Here we continue a series of post that argues for Christian-based political activism. In Part 1, we examined what kind of political system we must create to promote the spread of Christianity. We also considered what has gone wrong with our country. We do not fear God. Now we will look at the consequences of not fearing God.
To Not Fear God
To learn self-discipline, we must first experience being disciplined. What does that involve?
Discipline aims at the removal of bad habits and the substitution of good ones, especially those of order, regularity, and obedience. –C. J. Smith. (from here)
When we instruct our children, we punish the behavior we don’t want, and we reward the behavior we do want. When He allows us to experience the consequences of our behavior, God instructs us, His children, in a similar manner. When we respect each others rights and regard each other with love, we live orderly and productive lives. When we try to exploit each other, we consume one another.
Galatians 5:13-15 English Standard Version (ESV)
13 For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. 14 For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 15 But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.
When we refuse to fear God, we refuse to accept His instruction — His discipline, and we continue in disobedience and evil. Instead of loving our neighbors, we seek ways to consume them, and so our neighbors — following our own example — consume us.
Consider the idiom “dog eat dog.”
In a dog eat dog world, there is intense competition and rivalry, where everybody thinks only of himself or herself. (from here)
Do we want to live like that? No, but how do we break out of the cycle of the abuse that encourages us to abuse others? We begin by fearing God. We ask for His wisdom, and He helps us to repent of our foolishness.
The Alternative To Fearing God?
What is the alternative? We gain troubles of our own creation. We gain a glimpse of Hell.
Micah 6:9-16 Good News Translation (GNT)
9 It is wise to fear the Lord. He calls to the city, “Listen, you people who assemble in the city!10 In the houses of evil people are treasures which they got dishonestly. They use false measures, a thing that I hate.11 How can I forgive those who use false scales and weights? 12 Your rich people exploit the poor, and all of you are liars. 13 So I have already begun your ruin and destruction because of your sins. 14 You will eat, but not be satisfied—in fact you will still be hungry. You will carry things off, but you will not be able to save them; anything you do save I will destroy in war. 15 You will sow grain, but not harvest the crop. You will press oil from olives, but never get to use it. You will make wine, but never drink it. 16 This will happen because you have followed the evil practices of King Omri and of his son, King Ahab. You have continued their policies, and so I will bring you to ruin, and everyone will despise you. People everywhere will treat you with contempt.”
Is such self-destruction possible for a Christian people? Some would say no. Consider this commenter.
My initial reaction is that there is no political system necessary to promote the spread of Christianity and that political systems should not be measured by their efficacy on that point. Christianity has proven itself extraordinarily resistant and superior to virtually all forms of earthly governance. It expanded from a group of a couple of dozen Jews in a distant province of an initially hostile Roman Empire to the dominant religion on earth in an extraordinarily short period of time. It has survived official, and at times extremely cruel and brutal, persecution at many points in its history. The reason that Christianity can surmount base secular hostility is that it is, while in this world, not of this world and is not a particularly political (or politically dependent) phenomenon. (from here)
But Christianity has been nearly eradicated from some parts of our world.
Consider some statistics. In the eleventh century, the population of Asia Minor was almost wholly Christian. By the sixteenth century, Muslims constituted 92 percent of the population. During those centuries, the Church lost most of its property, its ecclesiastical structures were dismantled, and its bishops prohibited from caring for their dioceses. At the beginning of the period, there were four hundred bishops; by the end, 97 percent had been eliminated. Because there was no centralized state, only petty rulers, a dhimmi system was never put fully into place. As Muslim institutions flourished, the Christian population fled, and the disoriented and dispirited who remained gradually adopted the religion of their masters. Today there are only tiny remnants of ancient Christian communities in Turkey. (from here)
How could that have happened?
“In Islam, however, jihad is a religious obligation. It forms part of the duties that the believer must fulfill. It is Islam’s normal path to expansion.” P. 18,19
“Hence, the second important specific characteristic is that the jihad is an institution, and not an event, that is to say it is part of the normal functioning of the Muslim world. The conquered populations change status (they become dhimmis), and the shari’a tends to be put into effect integrally, overthrowing the former law of the country. The conquered territories do not simply change owners. Rather they are brought into a binding collective (religious) ideology — with the exception of the dhimmi condition — and are controlled by a highly perfected administrative machinery.” P. 19 (from here)
What Islamists once accomplished in the Middle East, today’s Islamists remain capable of doing today. Moreover, what our leaders are doing to us today threatens the long-term health of Christianity. Look what our government is doing. They take our children and force them into “secularized” schools. In the name of multiculturalism, our leaders deprive our children of an education that includes the necessary wisdom they need to understand what to do with the knowledge they gain in school.
