27 October 2021
The cultural heritage of America is loaded with anti-Christian doctrines. Let's shoot them down.
Historical background first: God built the Hebrew nation as the one cultural and intellectual background suitable for revelation. The Hebrew people eventually threw that God-built culture in the trash. It was a dim memory in the time of Christ. He made it clear that Judaism is not the religion of Moses. The Hebrew outlook no longer exists anywhere on this earth, aside from the personal convictions of a tiny handful of people. Recovering this culture is what churches are supposed to do; it's what Paul did during his apostleship. It's what Christ taught during His time on this earth. He flatly said that the portion of humanity capable of embracing it was tiny when compared to those who could not. The ancient Hebrew way of thinking and living is absolutely necessary just to understand Christ.
Before the last of the Twelve died, churches had already begun ditching that Hebrew approach, as well. Long before the church leadership caved into Constantine's invitation to get involved in politics, the foundation for resisting that manipulative relationship was gone. The documents of the Early Church give evidence to the increasing rationalist influence driving out the ancient Hebrew mystical approach. John's Revelation predicts this would only get worse.
Jesus was essentially a Hebrew mystic. Everything He taught pointed to an otherworldly orientation. If you aren't a mystic, you are not following Christ.
1. The only way to live under God's Law is by conviction. There can be no justice without a heart-borne drive to obey the Lord. It's not the structure of the law code that makes justice; you cannot get it intellectually without a radical change that puts your convictions above your reason. The Bible makes it clear that such will always be a minority in any population. It is not possible to construct an atmosphere in human terms that will lead people to live faithfully without a catastrophic change in the culture and mindset of the people. The biblical way is impossibly foreign to anyone without the presence of the Holy Spirit. It's still a monumental task to teach those who do have the Holy Spirit.
2. Christ flatly avoided getting involved in human politics. We should follow His example, because it wasn't merely contextual. There can be no Christian government outside of the close confines of a church body. That body must be tribal, feudal and hold to a mystical covenant in order to meet the bare minimum prerequisites for following Christ and claiming to be a church. It is not possible for a human government to embrace any biblical covenant in that the necessary intellectual background and customs have evaporated from the human reckoning. It is all we can do as small church communities to confess those assumptions in contradiction to all human government.
3. You cannot be yoked under a human government with non-believers. You can be forced to operate under a human government, but you cannot make common cause with outsiders. Everything you think, do and say is under Christ. You cannot propose God's Law for those who are not under Christ. It would simply become another evil oppression to force upon others a way of life that violates their consciences. Sure, you could always get a portion to go along with most of it, but you cannot expect it to be peaceful. You cannot merge church and society. It's already chaotic enough with those who are spiritually born. Including those without conviction in a conviction-driven environment guarantees destruction of the community.
4. Liberty is not a God-given right. Scripture says grab it if you can, because it gives you a chance to live by the Covenant. However, the whole tone of the New Testament is that you should expect very little of that. The people we most need to reach are those who live under oppression, and we cannot witness to them unless we live where they do. Going on mission specifically excludes trying to change the government through any means but prayer. It's a mission of faith. The typical patriot ideas about liberty are utterly pagan in origin.
5. There are no God-given rights of any kind. Scripture never uses the language of rights, only divine justice. And unless you have a substantial covenant community in strong tribal unity, you don't even have the grounds for politically resisting a bad government openly. The only frame of reference by which we address any government is through the Covenant of Noah; the Seven Noachide Laws are a decent interpretation of that Covenant. There's nothing in there about rights. When you start talking and reasoning about rights, you have departed from Scripture.
6. American culture is pagan. We won't trace out the details here, but the Early Church Fathers had already departed from the ancient Hebrew ways of Christ, and it got progressively worse as the centuries passed. America was built on the Enlightenment, a pagan combination of Greco-Roman and Germanic mythologies. It is very much man-centered and filled with superstition, even as it pretends to be the ultimate in reason. Whatever faint vestige of Christian religion there was in the American founding fathers was so paganized that Christ would hardly recognize any of it. It doesn't matter what America might have been; it was never righteous by biblical defintion.
7. God is destroying the USA. You can blame whatever you like for the demise of America, but it's the hand of God unleashing demons on this nation because it never stood for Him in the first place. What little religion America once had was a blasphemous lie about Him, so He suffers no loss at all in the destruction of the US. It was never special to Him. Don't insult God by draping the American flag over the Cross.
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