God created the female body to illicit a response in men that would lead to fruitfulness.  Apparently it’s the most fun activity in the world often turning into worship or addiction, yet God had to command his people to be fruitful.  No doubt because our tendency is to want all the enjoyable aspects without the responsibility.  And so the morning after or however many mornings after we murder the fruit before the harvest in various ways.  And this has been the norm throughout human history.

Today our culture seems to think that eliciting that response anywhere on the street is no big deal, as long as you are ‘comfortable’ in your attire.  In addition we take the most ideal female bodies, those most likely to illicit the response to which we all owe our existence, and plaster them everywhere.  We take the fruit and the mechanism for granted, as if it is only about our choice and our will.  Not even considering the child, much less the transcendent God and his rules of created order.

Pilgrims Going to Church. George Henry Boughton. c. 1867

And then when we do finally chose to have that one designer child, as an accessory to improve our FB posts.  We seem to have a lot of trouble doing so.  And so there is a huge industry of medication to illicit the response in the male that used to be the role of the female.  We are desensitized to what the average wife has to offer.  I once heard a pastor ask “Which culture is more sensual the one where husbands get aroused by their wife’s calf or the one which requires silicone enhanced actors and medication to become aroused?

Our culture now embraces the notion that speech is violence because it causes stress in people who are not equipped to hear dissenting opinions.  Which is really nonsense.  But we care nothing for willy nilly actually, casually causing arousal in men, in any and all contexts.  And any results from this are of course more blamed on males as a repressive group.  God made the world in a certain way despite our choice.  We can’t choose our own sex but we can choose what we do with it, and we will be held to account.  We can’t pretend that modesty is not an issue, but we can choose to dress in a way that encourages all of the good things in the world, such as strong marriages, and a full quiver of children that result.  As in all things do you dress for yourself, or do you lay down your preferences, your life for the good of others?  Laying down your life is the Gospel.

This whole Report on Russians is a lot like a later Space Shuttle launch.  After many successful launches and two unsuccessful launches, NASA put a bunch of video cameras on the outside of the Shuttle to watch what happened during launch.  And they saw all sorts of wild things, they didn’t expect like tiles falling off.  But they didn’t know what to make of it.  Were these tiles necessary?  Does this always happen?  They had no context for the video they were watching.  They just didn’t know.

And that’s a lot like this report.  We don’t have reports like this on Obama or Bush or anyone really.  So what do we compare it to?  We don’t know how the White House does, has or should run.  We don’t know which tiles falling off will actually be a problem, which don’t matter and which are actually necessary.  Who is to say this is unbecoming a President?  Who is to say this will result in disaster?  Most of us don’t know from personal experience and we can’t even read about it because we don’t have a picture at this level of any other President.  It does seem pretty obvious that any President being dragged through this process for two years with a media hoping for the worst the whole time, is hindered.  If you look at the results of his actions, any bad results might just as easily be attributed to the insanely negative press, as to strange methods employed by Trump.

Also, no one seems to know how Trump, works.  Though in some ways he is the most transparent President we have ever had.  He he seems to be the same character in private as on his reality shows and in his books.  How many Americans do what he did?  We know no politicians have done anything comparable.  They have been spending their lives developing the perfect answers to the right candidate questions and crafting fake personas to get elected.  What we do know is that this Trump, whom we all know, was fairly elected.  We do know that politicians and media have no idea what Trump is saying, or how he communicates.  As evidenced by them seriously entertaining a joke about Hillary’s emails, as an invitation to the Russians.  They didn’t get the joke, and seem to think Trump chose to conspire with Russia while in front of thousands of people live, with the whole world watching at home.  So why should we think they understand anything he says?

It’s like watching a master chef at work.  If you don’t know anything about cooking, how can you criticize his methods as he cooks?  The real test is in the tasting.  If you understood the correlation between cooking and the meal, you could do it too.  But how many  of all these critics can do what Trump does?  And concerning those commentators who have worked in previous administrations:  Who is to say that their experience was the ideal?  Who is to say that things couldn’t be better or just different?  The American people sent a clear message by electing Trump.  They were tired of all these political professionals and their stuffy official speak and all the resulting nonsense.  They wanted something different.  They wanted a working man who wasn’t part of this Washington gang.  So assuming that his unorthodox methods are proof of evil is just begging the question. He’s not a politician, he doesn’t claim to be.

