Posted by
My View on Monday, November 06, 2006 6:56:55 PM
Eventually, there will be beauty from the ashes from the 'Ted Haggard homosexual sin saga', if the Christian community is willing to embrace these repeating episodes of most favored Christian leaders falling from their position of spiritual leaders because of sexual immorality.
This is not new, it is as old as creation's fall itself. All you have to do is read God's Word to discover hundreds of real life stories of called men of God lead astray by sin's sexual enticement.
This script's focus is not the person Ted Haggard, but the growing idolatry that has been birthed inside of the evangelical political movement. I believe that many believers have refused to engage the 'eternal faith walk' for the satisfaction of the 'temporal production of a value vote'.
Our priorities must return to the mission of the people called church impacting the marketplace personally, and not just politically. My radical conclusion (I shared it Friday on my show for Northern California); I believe it is time for Christians to adhere to a new political effort, a publicly self proclaimed "Separation of Faith in Politics".
No, I'm not suggesting that we grow apathetic and submit to an erroneous representation of Thomas Jefferson's letter mentioning a 'separation of church and state', but rather a committed determination of removing our selves from placing our faith in politics, in a vote or in a man who can deliver votes to impact our culture and country.
The enemy loves to convince common man that he (and she) needs a campaign to bring about change. Reference Genesis, and you read that the serpent told Eve (with Adam at her side guys) that if she just entered into the 'tasted the apple', she could be like God. She could begin to bring about change and solve problems for the world around her.
How often we are convinced that all it will take is a "tasty", polished political strategy or campaign to return order to this spiritually ignorant world. So, we learn to campaign. We campaign on our importance to God, to the churches future and to the countries legacy. We study how important 'we' are for God's purpose to succeed, forgetting that it is "we" who are totally dependent upon Him to fulfill His purpose in and through us to the world.
The sorry truth, we actually worship these 'common men and women' who are called of God, by God, for the purpose of the ministry of the gospel. We drive them into the arena, so they can do 'greater things' politically. Then, when they are snared by their by their own lust, our worship and by our determination to place our faith inside of political campaigns, we become depressed and full of questions. We actually lose 'joy', because our strength was not in the Lord, but in a 'valued voter campaign'.
Now don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying that Christian's shouldn't vote or be political active. We are citizens of this world and this country, and their is a duty of liberty and morality to vote. As a matter of conversation, I believe it is sinful to not vote when the issues on the ballot represent moral direction and eternal outcomes.
So, I want to encourage more individual Christian into the 'active citizen vote arena', and into 'spiritual political intelligence'.
At the same time, our faith is not in a vote or the campaign. If we lose an election, do we lose our salvation? If we win an election, do we bring eternal redemption to the country? Let's place our faith in the One Who can deliver both, without a vote, nor a slick campaign.
Tomorrow, get out and vote...then return to the 'real work' of the gospel, the daily faith walk that impacts your worldy marketplace, no matter the election's outcome.
Please pass your thoughts along via my email, thank you.