I’m in the Dallas/Ft. Worth airport, coming back from one of America’s vain pursuits:  vacationing.  For some reason, I get a ravenous appetite whenever I travel by plane, even if it’s for a short amount of time.

Craving a Wendy’s hamburger, I order a 1/2 lb. cheeseburger combo.  (And by the way, eating greasy, unhealthy food is another vain American past time, but since this is the first time I’ve had a Wendy’s in probably a year or so, I give myself some slack.)  Just as I’m about to dive into this greasy delight, an overweight woman, who appears to be in her late twenties/early thirties, saunters up to the counter with an ugly Chihuhua in some type of carry-bag.

She kisses its ugly little snout as she waits to order.

To say I become a bit peeved at this would not be far from the truth, but I can’t allow this affront to my sensibilites to ruin my meal.  Instead, I ponder this modern day obsession women have with their dogs.

On the flight to Dallas, one of the American Airlines stewardesses, a semi-attractive blond in her late thirties/early forties, was taking a break in the tiny cubicle where stewardesses sit near the black of the aircraft; she was positioned right in front of me, facing my direction, at an easy viewing angle.

As she was playing with her smart phone (yet another vain pursuit of Americans, all three of which I confess I indulge in to my shame), she suddenly brightened, like she just saw a picture of her long lost lover.  She turns the phone to one of the other passengers that earlier she had engaged in conversation with, sitting a couple of rows ahead of me, and showed him what she was gushing over.

You guessed it:  a dog.  Then, flipping the phone back towards her heavily mascared face, she lifts the screen to her ruby-red lips and kisses it.

The thought suddenly struck me that I don’t often see women—ever, as a matter of fact—kiss their children in public or gush over their pictures in public places, or show their pictures with evident glee and happiness to those around them.

Isn’t this strange, perverse even?  What vile turn have we taken in America where women publically fall all over themselves with dogs,  but yet rarely, if ever, show the same public adoration and affection for their own children (if they even have any)?

Truthfully, I find it revolting and revealing; revolting that a woman, the one time tender and loving caregiver of a family’s most cherished possession, children, now pour that love onto an animal that licks its private parts, has fleas, sheds, urinates and defecates in public, and consumes its own vomit.  Revealing because it is yet another clear marker that portends the unraveling of the American culture.

Think with me for a moment and see if I speak the truth:  how many pictures do you see on Facebook or the media that portrays pets, and how many pictures do you see that portrays kids?  I say without hesitation that there is an avalanche of photos about pets and a mere trickle about children.

And how about articles on the internet news about pets as opposed to those on children?  We are drowning in articles about “rescue” pets, pets getting their nails done, prosthetic limbs, dog and cat food, pet healthcare, pet daycares, pet hotels, Leo the Lion, ad nauseum.  Now compare this with articles about children and tell me something is not profoundly wrong in this country.

Speaking about Leo the lion…interestingly, Leo’s demise came right on the heels of the Center for Medical Progress’ expose of the macbre organ harvesting of aborted babies.  And who garnered the lion’s share of the attention from the media?

Where was the outrage from women over babies organs being harvested in a manner that would have made the Nazi’s bursting with pride?  And we know that if it was revealed that the organs of pets (especially puppies) were being harvested for medical research, the White House would have been burned down with Obama, the Senate and the House joining in the torching.

Our eyes need to be opened to see what is happening all around us.  And friends, it does not portend well for our future.

My last post discussed what I consider to be a “Christian vice”:  extending love, mercy and forgiveness to people who utterly and absolutely reject it.

I read another article that crystallizes this absurd—even dangerous—idea.  This article, penned by Allan Erickson, concerns the mass shooting of black Christians in Charleston, South Carolina, on June 17, 2015, by a young, white racist who mercilessly murdered these people in a bible study.

Erickson writes:

“The members of that church personified Christ. They called for calm, peace and prayer. They extended grace to the shooter’s family, and even spoke the words of forgiveness to him…”

I agree with the first portion of the above paragraph; to call for calm, peace and prayer in the midst  of such heinous carnage is exemplary, which is far better than calling for the looting and burning down of the town.  And calling for “extended grace to the shooter’s family” is a further act of graciousness.

But then Erickson begins to slip into the common heresy of modern day American Evangelicalism when he writes of the members of the church speaking words of forgiveness to the shooter:

“Family members of those killed went on camera, witnessing the love of Christ, mourning their loved ones, and extending grace and mercy and forgiveness, even when none was requested by the killer.” (Emphasis mine.)

Where in the Bible do we find the Lord Jesus “extending grace and mercy and forgiveness” to a murderer when it was never requested?  Can you find one single Scripture, in either the Old or New Testament?  Was not repentence first required—even demanded—from anyone who would receive the unfathomable riches of mercy, grace and forgiveness from the Lord?

It is nauseating, even revolting, the depths that American Christianity has sunk to.   We cheapen the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and count His precious blood as a cheap commodity when well meaning but wholly deluded Christians can offer it so willingly to a depraved murderer that wants absolutely nothing to do with it.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor during the reign of Hitler and who was a member of the failed plot which sought his assassination, wrote these famous lines:

“Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace. Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks’ wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is represented as the Church’s inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price; grace without cost! The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing….”

“Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession…Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.” (Bold mine.)

This “cheap grace” is nothing less than a heresy, a perversion, of authentic grace.  He contrasts “cheap grace” with “costly grace”:

“Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man’ will gladly go and self all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble, it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.

“Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: “ye were bought at a price,” and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.

“Costly grace is the sanctuary of God; it has to be protected from the world, and not thrown to the dogs. It is therefore the living word, the Word of God, which he speaks as it pleases him. Costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus. It comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. Grace is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Emphasis mine.)

Christians in America, if they preach anything, preach “cheap grace.”  This is manifestly exhibited in this article by Allan Erickson, no doubt a well-meaning individual but deluded by the innumerable adherents around him to the heretical doctrines of “cheap grace” that permeate our culture and which has caused our country to rot in immorality and wickedness.

Ultimately, the teaching of cheap grace is an attack against the holiness, sovereignty, and preciousness of the Gospel and the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.  We preach cheap grace to our doom as a nation.

“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.