May 2014 – sheaoakley.com

May 30, 2014shea No Comments

The Myth of Christian Theocracy in America

In recent year Secularists have gotten a lot of mileage in the media out of warning of the threat to the United States of a home grown Christian version of Islamic theocracy. This would be perpetrated against the nation by those who are politically and theologically conservative. Some of these pundits just muse darkly about the ramifications of too many Bible-believing Christians in government. Others, with less restraint and far less reason, have gone so far as to brand those political activists who believe in biblical principles as the “American Taliban.” What these individuals do not realize is that the vast majority of biblical Christians in this country have no love for the idea of the church and the state somehow becoming one either. Our reasons for not wanting such a change in the nature of American government are quite different from theirs’ but the fact remains that, outside of a few people on the extreme fringe, we mostly would prefer to leave our political system the way it is.

A strong argument can be made that true Christianity functions better in a pluralistic society with guaranteed religious freedoms and a nominal separation of church and state than in perhaps any other political construct in human history. Such a society took root in America largely as a result of the founding fathers of our nation knowing about the government-backed religious intolerance their immediate ancestors experienced in Europe. Because of this many of them wanted to create a society in which freedom of conscience was safeguarded by the government, not eliminated by it. The Establishment Clause in the U.S. Constitution was far more likely designed to protect the church from the state than vice-versa; something that is often forgotten by both sides in the current debate.

One of the reasons Christianity remains a vibrant part of the contemporary American scene is because all of its branches have, in a sense, been “watered” by a political system that was not designed to promote one branch at the expense of another. Historically when a government and a particular church become fused into something resembling a theocracy the result is the suppression of all the other churches. This is not desirable for Christians who agree on theological essentials, but not on all particulars (and that represents most of us under the biblical Christian banner).

Beyond that, history also shows that when a particular church becomes a “state church” it usually dies. Look at the official churches of countries all over Western Europe. Truly practicing Christians are today a very small minority in most of these nations. The Church is inevitably compromised when it becomes too intertwined with the state. This has actually been evident ever since the adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the late Roman Empire by Constantine in the Fourth Century. It is not unreasonable to propose that much of the remaining purity of the early church then proceeded to die along with Rome.

Christians in the United States do not want to live under the politically correct thumb of Radical Secularism, but most of us also have no desire to have any one denomination tell us how to live out an authentic religious life; with the sword of government providing that denomination with the power to do so. Such an arrangement would indeed smack of life under something like Sharia law, a reality Christians want to avoid just as much as Secularists do (though, again, for different reasons.)

Ill-advised pronouncements from the extreme Left about “Christianists” wanting to make America into some kind of religious dictatorship do not hold up under any kind of serious scrutiny of earnest followers of Christ in this country. That such scrutiny of the facts is not a priority for people who have already made up their minds about biblical Christians should not come as a big surprise. Those who have declared man the measure of all things tend to instinctively dislike those who hold to a biblical worldview, and generally despise the idea of people with such convictions having any kind of political influence whatsoever. We are, by nature, offensive to them.

But perhaps a few Secularists will pursue the truth (with the open mind they so often accuse Christians of not having) and learn that they have far more to fear today from Radical Islam then from us.

May 23, 2014 2 Comments

Seeking Christ as All

The ultimate focus of every believer must be Jesus Christ. This may seem obvious but the kind of focusing I speak of is a consuming one, one that goes beyond the ‘Christian Norm’ of praying, reading Scripture, and worshipping on Sunday mornings. None of these things fully encompass what the Christian so desperately needs and that is to find Christ, for Christ.

We sometimes pay lip service to the notion that God is all we need. Unfortunately our lives often continue to be built on anything but the true Source of life. Do we really desire the Son of God for Himself alone? Or do we mostly look to Him as the One who can deliver us from all of the worries, all of the troubles of our present existence? The Bible does tell us that if we seek the Kingdom of Heaven all other things will be added on to us. But all the other things are worthless if they do not come about as a by-product of our devotion to the Lord.

