Organized Religion Behaving Badly

  Organized religion behaving badly.

Last post I made the point that churches as social institutions were necessary, and that this seemed to be endorsed by scripture. This time I want to illustrate from scripture that they continually go wrong! It is so like God – but still breathtakingly wonderful - that in response he continually works to reform and revitalise them. As Paul said of God's grace in another context “but where sin abounded grace superabounded” (Romans 5:20)

One way things go wrong was when the ministers (& people) do evil.

The priest Eli was an early example: “ Eli's sons were scoundrels; they had no regard for the Lord. … This sin of the young men (demanding the best part of sacrifices the people came to offer to God) was very great in the Lord's sight because they were treating the Lord's offering with contempt.” 1 Samuel 2:12ff).

In addition their father who should have stopped them did not: “Now Eli who was very old heard about everything his sons were doing to all Israel and how they slept with the women who served at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting”

God's actions leave us in no doubt how he feels about such actions. He sent a prophet who warned Eli what would happen if he did not act against his sons. Eli did nothing. Then God sent a message to Eli through the boy Samuel: “I will carry out against Eli everything I spoke against his family – from beginning to end. For I told him that I would judge his family forever because of the sin he knew about: his sons blasphemed God and he failed to restrain them.” This was fulfilled when both of Eli's sons were killed in battle, and Eli fell from his seat and broke his neck on hearing of this and that the Ark had been captured.

The lesson is that God really hates evil being done by people who are seen to represent him, and the “higher-ups” who fail to do their duty to stop them!

In our day both the paedophile priests and the bishops and church officials who turned a blind eye are exactly in this position! I find it hard to comprehend – assuming they have read this part of the Bible – and the story of Samuel is one of the more well known Bible stories – that they can actually believe God exists and still do what they do. They should be far too terrified – having read this example of how God feels about such actions – of facing God on Judgement Day! For those who are so committed to the institution that they think evil should be swept under the carpet, abuse hushed up and victims silenced, look what God did in this case.

Not only did God punish Eli and his sons as a lesson to us (1 Corinthians 10:11 “these things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us ...” (and when you stop to think about it, death in this world is the least of the problems of someone who incurs God's wrath!) but He dealt severely with an institution that was misrepresenting his character. The Ark of the Covenant was allowed to be captured by the Philistines (who then learned reverence for God), and the sanctuary at Shiloh destroyed (Jeremiah 7:12 “Go now to the place in Shiloh where I first made a dwelling for my Name, and see what I did to it because of the wickedness of my people Israel ...”

There is a warning here to be heeded!

In Jeremiah's lifetime we have the example of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the deportation of the people. God preferred to appear weak by having the Babylonians boast that their gods had given them victory, and to have the Temple dedicated to him destroyed rather than have evil flourish in it. For instance Ezekiel's vision about corrupt worship in the Jerusalem Temple while he was among the exiles in Babylon. Ezekiel 8:16ff “He brought me into the inner court of the House of the Lord, and at the entrance to the Temple, between the portico and the altar, there were about 25 men with their backs to the temple of the Lord and their faces towards the east, they were bowing down to the sun in the east.”

God did these things in the past and had them recorded in his Bible “as a warning to us” therefore he may not necessarily visibly punish “here and now” these days. We have already been warned. On Judgement Day we will have no excuse! Of course God is kind and does not wish anyone to perish but rather that they may repent and live! So he may reinforce the past warnings by executing a little bit of judgement in this world.

Another way things go wrong is “career minded ministers”

I do not mean that people serving God full time and earning their living from it is a problem. Not at all! The Old Testament priesthood and Levites were set up by God this way. In the New Testament the pattern is the same. The Apostles gave up their businesses -Peter, James, Andrew, John their fishing business, Matthew his job with the revenue office and so forth, to work full time with Jesus. In Acts 6:1ff the Apostles stress the importance of them “giving (their) attention to prayer and the ministry of the word” Paul did indeed at times support himself and his team by working but he also defended the right of ministers to be paid with statements like “Who serves in the army at his own expense?” (1 Corinthians 9:7)

I do mean “career ministers” who are people shaped by this world not God.

