Natural Law and Christianity

19/July/2010 12:30 Filed in: Oikos Thoughts | Web News
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Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. Mark 12:17, Matthew 22:21, Luke 20:25 ESV

Many years ago I was a team leader of a small group from our church that went out Monday evenings to call on visitors from our Sunday service. As we parked outside a small apartment in north Seattle, I couldn’t help making a stupid remark about the name of the person we were about to visit. Even with my ignorance, the visit turned out to be quite productive and the young woman became an active member of the congregation.

She moved away a year or so later and within a few years she returned for a visit. Through the course of events I learned at the very instant I was making a spontaneous remark that could be considered flippant, inside her apartment things were quite serious. Her remarks were much more prayerful, which went something like: “God I would like to believe you are real, but I am having a very difficult time. If you don’t show me some sign of your reality, I have no reason now to live and before morning I fear I will use this gun to commit suicide.” At that time, we a small group of, in the larger context, complete fools rang her doorbell.

When I learned the true events of that evening not only was I humbled, but I realized in our lost and dying world just how thoughtless is much of what Christianity and the church says and does. Put in the broader context of recent world events, the problems of the recent Great Recession, were not caused by the greedy money grubbers on Wall Street, financial institutions, and real estate, they knew no better, they were just sinners sinning.

The real problem that caused the current mess, was that Christians, as individuals and in community as the church, played religious games, and sought political power, while the world, as it should be, crumbled. The church of Jesus Christ has one calling, to proclaim the Good News of the redemption of the world found in Jesus Christ alone. Instead of proclaiming the gospel, and being the leaders of the common community, the church has attempted to become so earthly relevant that its of no earthly good. Instead of being a restraining force of evil, to use the words of Revelation 3, the post modern church has become tepid.

As I was watching Glenn Beck one day last week, he and Stephen Broden, a church pastor from Texas were talking about this very subject, when Glenn interjected a comment about church leaders needing to protect their nonprofit status. It was just a few, off the cuff words, and the conversation moved on. Those nonprofit status words however have stuck with me since that time and are the founding principle for this message today.

I use the word message because after doing some Internet research I quickly came to the conclusion that there was nothing substitutive in the net noise that would add anything to what I shall be attempting to explain. Therefore there are times when we all need to follow the leading of God and just preach what is on your mind.

Sometime between my visiting the young woman in the story above and today, I had the opportunity to visit a church in one of the larger rural communities in the Northwest. The service was much more traditional, yet non-liturgical, than any church service I had ever attended. Reading through the bulletin, there was a paragraph that dealt with the legal formation of the church that implied that the standard 501(c)3 religious tax exemption did not apply to the church and that tithes and offerings were not tax deductible.

After the service, the pastor greeted me as is normal, and after a discussion of why I was in the area, Christian doctrine and other such topics, I asked the question about the church’s legal status. The pastor smiled and gave me a brief synopsis of their belief system relating to church and state relationships. His congregation believed that the church was not subject to the rules, regulations, and laws of the state, and church authority is superior to the state. Furthermore with the institution of the federal income tax in the early twentieth century, church leaders had made a fundamental mistake in accepting that state dominance.

He was right, if you look at the history of western civilization, good, bad, or tepid, the church was never really subservient to the state, many times it was indistinguishable from the government, but really never subordinate in the sense of the IRS designation. In other words true separation of church and state as designed in the founding of the American republic, was truly the separation of church and state, not the downtrodden excuse we find in the United States today.

On the Internet when you search for the history of nonprofit organizations, you find a history of religious exemptions codified in law, but as most of history today, you find it organized in such a way as to justify what we want to accept, rather than making today anathema of true history. Where the truth lies however is not in human law, but rather the inalienable natural law of God which supersedes all human endeavors. Hence in a truly secular society, which we have become, you will never find that reality of God, with very rare exceptions.

Elaborating further, for all intents and purposes, the state has become god itself for many of the citizens of the nation and the world today. Stateism is to supply all our desires and provide us with security when times become challenging. In other words people have begun to desire the leisure of the Animal Farm. But stateism is a transient creation of man and not of God, hence we are in the process of learning a lesson in absolute reality and natural law.

I have mentioned before that I have a friend that says that the rapid decline of America did not begin when we took the Ten Commandments and prayer out of the schools, it began when we took the Ten Commandments and true prayer out of our churches. Adding the context of today’s message, the decline of the United States began when we made the church biddable to the whims of the federal government and the decline of American dominance in the world follows thereafter the reality of the Sin Cosmos.

