps we'll be a bit more emotionally drained than usual and maybe our tummy soured over all the greasy chips, dip and beer. For many, it is the high-water mark of emotional intensity for their year, maybe their lives. Over jostling a pigskin ball.

If this sounds ludicrous (which it is) it is only more intensely ludicrous and much, much sadder to realize that many, if not the majority of those who will be watching are men and women who claim to be in a love-faith relationship with the most significant figure who ever walked the earth - the one who DOES make a difference, who DID speak the wind and seas to silence, who DID raise the dead, who DID in a word, make a difference.

But imagine for a moment if you could line-graph the emotional intensity responses of these people on a chart. Imagine if you could graph their emotions this Sunday as they watch the bouncing pigskin, and then compare that chart with the intensity of their feelings, reactions, aspirations toward this Jesus, the one they claim to love? The juxtaposition of these charts might prove to be a monumental embarrassment. The pigskin versus the Eternal One.

Let me make it clear, I do not believe it is in any way wrong, unspiritual or sinful to watch, enjoy and even get riled up at the Super Bowl or any other sports event. Nor do I think on the other hand, that one must charge himself into an emotional frenzy in order to prove that his faith is valid. To do so would be to engage in the very ill I'm pointing out, focusing either on moralism on the one hand or emotionalism on the other. But there's a real lesson here as well, and this is the main point; we have as believers, grown bored with Jesus Christ, and this is I believe, our chief malady. In fact it is our "mother sin" as it gives birth to all of the "children" - besetting sins that more than anything else, distract us from our chief love, our most vital concern, THE main issue of life. Distractionism and boredom with Jesus; cure this "loss of first (or chief) love" and you cure the Body of Christ. It's that simple. Regardless of how it is expressed outwardly, emotional/spiritual intensity toward Jesus, a Jesus-shaped faith, is a good thing, a necessary thing.

But we've had this sickness for a long, long time, so long that we do not for the most part even recognize it. We think of sins as being those outward actions or behaviors that hit the headlines with scandal, make the news stories and ruin lives, when in fact these outward sins, are but symptoms of the bigger sin - distractionism and boredom with Jesus.

The Apostle Paul was not being dramatic, nor was he a misty-eyed sensationalist when he considered, as he calls them, "the unsearchable riches of Christ", (Ephesians 3:8). To him, knowing, and being in relationship with the Master of the universe was like opening a Niagra-sized treasure chest, every day unfolding to him new, inexhaustible, eternity-sized mysteries and beauties - all in the living shape of Jesus. He was content to live his life with this, exploring these inexhaustible dimensions of divine Christ-brilliance for the rest of his life. He had discovered that "for him to live, was Christ".

Would his emotional "chart" rise as the pigskin flies this Sunday? Yes, I don't doubt it for a moment. But for Paul, nothing would rise higher than even the briefest glimpse of the edge of His glory - the glory that was "the mystery of Christ".

Some examples of the distractionism which is birthed by the mother sin of boredom with Christ are:

-Moralism

-Legalism

-Traditionalism

-Doctrinairism

-Dispensationalism (and Millenialism)

-Sensualism

We hope to explore these "distractions" in coming posts. Bottom line: if Christ IS, we really have ONE major, dominant issue in life, don't we? Otherwise, why bother? Let the pigskin fly, because there's really little else that matters in life.

The Way of Jesus - One Reason Why It Alone is True

After a lifetime of observation, I believe the way of Jesus is true and is distinguishable for at least this - it alone prescribes the way of hope of "salvation" without the use of human effort, devise or ingenuity.

Sounds simple, obvious, but in fact apart from every religious system the way of Jesus alone deals with the core ontological human dilemma - that we are incapable by our own efforts to do what so desperately needs to be done.

Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judhism (incomplete Christianity), quasi-Christian cults; all offer a hope for the life to come. But only Christ-centered faith declares "YOU can't do it! - you are tragically and undeniably a mess."

One need only to recall the most basic observations of human history: the slaughter of children at a school-yard in Connecticut, the genocidical mania of a culture under Hitler, the graves of Stalin, Pol Pot or the rape or abuse of a child - you cannot deny that man, humanness is a moral catastrophe. Sick and beyond hope in and of itself.

So how is it possible that this same collective moral disaster heal itself or rectify this insanity? By it's own effort, by "pulling itself up by the bootstraps"?

Apart from the core debate of philosophy, (does God exist?) one can at this point begin to address the question, "which god is true?" And from consideration of the human condition alone, only Christianity sees that...