The truth is, there should not be political orthodoxy, there should not be professional politicians.  The whole point of our system was that normal people who have proven their worth in the real world, may serve for short periods of time in public office representing their fellow man.  Now this ship of state is covered in so many barnacles that all these foolish DC wonks think it is some grand crafted marble edifice.  I was even marveling at David French’s fawning love for this encrusted mass we call our justice system.  But many Americans are sick of all of it.  We want the barnacles scraped off and our USS Constitution and returned to we the people.  So give him a chance.  Maybe his methods actually work better.  It’s like when your boss asks you to do something you don’t want to do.  So you sabotage the task, or do it poorly, and then think you proved how wrong he was to even want it done.  Trump has had no support including from his own party, yet he has gotten things done.  In one sense this stale mate is good.  But if it only happens to Republican Presidents, then we keep moving in one direction.  That’s not trusting or even respecting the system, or the Constitution all feign to care about.  This isn’t the peaceful exchange of power.  You don’t withhold some of the power because you don’t like how someone tweets.  And any criticism of this hindered leader is really nonsense.  You cut the mans breaks and then mock him for crashing his car.

So the proof is in the pudding, as they say.  And we are all out there criticizing the rancher and his cows before they even thought about making gelatin.  People who are in the White House five minutes are trying to write tell-all books evaluating Trumps Presidency before it even started to happen.  We really need some perspective and context.  And I need some pistachio pudding.

The end of Matthew 18 is often referred to as the ‘Church Discipline’ section by churches who actually obey these commands of our Lord.  All the other churches seem to ignore it and then both sets of churches attack the other.  Jesus’ words are mostly contained in four books which the average person can read in about ten hours, all if it important.  Often these books get divided up into sermon size bites and we forget that the whole, chapter, book, Bible goes together. There are a lot of ideas all connected in this chapter, children, lost sheep, sin, forgiveness.  But the main idea I want to bring out is about lost sheep.

Christ the Good Shepherd. Bartolome Esteban Murillo. 1617-1682. Oil on Canvas. Madrid Spain.

I have seen almost no evidence that the church in America cares at all about lost sheep.  A recent study showed that a large percentage of ‘evangelicals’ think that ‘evangelism’ is wrong.  I mean really, the contradiction is right there in the word, no need to get into doctrinal statements or verse exposition.  The church doesn’t address the lost outside the Church.  And searches on church discipline don’t turn up much either.  There are no studies on Jesus’ words here because no one knows them.  The Church doesn’t address the lost in the Church either.  My experience bears this out as well.  Almost all attempts I have made to reconcile or have-it-out to see who is correct Biblically, to correct or be corrected, have come to nothing. No one seems to care.  We are encouraged to take the easy way out and just leave or let the other person leave.  Attempt to pursue another person and professing Christians talk about restraining orders and taking their lame excuse for a case before godless men(I Cor. 6)!  Our communities are large enough that we never really have to see that person, we can just go to the new church-plant-of-the-month and pretend everything is fine.  But it’s not fine.

I get tired of walking this road, of saying these things, but I was confronted with a few verses that bring it all together.  The Lost Sheep isn’t just a person without Jesus, who needs to make a commitment of faith.  It is someone who has been living in the light and then rejects it.  They are a sheep who have strayed from the flock, from orthodox in practice, orthopraxy.  It’s not about church membership.  If you claim the name of Christ, take communion, and then err without repenting, you are a lost sheep.  Peter speaks of these sheep in 2 Peter 2:20-22:

For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning.  For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them.  But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.

It is worse for sheep to stray than to have never been sheep.  You should want to correct your erring brother over saving others, or getting new converts.  In Matthew 18 Jesus says you leave the 99 sheep and go to rescue that sheep.  You don’t just go down to the market and get another sheep.  Because the errant sheep is in peril, and you love that sheep, that sheep is valuable.  Correction should come before evangelism.

