Morality and the Real Enemy
So this morning as I was listening to Do Something by Matthew West on K-Love and it kind of launched God and I into a discourse. It’s a really cool song, about how the singer is wondering why there is bad in the world and for God to give us an answer to the problem. Then God tells him I have, it’s you! The singer then realizes that we are the answer, us collectively as the church are the answer and we are to wage this war against evil. So as that sunk in and I was like, whoa cool! We are supposed to fix these things, I then had this weird coming together of thoughts. See lately in my lessons with God, I feel like he has kept them focused on judgment and our responsibilities as Christians in regards to morality. I am quite certain that God has taught me a few things here. 1) We are to NEVER judge. This is strictly in the sense of the meaning as in the way the word judgmental affects us. I won’t go into it here since I have elsewhere, but to me judging is very specific. 2) No matter what, we will always sin and always have sinned. It’s why God sent Jesus. Therefore it is absolutely worthless making our personal sins the thing our relationship with God center’s around. I would almost argue that it is a sin in itself to be so focused on your sins. The price was paid, you will always have more sins, give it to God and forget it. 3) What God WANTS our relationship to be focused on us living so lovingly towards him that the world around us cannot ignore it. This means using all our abilities and passion towards the progress of his kingdom. If you are good singer, sing at church and bless others with your voice. If you are good organizer, you organize huge events, fantastic parties for him! If you are an athlete, you play your heart out for him. We are to be DOERS, not repenters. It is a worse for you to do nothing for his kingdom than it is to cuss and lust etc.
Okay so anyways, to the point of this whole thing. As Matt West is singing about stopping child slavery and other truly Evil things, it dawned on me. I think that the churches focus on our personal morality and sins is a lie straight from the enemy. SOOOOO many church services and just the culture of church in general is all about our personal shortcoming in regards to God’s perfection. We’re too stingy with our money, we’re lusting too much, we cuss too much, we watch too much television, we do drugs, we drink too much, blah blah blah. Is there really any point at all in even acknowledging these things? We will ALWAYS backslide. We will ALWAYS sin again. So why waste our time on them? I know what people will say, God hates sin, it’s a barrier between him and you, blah blah blah. And they are absolutely right! But God wants our eyes on him, not our sins! By constantly staying focused on our personal petty sins, we are missing the bigger picture. God has worldly enemies in the shape of evils that are ravaging the world. Sins that are truly horrendous and that are collective, even cultural. Just to name a few, prostitution, child slavery, religious intolerance (violent type), genocide, child abuse, etc. Collectively as the church, we should be on a campaign to systematically destroy these enemies of God. Instead we are too busy spinning our wheels fighting our own petty sins.
When I say destroy these enemies, I don’t want the process of that to be open to interpretation. We cannot defeat these titans with violence or anything like that. It takes love. It takes a group of churches to collectively come together and say “we will end child slavery,” and then start a campaign of love where both the victims AND the perpetrators are the recipients. You save the victims and nurture and love on the criminals and you will change the culture to a point where it doesn’t exist anymore. It is a daunting, mind boggling task, but with all the energy and time we waste on judging people for being gay, lazy, stingy, drunkards, etc, we could change the world.