deceptions

I consider you a brother/sister in Christ, and siblings sometimes disagree. That’s cool.

I’m also honest, sometimes to a fault. And if it’s a fault, I’ll die on that, and stand before God on Judgment Day in full confession thereof. I try to proclaim truth in love, and sometimes that means tough love. Guess my street-tough inner-city background gave me the constitution to employ that as needed, and to endure so much of the BS this world flings at us.

Truly, we’re not meant to be fully comfortable in this life, in this world. That’s because it’s a cursed world. To be challenged is discomforting, as it should be, but can be liberating in the realest sense. I’m challenging you right now. Consider this tough love.

To say I’m worried about your soul and spiritual health is true! After all, I care. Still, your life and choices are yours to follow. As a philosophical libertarian, I’m not going to order you around. Your private choices are your business and God’s. I will, however, make suggestions, and challenge people, and I expect nothing less than the same treatment, per the Golden Rule.

So I’ll elaborate a little. Why do I worry about those Christian friends dipping toes in social leftism? Why do I consider “The Christian Left” to be a complete sentence?

I’ve been there and escaped its clutches, and can see right through its great lie. I wish more people could. It disguises itself as “loving thy neighbor” when it really means “use governmental coercion to steal money/freedom from some to give to others because of how I have been told to perceive them to be mass victims of an oppressive system”. It feeds on insecurities and mutual reinforcement, likes and atta-boys from sycophants, whether you realize this consciously or not.

I’m so thankful to have stepped out of that herd of anger and resentment. I realized that until we assume individual personal responsibility, we’ll be enslaved to worldly groupthink, and in the name of “social justice”, demand injustice in the name of justice.

So from the outside, here’s what I see.

Identity politics and “social justice” are dangerous ideologies, driven to idolatry of victimhood as an end of the means, and wholly antithetical to divinely granted, free-will freedoms of thought and speech. The whole subculture of “social justice”, besides being a grotesquely Orwellian, Newspeak-style misnomer, is an alluring yet diabolical worldly phenomenon. It is encouraged and fomented by none other than Satan the devil himself.

Political correctness serves as a device of censorship, suppression and oppression, a cancerous, metastasizing, gangrenous lesion on the face of open, frank and intelligent discussion. I refuse to play that game. Why? Easy. God doesn’t. That alone overrules politicians, celebrities, so-called “social justice warriors” and anybody else’s opinions.

Only His word ultimately matters, not the world’s. Nowhere in His Holy Word (Bible) are “PoC” and other such terms used, or even squarely implied. Jesus loved all the same, regardless of their color. MLK rightly followed that concept when speaking of the importance of content of character vs. the color of skin. Where has that ethos gone?

What about poverty, slavery, censorship, tyranny, other forms of destruction of freedom, based on the Bible? Absolutely worthy causes. We as individuals are called to help. That’s you and me, personally — not using government as a coercive proxy. Jesus didn’t add, “by government gunpoint” to “love thy neighbor.” [Anyone who thinks He did is welcomed to show me those words in the Bible.] Compassion is not a bureaucratic exercise!

Why would that be? Love is freely given and accepted, never coerced. Therefore, “love” thy neighbor logically cannot apply to taxation (which is involuntary) and governmental bureaucratic machinations. Love can be expressed authentically only through freely given personal action and charity, whether time or money or both. And if you somehow think bureaucracy is synonymous with love, and want more taxes, pay more taxes on your own…pay dot gov will accept donations 24/7/365.

The poor and oppressed are of all races. [Did you know the majority of poor in America are not so-called “PoC”? Some good the mythical “white privelege” has done for them! What of their plight in all this?]

My experience growing up in inner-city poverty was a blessing from the Lord. I was a decided racial minority in that environment, and as such, understand what it’s like to be in that societal framework. One message became clear, later reinforced in His Holy Word itself, as God taught me this: we’re all one race…the human race. We’re to “love thy neighbor” with zero regard to his outwardly visible melanin level.

I take that strictly literally, as it should be. I will not extend any less neighborly love to my dark-skinned neighbor as the others. As an aside, he too is a fully devoted servant of Christ, and we’re on the same page on this issue. [A “PoC” conservative? Horrors! Yes, they do exist. My neighbor is one. I follow many others on social media. And their insight on what it’s like to be who they are, I trust more than any naïve and detached “social justice warrior”.]

If you note the importance of how we live, you’re right. We set an example in our behavior. Talk is cheap; actions matter. You will not see me treat someone badly nor unequally based on immutables. Again: why? Easy. Jesus wouldn’t. It’s that simple. Anyone who tries to make it more complex than that is selling you a sucker’s bill of goods.