I’ve said before we aren’t ‘adults’, we are children.  And that’s why Jesus connects these things in a back and forth in these verses.  The disciples are on a high because they don’t have to pay the temple tax.  They are wondering about the ranks in this army which they think Jesus is building to overthrow Rome.  He brings them back down and tells them they must be like children.  But do not be stupid.  Sin is serious.  Do what is necessary to address it in yourself.  Then he adds the children into the lost sheep image.  These children are sheep, they were probably Jewish children in the covenant.  They had a certain type of infant faith.  Yet as they would grow the Pharisees would destroy that promise and turn those children into copies of themselves, sons of Satan(John 8:44).    Jesus does not want any of these children to be led astray, as many would be and the Romans would wipe  out so many.  Leading sheep astray is serious evil.

He then goes into the so-called church discipline section.  Brothers in sin, are connected with the lost sheep.  Don’t you care for your lost brother as the shepherd who goes after that lost sheep?  You should.  Two thirds of this procedure have nothing to do with the formal church.  Most situations should be resolved brother to brother.  You are your brothers keeper.  My point here isn’t getting into the details or to consider traditional wisdom on best practices, but simply to encourage you to do it, to work it out.  At least try. Go talk to your brother.  And be willing if other people ask you to help them talk to someone.

Prov. 27:6 Faithful are the wounds of a friend;

Then you bring in more people as you need them.  The point is to bring them back not scare them away and gloat over how much better you are, or to gossip about their sin.  Sometimes it might not work, take heart, God is with you.  And he will respect the decision of the church on such matters.  What we do on earth has eternal consequences.  Don’t throw up your hands and say it’s up to God, in heaven, some day.  He has given us these tasks, this is our work now.  Don’t say vengeance is God’s.  This isn’t vengeance, or punishment, this is correction or discipline.  It’s about restoration and unity, and if it is successful, James says in  5:19,20:

Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him;  Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins.

Oh how wonderful to rejoice over that lost sheep.  But then Peter wants some clarification on the forgiveness side.  Jesus says pour out your forgiveness, because God has forgiven you much more. Don’t be stingy.  This is the type of interactions which can not be faked.  This is the moving of the spirit.  I hate to think that the failure of the church all around to restore those lost sheep or to prevent those children born into Christian homes from falling away, is simple ignorance.  Maybe they haven’t heard this spoken clearly, Lord.  I pray it is not a lack of the Spirit.

Y logo.

I usually get accused of being stodgy or negative, but generally reality is worse than I think.  I assume things are better than they are not worse.  The ‘Y’ logo was like this.  It has bothered me for a while that the ‘Young Men’s Christian Association’ has been turned into—just—‘young’.  I think it is very fitting.  The Christian part obviously has been removed from our culture.  And referring to or organizing something around men is also out, thank you feminists.  And even the association is mostly gone.  Young people don’t form associations or become members of churches, because then they might be associated with the negatives of any human collaborative effort.  We are not joiners.  We do worship youth, however.  We love youth, anything youth do is good, correct, right, moral.  Parents go to the churches their kids like.  Parents let their kids dictate everything, because they know how to work technology.  And most of the people in those ‘Y’ gyms are there pretending they are a lot younger than they really are.  Worshipping youth.

But then on looking into the history of the YMCA logo, it’s even worse.  The original logo contained a Bible verse and a Bible. Oh my.  Long before the days of multiculturalism, it was a verse about bringing the world together under the Gospel.  John 17:21.  It was in Roman numerals! Who knows what those are anymore?  This verse is Jesus praying for his disciples in the garden sweating blood.

“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one”

Original 1871 Crest.

What a beautiful, sentiment, goal, war cry!  The old logo reiterates the importance of this plea by calling out all the populated continents.  And in the background is the ‘chi-rho’.  The first two letters of ‘Kristos’, ‘Christ’ in the Greek alphabet ‘X’ and ‘P’.  This monogram was one of the earliest symbols of the Christian.  You find it carved all over ancient caves and rocks in Turkey to this day.