Such Old Testament ones persecuted the prophets who really were God's agents. Jeremiah was flogged on the orders of the priest Pashhur for warning the people to turn back to God. (Jeremiah 10). Amos is ordered to stop telling the people to turn back to God by Amaziah priest of Bethel (Amos 7:10ff). Here we get, as a side note, Amos' famous words “I was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet ...” There were plenty of career prophets about (see how Amaziah says to Amos “Go back to Judah, earn your bread there and do your prophesying there!” but none of them were delivering God's message. Amos certainly was not one of them – he was a real messenger sent by God!

Through Ezekiel, God describes ministry by the metaphor of a shepherd. Ezekiel 34 is a dramatic description of the continual failure of human ministers and how eventually God himself will have to step in to set things right. Looking back we know this was in the person of Jesus who called himself “the Good Shepherd”. Ezekiel 34:2ff “woe to you shepherds of Israel who only take care of yourselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals but you do not take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. ...”

In the new testament we see priests like Caiaphas who practice realpolitic rather than justice. “'What are we accomplishing?' They asked. 'Here is this man performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation.' Then one of them named Caiaphas. Who was high priest that year, spoke up,'You know nothing at all! You do not realise that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish'” (Caiaphas deserves no credit for the prophetic double entendre: “one man die for the people”) For all their “religion” these priests actually knew God so little that when he came in the flesh they could not even pick the resemblance!

Even in its fledgling state the Christian community fell prey to ministers who were in it for the money or satisfying their own fallen nature.

Paul battles them in Corinth: 2 Corinthians 11:13ff “For such people are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ ...”

Peter had some blistering things to say: 2 Peter 2 “But there were also false prophets among the people (of the Old Testament) just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies … Many will follow their depraved conduct bringing the way of truth into disrepute … In their greed these teachers will exploit you with fabricated stories. … they will be paid back for the harm they have done. Their idea of pleasure is to carouse I broad daylight. They are blots and blemishes, revelling in their pleasures while they feast with you. With eyes full of adultery they never stop sinning; they seduce the unstable; they are experts I greed – an accursed brood!”

Jude felt compelled to pen a warning: “Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God's holy people. For certain individuals … have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people who pervert the grace of God into a licence for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord. … These people are blemishes on you love feasts, eating with you without the slightest qualm – shepherds who feed only themselves. … they follow their own evil desires; they boast about themselves and flatter others for their own advantage.”

In Revelation 2:18ff the church in Thyatira is warned: “Nevertheless I have this against you; you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet. By her teaching she misleads many of my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols.”

Every gardener knows: as well as feeding and watering your prize plants you have to keep pulling up the weeds! And weeds always seem to grow faster than the good plants.

“Organised religion” seems to be the same, it needs (probably every generation) to be brought back to obedience and trust in God because it has drifted away into unbelief or wrong belief or both. It also needs always to be on guard against evil doers – wolves in sheep's clothing who want to hide among the flock and devour.

Organised Religion - Do We Need It?

Organised Religion – do we need it?

The answer is a definite “yes” on so many levels!

For instance our world view is largely socially shaped. Our beliefs are reinforced by bouncing off other like-minded people, by enacting rituals together and so forth.

The person who can stand out against peer pressure is rare even in our “individualistic” West, in the East they have been virtually eradicated: they even have a saying “the nail which stands above the others gets hammered down”.

You may have heard sermon illustrations like: “what happens if you pull one glowing coal out of the bed of coals? It turns from red to black and goes out! What happens if you put it back among the other coals? It starts to glow red again. Just like that we need fellowship with other Christians!”

However some have suggested that small Christian fellowships can adequately fulfil this role, that we do not need anything like the large denominational organisations we are familiar with. (Of course others say we need to go the other way merge all these organisations into one – I'll deal with that later.)

