Monday, July 31, 2006

EASY PICKINGS

It seems that so many people are easy pickings. I have been in churches where untoward political comments have been made. Personal opinions which are not unquestioned truth are presented alongside absolute truth from scripture. People become divided. Greg Boyd, pastor of Woodland Hills Church in Minnesota found out what can happen. He came out against what he called conservative politics and 1000 out of 5,000 people left. His big mistake was using codewords for the left in his statements. Foolish; very foolish indeed. Just yesterday went to a 5,000 seat church in Philadelphia on their opening weekend. The pastor basically started quoting as fact Cornel West's rather flawed book on imperialism, ruining a nice service. This pastor had put what seemed like a very good brain on hold, withholding critical thinking when quoting a friend of his. He went on into a left-wing diatribe. It goes on and on. People sing to America the same way they sing to Jesus. Not a good idea. People are told one party is God's party. A liberal young man who moved to India to become a Hindu came to know Jesus. We had them over for dinner. He said with a straight face that he was a Republican now - after all, all Christians are Republicans! There are ample ideas on both sides of the aisle that have no place in any Christian's repertoire of beliefs. People are easy pickings because in the marketplace of ideas, there are those who will tell you what you desperately want to hear. Once you accept the ones that are obviously true, you are fed others which are debatable, but you have trusted the source, and not the ideas themselves. These ideas are repeated with no concept as to the degree of their truthfulness, which is dangerous. You get people repeating them ad infinitum, and deception continues. It is like Jim Bakker, former TV evangelist and head of PTL in South Carolina said in his book I WAS WRONG. He didn't study anything. Rather he saw what worked and packaged it well - he was a salesman and could sell anything. That is what is happening in the world of politics, where people who claim to be intelligent repeat the mantras they hear, and unfortunately, also in the world of religion, where people repeat self-serving ideas without checking to be sure they really are the thoughts and commands of Jesus Christ. People are easy pickings when they do not check things out for themselves. Let's be sure we do that.