Monday Morning Music Ministry

4-22-24

Billy Joe Shaver told the story of when he was in a crowd of people and someone sneezed, he said “God bless you.” A number of folks turned their heads and gave him weird or angry looks. Remembering that he was in California, he quickly said, “May the god of your choice bless you!”

A metaphor, of course, from that master singer-songwriter who came to Christ late in life but communicated truth, even when his adversities – whether self-induced or by the enemy of our souls – persisted. His testimony was strong in music and in words… and in humor, a legitimate weapon available to us as we share the Gospel. Another person who famously used humor to make points was Abraham Lincoln.

Professional scoffers hold Lincoln up as a skeptic or agnostic, but he merely was someone who did not attend church regularly. His words and actions – indeed, his life – was a testimony, however, to his Biblical knowledge. More, his growing spiritual wisdom. Further, his cleaving to the Savior.

Month by month during his presidency, literally week by week until his martyr’s death, Lincoln’s conversations, letters, and speeches read like sermons as much as they were political views or policy statements. He shared testimonies about his own faith, and admonitions to his fellow citizens.

One of his most profound lessons was delivered not couched in humor as he masterfully and frequently did, but in a direct way. It was a point that transcended the anxiety and desires of people in the midst of a bloody war, although that was its context. We would do well to remember Lincoln’s perspective every time we pray, or feel the need to:

My concern is not whether God is on our side. My greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.

This worldview is so comprehensive that I believe it could stand with the greatest of the Bible’s proverbs or commandments; or the Lord’s summation of the Gospel, or the Epistles’ evangelistic messages. The inherent anomaly today in the application of Lincoln’s aphorism “seeking to be on the Lord’s side” is the very concept of seeking God… versus seeking after gods.

How often does the current president, or, indeed, the larger cultural establishment, ever acknowledge “seeking to be on the Lord’s side”? How often (as once was common) do the agencies of government refer to, or base policies on, Biblical standards? When “In God We Trust” is stamped on coins and paper currency, and carved in stone on the Supreme Court building, and emblazoned over the Speaker’s chair in the House of Representatives… why do court decisions deny and restrict Christians’ rights? Why do bureaucratic edicts reverse the standards and traditions of a Christian culture? Why does the president co-opt the role of churches? Why are secular and blasphemous values given priority over the essential beliefs of people of faith?

It would be simpler (though by no means simple!) to address these challenges if this crisis were confined to the agencies of government. In that case, a simple revolution… a rise of the masses… perhaps riots in the streets and storming of courthouses and legislatures… would all make for a good beginning. Count me in. But it is not “simple.” Beyond government, it is the entertainment industry. It is the education establishment. It is the “news” monopoly.

But we cannot stop there in identifying the problem. Rather, we can start in the virtual streets just referred to; in the homes of our nation; sadly, in many of the churches themselves. And in individuals, neighbors, our selves? God forbid. But true.

Never mind “leaders” who violate the essentials of their religions, or secular values in education, or in pop culture that traffics in pornography, violence, and abuse. A more dispositive manner of “taking the pulse” of society’s health and its spiritual essentials, is how often people react to problems by saying “I’ll send good thoughts…” or “You have my good wishes…” These casual phrases routinely are frank evidence of shallow hypocrisy. Empty words, usually: insults to the people being assuaged and to the God Who can otherwise be invoked. “Sending” “thoughts”???

How much more is God’s Name taken in vain than spoken in reverence on TV, or in conversations? How many times do pious people say “I’ll pray for you,” but seldom do? How many people think they acknowledge the Lord by referring to Him as “the man upstairs”? How honoring.

False beliefs, phony value systems, tepid expressions of faith risk yielding, at best, tepid answers to prayer. Should we expect a Holy and Sovereign God to look kindly on a people who embrace apostasy? Has God ever bent His will, changed His ways, to accommodate heresy? Is there an Expiration-Date on His precepts?

May the god of your choice, America, forgive your wicked ways. In the meantime, the God of the Bible, as Abraham Lincoln said, is always right. Let us be on His side… while there might still be time.

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Click: Holy Ground