The tweet below, from a major conservative/evangelical figure, is emblematic of what has become our family’s knee-jerk response to all forms of calamity in our society.

If we evangelicals keep turning every crisis into a “political conspiracy” we MAY find we’ve satiated our own minds, but will have failed to satisfy the One Who’s “shaking everything that can be shaken”. (Hebrews 12:26-27)

Let me break this down a little further.

1. First

Our response to every judgment of the Lord in the last two + years has been to take aim at our political enemies. This lays bare the nexus of our idolatry. Our reflexive reaction to the cultural pressure points is to look for, pray for, and defend a political solution. This is idolatry.

The political solutions that we clamor for fuel a carnal spirit that’s cloaked with religious zeal. They also reenforce the cult-narrative that is attached to every idol. (Yes. Conservative MAGA America has a cult narrative…)

With our cult-narrative emboldened we feel all the more adamant about defending our idol. (The fact that we don’t call it an idol doesn’t matter a whit.) This is how idols stay on the high places. And the more we respond to the Lord’s judgments by taking aim at our “political enemies” the more we entrench ourselves in the devil’s game and the idol’s narrative. It’s literally a self-perpetuating cycle that can only be broken with (I’m serious here…) “prayer and fasting”. (A teaching for another time)

2. Secondly

1 Peter 4:17-18 tells us that one of the reasons the Lord’s judgments begin with His household is so that we can show the nations how to respond to the Father they don’t know when His judgments fall on them.

Here’s the question to consider: If our responses to the Lord’s judgments are to incessantly cry “conspiracy!” and “political enemy!” how will our unsaved neighbors respond when they experience the Lord’s judgments? We will not have given them the paradigm of salvation.

The world will give God is what we’ve given God:

• pride instead of humility

• rebellion instead of yieldedness and crucified surrender to the Lord

• the assumption that we’re already “good” instead of repentance

• taking aim at our political enemies instead of appealing to God for help

And the world WILL take aim at the people of God with demonic intensity in the days ahead.

____________________
JSB • April, 2022

If you would like a print edition copy of our book “Seek My Face” write me at xaris4u@yahoo.com . Please include your USPS mailing address. Blessings to you friends.