A couple of decades ago I was studying up on sociology, particularly the sociology of religion. It was at a time when “house churches” were all the rage. Some sincere advocates believed that this was going back to our New Testament roots. It also echoed the social flavour of the time of attacking all forms of authority and every institution. This was a much less laudable but more probable cause of the movement's popularity!

It has stuck in my mind all these years how the books I was studying were unanimous in their verdict that thinking one could have any religion which passed from generation to generation and influenced whole cultures, without having an “institution” was sociologically naive. The crunch was that whatever its faults, large religious organisations were simply a necessity given human nature and the way this world is.

Given these empirical observations, to what extent are they borne out in scripture?

Take the Israelites after God had rescued them from slavery in Egypt. There was established a secular administration: Moses as leader (not always unopposed or appreciated!) and senior judge, then the loosely bound tribal league, with each of the twelve tribes having its officials and deputy judges for trying straightforward law cases.

Moses also had a unique religious role as a prophet and mediator between the people and God.

Then God added a religious institution based on Aaron and his (male) descendants as priests, with rituals and vestments ordained down to the last detail. There were also instituted (three) annual festivals where the whole tribal league gathered to celebrate together and reinforce their common faith.

To this God added mobile worship centre (as befitted nomadic herdsmen). Again it was ordained down to the last detail, with the tribe of Levi appointed to run it.

Further the Law was written down and preserved for teaching successive generations with the Levites playing a special role as teachers.

Nevertheless, the cultic activities God instituted differed sharply from those of the peoples around them. God specifically forbade: Idols or images, Human sacrifices, ritual prostitution, and worshipping other gods. All of these were part and parcel of the religious practices of the peoples surrounding the Israelites once they entered the promised land.

I think it is safe to conclude that God recognised and endorsed the human need for “organised religion” together with festivals and certain rituals. And a means of preserving, transmitting and teaching the faith. But, God certainly did not endorse corrupt rituals and ones which obscured his essential moral character, goodness and uniqueness.

By now you may be thinking: “and look how that all went wrong starting with Aaron's “golden calf” idol!" True, and I want to look at the failures next post, but for now I am just looking at the necessity of religious institutions.

What about Jesus? Did he set up a “New Covenant” organisation? Maybe not, but then he was initially calling the nation of Israel (Matt.15:24). It already had religious organisations: one based on the Pharisees and the Synagogue the other the temple worship led by the priests. This would become obsolete once Jesus died and rose again, removing the point of animal sacrifices (Heb. 10). Historically it then became physically impossible after the Romans demolished the temple. Perhaps there was for some time at least the possibility that the nation would belatedly recognise Jesus as God's Messiah and these organisations would be reformed and revitalised.

Historically that did not happen and the early “followers of the Way” were ejected from Judaism (Acts 8:1).

Organisation certainly can be seen in the Christian Church from soon after the New Testament period. I think it can also be seen developing earlier from the record of scripture.

The Apostles were clearly preservers and publishers of the record of Jesus' life and teaching. They also appear as “leaders” of the large and growing community of believers. Fir instance we see the Hellenists coming to them with the complaint that their widows are being neglected in the daily distribution, and (after prayer) the Apostles appoint people to oversee this work (Acts 6). The incident of conversion among the Samaritans, and their receiving the Holy Spirit after the Apostles go to them and lay their hands on them could be interpreted various ways. But I think all ways contain a germ of God endorsing the Apostles leading role (Acts 8:14-17).

The Jerusalem Council (Acts 15) gives a picture of dealing with disagreement over fundamental issues of faith in that early community. That they came together in council indicated some degree of organisation and unity. That James after summing up the issue ans says “...it is my judgement ...” (Acts 15:19) and achieved agreement all round speaks to acknowledged leadership.

