It has been a long time since I’ve been shocked by anything on the Internet. Vegan condoms pretty say it all. Welcome to the age of the extreme extremists! Anything to devalue humans to be lower than the animals is welcome!
Meanwhile, I also ran across an extremist atheist site so full of hatred and bile that it was downright shocking. It was shocking partly because atheists normally at least try to appear to be logical people basing their beliefs upon logic and facts. You and I may disagree with either, but that’s besides the point. The posts dripping with anger and sarcasm were truly surprising. It was all emotion.
The ranting of the people against “creationists” was actually targeted at a particular Church of God organization. You really can simply read it and see the mind of Satan at work, trying to destroy the Church of God like he destroyed the earth over 6,000 years ago. He has deceived the whole world, and he will sway people more and more until they get to the brink of destruction.
Never mind that the COG has long taught that there were millions of years of caretaking and preparing the earth before the 7 day recreation event. Never mind that the traditional COG is only “creationist” in that it teaches evolution in and of itself does not account for why life is here nor the complexity of life, let alone the human mind and intellect. There was life on earth long before Adam and Eve, and it takes a lot less to come to that conclusion using the Bible than to try and stuff a bunch of fossils into a few thousand years. No, don’t let facts get in the way of your prejudices. Just spew out bile and suggest ways of getting even.
And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
~ Ro 1:28
And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
~ 2Th 2:10-12
When you read the Book of Judges, you are struck by how out of control things seem. That’s mostly because they were out of control back then, and that is a major reason why the people eventually wanted a king. A centralized government would pull everything together (for better or for worse).
When you watch politics in action today, it’s difficult to not be struck by how little that has changed. It seems that people in general would rather have a bad but effective government in place than none or a good but ineffective one. We talk about freedom a lot in this country, but we are giving up our individual sovereignty more and more every day and giving it to a central government. It seems to be the way of things. It is how mostly free governments fall and dictatorships take their place.
And yet, this centralized power does not come without a cost. Some will resent the loss of freedom. Some will be ideologically opposed to certain ideas espoused by the central government. In a government where the people have the power, every effort will be made to include various factions and not cause the divide to widen. However, as events occur and people expect the central government to solve all of their problems, they give up many of the rights and freedoms for safety and security in some form. This eventually leads to disenfranchisement of a group or of groups of people. Their needs become discounted. So, you wind up with some violently opposed to the government while others will violently defend it.
In theory, a government should be able to move either way on the spectrum. Either it becomes more free or less free. I cannot conceive of any instance in which it remains stagnant. The Soviet Union broke up and presumably became more free (in reality, it led to more war and strife and became less about freedom). However, Russia has begun to swing back more towards an authoritarian central figure lately. It has not remained stagnant.
Neither has ours. Wiretapping without a warrant is a direct violation of the Constitution. Both conservatives and liberals have taken the underhanded approach of reinterpreting the Constitution according to their philosophy to the point that it has become meaningless. While liberals trample all over rights of free speech and the public practice of one’s religion, the conservatives are restricting free speech in telephone conversations, emails and other assumed private conversations in the name of security — not to mention the illegal detention and interrogation of individuals without trials.
Back in the days of Samuel, the people cried out for a king. They didn’t want just any king, but they wanted “a king to judge us like all the nations” and so they could “be like all the nations” (1Sa 8:5, 20). They wanted a central power to bind them together. They didn’t care that the king would take the best of the best from them. They looked to politics as the answer.
The COG has long recognized that there is a governmental aspect to obedience to God. Some groups have carped so much about that they have turned it into doctrine, while other groups have done their best to not even mention it at all. However, the truth is that Jesus will return and being setting up a kingdom. A kingdom is a government! It will be ruled by the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. We are now in training to live according to its rules.
People like to call it “legalism”, but the fact of the matter is that Jesus will rule with a rod of iron and expect people to obey the rules of His Government. Those who are not willing, those who are constantly and willfully disobedient, in other words those who are not repentant, will not make it!
People constantly turn to the wrong source. People become extreme in their thinking because there is no bearing of true north within the human psyche. People may “follow their hearts”, but the human heart is wicked and deceitful and will lead to extreme behavior (Jer 17:9). Unfortunately, people don’t want to believe that, so they continue doing things the same way hoping for a different outcome. They are deceived. They are picking from the wrong tree.
We need to pray for those who are held captive by the attitude of Satan, and we desperately need to keep praying “Thy Kingdom come”!
There is a natural tendency to turn to government for the answer. The question is: Whose government will you submit to?