On the whole, liberal Christianity is like the devil quoting Scripture. I had a relative who’s not a believer angrily direct me to an article by John Pavlovitz on his opposition to Donald Trump during the 2020 election. I was already familiar with him and don’t agree with his doctines.
I only want to judge things the way the Lord does. It serves no purpose to ever willingly be in disagreement with *Him.*
Ever since He created man, God has held us accountable for our hearts and our actions. And that’s despite the fact of how hard people used to have it in pre-modern times. And, God built the early church through people who sacrificed and were often martyred, despite the fact that they lived in that difficult, pre-modern world, too.
To be part of the body, isn’t it to become more and more an “all-purpose” Christian whom God could have put anywhere, in any time or place, and still our faith would survive and grow — as Paul said, he learned through Christ how to be abased and how to abound.
The guide to this is in the New Testament. How often do churches “remember the prisoners as if chained with them,” just for one thing?
Shouldn’t the suffering of Christians in other times and even other places today motivate us, since if it’s not too much for God to ask of them, well, do we think that we’re better than them?
How about “love not the world, nor the things that are of the world”?
I’m a devoted Christian, and it’s practically ***impossible*** for me to live, to just exist in this society, and I can give you no end of evidence for why that is chiefly due to the state of the church here. But that does NOT mean all individual Christians.
It means the church overall. It has moved considerably away from the Lord, and those who are still in it and have a relatively comfortable life don’t mind as long as they’re in it.
Myself, I’ve been satisfied to get by, and when I could, to work menial jobs to support serving the Lord the rest of the time. In the end, as long as I stay faithful to Him, the state of the church here doesn’t eternally affect me. But it does eternally affect many others.
Now you know why I responded to your posting the way I did. I never saw you as a “Pavlovitz type” but...I suppose i was venting more than anything else. Time for all of us to get more familiar with “the testimony of the Word and the blood of the Lamb”.
A lot of these guys...when you distill down what they are saying ultimately will lead you back to the story of the Jesus, the expensive box of perfume, and the questioning of Jesus’ motives by Judas when Christ allowed himself to be anointed by a penitent woman. “Such a box ought to have been sold and the money given to the poor”...Oh one could just hear the sighing sniff and the questioning and accusing lilt in the voice...aramaic or modern English...the accusation is the same, and the sneer of the devil behind all that. Judas...the first recorded social justice warrior!(the forerunner of all Marxists and social leftist progressives after him...crying for the poor but collecting the processing fees and a bit extra if one could get away with it!) Judas betrayed Christ and the Judas people afterward, like him in religious pious words, slandering their fellows in Christ over the millenia, if indeed they were ever their true brethren and not the ravening wolves that the apostles warned us about!
Carry On and to God be the glory forever! Amen!