What a shame.

This university ‘cheating’ scandal, has brought a few things to light.  I can hardly write that sentence with a straight face.  There is nothing unifying about those things we call ‘universities’ today, and there is hardly an aspect of those fractured—things—which is not cheating every student in some way.  But one of the most annoying aspects is the feigned hatred for aristocracy.  When I was a child and thought as a child people would often say to me “life isn’t fair.”  I thought if people stopped saying that maybe it would be.  But then I gave up my childish ways and realized that life is not fair and it never will be.  But many today still think as children.  And we are all reaping the consequences.

Women and Children First. Those with power have a greater duty to lay down their lives. The Wreck of the Birkenhead. Thomas Hemy. c.1892.

Jesus said the poor would be with us always.  In context he was making it clear that worship of the Father through the Son is more important than social problems.  We are worshipping creatures, we are here to worship, and if we worship the wrong thing i.e. the created rather than the creator, the poor/social problems/whatever, instead of Yahweh through his son Jesus the Christ, we are going to make a huge mess of things.  Christ also made other stunning statements to our snowflakes yearning for fairness.  He says he spoke in parables so that some people would not understand(Matthew 13).  He was fulfilling prophecy, glorifying his father, not enlightening those who didn’t want the light.  That doesn’t sound fair.  Even more unfair is the Parable of the Talents Jesus tells in Matthew 25.  He concludes saying:

For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Nothing about this seems fair to us.  Each servant was given a different amount in the beginning and though the two servants who invested got the same percent back the servant with the most money was again rewarded when the wicked servant was rebuked.  Moe went from 5 to 11, Larry went from 2 to 4, Curly went from 1 to 0.  That’s not fair.  Because the point is not about money or status the point is about how you handle the responsibility given to you.  It’s about the relationship between you and your creator, not you and other men.  That brings us to a key concept in our politics and social concerns today, envy.  Envy is the sidelong glance.  ‘But what about him’ Peter says.  Jesus replies “what is that to you, follow me”.   Even in a perfect world were everyone followed Him, there would be a million inequalities. That’s how God wants it.  Those inequalities are opportunities for conflict, as well as reconciliation and stronger relationships.  It’s easy to get along with people who are just like you.  But when people are richer or poorer than you, you have to work a little to sacrifice or humble yourself.  Jesus divided Eve from Adam so that they could relate to one another in a richer, deeper way.  Men and women can complain about what they don’t have and compare themselves to the other, or they can be faithful with what they do have.  The wicked servant was not appreciative, he thought God was stingy.  He thought it was a zero sum game and was to afraid to take risks or to profit.  He was probably a Socialist and those who take his side are guilty of envy.  Envy used to be considered a bad thing, because God said so.  It was one of the seven deadly sins.  Sadly today in America it is considered a virtue.

There will always be rich and poor, gifted and ungifted, beautiful and ugly.  God likes it that way.  Every system we have devised to try to eliminate these differences has resulted in death and destruction and slavery, often on a large scale.  There are types of equality which are good.  Equality before the law is good, no matter who you are you should get a fair trial if you are wronged or accused of wronging someone.  Conservatives speak of equality of opportunity vs. equality of outcome.  The outcome side is that impossible task which Marx and all who follow him pretend they can fix.  The opportunity side is somewhat doable, by striving for a merit based system.  By rewarding people for what they can do instead of who they are, or who their parents are(( Even this is arbitrary, what do you have that you were not given? God gives some abilities (Exodus 31) and some status (Romans 13), some neither.)).  This is what seems to upset a lot of people about the cheating scandal.  But while the U.S. has done far more here and by extension around the world to bring this about, inequality of opportunity will always be with us.  In this country upward mobility or the measure of the poor’s ability to become wealthy is better than almost anywhere[2. I would argue even the nations Slovenia, Chile, Italy, and the UK, where it is better, that fact is due to American thinking being exported].  But it is declining.  I think one major reason for that decline is the establishment of Envy.  Attacks on the 1% are more common, so why bother?  What is in fashion is attacking the 1%.  What is out of fashion is minding your own business and achieving the most you can.