As a kid on the streets of downtown and East Dallas, I saw more than my share of con artists and shysters, more than most people will in an entire lifetime. Been there, seen it all…I understand their mentality and modus operandi. And worldly “social justice”, as now practiced in America, is a big, systemic social con game.

It’s sad to see people fall for it, especially fellow Christians. The “social justice” movement, as practiced on today’s Left, is of this world, not of our Lord. It disappoints me to see so many Christians dabbling or wholly slipping into that diabolical whirlpool of deceit, resentment, bitterness, and anger.

So what are you doing for “social justice”? If you answer that to me, or if you’re telling others, you’re not doing charity the right way: privately. You’re virtue signaling. Helping others is not done for the sake of bragging rights. It’s not about you. It’s about those in need. I’m not going to be touting my charitable contributions and acts on social media. That’s not why they’re done.

So there it is. If you wanted to categorize me, which really isn’t possible, the closest guess would be “fiscally and socially conservative, Biblical Christian Libertarian”. 😉 And I am fully secure in that. This place is squarely where I truly, wholly believe God has called me to live, with 100% authenticity. It’s home on Earth, until I go Home for good.

If you’re reading this far, you’re a sharp, learned, well-read person. That’s a good thing. Our brotherhood or sisterhood in Christ is why I care enough to go to this much trouble to write all this. Thank you.

As such, I have just one book to recommend for now, outside the Good Book, of course: “How Now Shall We Live” by Charles Colson. Check it out. I’ve never seen the application of the Christian worldview to the issues and temptations of the world so well-explained in a soundly Bible-rooted way. My wife recommended it to me, and it was a great learning experience, clarifying neatly some ideas and tying some ribbons up that had been irritatingly open-ended for some time.

I’d love to compare notes after you’ve read it.

As for the killings of so-called “PoC” that prompt rage and anger and virtue signaling from some of you, yes, they’re sins! Murder absolutely is a sin, whether done by civilian or cop, left or right, white or black, or anyone in between. All murder is a hate crime by default, regardless of what the perpetrator or victim look like. [What? Did you think it was a love crime?]

Horrid acts like the recent Georgia killing, or the far less-publicized but equally tragic daily murders in Chicago or Baltimore, happen with a deep root cause: because individuals and society have abandoned Biblical morals in favor of the vices of innately sinful human nature.

Quite simply, thou shalt not kill. It’s clear all the murderers are deeply lost. They don’t know our Savior. Otherwise they would not do these things. And that includes other violent criminals, even if claiming to be Christians.

We as a society have lost our way in failing to teach kids Biblical moral precepts and why to adhere to them. Not just legal law, but Godly moral law. This is why we have, for example, widespread venereal disease (extramarital sex/fornication), neighbors not knowing each other (failure to love thy neighbor), and obvious violations of any of the Ten Commandments (most crimes, including this).

People infused with the Holy Spirit don’t do these crimes and immoral acts, nor condone them! That’s not judgment, but straight-talk Biblical truth. Truth needs to be heard. Who will listen and heed?

We as a society have lost our way and will keep paying the price (including the loss of innocents) until we repent—individually and collectively—and sincerely seek forgiveness from the Lord. That applies to each and all of us.

The undeniable fact is that these murderers (and rapists, child molesters, those who beat their wives and girlfriends up, terrorists, “religious” killers, and any others foisting violence on innocents) don’t commit the crime if they are truly God-fearing, obedient servants, instead of hate-filled mercenaries. Had they come to Jesus beforehand, and stayed there, this simply doesn’t happen. They either never were, or have gotten lost.

Come, Lord Jesus. We need you.

When I was a child, smart as I thought I was, I lived under a few great delusions of naivete. It was nobody’s fault, per se–least of all my parents, who had far too much on their minds in simply scrounging up rent money and keeping roaches and rat turds out of our food. Fortunately they encouraged me to absorb information like a sponge and think critically, to question those in power, to out-fight those I couldn’t outsmart, and to outsmart those I couldn’t out-fight. But I believed a great lie. Not only did I believe it, I repeated it, spread it, and with patriotic fervor. It was a lie because I saw signs of its fundamental dishonesty and chose to ignore them, head firmly in sand.

Simply by virtue of lacking life experience and exposure outside my (sometimes dangerous) neighborhood, and sanitized news and facts that in the newspaper, TV and encyclopedias, and by ignoring those early signs, I bought into the lie: that the United States, magnificent as it is, bastion of freedom, might and power, will be that shining city on a hill of freedom and virtue for the world, for my lifetime and probably well beyond. I believed in the promise of this nation to overcome all that would stand against us.

This was despite the Cold War nuclear threat from the USSR, which I saw (correctly in that case) to be a doomed “Evil Empire”, and as it turns out, one that Reagan soon would both articulate in precisely that matter, then contribute to destroying. I had no idea we could destroy ourselves from within; I thought social order and moral standards would keep internal, corrupting cancers at bay for the foreseeable future, until some truly calamitous external event nuked it all, perhaps literally.