Paul in his letters leaves us in no doubt that the Christian organisation was bigger than the individual congregation. (eg hinted at in 1Cor.11:16, implicit in 1 Tim.1:3 and Titus 1:5,)

[Special Note: As anyone can easily verify by a word search of EKKLESIA, generally translated as “church” in Paul's letters he has in mind people who meet together not an organisation far less a building! - but that is a story for another day.] (but consider Gal.1:22) and Revelation 1:4 ff)

Paul leaves no room for doubt in his letters that he is apostle with responsibility for and authority  over at least the churches spread that he or his associates had founded.

His relationship to Peter and the Jerusalem church is interesting. He sends Jerusalem famine relief, he goes to Jerusalem for a ruling from the leading Apostles in his dispute with the “circumcision party” who have been undermining his work (Acts 15). Yet he stresses that “his Gospel” came as a revelation from God – he did not learn it from any human”(Galatians 1:11 ff). On the other hand, he says that years later he recited it to the leading Apostles and reports that they agreed it was the same as what they taught (Galatians 2:1ff). His dressing down of Peter over fellowship with Gentile Christians demonstrates the truth of the Gospel trumps any deference to organisational hierarchy (Galatians 2:11ff).

I think that we do see the beginnings of a supra-congregational organisation. This organisation has two interesting features: First, as Jesus taught (eg Mark 9:35) and Paul used as a yardstick (eg Acts 20:18ff), leadership is by servant-hood. Second, loyalty to Jesus and the truth of his Gospel is more important than “unity” in the organisation or loyalty to any human leader (eg Galatians 1:8, 2:11ff).

Next we shall look at how it all went wrong (again and again and again!)

Sleeping Watchmen

Sleeping Watchmen

May I start by wishing you all the joy and peace which is in Christ Jesus this Christmas

I was sad and angry when I read the Christmas messages of church leaders in the newspapers this Christmas.

During the year in my home state of Victoria (Australia) the anti-Christian lobby has felt strong enough to come out of the woodwork. Two examples churches could not fail to notice were these:

One, Christian education in schools. The State schools had allowed half an hour per week for children whose parents did not object to receive Christian Education on a government approved syllabus using volunteer teachers from the various churches. During my ministry the content of this syllabus has been progressively watered down for fear of offending anyone or appearing to proselytize. eventually it had been so emptied of any Christian content that it had become just a social studies course dressed up in a few Bible verses, teaching the secular sentiments of the day.

Towards the end of 2015 even that was banned from state schools by the government.

Then as Christmas neared, the government issued a decree that from next year the singing of Christmas carols, and indeed any songs which mentioned God would be banned from State Schools. There would of course be no nativity plays or nativity scenes in classrooms.

“Blind Freddy” as the saying goes, should have concluded that there was a powerful lobby strongly opposed the Christianity, who wanted the message of Christ swept from the national consciousness.

Then came the newspaper clips of the church leaders' Christmas messages. All on the theme “make room in the inn of your hearts for strangers” - especially Syrian refugees.

These leaders might have though they were being topical – they were actually a couple of centuries in the past. A past where the whole nation was at least nominally Christian, a past where they were maybe the official religion of the land, a past where the Gospel was (in theory if not in practice!) so well known that it could be taken for granted and a homily about attitudes was acceptable.

These people, called to be shepherds and watchmen, had failed to see the change that had crept up on Christian nations over the past few centuries. They have been sleeping on watch!

The message they should have been giving to a nation well on the way to forgetting about God was this: “Christmas: celebrating the saving love and power of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit: God the Son enters the world he created as one of us, as a human baby. His purpose to be the greatest revelation of who God is: to show God's love, and to be God's love in dying for our sins, to show and be the power of God in rising from the dead, breaking the power of sin and death.”

Separation of Church and State

Separation of Church and State

Now might be a good point in our exploration of “Saving the West” to think about the separation of church and state.

Jesus famously said “render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's.” Although he was at the time adroitly avoiding the trap his enemies had carefully set for him. To his disciples he stressed how differently those he gave spiritual authority to were to act compared to “rulers of the world”. Later when Pilate questioned him about the allegation that he was a rival king to Caesar he answered : “My kingdom is not of this world.”.

