“The American insantiy for Loving Everybody is ruining my good temper and delivering my stomach to enormous bouts with acidity.”
Taylor Caldwell, author
Imagine, for a moment, that you are a Jew living in Warsaw, Poland in 1939. Suddenly, the Nazi invasion of your beloved homeland occurs at a lightning pace, and within two months your world is turned upside down. Before WWII is over, you will have lost everything: your city, your home, your business, and each member of your immediate and extended family. You will have watched your family tortured, murdered and some of them marched into the gas chambers in Auschwitz.
It will only be by God’s grace that you survived. As a prisoner in Auschwitz, tortured and starved almost to the very point of death, you were within days of dying until the Red Army brought your deliverance in 1945. You became a living skeleton and weighed 75 pounds, down from the 170 you were before the invasion six years prior.
Please be honest for a few seconds. Would you love the Nazi’s? Upon your liberation, would you have weakly shuffled up to the Nazi commandant of Auschwitz and whispered with all your strength, “I forgive you! Jesus loves you and so do I! God bless you, my friend…I will continue to pray for you that the Lord would bring you to Himself!” And then, summing all of your available strength, would you have then reached up to him with your pencil-thin arms and given him a bear hug?
Probably not. No, it might take you a lifetime and beyond to work through the hate, revenge, and all the other understandable emotions that accompany such a loss as you would have suffered. Nobody would be angry with you for feeling the way you did…all, even those who were spared the brunt of the Nazi atrocities and lost no family members, would feel compassion and understanding for your unimaginable loss and suffering.
Why, then, are so many Christians falling all over themselves to love, embrace and accept members of the LGBT community, the very community that has just accomplished a cultural blitzkrieg over our nation on June 26, 2015? These people are out to destroy Christians, Christianity, and our way of life, and they are bulldozing away everything we hold dear, all with the blessings and power of the Obama administration. And all the while, Christians are stupidly telling them, “Jesus loves you and so do I!,” embracing them as they plunge sharpened daggers in our backs and the hearts of our family members.
For example, in this article, Christian author Michael Brown writes this:
http://barbwire.com/2015/07/06/0700-oregon-declares-war-on-the-christian-faith/
“I’m sure the Kleins would like nothing more than to forgive you to your face and give you a great big hug. Not only are Christians moral people, they are forgiving people.” The Kleins, you will remember, are the Christian owners of “Sweet Cakes by Melissa” who refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple.
Mr. Brown continues this distasteful “love fest” with the enemy in this article:
http://barbwire.com/2015/08/17/lets-pray-for-michael-sam/
Brown writes:
“Who knows what will happen if we pray that he will encounter the incredible love of God, that he will recognize his own sin and guilt (that’s the path for every one of us on the road to redemption), and that he will call out to the heavenly Father to have mercy on him. Who knows?”
Yes, in the grand scheme of redemption, the salvation of one such as that degenerate pervert Michael Sam would be wonderful. It is theoretically correct that the most vile and wicked of individuals could be saved, and that the wonderful, transforming grace of the Lord Jesus is not limited. But we Christians are missing something when we cheaply and so easily extend that grace to people like Michael Sam, as if the precious blood of the Lord Jesus and His death on the cross is a mere trinket that can be cheaply dangled in front of the noses of the most abominable sinners, who neither ask for or value it.
There is something distinctly distasteful with this feminine and over-emphasis on love and acceptance of people who desire only one thing: to destroy us. And, it is unbiblical and makes light of the legitimate sufferings and losses of others. This “love gospel,” practiced by so many in America, is part of the false gospel known as “American Evangelicalism.”
Brown presumptuously puts words, thoughts and feelings in the mouths of Christians like the Kliens who are at real risk of losing everything because of the militant actions of radical homosexuals and lesbians. Maybe, Mr. Brown, Christian business owners who are being fined out of existence and are losing their livelihoods, unable to pay their mortgage and car payments, might not feel so forgiving and loving toward their enemies. Should your words make them feel guilty? Are they somehow less of a Christian for wanting justice done, to see these enemies of all things righteous and holy and decent punished for their actions? What, Mr. Brown, do you think of these saints in the Book of Revelation who appeared to be a bit impatient with the Lord Jesus Christ for what they perceived was His slowness to bring them their justice over their enemies?
“They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” Revelation 6:10
|
Of course, Christians who espouse this perverse form of love toward the ungodly have grown up in America where, for many of us, our closest interaction with tough living was agonizing over what flavor of ice cream we were going to have after dinner. It is easy to spout meaningless platitudes towards others when persecution is measured by the degree of mean looks people give us when we hand them a gospel tract or invite them to church.
The truth is that this “love gospel” is part of the false gospel that has effectively brainwashed generations of Christians and caused most of us to be nothing more than neutered, chocolate soldiers in this battle for souls and against evil. It certainly is not a part of New Testament Christianity.
For example, what do you think Jesus meant when He told the parable of the ten minas, found in Luke 19:11-27, and uttered this decidedly “unloving” statement?:
“But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them—bring them here and kill them in front of me.’” (verse 27)
Part of the problem with American Evangelicalism is our cherry picking of particular Scriptures without giving due diligence to the others which speak on the same subject, often giving needed balance and clarity. I confess I often cherry pick myself, to my shame. We are all guilty of the same offense, and wise is the individal who recognizes their weakness in this area and strives for balance and a well rounded understanding of truth.
In the above mentioned passage of Scripture, Jesus clearly—at least in my mind—is giving us insight on how His Heavenly Father will treat His enemies…His Father’s enemies. And nothing is found here that anywhere comes close to the perverse “love bombing” of our enemies as glorified by American Christians.
Yes, Jesus did teach that we should love and pray for our enemies; I understand and accept this as a marvelous display of genuine graciousness, mercy and forgiveness. But we err if we fail to also consider the other myriad of verses that seem to teach the exact opposite, like this one just mentioned.
How to we reconcile such apparent contradictions? This will have to wait for another post, but suffice to say, to not consider the other passages of Scripture that points to what seems to be the exact opposite of “love your enemies” is to plunge oneself into some dangerous, irrational and illogical belief systems.
Consider, for example, Revelation 2:1-7, commonly known as the “letter to the church at Ephesus.” Without going into great detail, I will point out—cherry pick—two specific passages: verse two and verse six:
“I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance, and that you cannot tolerate evil men, and you put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false…” (NASB)
“Yet this you do have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.” (NASB)
Notice in these verses the decidedly negative approach to the views of the enemies of the church at Ephesus that these believers held: verse two reveals that the Ephesians could not “tolerate evil men.” Not tolerate evil men? But I thought American Evangelicilism was all about “tolerating evil men,” no? Is is possible that Jesus had it all wrong here?
And it gets even worse, for verse six tells us that these Ephesian Christians actually hated the deeds of the Nicolaitans. And lo and behold, even Jesus Himself hated these same deeds. That’s a strong word, hate, isn’t it? Such a word and emotion is hardly viewed today as a Christian virture, particularly among those members identifying themselves as modern day Evangelical Christians.
And when do we ever hear or read of such hate that Christians have for the deeds of the wicked? Hardly ever or anywhere. Certainly not from the average pulpit, nor in the typical Christian pop song.
And how intolerant those Ephesian Christians were! And surprisingly, Jesus heartily commended them for their intolerance. Obviously, Jesus would not be a popular speaker on any university or college campus today, especially those that receive federal funds.