And that gets back to Jesus’ words.  What matters is your relationship with your creator.  Do you appreciate and enjoy and make the best of what he has given, you?  Or do you grumble about the neighbors and go vote for Bernie?  There are some vestiges of this left in our culture, like that catch phrase from Spider Man, : ‘With great power comes great responsibility.’  And that’s what we forget.  Since aristocracy is a fact, what do we do about it?  It used to be that those with more were held to a higher standard.  A gentleman was not just someone who had more, it was someone from whom more was expected, by himself, his family and society.  You get the perks but you also have the duties.  We see the breakdown of this all around.  Children of the wealthy are party girls and playboys, they don’t lead by example with what they have, they exploit it for selfish ends.  Unlike the English gentleman who laid down his life in war for his country, the wealthy of today party, drink and have sex in ways unbecoming of the worst heathen from days gone by. We see it in the Kardashians, Hiltons, Trumps and even the British royal family.  One example of this done right is the speeding rules in Iceland.  The highest speeding ticket in the world is from Iceland.  Because it’s a progressive system.  The more money you have the higher the fine.  Which is how it should be.  Not because speeding matters at all, it doesn’t, but because if you believe there should be a penalty, it should hurt the same for everyone.

This was brought to light recently with the prostitution scandal involving Robert Kraft.  People are suggesting that he is receiving harsher treatment because he is a high profile person.  But that’s good, he should be held to a higher standard.  Just like Gregg Gianforte should be picked on for knocking down a reporter, when the average person might not be.  If you want the power and the money and the influence, you should use it for good.  People are watching.  Bad behavior should be condemned and punished.  You can’t champion bad behavior in the wealthy as a right of passage and also suggest you care about the poor and repressed.  Bad behavior by those who can, is the same abuse of power as that which you see in whatever social problem.  When the Kennedy’s are caught with a woman under the desk, it’s not cute.  It’s abusive.  They are supposed to represent the people, to be selfless.  Their sin trickles down or up whichever way you want to look at it.  Bad men elect bad leaders and bad leaders encourage bad men.  Whichever side you are on, you have a responsibility to stop evil in yourself.  We are to emulate the king, Jesus and to model our leaders after him.  He sacrificed everything.

I never stop marveling at the way Christian peoples older than 1960 sacrificed so much for the future of their progeny.  Especially the founding fathers, promising and many of them actually giving up their lives   fortunes and their sacred honor.  Then we started passing laws making it almost impossible for families to pass down their hard work to their children.  We started wracking up debt which God knows how many future generations it will take to pay back. And we build national retirement systems and healthcare systems, which are just pyramid schemes on the backs of our children and their children.  

We are selfish. We only care about ourselves, right now.  I think this leads to a couple of large scale problems that are related.  Vaccines and the Church.  Vaccines work on a population level not on an individual scale.  Inoculating a small percent of people doesn’t really do anything.  But when entire populations are inoculated many many lives are spared and many diseases have been irradiated all together.  This is indisputable medical fact.  But today we play the small game.  We find the most diseased tree in a forest more healthy than any forest in history, that we know of (we don’t know much about the ancients), and we make that tree the rule.  But this was always the case.  There are always a few people who react poorly to any medical treatment.  That’s just the way it is.  But we can’t define the process based on those few.  At a certain point, maybe but that’s a first world problem.  You have to solve all the 3rd world problems first.  And you can’t lament every pioneer who got hurt along the way.  Those men of old sacrificed for the greater good.  They put their shoulders to the plow and carved out civilization so that their children would not have it so hard.  They were playing the long game and so they won it.  We amplify every small problem on blog posts and semi-news organizations to the point that we forget all the good that has been accomplished.  We pick nits.  We are focused on our narrow selves instead of the large scale as it relates to disease and many other things.