Given this it seems out of character that Christian “organised religion” rapidly became just like “the rulers of this world”. It is just a (very sad) fact of church history that so often prelates have seemed only interested in power and money. I won't labour the point, but the fact is that history is replete with power struggles between “the church” and the secular ruler. Conversely, secular rulers have at many times sought to control organised religion both to legitimate their rule and as a means of controlling the populace.

Out of this insalubrious past came emancipation in more recent times. Young countries like the United States where early settlers were fleeing persecution and the government telling them what they should believe enshrined the “separation of church and state”. Old countries like Great Britain who had an “established church” broke that connection.

This is all common knowledge, but it is often swept under the carpet when the term “separation of church and state” is used polemically – as it increasingly has been in the campaign by secularists to eradicate active Christianity.

Given the – to use an old concept – sinful nature of human beings, no human or human organisation is infallible. I have an extremely high view of that Church for which the Bible uses beautiful imagery such as “the temple of the Holy Spirit”, “the Body of Christ” and even “the Bride of Christ”. But that Church will only be revealed fully when Christ returns – that will be its first meeting! Those organisations of human beings which we call “churches” or even – of our own denomination naturally - “THE Church” are only human organisations. God may be gracious and work with and through them, he may care enough to prune and discipline them when they get too rotten, but they are still very human and frequently dominated by evil.

If anyone doubts this, consider the problem of paedophile priests and church workers, and the lengths bishops and church organisations went to to silence the victims, cover up rather than to confess terrible things which had been done, and even, horror of horrors, to protect paedophiles and allow them to continue! No, the thing we often call “the church” is still human, fallible and frequently sinful.

So to allow such an organisation to exert authority over the lawful government is indeed a bad idea. BUT to go one further and say that our laws should not exemplify Christian principles, or that avowedly Christian men and women should be disbarred from being in the government is a travesty!

Secularists have urged both these things, and Christians seem to have given way without a fight. Perhaps it was the mood of the times and fighting would have been to no avail, but now we must wake up!

The West is in peril of disintegrating: the freedoms, the laws, the attitudes, the prosperity that it has produced are in danger of fading away – or being brutally scrubbed out.

In the question of church and state we need to believe and proclaim that we disavow absolutely the bad “old” days of power struggles by “organised religion” and government and government mandated churches; and the bad “new” days exemplified by Islamic Sate. Then we must stand up for the achievements wrought by godly men and women who knew that the Bible was God's word and that God's aim was for people to have life and have it in all its abundance.

PS – no more posts for two weeks

Nations who Reject God

Nations who Reject God

Does God hand nations who reject him over to the consequences of their folly? If it comes to that does the act of a nation and its leaders rejecting God inevitably lead to foolish political decisions?

This would seem likely to be the case, but I would like to establish that it is biblical teaching, not just a likely looking theory.

We have all heard platform speakers who take a short narrative section of the Bible and use it as the “proof” for even the most blatantly un-biblical notions. I certainly don't want to be like that! So how do we try to find accurately what the Bible teaches (if anything) on this question).

First we can check if more general teaching is consistent with our theory being true.

The Bible does say that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Ps 111:10, Prov. 1:7, Prov. 9:10) and conversely “the fool says in their heart 'there is no God'.” Ps 14:1. So there is a link both between being God-fearing and making wise decisions, and between folly and rejecting God, so this is positive so far.

There are prophecies against Israel's rulers, pictured as shepherds over God's flock, which shed some light:

Jeremiah 10:21 “the shepherds are senseless and do not enquire of the Lord; so they do not prosper and all their flock is scattered." Here rejecting God's counsel on the part of the national leaders has bad consequences for the people.

