Musing on some of the posts I’ve read from Glenn Beck’s big D.C. rally today, I came back to an observation that occurred to me while I was writing last Sunday’s sermon. I have many times heard people give thanks that we live in a nation where we are allowed to worship God without having to worry about dying for it, and that is indeed reason to be grateful; but how often do we stop to give thanks to Jesus that we can worship God without dying for it? The fundamental freedom to worship God in spirit and in truth doesn’t come from our Constitution, it comes from Christ. Worthy is the Lamb who was slaughtered, because it’s only through his blood, it’s only because he allowed himself to be butchered, that we can enter the presence of God. We need to remember which is the greater gift.
Unfortunately, I think sometimes we lose sight of that, and it shifts our focus. We Americans should be proud of and grateful for our country, yes, because it’s the one God has given us, and because we’re fortunate to live here; but we should never, under any circumstances, for any reason, seek to use our faith for political purposes. We should never do anything that makes our allegiance to Christ secondary to our allegiance to any earthly flag. To do so is idolatry, and a betrayal of the one we claim to worship.
Photo © 2005 Kaihsu Tai. License: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported.
Good post, Rob. I greatly appreciate it.
And yet there is a part of me that wonders, would our worship be more genuine, would our allegiance to Christ alone be more singular, would our faith be more sincere if we lived in a land where we did not have such great freedom to worship as we do now? Those churches of Christ, those believers who love Him whole-heartedly and live in places without the freedoms we enjoy, may have that shadow of death hanging near them every time they gather; yet there is no question about which party they support or which issues they'll fight for. There is only one: Jesus Christ and Him alone.
I'm not asking for persecution, nor praying for it. Yet I can't help but wonder if we have become far too comfortable and far too "bored" with the normal Christian life because of where we live. Food for thought, anyway.
Would they? I don't doubt they would; such is usually the way of it. (That connects, I think, to the Barnhouse scenario I referenced again last night–not precisely the same issue, but the root's the same.) Comfort has a remarkable way of dulling the mind and diffusing the focus. It's a particular struggle as a pastor, I think; if we don't keep challenging our churches, they'll tend to settle into lethargy and drift–but doing so makes trouble where we can otherwise often get by without any, and we tend to have the assumption that trouble means you're doing a bad job. "Choose this day whom you will serve," indeed . . .
Thanks for the good words–much appreciated.
Even David, the man after God's own heart, almost blew it by killing all of Abigail's family after being persecuted by Saul. I think we can be passionate about spreading the Gospel no matter where we live. The devil is seeking to devour us even if we are "comfortable."