Denunciation
Last Toke: 27 days
Last Smoke: 20 days

Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place." (John 18:36)

Today is the first day since the middle of last week that I've had a chance to listen to the Christian afternoon talk show, and boy, what a day to tune in!

Today's discussion centered around the comments made yesterday by the Rev. Pat Robertson on his 700 Club show publicly advocating the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Much to my dismay, but unfortunately not to my surprise, all of the listeners that I heard call in during my drive home failed to denounce this outrageous behavior from someone who postures as a Christian leader in this culture. Oh, some of them were critical of the statement, usually with some sort of defense of this purported man of God's history of integrity. More often, however, I heard support and even blessings on this travesty.

Let me be clear about my position. Pat Robertson has shamed the Name and Mission of the Lord Jesus Christ by making these comments, especially from a teaching pulpit. This type of invective is nothing short of pure evil, and the fact that there are actually people (perhaps even a majority) who call themselves followers of Christ and actually approve it scary to a surreal extent.

How is it that Christian radio and TV reflects such a poverty of spiritual understanding, in both its talking heads and its listeners?

My guess is that Hosea 6:8 provides the answer: "My people are destroyed by a lack of knowledge."

Too many people are counting on the likes of Pat Robertson to be vendors of truth, instead of taking to their knees and their Bibles for guidance. For several decades now, Robertson and his ilk have been at the forefront of worst kind of corruption of the Christian mindset -- one that elevates the personal revelations of those blessed with special 'gifts' above the revealed, infallible, reliable and unchangeable Holy Word of the Living God.

Why bother struggling with the genealogies, detailed descriptions of the ceremonial law, and prophecies of the Old Testament, or the difficult doctrinal statements of the New, when someone like Reverend Pat can just get the scoop right from the Holy Spirit?

Another aspect of what I heard on the radio today that really bothered me was the ease with which these statements were dismissed in the interests of 'national security'. What?!?! Leaving aside that Hugo Chavez is about as much of a threat to us as was Manual Noriega (remember him?), how is it that Christians DO NOT UNDERSTAND that we are citizens of the Kingdom of God, first and foremost, and that a direct contradiction to Christ's command to love one's enemies, bless those who curse you, repay evil with good, etc.... cannot be rationalized away in the name of support of our national security! Jeez, people! Get a grip! Remember who you follow! Not some fat, rich, ego-centric nut job, but the Lord of Glory who died rather than assert His legitimate right to power in order to procure our eternity with Him.

Can you imagine what would have happened to the Christian Church if the Apostles had decided that Nero had to go? It likely would have simply become just another power faction in Roman society, instead of the world changing faith it is.

One final comment on the subject of tyrannicide. Is it ever justified to assassinate an evil ruler to protect other, innocent lives? Dietrich Bonhoeffer thought so, and died in a German concentration camp as a result.

But God took care of Hitler in His way, on His timetable, like He has so many others before and since, not allowing Bonhoeffer and his co-conspirators to succeed in saving what probably amounted to millions of lives (not sure of the timing of the plot or whether it would have stopped anything). This is one of the sobering truths about living in this world knowing God. He allows evil to rise up and do tremendous damage. His purposes for doing so are not always clear, but there is more than enough evidence in the lives, teaching and sacrifices of Jesus and the Apostles to indicate that sometimes we are called to be slaughtered like so much livestock in order to allow evil to be truly exposed and the Truth to be made clear.

This may ring harsh in the ears of we comfortable believers in the West, but God's ways are not our ways. Our understanding of things is limited by our desire for comfort and relief from suffering. The Book of Job is a good tonic for this mentality.

It will be interesting to see if W comes out strongly against Robertson on these comments. I will be very disappointed and concerned if he doesn't.
- posted by The Drake @ 5:22 PM