"there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” - Acts 4:12

So What's so Good About Us? (Lie to Me, Please!)

-Blog author's note: This important article was forwarded to me by a friend. I do not know who the author is, but since it is quite relevant, I gladly post it here. I have performed slight editing for typos, (I know, I OCD ovur that) though not to change the content - katachriston

"A new analysis of the American Freshman Survey, which has accumulated data for the past 47 years from 9 million young adults, reveals that college students are more likely than ever to call themselves gifted and driven to succeed, even though their test scores and time spent studying are decreasing.
Psychologist Jean Twenge, the lead author of the analysis, is also the author of a study showing that the tendency toward narcissism in students is up 30 percent in the last thirty-odd years. This data is not unexpected. A great deal has been written over the past few years about the toxic psychological impact of media and technology on children, adolescents and young adults, particularly as it regards turning them into faux celebrities—the equivalent of lead actors in their own fictionalized life stories.
On Facebook, young people can fool themselves into thinking they have hundreds or thousands of “friends.” They can delete unflattering comments. They can block anyone who disagrees with them or pokes holes in their inflated self-esteem. They can choose to show the world only flattering, sexy or funny photographs of themselves (dozens of albums full, by the way), “speak” in pithy short posts and publicly connect to movie stars and professional athletes and musicians they “like.”
Using Twitter, young people can pretend they are worth “following,” as though they have real-life fans, when all that is really happening is the mutual fanning of false love and false fame.
Using computer games, our sons and daughters can pretend they are Olympians, Formula 1 drivers, rock stars or sharpshooters. And while they can turn off their Wii and Xbox machines and remember they are really in dens and playrooms on side streets and in triple deckers around America, that is after their hearts have raced and heads have swelled with false pride for “being” something they are not.
On MTV and other networks, young people can see lives just like theirs portrayed on reality TV shows fueled by such incredible self-involvement and self-love that any of the “real-life” characters should really be in psychotherapy to have any chance at anything like a normal life.
These are the psychological drugs of the 21st Century and they are getting our sons and daughters very sick, indeed.
As if to keep up with the unreality of media and technology, in a dizzying paroxysm of self-aggrandizing hype, town sports leagues across the country hand out ribbons and trophies to losing teams, schools inflate grades, energy drinks in giant, colorful cans take over the soft drink market, and psychiatrists hand out Adderall like candy. All the while, these adolescents, teens and young adults are watching a Congress that can’t control its manic, euphoric, narcissistic spending, a president that can’t see his way through to applauding genuine and extraordinary achievements in business, a society that blames mass killings on guns, not the psychotic people who wield them, and—here no surprise—a stock market that keeps rising and falling like a roller coaster as bubbles inflate and then, inevitably, burst. That’s really the unavoidable end, by the way. False pride can never be sustained. The bubble of narcissism is always at risk of bursting. That’s why young people are higher on drugs than ever, drunker than ever, smoking more, tattooed more, pierced more and having more and more and more sex, earlier and earlier and earlier, raising babies before they can do it well, because it makes them feel special, for a while. They’re doing anything to distract themselves from the fact that they feel empty inside and unworthy.
Distractions, however, are temporary, and the truth is eternal. Watch for an epidemic of depression and suicidality, not to mention homicidality, as the real self-loathing and hatred of others that lies beneath all this narcissism rises to the surface. I see it happening and, no doubt, many of you do, too.
We had better get a plan together to combat this greatest epidemic as it takes shape. Because it will dwarf the toll of any epidemic we have ever known. And it will be the hardest to defeat. Because, by the time we see the scope and destructiveness of this enemy clearly, we will also realize, as the saying goes, that it is us."

—blog author's comments below.

Jesus' primary attribute as he walked in his own culture was not judgment nor anger nor impatience (unless it was towards the religious establishment), but his primary attribute was compassion. He had compassion toward the lost of any class.

If the Church is going to be relevant, if the church is going to matter to this class of individuals, this disenfranchised culture it must do what our Lord would have done and accept, recieve these broken lives as if worth saving because they are.

Are We on Autopilot? Or How to Re-elect a Socialist President in a Free Nation

When America awakened on the morning of November 7 to find that she had re-elected for a second term, the most aggressively socialistic president of our time, an apparent majority of the citizenry seemed quite satisfied. But there were many, many folk who felt as though the bottom of all things had just fallen through, that we as a nation would never be the same, and questions arose as to whether we could even endure this turn of events as a unified nation.