Ezekiel 34 deals with Israel's corrupt leaders at length and leads up to the thrilling prophecy that YHWH himself will step in and rescue the flock and be their shepherd – a Good Shepherd! But in the early part of the chapter, the faults of the leaders are laid bare, and the fact that (up to a point) God did allow the whole nation to suffer the consequences of their mis-rule: “The word of the Lord came to me “Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them: ' This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Woe to your shepherds of Israel who only take care of yourselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, cloth yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost You have ruled them brutally and harshly. So they were scattered ...” (my emphasis)

There is a great deal of food for thought in this passage for civic and national leaders – and ministers about what God requires of them, but the point relevant to our discussion is the result of their failure in the case of Israel : God's sheep were scattered. So although he promised – and performed – a wonderful future rescue of his sheep; at that time the natural consequences of these leader's decisions were allowed to follow.

Again from these passages there is a link between leaders rejecting God's way and what God requires of leaders, and harm flowing on the whole nation. This is further support for our theory.

Now to two cases-in-point in the Bible.

The first is the time of Jeremiah. The successive kings and even more so their chief advisers were not men of God. The chief priests were actively opposing the prophet. The people were, as we learn in the later chapters of Jeremiah actively worshiping idols.

The first hurdle, a low one as it happens, is that the disaster which falls on Israel is attributed by the Bible to God's judgement. It is a commonplace in philosophy (and accident investigation!) that the question “What caused this to happen?” can be answered on different levels – all of which can be true. So in this case, it was God's judgement. It was also a result human folly in not taking the advice and the choices that God offered which would have averted the disaster.

As I said in an earlier post, ancient Israel was in a particular covenant relationship with Godnot shared by modern democracies. So some aspects of what God did to Israel when they rebelled against him and worshiped idols cannot be simply transferred to our situation. On the other hand God did punish eve pagan nations for extreme evil, so some of God's warnings of judgement linked to evil acts may well be applicable. But  to be on the safe side, I will not use the level of the cause being God's judgement in looking at our situation.

On the simultaneous level of the cause being human folly and disobedience, there is good support for our theory – except that God's mercy is so great that he holds out open arms to them right up to the end! They continue to reject him!

On the political level the rulers made foolish choices. Flirting with the waning Egyptian empire and rebelling against their powerful Babylonian overlords was proved by subsequent events to be sheer idiotic folly. And God warned them to this effect. So their rejection of God's reality, power and goodness led to them becoming really bad political decision makers. (Or possibly, the same inner workings which made them reject God also had the effect of making them make stupid choices in other areas)

Even on the personal level, they would not go against human pressure and obey God. Near the end, King Zedekiah sough out Jeremiah and asked counsel of God. By this time it was obvious that the court prophets had been, as Jeremiah said, lying in God's name. It was also obvious that the policies urged on the king by the pro-Egypt lobby were a disaster. God told Zedekiah to surrender to Nebuchadnezzar. He promised that if he did, he and his would live. He warned that if he did not the city would be burned and his family killed. Zedekiah did not obey this simple advice. He and the city paid dearly for his poor choice.

Applying this to our situation, we may or may not as nations be incurring God's judgement for our sins: but certainly our leaders and the dominant voices in our countries have been rejecting God and busily sweeping Christian morals and teaching out the door – this has left them wide open to human folly and the deceits of the devil!

My second example is the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans.

Jesus wept over the city ans said: “How often have I longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing” (Matt 23:37)

In Luke 19:41 ff, we read: “As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.”

In the light of Jesus sorrow over Jerusalem and his prayer on the cross “Father forgive them ...” It is unlikely that the disaster which did indeed befall Jerusalem was divine retribution! However Jesus does link it to their national failure to recognize him – the Messiah.

This event also seems to support our theory: Had they as a nation recognized Jesus, events would have turned out differently. They did not, and their rejection of God's purposes for them left them open to also commit the political folly which led to their destruction.

So in the modern Western world, to varying extents nation after nation that has in the past given at least nominal allegiance to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has rejected him. Radical secularists have campaigned to remove all overt Christian influence, even Christians have been demoralized and churches infiltrated. Our nations are now left defenseless against human folly and the destructive influence of the devil.