After leaving so called corporate security, I had been working with a hardwood flooring contractor for some time when I was able to buy a new compact Isuzu pickup. Driving back and forth to work everyday, I decided to purchase a frame for my license plate that said, “My Boss is a Jewish Carpenter.” In the almost twenty years in construction and some 212 thousand miles I put on that little truck before it was replaced, I learned a lot about all phases of construction. While our main contractors were some of the best in the Puget Sound area, we got to see all types — the good, the bad, and occasionally some downright ugly.

Now, one of my favorite programs is on HGTV entitled “Holmes on Homes,” featuring Canadian Mike Holmes where he goes into peoples’ homes who are having trouble with the home they purchased or with their contractors and fixes the problems, sometimes at expenses that exceed the value of the home itself. Mike has two standard phrases that typify most of the projects. The first is, “Take it down.” The second is, “Make it right.”

In the context of what is happening in the American church and by extension, the evangelical Christian church around the world, is the Jewish Carpenter that founded the church, is beginning to “take it down and make it right.” Pastors and lay Christians who want to go back to the sloppy agape of the last few generations are going to find their contractors license revoked.

One of the Holmes episodes over the weekend featured a two story addition to what had been a contractors house, in which he had created a basement by digging down below the existing foundation and then just building a basement room and the addition with no means of reenforcing the now inadequate foundation. That is a pretty good description of current Protestantism. The church is without Christ’s underpinning in both doctrine and works and it will not withstand stupendous times. Many people who consider themselves Christians will be left behind, and I am not talking about missing the Rapture.

The foundation of the church is supposed to be the finished work of Jesus Christ, the son of God. By his choice, Jesus became human, lived a sinless life, was crucified as a propitiatory sacrifice for the sins of all humanity, and was raised again from death as the down payment on eternal life and the provision for all who believe, a future perfect home in eternity.

Building on that foundation the living stones of the church are supposed to be the purifying or strengthening agent of the world. Sadly with the ascendency of theistic evolution in the church, coupled with other progressive enlightened thought, you have the creation over time of Protestant liberalism, the social gospel, liberation theology, forms of wealth and prosperity, creating a literal lexicon of balderdash.

It logically follows that if Jesus Christ came into this world as the son of a carpenter and learned that trade, there must be something about construction, that would help the son of God understand the human condition as it relates to not only constructing a church, but also a civl society. For the Christian the library of Godly wisdom is found in the Bible, but the handbook of construction methods are found in natural law. That natural law combined with the Bible also provides the plans for constructing a sustainable and prosperous culture and civilization. Without and understanding of natural law and eternal theology, it all falls apart.

Welcome to July 2010. On one side of the discussion you hear how things are getting better. On the other you hear that we still need to change, the change, back to something else. Almost all of this rhetoric fails to realize that it really goes back to when American Christians sold their heritage in God; for a tax deductible donation. That is not separation of church and state, that is a cancerous collusion, essentially bringing God down to the level of human understanding.

American history is replete with all sorts of religious leaders proclaiming that they have a vision from God and to be holy you need to follow them. Some of them have even taken their flocks to the mountain top to wait for the return of Christ. What is lost in all of this striving for personal holiness is the grace of God, that alone saves sinners, and we are all sinners in this world, and will be as long as we breathe this planet’s air.

This brings us to the words of Jesus from the gospels we quoted at the beginning of the message. The essence of that verse in its broader context is the things of God can’t be bought with money. Then a country, whose citizens have made the love of money their God, it pretty much follows, they are on their own.

It has been stated on Wonder Springs, from before the meltdowns and the bailouts began, that the coming redux will be of God. So far the only person who has a large common audience that acknowledges that is Glenn Beck. The gift of God’s grace is free, but it isn’t cheap. The time is at hand when what you believe will matter significantly. Everyone has a religion and it matters. Like all gifts, you must use it or lose it. The divisions we see in the country is the process of people beginning to understand that it all comes with a cost, and personal peace through affluence will be removed from the choices.

Things may get more difficult before they get better, but remember these. God did not destroy Sodom and Gomorrah until Lot and his family had left the cities, but Lot was required to leave. After the reign of Saul, God chose King David, an imperfect man after God’s own heart. Finally in the short history of this world, in the fullness of time, God sent Messiah to redeem humanity and fallen creation from the death of sin.

So will you render your life and wealth unto Caesar or will you serve the God that created the universe and redeemed sinful humanity? That is the question each individual will again be called to answer in these times of stupendous and unrelenting change.

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