“Every historian knows that it was not Gandhi who ended European colonialism,it was the USA that did so. Not just India, but practically every colony received independence after 1945, even if it hadn’t been educated yet to govern itself. Historians also know that the moral might that forced imperial Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s hand was the Atlantic Charter, announced on 14 August, 1941.”  -Vishal Mangalwadi

It seems to me that we have been drinking the Gandhi Kool-Aid for far too long.  We think that being nice is the solution to the world’s evils.  We have no understanding that the World is governed by the aggressive use of force as Rush always said.  Those instagram trips you took to those far away islands were made possible by British and then American dominance of the world.  Chances are pretty good that that island once contained cannibals.  Are you really prepared to debate that all cultures are equal?  It’s because you don’t know anything about cultures without the USA hanging over them.  You can’t go there, you have to read about it, except for that weird Andaman Island.  And we are now seeing it more and more as the lie of Mohammed, is reasserting itself, in Afghanistan and around the world.

We can see how God used Empires to shepherd his people in the Old Testament prophecy in Daniel.  He didn’t tell us what was happening, he was laying out his plan.  He used Babylon to judge his people and to set up a captivity for a future return to glory.  He use the Persian empire to reinstate his people in the land of Israel.  Then he used Greek and Roman culture to unite the world and prepare it for the easy dissemination of the Good News.

We use Romans 13 as an excuse to be lazy cowards going along with whatever we are told, despite the fact that our rulers are under law, which they are breaking.  But the real point of that verse is that God appointed governments to punish evil.  America is the shyest empire ever.  We were handed this dominance after we humbly won WWII.  But let me ask you was there less evil after we pulled out of Afghanistan?  Is there evil around the world that we could be stopping?  Why don’t we?  Because of this silly doctrine about freedom, and state autonomy?  We should know from Scripture that the only kind of slavery that really matters is slavery to sin.  All other slavery is a distant second as a concern.  We should prioritize saving people from slavery to sin.  That is what the Gospel is.  Christ is reigning, we no longer need to be subject to the savage demons of the past.  The imposition of Rome on Israel in the first century was God’s plan.  It stopped evil, after the Jews rejected their messiah a series of wars erupted culminating in 74AD in Masada.  And this is more specifically what Romans 13 is talking about.  Every Jew who rejected Jesus the Messiah, and took up arms against Rome wound up dying by the sword.  The Christians who listened to Jesus words, fled to the hills of what is now Jordan and the Church, grew from there.  But fleeing is not a one size fits all solution.

God used evil men to punish evil.  How much more when the Gospel has spread and whole nations are now operated by Christians? The statue of all those great empires is crushed by God’s Kingdom.   We have Paul’s words.  He even yelled at the Corinthians for needing to go to worldly judges to decide matters.  We have God’s word, we of all people should know how do administer justice, how to punish the evil doer.  And we have Romans 13, we know the purpose of government.  So why don’t we act like it?  Why are we all distracted about state sovereignty and quoting George Washington’s farewell address out of context?  We should be punishing evil.  But we like our evil. We don’t fight it in our own hearts, churches or communities, so why would we fight it in our country or our world? If we don’t repent and start seeing things the way scripture lays them out, we are not only going to lose our dominance of the world, but we will be harshly judged for our apostasy.

It’s sad to see the battle lines being pushed back from the front with actual evil, to the limp-waisted minds of enfeebled Christians.  China is marching around the world consuming resources in it’s large maw of evil and we are worried that social media posts might be mean.  Instead of defeating actual evil we are forced to fight our neighbors over idiotic things like masks.  The unity Christ and Paul prayed for, was so that we could present a united front to the world.  Bringing his will on earth as it is in heaven, remaking the whole Earth. When you look at the history of Europe from 600 to say, today, it’s sad to see European Christians fighting amongst themselves instead of fighting the real evil, Mohammed.  Death and destruction and the very slavery that reached our shores was begun by Mohammed and his hordes.

The Good Samaritan. Rembrandt. after 1633.

In Luke 10 Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan.  “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead.”  But we are in an even worse position, we are passing by when he is still being beaten.  And we walk away.  Don’t we have a duty to stop the beating?  Do we try to go preach the Gospel to the robbers, as a hyper Evangelical minimalism might suggest?  Jesus makes it clear, walking by a brother in need is evil.  He also makes it clear that the whole purpose of government is to punish evil.  That is the real point of Romans 13.  These men should be caught and punished.  The government is the servant of God who carries out his wrath.  We don’t say “who am I to judge”, we punish them, God says.  Now secular governments can mess this up, but how much more should Christians punish evil when we the show?  Stopping the beating, catching and punishing the wrongdoer, is part of the Gospel.  How much more should this apply to whole nations?