To do this, to really look to Jesus constantly, sounds impossible. Every human being has responsibilities that do not directly involve worship or at least worship in the conventional sense of the word. But what we are looking for here is far beyond the conventional, far beyond what we do in church once a week. True worship is constant. We endeavor to focus on Jesus in all aspects of our lives. The ultimate goal is to lose ourselves in Him because we want Him to be everything to us. Only in this way can we expect our lives in the flesh to be transformed and given back to us as lives found in Christ.

As in much of the Christian walk the ability to see only Him as the focal point of our spirits does not come instantaneously. It has become a cliché to talk about how the myriad distractions of contemporary existence have made it so difficult for believers to keep God first in their lives. However, it is true. The modern world has indeed become too complex to easily “practice the presence” of God. Still, Jesus Christ is bigger than the world. Our Lord can still be known deeply if we ask for help in focusing on Him and then dare to step out in faith to do it. It begins with taking time to meditate on Jesus and Jesus alone. As we do this He can gradually become greater in our consciousness and the effects of the time we spend with Him begin to be felt in the rest of our life. Gradually we can become aware of Christ in all we perceive and all we know. Ultimately He can become everything to us and with we will experience the singular glory of being intimately identified with God. Then our cups can only run over with His love and we will light the darkness around us.

It is true that we continue see through a glass darkly, such is the penalty of living in a fallen world. The fact remains, however, that we still can be far closer to our God. Even here on earth it is possible beyond what many of us could hope or imagine. The key is our desire, the passion to pursue the Lover of our souls…as He has pursued us.

May 14, 2014 No Comments

Why Dying to Self is a Good Thing

“ ‘Cause love never claims the victory until it finally gives it’s all.”

The above line, from a Ginny Owens song, speaks volumes about the Christian life. We find it so hard to believe that sacrifice is a good thing. In our fallen self-centeredness it seems like we must protect ourselves at all costs, and so we love little because it feels unsafe to do otherwise. By that measure the Lord we worship lived a very unsafe life.

Ever notice that the most truly whole persons in our churches always seem to be those who are the most truly other-centered, the ones who care less about their own interests than those of the people around them? These are the brethren in our congregations whose lives have an authentically deep and enduring joy. They often manifest a kind of well-being, a peace and sense of purpose, that make them seem literally to almost glow in the presence of their fellows. It is easy to be envious of these Christians who appear to have found a secret of joyful life that eludes the rest of us. Some may take only a superficial look and discount them as being “hopelessly perky”. Others wonder if they are living in some kind of dream world.

But what if that dream world is the place of true Christlikeness? Could it be that the giving of all for others really is the path to fully knowing and receiving the love we all so desperately need? Jesus said that we must lose our lives in order to find our true lives. By this perhaps he meant that we must lose our self-focused lives by sacrificially entering into the interests and needs of others. Scripture tells us that the Son of God went to his death confident that it would be worth it for the joy of seeing so many lost sinners saved, restored both to the place of being sons and daughters of His Father and becoming His own new brothers and sisters . So he died to self in the most profound way, by actually giving up the earthly life to which most of us so tightly hold. Then he took up His life anew, a glorified life that fully belongs only to those who, in true love, give their all.

At face value living this way seems impossible, and so it is if attempted in our own strength. It is a sad farce to try to lead a sacrificial life in the power of our flesh. Some may appear to succeed for a time, but the end result of trying to produce such a life this way is always bitterness and the realization that apart from God we can truly do nothing. The good news is that His empowering love can be our own if we sincerely ask for Him to fill us with it. The spirit of love is the Spirit of Christ, the spirit of sacrificial love especially so. Those glowing people in our churches who we see and envy, whose loving nature we covet, we can become ourselves.

The key to a deeper victory of love in us is found in receiving it from He whose cup truly overflows with love. We need only sincerely ask Him to remove our self-centered hearts and give us His own. As we progressively do this over the span of our lives here on earth we will ultimately find our own wellbeing in living for the wellbeing of others, to the glory of our risen Lord.

May 7, 2014 2 Comments

God and the Gordian Knot

There are times in our lives when we must realize that we have done everything we can to resolve a problem and now there are only two remaining things to do. The first is to give the entire circumstance to God. The second is to wait for Him to do what we cannot.

