December 11, 2009

Never Knew You

Last night ABC Nightly News had a segment on faith. The crux of the reporting revealed that when it comes to religion, Americans want a smorgass board to choose from. For instance people are blending yoga and astrology in with their mainline theology. One woman interviewed considers herself a Catholic, however she regularly attends protestant churches, ‘because God is bigger than one denomination’. This certainly brings home the point that Jesus makes when he says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” (Matt 7:21 ESV)

1 comment:

Steve Corey said...

Gail;

-----Americans have turned to the world’s smorgasbord for their spiritual dining. They have swallowed man’s ill-fated attempt to consider unity as rising from the validation of any opinion. They have failed to understand that an opinion is not validated by the desire to hold it, but by its reflection of truth. Therefore Americans try to make confusion their unity by agreeing with freedom of opinion’s self-deception, because they do not like the systematized order of a humble search for the truth.
-----Yoga, astrology, earth-worship, Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, etc. are all opinions of man’s attempts to reach out to God. While the first order of systematized thought about these opinions finds them not to be wrong in that they reach out to God, the second order of thought finds they are all in serious conflict with each other. The third order of thought logically returns the possibility that God‘s reaching out to man should be the focus of a true religion. Humility allows this premise for consideration, and without belaboring the point with extensive proof, an honest study of human history shows God’s intervening reach for man to be through Jesus Christ. Therefore the opinion validated by truth is Christianity, such that the opinion itself can be relinquished for faith in Christ, and a new birth happens.
-----At the same time, to be consistent with the truth, this new-born must break with unity in holding to the validity of opinion for opinion, since that has now been found to be a deception. This consistency is where contemporary America picks a bone with Jesus Christ. For contemporary America is no longer the America which once agreed with the philosophers of the American Revolution. These men believed in a government controlled by individual freedom. Since, to them, religion was the greatest thread in an individual’s aspirations, and since in them America was comprised primarily of people who held Christ to be greater than government, then America’s government would be controlled by the principles of Christianity. But contemporary America is now more in agreement with the philosophers of the French Revolution. These men believed in individuals controlled by government. Since they observed religion to be the greatest thread in an individual’s aspirations, and since they believed government rises by the will of the people and subjugates the individual, then government must conquer the individual’s religion, and if possible, itself become the object of it. What better way to destroy the true object of religion and usurp its place than to propose the illogical validation of any religious contradiction so that unity of the masses might arise on the basis of believing in anything, therefore nullifying the principles of any god but itself from government by the masses .
-----Thank God for the Catholic woman. She has been wise enough to find the Truth as the object of her religion, and has been humble enough to acknowledge individual freedom in Christ for everyone who finds Him. Therefore she has not replaced the object of her Christianity with either denominationalism or the government. So she freely worships and fellowships with all her brethren, accepting them as Christ has accepted her.

Love you all,
Steve Corey