How Is it possible, many thought, that we a free nation could re-elect a Socialist for a second term, especially given the "progress" his leftist agenda had made over the first four years of his presidency?

Much of the answer to this question seems to be a condition not unfamiliar to man as he has endured such seasons of apparent economic disparity and arising demandingness of the disenfranchised.

In the ancient writings of Asaph, one of the authors of the book of Psalms in the Old Testament, the writer autobiographically provides us with a striking example of how this spirit works in the heart of man. Using his own experience as a case study, the writer with remarkable candidness and self-deprecating honesty describes to us his two completely divergent frames of mind and how they contrasted with each other, all triggered by this dilemma of apparent unfairness in life between the "haves" and the "have-nots". His two contrasting frames of mind can be described as "non-reflective" on the one hand versus "reflective" on the other.

The non-reflective observations of the Psalmist are what he describes in phrases such as "I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked", (v. 3), "Their eyes swell out through fatness; their hearts overflow with follies", (v. 7), "Behold, these are the wicked; always at ease, they increase in riches", (v. 12). Asaph was perturbed, petulant and envious of those who seemed to have everything life had to offer.

In other words, he looked out at the world around him and he grew increasingly disturbed by what he felt was an inequality of distribution, advantage and resources in society, and this unsettled spirit churned deep within - kind of like it did with Karl Marx, or the uncertain majority of Americans in November, 2012. This spirit was something that encroached as night does the day, subtly, non-reflectively all the while discounting and unselfconsciously minimizing the value of noble qualities such as freedom, liberty and prosperity in a free society.

This mindset can be further characterized by familiar idioms such as "asleep at the wheel" or "going on autopilot". We imagine the case as sort of the "Joe six-pack" mentality, beer in hand, on the couch with his buddies, watching "the game", almost an unconsciousness of the self as human, noble and created in the image of God - the spirit of the instinct, reactive, stimulus-response type of thing. Such a dumbing-down of the reflective processes of the intellect is akin to lowering the noble character of man to that of an animal or beast. In fact the writer uses this exact notion when he says in verse 22, "I was like a beast before you".

Contrasted to this is the reflective, or awakened mindset he describes when he "comes to himself" or better yet when he "comes into the house of God" (v. 17) or into the thought processes of his God, as opposed to his own. In other words, Asaph had "an awakening". He saw the folly of his non-reflective perturbations and renounced himself while he was under this delusional mindset.

The best seasons of any nation, any culture are when they are "awake", thoughtful, creative, productive and truly alive. Such was the case in the early days of our great nation. Men fresh from awakening the slumber of tyranny arose to craft a nation of awakened, courageous citizens. Contrast this for example, to the Germans of the 1930's who slept themselves, enslaved themselves into the national nightmare of Naziism, a collective unselfconscious societal cancer which the noble German people will always have as a blight on their national heritage. Such also is the America that crowned it's Socialist president once again on November 6, 2012.

When in a non-reflective, beast-level, autopilot mindset, the two primary characteristics are slumber and sudden reaction. We sleep until like a dog disturbed, we react with an angry, irrational, almost unconscious petty and bitter vengeance. So also a non-reflective parent is often an abusive parent, demanding his or her "space" until the poor child without any warning becomes the victim of the disengaged parent's snap reaction. So has the left "snapped" suddenly and irrationally against freedoms, like our 2nd Amendment rights. This non-reflective mass reaction is what is fueling the wave of leftism that is crashing over our nation at this hour. We are either asleep, or reactionary or both at the same time, (think of the "Occupy" movement). We do not know what we are doing, nor where we are heading. The cliff looms ahead and we fail to see it because of our slumber and our irrational, immature demands that things be "fair".

The remedy for this: First, awakening, v. 20, "like a dream when one awakes..." In other words to pinch ourselves out of the slumber of non-reflectiveness, and into the light of day, of true consciousness. Has "fairness" versus freedom ever worked? Security over liberty? Do we not see the predictable results of Marxism wherever it has been implemented? Are we blind to the ugly oppression and delusion of North Korea, Soviet Russia and the other efforts at a Marxist utopia? Yes, these are examples in the extreme, but it's all the same path, the path we are now on as a nation, and it is not the path envisioned at the founding of our nation.