There are a lot of examples but I am reminded of one concerning air travel.  We all want everything to be safe, but the reality is that accidents do happen. It’s because sin is in the world.  Despite modern man thinking he can overcome anything, the problem is not a lack of education or a lack of government safety.  Sometimes there is no one to sue.  But it might seem like a good idea to demand 100% success in airplane flights.  No accidents ever.  And it might be possible, but it would cost a fortune.  As a result air travel would be so expensive that people would drive instead.  But since driving is much less safe than even mediocre air travel, the end result would be more people dying in cars.  This perceived problem of the imperfect plane is exacerbated very similar to the vaccine that harmed that one kid.  A plane crash makes the news everywhere.  But the fact that over 100 people die every day in auto accidents goes unnoticed.  This is the problem of the seen and the unseen from Bastiat.  Focusing on the small personal thing can result in the greater system going to pot.[I actually wrote this before the recent grounding of Boeing 737 Max planes, but the overreaction proves my point.]

And it’s the same with the Gospel.  We think it’s all about us and our church or our town or our country.  If things aren’t working out then it’s the end times or something.  I always remember old Christians talking to each other when I was a kid.  They reminded me and one other that no one is necessary.  God is doing a big work, he doesn’t need you.  The Church has grown for 2000 years, and is still growing today. There were many losses along the way, caualties, lost battles.   But you can’t focus on these look at the glorious big picture.  I can’t remember the movie, but I  have an image in my head of a War movie where a tremendous victory has been won.  The parades are marching down the streets of the America confetti everywhere.  But even as all the celebration is going on, the military is knocking on the door of small town America and handing grieving families a flag.  There are always casualties in war on the winning side.  And this is a war.  Since the introduction of the camera, we don’t win wars anymore, because we don’t like to see even one casualty.  We focus on the grieving family instead of the parade.

So you had a bad day at work and come home and throw your Christianity in the garbage.  Well maybe it’s not so dramatic but we do the same thing in many small ways.  Because we think it’s about us being saved from our problems right now.  Instead of saving the whole earth from the enslaving rule and reign of demonic powers.  I was surprised to travel the world and hear different people talk about their nations.  Almost every people has pride.  And often it is pride in old accomplishment.  They are in a sense has-beens.  Uncle Rico lived back in 1982, but the Greeks lived back in 300 BC. when Hellenic culture brought many good things to the world.  The Acropolis today is no longer a shrine to a pantheon of gods is is a shrine to a Greek people who founded Western Civilization.  The Italians look back with pride on the Renaissance when their art and culture raised the bar for the world.  The Spanish once ruled the seas.  French once had the lingua-Franca.  The coptic Christians and the Armenian Christians seem to fight over who has the older church.  The Egyptians point to the pyramids.  The Chinese claim an almost-science older than anything in the west.  The sun never went down on the British Empire.  And then there is America.  I think we are at that tipping point.  The MAGA hat is the sign of the end.  We are becoming has-beens, harkening back to those better days when we won WWII and  saved the world.  When we advanced manufacturing of everything, invented the modern world and went to the moon.  This time has the air of the Greek man on the sidewalk surrounded by graffiti sprayed on horrid modern human hives, reminiscing about the good old days 2300 years ago.  Or the Armenian girl in Lebanon assuring me that she is part of the oldest church in the world.

The Jews are still looking for the messiah to bring them back to the glory days of Solomon, and the king who would make the world their footstool.  The Muslims think they were promised the world.  And endless angst fueled destruction has been the result.  But we ‘Mericans are falling into the same trap.  The world was not promised to America it was promised to the body of Christ, the congregation of God’s people, the Church.  It includes everyone.  Maybe God leaves this land barren without one single Christian and moves his focus over to Korea or China or West Africa.  So be it.

It is a strange thing because on the other side from the ‘Mericans living the glory days of the 4th of July , are the crazy secularists, burning everything down.  Even a lot of ‘Christians’ are in this camp, foolishly destroying all the tenants of their faith.  Their misplaced faith isn’t in this nation it’s in multinationalism, globalism, pluralism and ultimately in the uber selfishness of sexual perversion.  This conflict has come into vivid contrast the past few weeks in the Methodist church.  While many liberal branches sell out to the PC culture of perversion, the churches in Africa are standing firm on orthodoxy.  They will inherit the Earth.  Destroying the idols of both the nation worshippers and the diversity worshippers.

