Monday Morning Music Ministry

10-15-18

A robust element of many stories in the news these days, and a subtext of many articles, particularly political stories, is the resurgence of socialism. Significantly, the church is at the center of matters.

Socialism has experienced an awakening, at least in debates as its governmental structure is being somewhat dismantled. Wasn’t it dead and buried after the Reagan years? Didn’t the failure and overthrow of Communist regimes around the world teach people that socialism was a miserable failure? Weren’t the statistics of misery, poverty, and oppression in socialist paradises enough to inform people of its toxicity?

Quite the opposite. In America, anyway, it has been more than resuscitated. More than acceptable again, it is fashionable and urgently desired by broad swaths of the public and media. The Fourth Estate has become the Fifth Column, and Americans are, among other means of propaganda, “guilted” welcoming the socialist agenda.

No less than politicians and media and wealthy foreigners and the academic-industrial complex, many contemporary church leaders – Catholic, Protestant, Jewish – are fervent cheerleaders. For neo-Marxism.

My problem with Marx, Engels, and Lenin, and Left-wing Socialism is that, at essence, it is anti-Biblical. Church Marxists will argue that Jesus was the first socialist because of His dedication to equality and peace and his rebuke of the wealthy and concern for the poor. They say that His Disciples and the early Church were examples of communistic communities.

Why are these viewpoints anti-Biblical?

Jesus was devoted to equality… but never did He pull people down. He always lifted people up. Equality was a thing to be desired, and all are born with equal opportunities (never in history more than in non-socialist states), but Jesus made references to the real world’s ambitions on one hand and charity on the other.

Peace? We all know that Jesus had a temper, yes, and let His righteousness take precedence over peace as the world might define it yesterday or tomorrow. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”

Jesus’s attitude toward wealth? We know that He commanded to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s; and to “forsake all” and spoke of the rich entering Heaven as easily as camels passing through needles’ eyes. His distinction was not that “money is the root of all evil” but that “the love of money is the root of all evil.”

Were the early Christians prefiguring socialism in their communities of sharing? The answer is found in later, more organized Socialist states that have imploded thanks to inequality, wars and counter-revolutions, inflation, corruption, and – have you noticed? – suppression of religion.

In virtually every Socialist state, religion is oppressed; believers persecuted. In mild “mixed” socialist countries, church attendance and fealty to Scripture drastically has been diminished.

I think Christians should be opposed to socialism, moreover, because it is based on the state planning, state supremacy, or state control. Goods and services… economic choices… private enterprise… educational standards… prerogatives of daily life. When the population is reared on a socialist worldview, the government is assumed to be the ultimate answer to every problem, the ultimate source of every blessing, the ultimate judge of every challenge.

The government, not God, becomes people’s go-to resource. Google the proper agency instead of praying to the Lord.

Major culprits – wolves in sheep’s clothing – are “Democratic Socialist” or “Christian Democrat” or Democrat parties that substitute themselves for the church. How do they attempt to supplant the church? It is not always as blatant as pre-censorship of sermon notes, as the mayor of Houston attempted a few years ago; nor the many attempts to proscribe the Bible, and public monuments and celebrations, as “hate speech.”

It is more in the poisonous worldview of modern socialism: textbooks written by unelected secularists; the aspects of national health insurance that would discourage private and personal care, and force caregivers to sometimes act against their consciences.

The foundational aspects of the welfare state discourage (or attack) the concept so strongly commanded by Jesus that we care for one another as individuals. Massive taxes for a welfare bureaucracy allows people, or obliges them, to transfer their giving to the State – and in so doing, “free” them of the Biblical necessity to care for the poor and sick. Ultimately, allowing people to stop caring about the poor and sick.

I believe, as St Augustine believed and wrote, the real meaning behind “the poor you shall always have with you” is not that poverty is a futilely resisted pestilence, but that we need to be aware at all times of those who hurt. For their sake, and our souls’, not to check boxes on tax forms to fund some program somewhere.

Finally, consider: Marx spoke (supposedly) to the working class. Good at first glance?

But Jesus spoke to ALL.

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Click: Just a Closer Walk With Thee

10-31-11

Oft times, when we are in deepest state of anguish before the Lord, or attempting to draw closer and closer, and closer, to Him, we cry out for Him to examine our hearts.

There are times – precious few, in some of our cases – when we feel, not prideful or self-righteous, but close to Jesus in love and devotion. We want Him to search our souls, to see that we love Him as we never have, that our repentance is real and our dedication is pure. We can never reach these spiritual levels apart from the Holy Spirit, and we ask the Spirit to bring us to the Throne of Grace and address God in these ways.

At these passionate moments we feel like inviting God to plumb our innermost thoughts… but at the same time we dare ourselves to be worthy.

We must always be mindful that our righteousness is like dirty rags to a Holy God. We must be secure that we will never exhibit a “shadow of turning.” Matthew Henry once cautioned: “The heart, the conscience of man, in his corrupt and fallen state, is deceitful above all things. It calls evil good, and good evil…. the heart is desperately wicked; it is deadly, it is desperate…. We cannot know our own hearts, nor what they will do in an hour of temptation.… Yet whatever wickedness there is in the heart, God sees it. Men may be imposed upon, but God cannot be deceived.”

So we must proceed carefully! The spiritual pitfalls do not make this spiritual attitude toward God spiritually futile. Holiness and purity must be our goals. But awareness of the inclinations of human nature should keep us in the Word, and reliant on the Holy Spirit.

“I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.” – Jeremiah 17:10

The real truth is that God is searching our hearts always, and testing our minds, anyway. So an attitude of inviting God “in” is useful, and humbling, and spiritually disciplining.

But it is probably better that we devote ourselves, first, to our knowing God’s heart.

It is more important to our faith than God knowing our hearts.

Understanding God’s heart, and ways, and will, is essential before our own hearts can approach any state of preparation to invite God’s examination. Without seeking His heart we cannot know how to reach that point. Without knowing His heart we cannot find our own, to have that Closer Walk with Him.

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Click: Just a Closer Walk With Thee