Someone else wrote me that the Bible was the key to America’s salvation. This often goes with quotes from the Old Testament about saving the People of Israel.
That use of God gives me the chills.
This was my reply:
I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His Only begotten Son, who was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered unto Pontius Pilate, was crucified dead and buried.
On the third day He arose from the grave and ascended into heaven whence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the holy spirit, the catholic church, the communion of saints and the life everlasting.
Amen.
The Amen means that that and that ALONE, is what I must try to believe in. It is the ONLY religion I believe in, and mostly I don’t believe in that. I try to have faith the size of a mustard seed, and it is not easy for me.
CS Lewis warned against “Christianity AND …” The second you begin to use God for a political theory, the Senior Demon Screwtape told his nephew Wormwood in letters straight from Hell, you have diverted it, done away with it.
He also pointed out to Wormwood that it made not the slightest bit of difference what the “AND” referred to. It can be an obsession with fighting poverty, but it can also be an obsession with fighting evolution.
God is not a politician. Satan is not a politician.
Screwtape, the practicing professional in damning souls, said that all that mattered was getting people off of concentrating on Christ and salvation and making them think about “the Crisis” (He specifically mentioned on great line, “Christianity and the Crisis”). Get them thinking that True Religion is about social policies like abortion or evolution or the poor.
To damn souls, said the successful old professional Screwtape, you just need to get people off of seeing Christ as a means to Salvation, and as a means to something else that they think is Good. Anything else will do.
Screwtape told Wormwood that in order to damn people, you need to make them think they have mastered salvation, and can now go on to more relevant stuff. What the “relevant” stuff is makes no difference at all.
Screwtape pointed out that the sin of gluttony has nothing to do with overeating. Jesus Christ was not a dietitian. As an example, Screwtape pointed to a very thin woman who was on the path to damnation through gluttony. She was obsessed with eating very little, and made unreasonable demands on people, especially overworked waitresses, to cater to her exact diet.
Today’s vegetarian fanatics will fit very nicely into the place Screwtape has prepared for them. Gluttony is OBSESSION with food. It doesn’t matter what form the obsession takes.
An obsession with using God in politics is a fine wide road to seeing Screwtape up front and personal. He doesn’t care what the politics happen to be, and the damned won’t either when the time comes. The obsessive pro-lifers and the socialists will be right there together.
The only thing I use God for is salvation. Jesus said stick to the Golden Rule and worry about your own soul. If the High Priest demands more, I will let the High Priest follow his Law and his scriptures where they lead him.
I am the grandson of a Methodist circuit rider. My first ancestor in America was the Reverend Alexander Whitaker, the son of a Cambridge professor. He was the first Anglican clergyman in America, arriving at Jamestown in 1609 “to convert the savage Indians.” He baptized Pocahontas and wrote the first book in English in America.
His book, Whitaker’s Good Newes From Virginia, is online and it is twenty thousand words long. It contains long quotes in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, all of which he had mastered. He was a very literate man, which becomes relevant below.
The Reverend Alexander Whitaker died in Jamestown before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.
But as soon as the Methodist Church arrived in America, my literate ancestors left the Anglican Church and became Methodists.
John Wesley, the founder of the real Methodist Church, lived and died a High Church Anglican. In his Anglican church, the Nicene Creed was what adults use. The Apostles’ Creed, which I recite above, is what children recite in the Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican churches.
My literate ancestors knew that, and they chose to be Methodists.
Most Methodists were the coal miners, the frontiersmen, the people the Established Church ignored. Many of them never heard of Christ until Wesley came to them. My VERY literate ancestors joined his church. We are the children’s church, the catholic church.
We knew that, too.
Wesley went out to the people the High Priests would not touch. So did Jesus.
And when Jesus spoke of the Kingdom, He never pointed to the High Priest. He pointed to the children.
All this religion stuff embarrasses the mainline preachers. So they got together recently and declared that Christianity is all about helping poor people. This is a line that was old two thousand years ago.
Some people tried that line out on Jesus. He replied, “The poor we have always with us.” He then explained that He was on this earth about salvation. His concern was not about Liberation or abolishing poverty. He was more worried about what greed did to the rich man’s soul than about social conditions.
Jesus did not just minister to the poor. He ate with the rich tax-gatherers.
That embarrasses the High Priests of today exactly the same way it embarrassed the High Priests who spoke to Jesus. For today’s leftists clergy the rich to are The Enemy. Today’s mainline clergy wants to be “relevant” to THIS world and stop talking about a theoretical Other World they don’t believe in anyway. The High Priests love the Old Testament because it talks about history and social conditions and other “relevant” things a lot.
For the old High Priests, Jesus was monomaniacal and just plain silly. For the new High Priests, Jesus IS monomaniacal and just plain silly.
What Jesus did not say was “read the scriptures to attain salvation.” What Jesus did not say was “Praise God” in the old heathen way. He said LOVE God. The God of Jesus knows who He is. He needs no reminders from down here.
God is not a dietitian. God is not a cosmologist. God is not obsessed with THIS life. A person who thinks God is about the six-day creation or taking care of one’s body or changing social conditions make great fuel for Screwtape.
Jews kept reminding Jesus that the Old Testament Messiah would come to save the Jewish nation. Every time they brought that up Jesus said, in every way he could, that “My Kingdom is not of this earth.”
For those who want to show how “relevant” Christianity is, the Old Testament Messiah is very useful. He came to save Family Values. He came to save America.
And Screwtape says, “That will do just fine.”
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