We need to pull our heads away from the self centered world we build on our portable phones and look around at what is going on in the bigger screen God lays out for us every day.  We were not promised perfect comfort and ease if we accepted Jesus.  It’s not about us.  Church isn’t about feeling good for the rest of the week.  It’s not a cry in for the gay guy and his supposed persecution.  We were promised that Jesus would rule the world and if we accepted this truth we would be spared the destruction and further, we would be blessed.  It’s a war and we are called to fight for the hearts of the world enslaved to all these old lies.  But we can’t enshrine ourselves in the stone memorials of our past victories never to fight again.  We can’t live in the good old days.  The work is not finished.  We want to finish the race faithfully. Our best day should not be the 4th of July 1776, or the 8th of May 1945, it should be tomorrow.

Did our forefathers really believe the Church was only a building?  Then why did they build schools, orphanages, hospitals, villages, cities, states, kingdoms and nations?  Why did they move to the jungle and live in huts, or the dessert and live in caves.  Why were there always priests and chaplains on ships, in battle and in prisons?  Why did they express their faith in the rich images of literary, painted, sculpted, symphonic and performed metaphor?  Not to mention protecting the institution of the family as sacred.

The reality is that to congregate, hear preaching, sing songs and pray, you need a location.  We aren’t disembodied souls.  The early church met in Mark’s mother’s house, probably because she was well-off and it was large enough to fit them.  Later Christians advanced the art of architecture, making buildings larger and more beautiful.  And why wouldn’t they?  Do we hold this against them?  These communities poured their blood and sweat into cathedrals, monuments to their faith which stand to this day.  Those rock are crying out.  It’s strange that what we hear are dissonant tones, especially considering the amazing acoustics.  There seems to be a growing dislike for excellence in anything, except the function of our devices.  When they go wrong we lose it.  But everything else is no longer a pursuit of excellence, what is it a pursuit of?

Why is attempting to build a church building by the best theology you can find somehow suspect?  Is it more appropriate for the government, hopelessly lost in their humanism, not knowing what a male or a female is, to build buildings and we simply rent them?  The fact is we paid for them.  The state doesn’t have any money they must first get it from us.  Why do we let them have the power over our money?  Isn’t it all about power?  The church isn’t allowed to exert power, to pursue excellence, that’s intimidation.  But the state can be all powerful?

Why do we shoehorn the reach of our faith out of every aspect of life?  Why do we consider this more Christian? Why are we hiding our light?  Our faith is limited to a small corner of our heart, expressed only, just a bit, when we, *shh* meet together.  Oh my that was hard to say, to admit.

We are to take every thought captive.  Jesus is King.  That’s a fact, he is reigning on high. That’s the Gospel. He earned this exalted position by laying down his life as the perfect sacrifice.  We are to go into the whole earth baptizing everyone.  It’s a geographical mission, we should claim territory.  There was a territorial aspect to the ruling effect Satan and his demons offered to Jesus in the wilderness.  We shouldn’t be afraid to boldly build buildings.  Everyone else builds buildings which expound their religion.  That’s why we have so many dark, confused, sharp, ugly buildings.  Cathedrals were engineered and crafted over generations to fit in more windows, to bring in more light, we are the light of the world.  We have the word of God, we are at peace with him.  Everything we do should reflect this.  We don’t have to fit the gospel into architecture, like Rosie O cramming into her jeans.  It’s there already, men at peace with God, free of sin are able to build and create and reflect the glory of God in everything they do.  What do you spend your money on that’s so much better than a beautiful building?

