If you aren't a Christian, this piece is unlikely to interest you. If you are a Christian, read it carefully and ponder its contents. I've admired the author, Chuck Baldwin, for some time now (like other "homegrown terrorists," I voted for him), and while I sometimes disagree with him, I find that he's in the right more often than not. In this case, he's spot-on.
What sets Baldwin apart from the "Churchianity" and "Moneyanity" crowds is his ferocious, uncompromising assault on apostasy. Unlike the feel-good, "anything-we-do-is-cool-because-we're-saved" hypocrites who infest those abominable "megachurches," Baldwin understands that "...as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also." His emphasis on the importance of honest self-appraisal has, on more than one occasion, given me pause to reflect upon my own attitudes, values, opinions, and way of life. Needless to say, I haven't always liked what I saw -- but that's for the better. Self-satisfaction is a virulent pathogen, and a significant cause of today's cultural and spiritual gangrene. It is the root of hypocrisy, a defining characteristic of today's churches, in that their works and their professed beliefs are completely out of alignment.
Honesty has fallen by the wayside as ostensible "Christians" taint their faith with toxic ideologies, favor comfortable lies over unpleasant truths, make a religion of politics -- and tell themselves, all the while, that they're doing God's work. This is the mentality of the Inquisitor, the Crusader, the Witch-hunter and the Pharisee -- and is diametrically opposed to Christ's teaching. (Note that in I Corinthians 9:22, Paul did not write, "Therefore I shall hie me forth and bomb the unbeliever into the Stone Age," but rather: "I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.") Nowhere is this schism more evident than in the typical American "Christian's" utter indifference to the plight of his Lebanese and Iraqi co-religionists, and his support of a foreign policy that virtually guarantees their extermination. ("Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of my brethren, ye have done it unto me." -- Matt. 25:40)
I'm not the kind of man who overturns rocks and roots through dumpsters in search of "signs." It's bad policy (see Matthew 16:4), bordering on heathen superstition; but I spent most of yesterday brooding over the culture of deception. I'd meant to commit my musings to paper upon returning home, but found that Baldwin had beaten me to the punch -- and done a better job of it.
Read and enjoy.