Currently most of the church has become what Christ warned against.  We are the priest and the Levite passing by the man in need.  They did it because they were preoccupied with their reading of the Law.  They thought he was unclean.  But we do it for a more ridiculous reason, we are worried that we are unclean.  We are so self-obsessed with our problems and worrying about being perfect that we can’t do anything.  This is a completely different thing from fighting our own sin first and then fighting the sin out there. Which is correct.  We waffle with double minds tossed too and fro by every new woke doctrine.  But Paul says this is what children do (Eph. 4:14).  We need to grow up and spread our light to the world.  We need to be equipped to form a strong body and to fight.  For some reason we no longer see fighting as a Godly act of sacrifice.  But putting on your weapons and going in to the battle means that you could be killed too.  If you intervene with the Samaritan you could be killed, you are laying down your life for his.  That is what makes it a valiant act.  And that’s what makes not stepping in, cowardly.

So, if saving one man on the road being beaten is a good thing, how much more for a large capable body, like say a country, to step in and save another large group of people being abused?  Of course we should view unsaved peoples as first and foremost needing the Gospel.  And we should send the Gospel to them, as we have for generations.   But how do we sit back and watch people being abused all over the world.  How do we watch starvation, and the abuse of women, and the enslavement of other tribes?  “Who is my brother?”!  Do we just write it off as cultural differences?  And even worse we fund the very country which is guilty of this evil the most, China.  Every big tech company is in bed with China for money.  Where is the pressure on them? Instead we worry about offensive comments about people who don’t know what sex they are.  How about sending pallets of cash to Iran one of the most hated oppressors on the planet?  And then you elect Biden to do the same thing because you think it’s better than mean tweets.  You are a child.  This blood is on your hands.  Get some perspective and get in a real fight instead of all this child’s play.    Of course we need repentance, from this especially.  But we need to get on to better things like exploring the depths of God’s word and his world instead of the bottomless pit of self pity.

C. S. Lewis talked about the unfortunate degradation of language in which words ceased to express unique ideas and only became further terms for ‘good’ and ‘bad’.

It’s sad to see this happen to the word ‘religion’.  I appreciate Keller trying to reach his audience, but participating in the degradation of words, which is really just a sneak attack on traditions that were really good, is not Christian leadership.  Sometimes your audience drank bad Kool-Aid and they need to be instructed on a better way.

Religion had two senses, the general practice of a faith and an aspect of Christianity.  These are reflected in the more specific definitions from Webster’s 1828 dictionary.  The first three definitions reflect the Christian culture in which this was written and the word understood, the fourth the general sense.These definitions weren’t attacked because Christianity was doing so badly, they were attacked because it was doing so well.  People hate Christianity.  Any stick is good enough to beach Christianity with as Chesterton said.

We had plenty of words already to express badness and plenty of words to express badness as one relates to his Creator.  Hypocrite, pretender, sham, fake, false teacher, anti-Christ, Pharisee, Judaizer, Legalist and on and on.  But what words are we left with to describe an aspect of our relationship with God that is not theology and not moral virtues?  Piety?  Reverent?  Hardly words in common use.  They also seem to lack a certain joy.

The fact is that saying “I don’t have a religion I have a relationship” is a religious statement.  And as such it is a lie.  Humans are religious beings.  You can see this all around as the religious rites of COVID take hold.  If you don’t use the proper word, wear the proper things or act the proper way, you are a heretic, and are banned, shunned, your bank accounts will be cancelled and you will be erased from the internet. Anti-religion religion is self contradictory and hypocritical.  On two levels.  It is doing what it is accusing others of doing and doing it badly.

And the main problem is all the Christians who think that obeying what God says is somehow a problem.  It justifies ever worsening behavior.  It is a race to the bottom.  It makes good religion the enemy.  It enables sin and demonizes those who are better than you in practice.  It is sinning so that grace may abound as Paul says.

We have gotten rid of the word and the practice.  Language is inextricably connected with our thinking and actions.  Do you compare your actions with that of your Christian brother and try to love God more than they do?  Is bringing his will to earth as it is in heaven a priority for you in every area of life?  Or do you criticize people who are better than you? Do you make up excuses for why your behavior is fine?  That is not for us “certainly not!”.

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its savor, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.

You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a basket. Instead, they set it on a stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” -Jesus the Christ