Conformism: Christianity Without Confrontation

Al Cronkrite | March 14 2005

Leading preachers have a lot in common with professional athletes. The former have exceptional mental and verbal abilities which they display from the pulpit; while the latter have exceptional physical abilities which they display by actively participating in sporting events. The sporting events often involve maneuvering some sort of ball into a scoring situation while the pulpits involve unlimited numbers of esoteric teachings that usually produce thrilling insights somewhat similar in value to the scores of the professional athletes.

Conferences have Christian fans the same as major sporting events have athletic fans. In both cases the fans are attracted by the prowess of the performers and in both cases the stars have their own fan clubs.

New Christians, and some older ones as well, are thirsty for knowledge and are ardent supporters of Christian conferences. They are willing to spent the time and money necessary to attend and the star performers are glad to get the money and the adulation.

With the opinion that they accomplished little or nothing, I stopped attending conferences years ago.

Nevertheless, recently, a good friend gave me information on a conference here in Florida being sponsored by a local organization with a reputation for integrity, good scholarship, and sound theology. I pictured a small group of Reformed Christians being granted an intimate and honest discussion of American Christianity, signed up, paid my admission fee, and made arrangements to attend.

On arrival, I found the church building was huge with an auditorium seating five thousand. I met my friend in the lobby and commented on the size of the building and the number of people attending. We both agreed that the sponsoring ministry appeared much bigger than we had thought.

In a separate building there was a very large book store well stocked with books written by the participating ministerial quartet. The cash registers were humming. There could be little doubt that the commercial side of the enterprise was doing well.

As it turned out the conference attracted Evangelical and Reformed Christians from all over the nation with four to five thousand people in attendance.

My friend and I got into line at the coffee bar for lunch. It was owned by the sponsoring ministry. A small coffee and a muffin were about 3 dollars. There was a long line and the cash register was busy.

The first presentation was given by the pastor of a large Baptist Church. Smoothly forceful, articulate, and with the Doctors Degree certification he set the initial tone for the meeting by instructing the audience not to be anxious, that the world is passing away, that they should not be conformed to it and that it should be lightly considered by Christians. The text came from the 2nd Chapter of First John. I wondered how a text of this sort written nearly fifty generations ago could be rationally used to dismiss the Creation God made and pronounced to be "good". The problem with God’s world is that though it seemed to be passing away nearly two thousand years ago, it is still here, and I wondered if posterity might one day look back on this era with its pandemic fixation on the end times and note that His creation still remained.

"The practice of discernment is part of higher consciousness. Discernment is not just a step up from judgment. In life's curriculum, it is the opposite of judgment. Through judgment a man reveals what he needs to confront and learn. Through discernment, one reveals what he has mastered." Quote from: Love Without End, by Glenda Green. This quotation followed an Asia Times column by Alan Boyd and bolstered my impression that many of our Church leaders are unable to discern the times in which we live. To every thing there is a season....A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace. Ecclsiastes 3:8

Someone recently asked me if the fervent prayers of God’s people might produce a more righteous social order. We must pray but God holds us accountable to elect law-abiding, God fearing, mature Christian leaders. God’s dealings with ancient Israel provide an interesting example of His method of blessing and cursing. Individual Israeli citizens were judged by their actions while the Nation was judged by the actions of its leaders. While America as a nation and the American Christian Church are under the judgment of Almighty God, I, as an individual Christian, enjoy His blessing. However, as our Nation continues to deteriorate both the church and I will suffer as well.

The leaders of America’s churches appear like monks in a monastery. They would rather ignore the whole of what God created and pronounced "good" by pronouncing it "evil" and pursuing an ethereal Christianity. That they can virtually ignore the blatant deterioration of American society in favor of catering to the frivolous desires of their blessing seeking constituents is a major affront to the God they claim to serve.

When Adam and Eve broke fellowship with God by usurping His throne, His control over the lives of His creatures was disrupted and sin began to produce death. Not only did the duration of human life progressively shrink but conduct deteriorated as well. When God wrote His Laws on the tablet Moses had prepared, it was in a loving effort to repair damage the breach in communication had created and establish order and righteousness in His creation. God has a worldview which is established when His Laws are obeyed.

Communists and Socialists have a worldview. Their worldview is the establishment of a centralized government that will, at the point of a gun, eclipse God’s diversity with man-made diversity and human equality.

Libertarians and Anarchists have an equally humanistic worldview involving the complete decentralization of government to individual citizens.

