The other day I made my way to Nashville to pick up my significant other for lunch at a popular downtown restaurant. When she got into the car she immediately began venting her frustration over all of the horns honking around the state capital building where the legislature was in stressful session over a purposed new state income tax. As annoying as it was, I said, we should be glad it’s happening. These people were taking a bold and courageous stand against socialism in Tennessee; a stand I wish would be taken in the nation’s capital as well. However, considering the current occupants of the White House, I suspect a horn-honking parade on Pennsylvania Avenue would be about as productive as one around the Kremlin.
Anyway, the bottom line is this; It’s budget time in Tennessee and there isn’t enough money to pay for everything we’ve bought into. Just like ALL government funded programs, there’s never enough money. Our turncoat republican governor here pulled a George Bush “READ MY LIPS” stunt a few years ago to get himself elected and then immediately joined forces with liberals to try and create a state income tax to pay for the humongous Medicade program called “TennCare”. Now the state government is broke, shutdown and everyone is screaming and pointing fingers.
I couldn’t help but ask myself how we got here in the first place. Let’s forget for the time being, all of the waste, corruption and fraud that always accompanies government ventures. What I want to know is; What’s the government doing operating a charity anyway? That’s suppose to be the role of the church, not the government. The government is running a charity because liberals and socialists believe government should be all things to all people. Therefore, they impose their Robin Hood ideology on the rest of us with programs designed specifically to re-distribute the wealth of the working class. Government charity; What an oxymoron!
However, I want to get to what I consider to be the root cause of us being in this painful predicament. It seems to me that more and more, our capitals are becoming pseudo-churches of the 21st century, where Govt. replaces God, taxes replace tithing, welfare replaces charity, legislation replaces doctrine, presidents replace saviors, congressmen replace clergy and where love is replaced by tolerance; a tolerance that promotes inversion and perversion instead of conversion.
When I stand back and look at the church these days, I see leaders who abandoning their “First Love”, are more interested in competing with the culture, as if envious of its numbers, instead of leading us out of it as Abraham led Lot and his family out of Sodom and Gomorrah. I see leaders feminizing the church with passive ideologies, group-think, stage productions, grand building programs and socialist psycho-babble, instead of simply preaching repentance and faith in Christ and taking care of the poor as commissioned by Him almost 2000 years ago; teaching us, BY EXAMPLE, how to humble ourselves as “living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God…” for the physical, emotional, financial and spiritual needs of our culture’s victims. The church simply can’t lead a culture out of its depravity while following and imitating it, anymore than a dad can teach his son maturity by trying to be one of his cool buddies, instead of a father. Oh I know token efforts are made at charity now and then in quite a few churches with Cans for Kids programs and such, but I’m afraid that all too often it’s more show than go. Sacrifice and humility are becoming traits many of today’s churches have subtly removed from Loves divine definition.
I am left to wonder what amazing things could be accomplished to the glory of God, if every bible-believing christian in America really put into practice what it teaches about the tithing of one’s own time, money and resources toward society’s sick and needy through the church. Something tells me that if we were really obedient to the call of Christ, government charities like TennCare wouldn’t even be necessary.