The second part of the remedy is to get proper perspective, such as the Psalmist did when he "went into the house of God". We simply are not smart enough or big enough to figure the thing out on our own. We get lost in the delusion of our momentary desires, and we need to stand on the shoulders of something or rather Someone far bigger than ourselves, Someone who knows the tendencies of the fallen human heart, and who offers us abundant mercy when we finally feel our need of it, our need of Him. Such is the Apostle Paul's urgent cry, “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” (Ephesians 5:14). If God grants us mercy, we will so arise before it is too late and our sleep becomes our death.

Why Sandy Hook Happened and Why it Will Soon Happen Again

150 years ago we began as a culture, to entertain the idea that man did not have a distinct ontological purpose and no higher destiny then to be reabsorbed back into the biological mass from which he originally sprang. In such a case, any sense of destiny, purpose, nobility, not to mention eternity, all became pipe-dreams. We were, at the core of our beings, merely some insignificant part of an ecosystem that was by purely materialistic or naturalistic forces, being blindly guided by the impulse of pure chance and utter meaninglessness.

In the course of time we embraced these concepts into the American system of education - a system already tilting toward the left by pragmatist ideologue leaders such as John Dewey - a stepchild of the Hegelian philosophy of the dialectic deeply espoused also by Karl Marx. In the school system we began to teach our children that they had no ultimate destiny and that they were merely part of the cosmic and biological accident that occurred with no meaning, no hope, no reason, no future.

This mindset of course had very predictable effects on the generations that followed until through weakness and abdication of the church on the one hand, and an opportunistic charge by the progressive culture on the other, a fatal, but not unexpected court-decision was made in 1973 legalizing the wanton slaughter of untold millions of lives in what has become a modern-day holocaust. Since then, some 55 million humans each with a unique DNA profile, have been erased as if they were nothing more than unwanted debris. Once again, we boldly and loudly made the statement that life was not created in the image of God, in fact life had no meaning at all, really.

Following suit in the cheapening of life were then both the major motion picture and the computer gaming industries with their relentless parade of blood, death and mayhem with no consequences. Add to this the ubiquitous proliferation of psychotropic drugs over the last ten to twenty years. On March 22, 2004 the FDA published a Public Health Advisory that reiterates several of these side effects and states (in part) "Anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility, impulsivity, akathisia (severe restlessness), hypomania, and mania have been reported in adult and pediatric patients being treated with antidepressants for major depressive disorder as well as for other indications, both psychiatric and non-psychiatric."* it is estimated that one in ten people in America are now prescribed SSRIs.

Recall that these drugs are being prescribed to a population who are already disenfranchised from God, who have already been raised in a school system and culture where the life of man is meaningless, who live where babies are wantonly slaughtered just days, weeks or months before they would somehow cross onto that magical realm from unviability to viability.

Then such subjects of this culture of death are handed a gaming device where they can carry out yet more fantasy of mayhem and gore. Now obviously not every child of the gaming culture is a potential mass-murderer, but out of these generations, raised in an atheistic, drug-infested culture there are liable to be those who through some other form of mental instability, cross that line from fantasy to reality, acting out in their own world the dark, psychotic play that has been the ceaseless inner horror movie playing deep within for perhaps years.

That's why we can expect yet another Sandy Hook style shooter in the near future. The odds are against us. Tragically, It is not a matter of "if", but "when."

So in summary, it is not the case that you can point to one phenomenon like the Beatles and Rock 'n Roll in the 60s, the Vietnam War, the hippie culture, the removal of prayer from school etc. etc. as the case for our cultural decline. Rather, these are all symptoms of what really shifted when we began to declare that man was not made in the image of God, a declaration not in fact made as a result of empirical data or proof, but rather as the result of a theory still unproven - a theory which produced an onslaught. By means of the mechanism of the dialectic, what Darwin was doing in biology, Marx was doing with economics. In this, both Atheism and Progressivism have joined forces and are now pouring gasoline on the culture of death in our country. Of course, their knee-jerk reaction is to seize the guns. If they succeed in this, then they have closed the coffin on this chapter of our nation's very existence.

The only obvious answer to this dark reality is for the church of Jesus Christ to finally awaken to both her true identity and her true task.

Because it will not be "if", but "when"





* citing from http://ssristories.com/

Gotcha! The Sneaky Little Surprise Behind Political Correctness

The PC movement thinks it is riding a trending cultural wave of transformational dominance and restructuring when, by it's media-driven power, it makes acceptable what has hitherto been unacceptable in terms of societal norms.

