Following Judah's Lion

Distorting the Gospel

Attention please! The gospel of Jesus Christ is good news. Great news! Eternally great news! But is there anything that so undermines that news as a moral catfight especially in a political year? James Dobson now accuses Barak Obama of distorting the Bible. Wow, tell us something we don’t know. Distorting the Bible is an Olympic event in politics and somehow, somewhere, Christians and preachers themselves have become embroiled in the meaningless distortion known as politics, and of course they drag the Bible into the fray. And when it comes to distorting the Bible the list is incredibly long and maneuvers in and out of almost every religious camp. Especially when it is politically motivated.

Moral wars and political steel cage matches so distort the gospel and the meaning of God’s cross, that lost in the entire melee is the everlasting offer of eternal redemption. And let us ask ourselves what is the motivation for Christians to aggressively engage the lost community to alter their morality? It surely cannot be for their benefit and salvation because faith in Jesus Christ requires no morality, it is by faith alone. It cannot be so God will not condemn them, they are condemned already. As a matter of fact, this political activism doesn’t have the welfare and salvation of sinners in mind at all.

The evangelical push to legislate morality is selfish at its core, for it seeks to by-pass the cross and contour the moral landscape to acceptable Biblical parameters which would, you guessed it, benefit us, the church. We seek our desire, our moral ambiance, and we seek to do it by the strength of our numerical political involvement and not the labor of our prayer closet, our sacrificial lives, and the entirety of our loving and powerful evangelism. As we can see clearly, we have little of that which is why we must spend enormous energy and money attempting to turn the sociological ship by the rudder of secular politics and not the power of the gospel. Even those who profess the gospel as the true agent of change still compliment that calling with political involvement. You do not see the secular politicians compromising their politics with involvement in the gospel.

The church has its hand in the cookie jar tightly wrapped around a mirage and we still cannot understand why the Philistines are upon us. And all over the news channels they report how Dobson has accused Obama of distorting the Bible. And this distortion is not about Jesus and salvation, it is about morality. Morality has become the golden calf of American evangelicalism, and millions seek to worship it on the altar of the voting booth and the first amendment. Are we really concerned with men’s souls, and if so why do we put moral stumbling blocks in front of their redemption so that the evil One convinces the sinners that we require such moral adherence to be Christian? This Christian political activism is now a powerful machine that wields legislative pressure and raises massive amounts of money, not to preach the everlasting gospel of the Everlasting Savior, but to push through some meaningless morality.

Oh yes, all morality without Christ is eternally meaningless, and we have yet to learn that the heart of the king is in God’s hands. Oh my, what would happen to this nation if the Christians withdrew their political participation? Abortion might become legal. The gay lifestyle might spread. Violence might cover the land. The entire country might be consumed with money. Think again, that is what has happened with colossal amounts of evangelical participation in politics. Hello, anyone home?

But worst of all, these type of attacks distort the gospel. We are not called to fight morality and indeed publicly accuse some political figure of distorting the Bible, almost to a man do they all do that. I did not hear Dobson attack President Bush for distorting the Bible when he said all faiths lead to God. I did not hear these attack machines chew up Dick Cheney when he said he accepts gay people’s lifestyles. You see, politics makes Christians respecters of persons and not respecters of God. The sinners who live in this part of the world need to hear and see Jesus Christ, they can have no spiritual benefit by engaging in a moral shoving match carried out in public.

The early elders refused to wait on widows because it would encroach upon their time in prayer and the ministry of the Word, but today’s “elders” find plenty of time chasing moral windmills and engaging in useless rhetoric with a fallen world which needs the very light they hide under political bushels. And many of these political preachers believe in the eminent return of the Lion of Judah and yet they waste time, money, and words arguing with dead people. How have we gotten so far and how can the church ever extricate herself from the very mess she reviles?

The answer is repent and believe…the gospel.