“Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament, and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.” Daniel 12:3
A friend of mine is just back from his annual foray into the hills of northern Arizona. He was hunting elk, and found some, but the great black bear he met and the tarantulas he kept spying on the ground all around him made more lasting impressions.
His last day, he was left on his own, as his companions parted early for one obligation or another. Loneliness closed in with the falling night, and took him by surprise. The campfire had seemed warm enough, on previous evenings, amid the banter and reflections of his friends. The stars above had seemed good company, with others there to marvel at the sparkling canopy.
But now, sitting alone, he found that the fire didn’t really warm his bones. The mysterious noises of the darkness sounded less companionable. And the stars all seemed so far, far away.
It’s election time, and a crucial one. Almost everyone – even those who loath all things political and pointedly work to avoid entangling conversations on candidates and issues – agrees that there’s a lot at stake this time around.
More than a few believe, as a friend quietly said: “If we lose this one … I think we’re done.”
Which makes all the more frustrating the growing realization in many quarters that, while the Democrats seem all in on the coming electoral battle, not all Republicans are anywhere near so committed to winning. In fact, it seems pretty obvious that in the upper tiers of the party – the “Establishment” of the GOP, who control the money and machinery of what’s happening in the states – many would just as soon lose. Let Dems have the Senate, the House, the governorships.
Why? It’s not hard to figure. For one thing, many of them are more comfortably aligned with those on the other side of the aisle, when it comes to “culture war” issues like abortion and the LGBQT agenda. They’re more conservative on economics, but share with their opponents an inexplicable enthusiasm for the war in the Ukraine, a laissez faire belief that Big Government is a good thing, and deep contentment with the D.C. swamp just the way it is.
But: if Republicans win, these leaders will become responsible. They’ll have the votes to change things. Worse, they’ll have a mandate to change things. They’ll actually have to work for a living. Take stands. Make public statements. Cast votes for the record. And be wide open to all of the criticisms they’ve been leveling at the Democrats these last two years.
Worst of all – a “red wave” will mean a plethora of Trump-supported candidates elected, and the friends of the Orange Man’s first order of business will likely be replacing current, stuck-in-the-swamp-mud leadership. People like Mitch McConnell will go from being the big fish in a small pond to being little fish in a big one. That’s not a trade he and his fellow Establishment fixtures are willing to make, just to save their failing, flailing country. Or an increasingly jittery world.
On the other hand, if Republicans lose, the onus continues to be on the Dems. The Republicans need do – indeed, can do – little more than lob verbal grenades from the cheap seats. While still sunning themselves in the camera lights and drawing big financial bonuses from the lobbyists.
It’s a hard-knock life. And, sadly, reminds me a great deal of church leadership all over our country.
I’m wondering if many of our pastors, deacons, and elders care all that much about winning, either. And by “winning,” I mean stirring revival, challenging a godless culture, taking on evil, or even leading lost souls to Christ.
All of those things require taking a stand. Speaking out boldly, thoughtfully – in and beyond the pulpit. That invites opposition, from inside and beyond the church.
Ask John the Baptist, the apostles, and, of course, Jesus Himself, what happens when those flexing worldly authority don’t like what those in spiritual authority are telling the crowds in front of them. Politicos are not inclined to mess around with people who fire up the collective conscience, or summon the faithful to moral revolution.
But then, neither are plenty of people inside the church. Quite a few have no patience for Christian leaders who want to address political and social issues. The church’s charge, from many a pew-sitter’s perspective, is to keep the Gospel vague, the Bible gently reassuring, and God out of people’s personal business. Any preacher who doesn’t comply with that can be deprived of tithes, offerings, and his pulpit in no time.
So, it’s a whole lot simpler – and considerably safer – just to put on a show. Give ‘em some laughs, some pleasant tunes that won’t linger long enough to nudge any consciences, and a sermon that tsk-tsk-tsks at the evils of the world without ever suggesting Christians need risk anything to challenge the entrenched forces of hell.
God surely wants His people comfortable … and safely behind the barricades. Keep the Scriptures out, the prayers short, and the evangelism to a minimum – and we’ll all get along just fine. See you next week, folks!
A few weeks ago, I wrote about my church’s decision to subdivide our congregation by joining the universal ecclesiastical migration to two services – one “contemporary,” one “traditional.” I offered my suspicion – informed by input from young people I know and those who teach and minister among them – that the worrisome exodus of youth and young adults from our churches is grounded less in distaste for church music than in other things.
Since then, ‘ve been getting a helpful earful of the “other things.”
Not a few of the younger set and those who work with them have taken me aside to suggest that the next generation’s overriding frustration is less with choirs and hymns and more with the lack of fellowship and community they’re finding in their local congregations (people come for the show and go home) and the lack of any potent teaching from the pulpit on how they can live like Christ in a world so increasingly hostile to Him.
Yes, they want to hear the Gospel made plain. They also would like to know what to say to their classmates, their professors, their co-workers and peers who persist in pressing the pleasures of sin, and the political urgencies of abortion, homosexual and bisexual relationships, transgender politics, and malleable truth.
But their Bible study leaders won’t talk about that. Their pastors won’t go there. People get upset when you go there. People don’t give when they get upset. People visit other churches when they get upset. Churches begin to shrink, when people get upset.
So, the younger folks sit on the half-empty pews in the old auditoriums, watching the praise teams, and feeling lonely. Wondering why the once-warm fellowship now feels so cold, and the noises from outside seem so foreboding. And why God and His truth seem so far, far away.
Long, long ago, in a church not at all far away, a pastor watched the growing influx of organized crime into the Phoenix area. He felt a conviction, as a moral voice in the community, to speak out. He began going to city council meetings. Writing letters to the editor. Talking on the radio. And preaching pointedly from his pulpit. People listened. Pressure mounted on local leaders to take action against the mafiosos and their minions. Law enforcement began cracking down.
One Sunday morning, mid-service, a stranger appeared at the back of the pastor’s church. Without a word, he pulled a pistol, leveled it straight at the pastor standing in his pulpit, and pulled the trigger.
The bullet missed. Not only the pastor, but the choir members sitting behind him. The slug lodged in the wall, about halfway between the heads of a back-row tenor and bass.
For many years, the church members left the bullet in the wall – the hole clearly visible from throughout the sanctuary. A symbol of God’s gracious protection. And a badge of honor, that they’d been counted so formidable a foe by the forces of evil in their community.
People knew where they stood. People heard their voices clearly. People had no doubt at all what this church, and its Savior, were about.
Is that still true in any of our communities? Are there, anywhere in our nation, Christians so bold in their message and vital in their actions that the culture is sorely challenged, politicians are provoked ... and criminals are genuinely afraid?
Bears are on the prowl. And the tarantulas are everywhere.
But it’s been so long since many of our neighbors, the leaders of our nation – and even those in our churches – felt consistent, persistent pressure to understand who God is, what love and truth look like, and where His people stand in these tumultuous days.
The fires just don’t warm like they used to. And a world of lost sinners is dying ... while the stars blink silently in the distance.
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