What if Americans overwhelmingly chose Christians to represent them in government?
What if the United States federal government from the very tippy top on down was overwhelmingly comprised of Christians?
Well guess what?
It is!
Yessiree, it’s true: According to a recent survey by Pew Research, nearly 92% of the incoming United States Congress is Christian.
How ’bout that!
Hallelujah, right?!
And woohoo, too!
Can’t you just feel the holiness (or something) oozing out of DC even as you read this blog through the tears of joy that are surely rolling down your jubilant cheeks?
Maybe we really are a “Christian nation”!
…or maybe we’re just another “‘Christian’ nation”.
See the difference there? It’s subtle in type, but a big deal in practical impact.
The first option – America as a “Christian nation” – is what so many in this land imagine to be the case – that we are a land with at least a majority of folks who have a high regard for the God and religion of Christianity. This is a ludicrously untrue contention, but a popular one nonetheless, particularly among self-identified “conservative Christians” in “good, Bible-believing churches” who also tend to view the US Constitution and its protection of things like the “right” to worship false gods as a very good thing.
The second option – America as a “‘Christian’ nation” – is much more in line with our sad reality. So long as the term “Christian” is left to open interpretation, Americans love to claim it as their own. When “Christian” is stripped of its convicting, precise definition and meaning, it suddenly becomes very popular here in “the land of the free” and the home of the NSA.
Same goes for Jesus. Keep Him vague and fluffy, and He is almost universally adored, but the more biblical detail you add to any presentation of His nature (especially as compared to ours), the more likely you are to be crucified…you know, like Jesus (the real one).
The one thing that unites all unbelieving Americans of all political persuasions is their shared contempt for the truth and lordship of Christ as King in practice right here and right now. All unbelieving conservatives and liberals share a common disdain for repenting, submitting, and obeying Him.
They love to claim Jesus with their lips, but the Christ in their minds has been carefully assembled using the attributes that they like and dismissing those that they don’t. This Mr. Potato Jesus approach to personal god/idol construction is the norm for unrepentant sinners in modern American culture (and everywhere else). It accommodates everything from the most conservative to the most liberal of attitudes on the socio-political spectrum. There is a Mr. Potato Jesus kit available for everyone. (See: The Rise of Mr. Potato Jesus.)
So it is that most “conservative Christians” in America are entirely comfortable proudly dismissing entire reams of Scripture that they find troublesome or in conflict with their idolatry of America, patriotism, talk radio, or the Republican Party. Liberals do the same thing do defend and defer to their preferred idols. Same goes for “Independents” and Libertarians.
All unbelievers (many of whom loudly claim to be believers) share the same fundamental approach to Christ and His Word: Take what you like, ignore what you don’t, and call yourself a “good Christian”.
Leftists hate His lordship.
“Conservatives” hate His lordship.
Independents and Libertarians hate Him that way, too.
And the vast majority of folks every group are, of course, “Christian”.
Just ask ’em.
Like Pew Research did.
How did we come to live in a land where the vast majority of “conservative Christians” freely and happily ship off their children to the State for explicitly anti-Christian “education”? (See: The Satanic approach to children’s education…as embraced by most professing Christians in America.)
How did we get a vast majority of self-identified “conservatives” who actively support and defend everything from Social Security and Medicaid to the police state, perpetual war, and State-controlled children’s “education”?
How did we become a land of “good conservatives” who gleefully pledge their allegiance in song to an indivisible State on “Independence Day”?
Well, we got here because words like Christ, Christianity, liberty, freedom, security, family, and state have been left wide open to interpretation. They’ve been severed from the objective defining light of Scripture and, as such, they’ve died and brought death to all that they touch. They have become whatever we want them to be, and what we have allowed ourselves to be conditioned to want is…whatever our State and Corporate elites tell us to want.
Perpetual war for the sake of peace?
Sure, why not? Go, America!
Perpetually increasing debt and enslavement to financial masters who effortlessly print (or type) the fake money we spend our lives chasing after?
Of course!
Perpetual surrender of freedom and liberty to the State for the sake of…preserving freedom and liberty?
Oh sure. That makes perfect sense…in a world detached from Christ. In a world that is not actively engaged, confronted, and corrected through the Gospel-fueled Great Commission as advanced by the true and faithful Church of Christ the King, the disintegration of language, economics, family, and everything else that we are witnessing here is entirely predictable.
Only the Gospel can address these problems, and we have been thoroughly conditioned to look anywhere but there to anyone but Christ for salvation in this culture.
Give us Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, and Fox News instead! (Or MSNBC, CNN, and Bill Maher, if you prefer…they all lead away from the one and only true solution of submission to Christ as Lord in practice through the Gospel.)
The question then becomes, “Will we repent?”
Will we be saved?
Will we believe? – with belief understood biblically as active obedience to Christ in all things right here and right now, all by God’s grace and for His glory. (See: Will we repent or will we be destroyed?)
Or will we be just like our “Christian” representatives in Congress?
You know, the ones we vote for, enable, and deserve because, in practice, we really do share the same phony Christ and the same phony Christianity.
May God grace us with brokenness, repentance, and a zeal for the proclamation and application of His Nature as revealed in His Word in every realm of His creation right here and right now…while there is yet time.
~
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© 2015 Scott Alan Buss – All Rights Reserved.
Soli Deo Gloria!