A coach threatened with jail for having prayer over lunch at a non-student event?
A 10-year-old homeschooled girl forced to attend government school by a court because of her strong faith?
Government attempting to seize control of your private health-care decisions?
Incurring national debt with which our children, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren will literally be enslaved?
As Yul Brynner often said as the King of Siam in the classic Rogers and Hammerstein movie “The King and I”; “Etcetera, Etcetera, Etcetera!”
Does any of this sound like it could occur in a nation founded as a constitutional republic, “… with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence …” – a nation in which our rights to life, liberty, property/pursuit of happiness are given by God and protected by a limited government?
No.
Just for the record, is it biblically justifiable to be angry for the right reasons in the right way? The “Jesus meek and mild” sold to the modern evangelical church is a fraud and has little resemblance to the Man from Galilee and His disciples who faced hardships every day that would wither most Christian men in this country within days.
I speculate that Jesus did NOT walk up politely to the moneychangers in the Temple Court and quietly say, “Excuse me, gentlemen, would you bear with me for a moment while I fashion a whip, turn over your tables and gently escort you out of God’s house?” He kicked their greedy carcasses out of His Father’s house – by the way, we could certainly use some of that today in the church as well.
When tyrants demand by force what God has declared only His to take, i.e. the “endowed rights,” it has been acknowledged and accepted to be appropriate by even adherents of pacifism to defend our families, our neighbors and our possessions. The methods of defense depend entirely on the context of the aggression, whether it is a prowler in your home at night for which deadly force is both scripturally and legally defensible, or the abuse of governing authority for which debate, petition, organization and the vote are our first-line “weapons.”
President Abraham Lincoln stated in the Gettysburg address that, “… we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated (that all men are created equal) can long endure.” We are again – or maybe even still – in that civil war, because that concept is still under attack by the political, legal, academic and religious bourgeoisie/elite who are militant foes of the above idea.
Or, as many a pundit, paraphrasing George Orwell in “Animal Farm,” have said, they simply believe some are more equal than others, granting them license to dominate and control the proletariat/common man. In tragic irony but in logical consequence, Marx’s adherents are in fact the elite, regardless of their “compassion” rhetoric.
Scripture tells us to, “BE ANGRY, AND yet DO NOT SIN; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity” (Ephesians 4:26-27 NASB). Like any passage, we must be careful not to use selective application to justify what we want to do; however, both God the Father and God the Son have exhibited anger – we just need to make sure we are angry over what offends Him and not just that which empties our 401(k).
Be angry over 49 million murdered babies. Be angry over the physical, emotional, spiritual and political abuse of children by people and institutions charged with protecting them. Be angry over men attempting to replace God on the sovereign throne over His creation. Be angry over the oppression of the defenseless by those seeking power, money or fame. Be angry over the glorification of vile perversion and its use to pollute the minds of our next generations. Be angry over the use of governing authority to steal, kill and destroy instead of to protect and serve.
Be angry with pastors and all men who are reflected by Proverbs 25:26: “Like a trampled spring and a polluted well is a righteous man who gives way before the wicked.”
The question we must ask ourselves every day and put before God is whether our hearts and motives are pure in our anger and whether our methods of solution are consistent with His justice AND righteousness, as well as His mercy and grace.
One of Dr. Jerry Falwell’s notable statements about his experience mobilizing Christians through the Moral Majority was that when Christians win, we quit, when we lose, we quit – we just quit.
No more. Get mad but get busy praying, serving and standing.
Pastors and lay leaders, please download the AMERICA Plan and do three things:
- Execute it in your church.
- Find other pastors in your community to stand with you.
- Start and don’t stop.
It is just part of the ministry portfolio of the local church and of the Great Commission, but it is indeed part, and if we were more responsible with it we would have dramatically less reason to be angry.