But there's a problem. Their movement lacks the novelty and chic-ness they thought it had. Someone already described their practice and mindset long, long ago depicting the PC movement of every generation in these words: "...they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them." (Romans 1:32). Paul is referring to a collectivized approbation of once-forbidden moral behavior. Culture thinks it's "cool", God saw it coming.

In the larger context of these words is a sad picture of what happens in any society that seeks to throw God "under the buss". There is always a downward spiral of public and societal moral degeneration. But along with that degeneration, is also the swelling cultural perspective of what has become known as "Political Correctness". It is the collective approval of the newly adopted moral norms of a culture in combination with a collective public disapproval of those who differ with them or who retain a God-reflected moral compass.

Recently as I sat in a public waiting area with the ubiquitous raised corner television blaring its mid-day litany of PC noise into the atmosphere it gave me reason to pause and reflect upon that ancient statement, "...they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them." Something seemed ironically familiar.

The host who was gay was bantering and making light about the subject of dating and from time to time he would make a comment about his open gayness. But whenever he did it raised a loud and large applause from the audience. Now I know without a doubt that the entire audience was not, nor could have been made up of entirely homosexual men and women.

But as the camera panned the audience there were virtually no faces that appeared to be uncomfortable or even a little shamed or embarrassed either about the gay comments or in the obvious pride in which they were spoken. They all seemed to be programed in sync with the fact that regret, nor embarrassment, nor any moral hesitation whatsoever was to be expressed in any way over his "gay pride".

The truth is however, there were those who showed or at least felt some moral disdain inside. They just refused to show it outside and risk offending the cresting wave of political correctness that was washing over the audience. If given the opportunity to consider even the rudimentary actions involved in an actual homosexual sexual event, many would recoil in horror. But no horror or shame showed on this day. Political Correctness has shut them down in fear, in a way that would have never happened just twenty or thirty years ago.

But all the PC in the world will never erase the fact that someone, long, long ago saw this movement, pulled open the curtain and surprise, surprise, (!) revealed the folly and the sadness of a culture that "not only does them but gives approval to those who practice them..."

Globalization, Polarization and the 2nd Amendment

Genesis 11:4-6
Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” 5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. 6 And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

Revelation 19:19
And I saw the beast and the kings of the earth with their armies gathered to make war against him who was sitting on the horse and against his army.

________________________________________________________________

The tendency toward humankind gathering itself together to oppose rule or authority reflective of God is as ageless as it is intuitive.

This intuition toward globalization or strength in numbers is clear from the Tower of Babel to the scene of Revelation 19. It is not merely a phenomenon to be played out in "the last days", it is the way of man.

Obviously, the desire in man to be a social creature or to socialize with his fellow is innate as well, nor is it in itself evil. It actually reflects something of the "imageo Dei" (the image of God) in his deepest part. God as a social Being in His essence (the Trinity is three "persons") merely reflects that social need in his pinnacle creature.

But because it is also true that man is fallen (and has a marred image-bearing capacity) so his tendency to socialize or gather together also has that quality of fallenness, hence alienation from God and toward self salvation or to be God himself. This is why globalization, not just now, in our day, but through history has been a constant bent and tendency. So it is that man seeking to be free from the rule of God has always found a home in relativistic and collectivistic societal paradigms. And because man's lust for self-salvation is without check or balance under such schemes, the ultimate end is always and ultimately totalitarianism.

And of course if globalization or socialization is to work there must be an abdication of individual rights and human liberties because there cannot be rogue elements which would tend to counteract the overwhelming movement in the direction toward this self deification.

Hence you have polarization or intolerance occurring at the same time that you have globalization or socialization. Therefore those "rogue entities" who would insist on human liberties, individual rights and the rule of God over man must be marginalized, must be put on the attack, must be silenced in any culture that is moving in a direction toward socialism or globalization.

That is ultimately what is behind the attack on our 2nd amendment rights. You cannot silence, or marginalize the "rogue element" without removing from them their ability to protect themselves from tyrannical control.

It is true, that while the left has the ascendancy in our day, it is also the case that there was a time when the "rogue element" had the prominent presence in the culture. This cultural shift, this drift toward the left, toward globalization, this polarization of our culture is merely evidence of the ongoing instability of a people that grows bored with freedom, willingly gives up it's liberty in exchange for a dubious, promised "fairness" and "security" at the cost of bowing the knee to the oppressor, removing God from the throne of the heart, and yielding to the slavery and chains of the state.