AN ARMED SAVIOR

AN ARMED SAVIOR

.

Chubasco

Suddenly thundering pulses of sound vibrated everything; Chubasco’s sails, the hull, my chest cavity, and the very atmosphere as well.  The concussive pulsations opened the clouds overhead, exposing the whirling blades of a descending Navy helicopter.  Then beneath the clouds, the chopper cut its way through the mist to North Island Navy Base, off our starboard beam.  Off our portside, yawned the luxury of Shelter Island and its neighbor, Harbor Island, where sightseers on a sunny day peer at the war machines crouching on the opposing shore of Coronado Island.  The bay of San Diego is a fitting buffer between those two incongruent zones…splitting serene extravagance from destructive sentinel potency.  Figuratively, mixing the two is a nation under tyranny.

.

 The separation is reminiscent of another divide, “church and state.”  The mission of God in Christ is uniquely different from the purposes of a nation’s legal authority.  God’s love appeals to the heart of a person to fulfill Holy ends within, while civil authority appeals to the order of the masses to fulfill political ends, communally.  Mixing the two, distorts the image of them both.  When there is no clear buffer zone between spiritual and civil authority, the perception of God becomes tangled with political ideologies and the legalized force of law.  It is the same inaccurate political/religious lens used to justify the crucifixion.  

.

The misperception is so pervasive that pointing to the “church” as proof of God’s existence weakens, rather than strengthens any claim for spiritual reality.  While grasping at more political-power, the church has mingled its goals with its secular coalition allies.  Tragically, the resulting belief-system betrayal has been so gradual that it remains undetected by many of the beloved today.

.

American church attendance echoes that assessment.  I am not suggesting attendance has dropped…it has remained constant.  Nonetheless, growth has leveled off over in recent years, as those leaving are nearly equal to those joining.  However, the reality is, the churches have been conducting a public ferryboat from their spiritual island to the political mainline, pick some up and dropping others off.  The net stability belies the fact that as the church became more politically focused, it unconsciously became less spiritually focused. 

One source of evidence for that claim was reported in a USA Pew Forum study, called, “Conversion & Deconversion,” It indicated a major cause for the “deconversion” trend is the declining spirituality factor:

·  Two thirds of those unaffiliated have some belief or spirituality, just no affiliation with any defined religion, and only one third are true unbelievers (Pew Forum).

·  The study also probed reasons for changes in belief.  The main reasons for deconverting were not based on truth (e.g. the perceived conflict between science and religion was not a major factor) but on factors such as believers being hypocritical and judgmental, too many rules and too little spirituality in the church, the perceived focus of religious leaders on money and power, and a reaction against the exclusiveness of religion.  Many who leave remain ‘spiritual’ and are open to returning to active faith.  (underlining added)

.

After a decade of mingling the two (God’s power with political power), Christians have unwittingly exchange the church’s former spiritual power for its present political entanglements.  As a sailor, I find the mixture not only emotionally and intellectually unsettling but spiritually nauseating…a kind of spiritual/political-seasickness.  In my view, presenting Christ in this political, social, financial, militaristic, and cultural storm drowns our Christian message in waves of political dogmas.

.

There is a very good reason for retaining a gap between “the law of sin and death” and “the law of the Spirit of life” as chronicled in Romans 8:2.  It allows a space for the cross of Christ to carve a much-needed peaceful Bay between those two shores through which the current of the Holy Spirit can freely flow.  A place unhindered by a politically affiliation church.

.

Unfortunately, when the guardians of spiritual power, conspire to solve America’s problems politically, they reveal their lack of trust in God’s spiritual power.  In so doing, they in effect, strip Christ of His spiritual power and robe Him in political authority, in open view of a spiritually starved nation.  Empowering the Prince of Peace with legal authority makes Him look less like a heavenly savior and more like the pilot of a helicopter armed for war.  Christians remember, as you long for a Him to come dressed for war,  “judgment must begin at the house of God.”  (1 Peter 4:7)