Outside a dark phase of youthful atheism, for which I thank God today because of the basal logical and probabilistic perspective it offered that led to a firm and permanent belief in Him, I thought that Biblical prophecy regarding the doom of great nations was an abstract, distant concept inapplicable to the America I knew. Sure, the Lord will come someday and strike down all nations after they have turned from Him, and become corrupt and infested with selfishness and evil; but “that’s not us!”

When one only has less than two decades of cumulative understanding, inertial thinking is easy. That’s my excuse, anyway.

The sociopolitical events and expanding, relativistic moral decrepitude of the last 15 years, and the last eight in particular, have proved how horribly wrong I was! To those I misled, including myself, I apologize; and for it I seek forgiveness from them–and most of all from the Lord.

The destruction of America, I now realize, doesn’t have to be a cataclysmic “Day After” holocaust of fire from nuclear warheads or an asteroid; it can be a process of cultural, social, political rot from the inside out. I believed in a promise destined to be broken, one paper-cut drop of lost collective moral and ethical blood at a time.

Contrary to prevailing political sloganeering, I acknowledge and face reality, instead of some rah-rah illusion or the false alchemy of wishes into actuality. The times after America’s greatest hour indeed are here, and have been for a long time. The descent off our former status as Greatest Nation Ever Built is accelerating its heretofore slow-creep pace. An asteroid or attack by an external enemy only would hasten a course already steered from within, and would be but an early death blow for the terminally ill empire.

All great empires wither; history proves this. Why be so smug as to think we are immune, and perpetuate that mighty delusion? I see our national downfall playing out here, now, front and center, plainly as the disorder and divisiveness on social media, the continual expansion of our national debt to new record levels on a daily basis, the ever-spreading and freedom-stifling malignancy of political correctness, the self-idolizing, “if it feels good do it” and “I don’t need God” ethos of culture, the increasingly open and pervasive hostility to our one true salvation, and also, the systemic corruption, unaccountability to the common man, and anti-democratic priorities of our economic and political elites.

Evil us upon us, not only from external forces such as Islamic terrorism and the physical and digital aggression of other large nations, but in our own states and communities, perhaps even in our circles of families and associates. Denying evil, and refusing to name its name, are tantamount to enabling and committing the evil. Do not be blind to this, or try to wish it away…won’t work.

The sociopolitical condition has gotten so twisted, so perverse, so bizarre, that the ultimate source only can be from Satan himself; the solutions cannot lie in any elected official(s), political parties, or governmental actions. I am not depressed over this development, just pragmatic and accepting of the truth. Instead, I am hopeful, I see light, and that side of truth is that the ultimate solution lies only in God himself, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, through the promise of Jesus.

Yet not until now have I seen this articulated so well, so disturbingly, so fluidly, yet with a focus on that one ray of hope still available, as in this essay by Ravi Zacharias.

Ravi is an immigrant but longtime citizen, a Christian scholar and world-renowned apologist, global traveler and minister, and admirer of the American ideal that has been so poisonously corrupted. His life experience and perspective, his theological understanding, all are more vast than mine, and it is from that foundation that he uses recent events to illustrate how far we have fallen a nation, and how we might still be able to salvage it or at least forestall further degeneration (though time is nearly gone to do so). Please read his Independence Day message, then consider thoughtfully the notion that our hope lies in no nation or culture (not even our own)–but instead God. And when our nation strays from God and forces us to choose between the two, we must make the correct choice, even if it ultimately may mean official and societal persecution and torture in one’s Earthly lifetime (as is being seen in more and more cases, right here in the U.S.).

Otherwise, America will fade to the twin curse of internal social destruction and external irrelevance in the world. Even if it does, there is a hope and eternal salvation that promises riches of soul that dwarf any and all material wealth ever produced by our nation, and all nations. Be a part of that ultimately and inevitably victorious outcome for God. I plan to.

And I know that, in the meantime, in whatever bodily years remain enumerated for me, it could involve the development of hardship along the way as an entire nation that I have loved, and still do, gradually yet obviously turns against its founding values, against the ultimate Author of those values, and in turn, against we who profess that Author and His values as our saving grace.

Jesus is the greatest hope ever given to us. Yet mark my words, I will be denied, shunned, mocked, cursed, scoffed upon, targeted with contempt, for bearing witness to that promise. That too already has begun, in social media. So will you be targeted also, if you dare to declare. I also accept that hard reality; for Jesus Himself also foretold it, and He is never wrong. Bring it on. The roaches, heat and poverty may have been a preparatory blessing in disguise…

Open Letter to “Christian Left” Friends

Independence Day Confession of a Great Lie