In mythology the Gordian Knot was a knot so large and complicated that it could not be unraveled by mortal effort. We all have had, or will have, such knots in our own existence. These are the problems that we simply do not have the ability to resolve, even with the character God has built into us so far during our years of Christian growth. We have marshaled what seems to be every ounce of will and wisdom we have and applied it to the issue. Based on this we may even have taken decisive action, but still have found no answer, easy or otherwise. The problem remains and we feel at our wit’s end about it.

The term “surrender” has become somewhat of a cliché in the Church. We are often urged to “surrender” our problems and, for that matter, our lives to God. Because we hear this particular exhortation so often it tends to lose a sense of urgency, even of reality, after a while. But the need for such surrender is an absolute necessity for any progress in being conformed to the image of Christ. One of the ways we are led towards it is through facing seemingly impossible problems.

The most effective thing we can do, when we have given what we feel to be our level best to resolve such problems and failed, is to pray (and ask our brothers and sisters in the faith to pray with us) for a divine solution. We then purpose to wait, for however long it takes, on almighty God. Once we have chosen to lay our burden down before Him we can simply continue to live our lives. We have done all we can. We can do no more than hold to the best previously discernible course and trust that our Lord will untangle our personal Gordian Knot through His power without our help or, perhaps more succinctly, without our flesh’s help.

This, it seems to me, is what it means to “cease from striving” in the best sense of the term. It is real surrender to a faithful God Whom we trust will do what we cannot…. and in that surrender is our peace.

May 1, 2014 No Comments

When Ignorance is Willed

One of the biggest ways we avoid living out the purpose of God in our lives and the lives of others is through willed ignorance. The Bible tells us that the human heart is deceitful, at least to the degree that it is not yet under the Lordship of Christ. Sadly, few of us can claim to have yet come to a place where that Lordship is absolute. Where our wills remain unbowed to our Redeemer there is room for all kinds of self-willed error and one manifestation of this can be found in choosing to avoid a truth that is obvious. We can know what God wants us to do, but we say we can’t. We protest that something is beyond our capacity to grasp when it really isn’t. We choose ignorance when it is within our ability to know because to know what is expected of us is to be under obligation to do it, no matter how undesirable or difficult it might seem.

Whether this happens on a conscious or subconscious level may seem hard to nail down, but perhaps it really isn’t. We often like to believe that a particular divine command is something we are not consciously aware of but that belief is part of our self-deception. Even if willed ignorance has an unconscious component it might be safely assumed that we are not without some responsibility for how it became unconscious. Things that feel unpleasant to us have a funny way of somehow being pushed from a conscious to a subconscious level. Whatever part of the psyche it is that might hold the denied knowledge of our responsibility the bottom line is that we have no way to permanently justify denying it. As moral agents and, more importantly, as children of God we must seek to know and do His will on every level.

There are, of course, times when a believer genuinely does not know what the best action to take is in any given circumstance. As fallen and finite creatures human beings are probably never going to always know what is required of them in this life, at least not right away. This is no surprise to God and it should not be a surprise to us either. But what might be called “innocent ignorance” is nowhere near as great a problem in a Christian’s life as the not so innocent kind.

So how do we guard against the tendency to pretend we do not know what God’s will is for our lives? One way is to take to heart that Christ’s yoke is easy and His burden is light. I believe that the Enemy of our souls is constantly trying to convince us that whatever our Lord asks of us is either unreasonably hard or even impossible for us to do. The irony in this is that there is a twisted element of truth in this lie he so often tries to make us believe. Many of the things a Christian may be required to do or endure would be impossible apart from the enabling grace of God.

However once that grace is received and applied we experience the power to do the seemingly impossible. Satan desperately wants to keep this knowledge from us because once we have it we have new ability to do great things that further the Kingdom of God on earth. It is also not necessary to pretend we do not know what God is asking of us once we realize just how much He loves us, and that is often a function of how much time we spend at the foot of the cross. It is in what Jesus did there that we come to understand we need not suppress any aspect of the truth in our lives. Willed ignorance of what we must do in obedience to Him will never truly set us free. What will is what He, in perfect obedience to His Father, did for us.