My theory "Busted"

Yes, my Theory Crashed & Burned

Last week my theory crashed and burned. As I looked at the Bible prophesies about judgement on non-Israelite nations, I found they did not support the theory I was developing. Embarrassing, yes: but the truth is far more important than any pet theory!

What I thought would be the case was this: The West has cast off God (that is true enough) therefore they have lost their moral compass (also likely true) therefore they have done bad things to a degree which brings about punishment from God.

What I actually found in the Bible was this: Nations did get punished for doing really bad things but the sort of things they were condemned for doing were the sort of thing ISIS is doing now in the middle east – crimes which the Western nations are uniformly recoiling from in horror and moral disgust. In short the Western nations, for all their faults have not been really bad.

Then I also saw a danger of opening the door to progressive moralists who have thrown away the Biblical standards of good and evil, and created their own quite different standards.

The Bible judges phenomena like the social acceptance of “abortion-on-demand” and of sexual immorality which in turn leads to high rates of divorce, with the inevitable follow-on of high incidence of child abuse, as really bad. But progressive moralists applaud these, and bring in their own definition of “evil”: such as Christians being “intolerant”; “capitalism” being inherently evil; failing to “save the planet” as the crime of crimes, and so forth.

One result of this both in Australia and the US, is a political dogma that incites people to hate and deride their own country and culture. This may not be completely new – the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta “The Mikado” has a line about the person “who praises every age but this and every country but his own”. But it is now a very vocal movement.

I do not believe for a moment that this national “self flagellation” is any more wholesome or useful than the medieval personal version.

Yes, our nations in previous and current generations have done bad things. Yes, just as we need to let God search our hearts and to repent and change our ways in personal life, so there needs to be the equivalent in national life. But honesty, not false modesty and false confession is required.

Compared to nations around the globe and back through history, we have been relatively virtuous.

Just remember that at one time that ruthless tyrant Colonel Gadaffi got to be chairman of the UN Human Rights commission! Maybe we should not take criticisms of Western nations by such bodies as necessarily being true!

Another anecdote that comes to mind is this: The mantra has long been that the British colonial system was terribly wicked. But some decades ago I heard a (black) African bishop talk. He said two things that have stuck with me. The first was “You gave us the Gospel. That was good. But you gave it away: you don't have it yourself any more. That is very bad!” the other was this: “In Education and health, in quality of life and quality of government, African nations have yet to return to the levels they enjoyed under colonial rule.” So maybe our forebears were not so bad as they are being made out!

Perhaps the most important flaw in this modern national self loathing is this: these criticisms come from judging our nations by Progressive morals (sometimes even when they come from church leaders and dressed up in Bible verses!) not Biblical morals. And as previously said, progressives for all their good intentions frequently end up calling right wrong and wrong right.

Back to the story ...

Since my previous theory is – as they say on the TV show “Myth Busters” - “Busted!” I need to think again.

My next idea to explore comes from Romans 1, particularly v.21: “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened” and the thrice recurring theme in verses 24, 26 and 28 “therefore God gave them over to ...”

Our nations did know God. But theological liberals have pushed the knowledge and fear of God out of most churches and rejected the Bible. Concurrently secularists and then Progressives have pushed the knowledge of God and having God the supreme goal of human life and the basis for right and wrong out of most of our social institutions, and swept away social mores based on the Bible's teachings.

Is it possible that God has given out nations over to the natural consequences of this?

Are our cultures declining because we abandoned God as their basis. Are western nations self-destructing because God has given us over to our human folly. One example might be Greece: They have huge economic problems; but the populace vote out governments who advocate the hard path back to national health and vote in ones who promise “an end to austerity” even though this is the path to utter ruin.

Next time I will see if this idea can stand up to a Biblical reality test!

Does the Bible apply to Nations

Does the Bible speak to Nations?