Hypocrisy is not just a statement about the individual, it’s a statement about culture.   Though you may not think something is wrong, you know that most people do, so you hide it.  Today that is going away.  Or it’s probably just changing, porn and abortion are fine in the public square, but liking Columbus is not.   I think a culture which hides it’s Biblical sins is far healthier than one that broadcasts them on social media.  And by inference the people in those cultures are worse than the supposed hypocrites in our history.  Norm MacDonald has a great line as part of his life-as-comedian—thing:  “People say the worst part about Cosby was the hypocrisy.”  “I think it was the raping.”  And I think this reveals that our attacks on hypocrisy are just a way of lowering the standard.

St. Peter’s Social Justice Campaign. Martyrdom is doing exactly what you know society dislikes, because it is right. Crucifixion of St. Peter. Guido Reni (1575-1642). Oil on Canvas.

We started this nutty trend in the church because culture said that those people in the 50’s were squares and we needed to get with the times.  So we wrecked the whole country.  But we are really just a different type of hypocrite.  Instead of disliking people because they are from Africa, we dislike them because they are from the past, a Christian past.  We make ridiculous categories just like they did, rather than judging people by the content of their character.  But that’s the point, what is content and character now?  It’s talking about things, emoting, wokeing, being in the social justice group.  I don’t even know what any of these words mean.  But I am certain they mean that people are attacking sense and reason and therefore Christianity.  And who wouldn’t think it was wrong the way they wrongly tell the story?

The reality is that all the people screeching ‘hypocrite’ are the real hypocrites.  Where is the proof of their success?  What ever happened to all Obama’s promises of hope and change and uniting the world and solving racial strife?  The reality is that the founding fathers of this nation brought together people from all the major Christian denominations and united them to defeat the most powerful military on the planet.  That unity brought about peace and prosperity the world has seldom known, to this day.  That’s the problem with social justice warriors.  They worship a false god, which turns the worshipper into a deaf and dumb fool, a hypocrite.  They don’t meet their standards, often they don’t even try, and when things fall apart, they are never heal accountable.  Christians for the last 2000 years brough us to this place, not by caring or being concerned about social justice.  They did it by mortifying their flesh.  Repenting, putting to death their own sin.  This is the Gospel.

Jesus didn’t say go and join a group that cares about social justice.  He said go and repent.  If you want a better world, you have to start with yourself.  If you want your group to be better you have to be better.  It’s easy to care and be woke and go on a social crusade.  It’s difficult to put yourself aside and treat other people better in every circumstance.  But that’s what Christianity does, that’s why it changed the world.  The current young person, supposedly cares about the problems of society while they create more of them every day.  You can’t sleep around, get divorced, quit hard things, let a screen raise your kids, let a screen be your interaction, lie on your resume, cheat your boss by being lazy, change your sex, pretend homosexuality is normal, kill your own baby, and a myriad of other sins and expect society to be healthy.  Being in the right group or not being in the wrong group is no weapon against real evil.  You can’t remake the world in your image and your rules and expect anything good to come of it.  But you can get enough people together who believe the same way and you can all pretend everything is fine,  for a while.

So, the problem is no that people in the past had sin which they tried to prevent, the problem is that you have sin you don’t care about.   The problem is not having a standard personally or as a collective that you can not meet, the hypocrite.  The problem is that “the Biblical standard has not been tried and found wanting it has been found difficult and left untried”.  And as a supplemental flourish the anti-Christian, yells ‘hypocrite’ as they flee down the road to their own destruction.  Peer pressure is good if it’s in the right direction.  Social shame is good if it’s in the right direction.  Treating yourself as a member of a group to absolve your sins, or treating other people as a member of a group to attack them is never good.  No one is guilty because they are a Hatfield, or a Capulet, or a Trump supporter, or because they lived before 1980.   It’s Marxism, it’s tribalism.  It always leads to tribal war, and all those eyes missing.  We need to judge people based on their character, starting with ourselves.  And that’s what Christians have done for 2000 years arbitrary ditinctions like race, class, tongue, tribe and nation, have been falling away.  The whole reason we first worlders can care about social justice is because of all the Christians who went before us.  They sacrificed their lives to spread the gospel, bring peace to all men.  They cared about the poor and the weak.  Satan came along and corrupted this fruit and made it a false god.  Please don’t worship this idol.