The clandestine cabal that seeks world hegemony has a worldview that involves a human aristocracy with tyrannical control over all of God’s creation producing a pristine environment, peace, and great wealth for their enjoyment.

The fruits of organizations that have a worldview can readily be discerned in the changes being made in our American legal structure. In place of the sanctity of life created in the image of God, life has progressively taken on the distorted view of humanists. The furtive murder of helpless babies in the womb has become pandemic. Pornography, homosexuality, fornication, adultery and all forms of sexual sin have gained popular acceptance. Marriage has been seriously damaged and family government destroyed. Lawlessness and mendacity are accepted as characteristic of government and a subtle transfer of control has been allowed by our citizens.

Are these not times when pulpits should be on fire with indignation? God’s creation is being desecrated by pagan humanists!

Instead, the second Conference speaker, a member of our American meritocracy, spoke soothingly from the 6th Chapter of Matthew commending our hearts away from worldly attentions to the things of God and exhorting the audience with our Lord’s statement concerning Godly concern for the birds of the air.

As with most all of the Christian conferences I have attended as well as most Sunday morning church services the intent of this Conference seemed to be the upward manipulation of the Christians in attendance. Intrinsic in this program appears to be a worldview that converted, matured Christians should become New Testament replicas of Jesus and that change alone will return control of the creation to The Creator.

I dissent. Man is a fallen creature. Jesus provided those that God chooses with a new heart, a heart after God, but even His exhortation to be perfect did not remove the sinful nature birthed with every human. Perfection can only be approached by obedience to His Laws. The church has fallen under the spell of the human Dracula, Sigmund Freud and his Baalzebubian theories of human nature.

From God’s perspective, there is only one worldview and that is to bring His creation under the dominion of His Laws. Obedience is the central theme of the entire Bible. Obedience requires law and it is obedience to His Ordinances that He craves in His people.

America is being controlled by secular forces that ignore God’s Ordnances and successfully foster evil. While America’s Christian ministers ignore God’s Laws, the forces of evil, with little interference, are busy installing ordinances of the Devil.

I recently received an E-Mail instructing me get another theme, it read "Every Christian leader is ignorant or deceived. . . except you, of course."

The total failure of American Christian leadership is attested to by the massive deterioration of our culture. My writings only affirm the obvious. What is commonplace today would have been cause for many of our Founders to leave the country, it would have been unbelievable to my own parents, and is even difficult for a redeemed heathen like myself to understand. That this has happened in a nation that claims to be 70 percent Christian casts an indelible stain on those that lead it.

The theme is a good one, the bearer is just another sinner.

This Conference provided an excellent example of the flaccid and ineffective condition of America’s Christian culture. Attended by 4 to 5 thousand Reformed Christians, many of them ministers, who came from all over the Nation, it affirmed the popularity of the works of the leaders and rewarding them with revenues with which to continue their work.

It turned out that the large church was not connected to the sponsoring ministry but was an Assembly of God facility being used because the sponsoring ministries facilities were not large enough.

The warm and cuddly message was popular with the audience, it calmed and placated them but left God and His worldview out in the cold. As I mentioned previously the leaders seemed intent on manipulating the audience into a higher spiritual position. Glossolalia, praise and worship that characterized my previous experience with Charismatic conferences was lacking, no one ever raised a hand. Nevertheless, the progress in theology was not accompanied by an attempt to create improvement in the condition of the milieu that surrounds us.

The entire Bible contains no more poignant account of the nature of evil and the rewards of confrontation than that of John the Baptist. Jesus attested to his greatness and was baptized by him. John the Baptist never conformed to the society in which he lived. He was God’s property and God’s ambassador. Though great in God’s Kingdom he was popularly said to "have a devil". Herod the tyrannical tetrarch, was having an adulterous relationship with his brother’s wife. John said to him, "It is not lawful for thee to have her". This statement not only affronted the tetrarch but incensed his immoral sister-in-law, Herodias, as well.

When Herodias’s daughter pleased Herod with her dance at his birthday party, he promised with an oath to grant her a wish. She wished for the head of John the Baptist and Herod, who was aware that John had a special relationship with God, opted to honor the oath. To the delight of mother and daughter and probably Herod as well, John’s severed head was brought to the party. When Jesus was told of the death, He made no comment.

Greatness in God’s Kingdom does not involve popularity or adulation and those of His contemporary servants willing to pay that price are few to none!

Florida is wonderful in the spring and though it was chilly for us Floridians, many of the Northerners at the Conference enjoyed the warmer weather.