We are delving into the question “can the West be saved”. We have established that if there is a God, then the Bible has the best credentials for being God's message to the human race. So a good question to examine is: “Does the Bible have anything to say about the rise and fall of nations and civilisations?”

There is a technical problem to consider before we start. It is this: “to what can we compare Western civilisation as a whole or indeed individual modern nations in terms of entities depicted in the Bible?”

From Moses onwards there is a lot in the Bible about the 12 tribes of Israel, then the unified kingdom of Israel, then the separate kingdoms of Judah in the South and Israel in the North. But these have a special relationship with God: “You have I chosen out of all the nations” so their dealings with God were on a level unmatched by any modern nation.

The nations of the ancient world which did not worship YHWH do indeed come in for mention, but unlike them Western civilisation does have a strong Christian heritage, and although modern nations now boast of secular government, their populations have, perhaps more in the past than the present, claimed to be “Christian”. Since Jesus said: “unto whom much is given, much is expected...” the modern West may face a higher standard of accountability before God.

So modern nations may rate somewhere between the Israelites and the ancient gentile nations.

A further caution comes from Jesus' teaching about the Kingdom of God under the New Covenant, particularly that, as he said to Pilate: “My kingdom is not of this world”. I believe we would be mistaken if we tried to identify any denominational church, let alone any nation with the Kingdom of God, even though both these claims have been made down through history.

With these warnings that we will need to exercise some care in how we extract principles from the Bible which can be validly applied to our quest, let's see what we can find!

Let's start with an easy one – and one I think may be applicable now – Israel in the time of the “Judges”.

The previous happenings under Moses and Joshua had of course been part of a very special covenant relationship and specific promises made by God to Abraham which modern nations cannot claim. Similarly the loss of “the land” and the 70 years exile in the 8^th century BC were closely tied up in scripture with the covenant – this time punishments for breach of it.

Even in this period of the judges, cripture makes it clear that what happened was a playing out of the exclusive covenant relationship between Israel and God (eg Judges 2:20 “this nation has violated the covenant I made with their ancestors”), but I am hoping we may find there is also something here we can apply to our modern situation.

In Judges 2:6,7 we read “After Joshua had dismissed the Israelites, they went to take possession of the land, each to their own inheritance. The people served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and of the elders who had seen all the great things the Lord had done for Israel.”

But then things slid. Judges 2: 10ff “After that … a new generation grew up who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel. Then Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. They forsook the Lord … they followed and worshipped various gods of the peoples around them … They aroused the Lord's anger because they forsook him and served the Baals and Ashtoreths. In his anger against them, the Lord gave them into the hands of raiders who plundered them … they were in great distress. Then the Lord raised up judges who saved them from the hands of these raiders. Yet they would not listen to their judges but prostituted themselves to other gods … Whenever God raised up a judge for them he was with the judge and saved them from their enemies … for the Lord relented because of their groaning under those who oppressed and afflicted them. But when the judge died the people returned to ways even more corrupt than their ancestors ...”

The pattern stated here is borne out by the historical cameos which follow. Some of the judges are simply mentioned, but on my count for five of them the cycle of: they reject God – fall to oppressors - cry out to God for deliverance – God raises up a judge and uses him or her to deliver them – they are faithful to God for a while – then they begin the cycle all over; is depicted.

In the history of the Christian West, the pattern may not be quite as clear – there seems never to have been some “golden age” - but certainly in different places at different times there have been revivals of faith in and obedience to Christ, and conversely descents into great evil (often wearing the mast of “religion”).

From the book of Judges we can at least see that these repeated descents are true to human nature, and the revivals due to the continued grace, mercy and power of God. We can also see that whilst the present falling away of Western nations in unison may be novel in Christian history, and the “gods” we are turning to different to the Baals and Ashtoreths, the process itself is nothing new.

It gives us an explanation for what we see currently happening in the world around us and in our own societies. It also holds out for us the hope that as God repeatedly had compassion on those rebellious Israelites when they cried out to him for help, he will have compassion now.