Stan Moody:
To My Brothers and Sisters in Christ in the Evangelical Wasteland:
I know of our zeal, our patience and our good works. I have experienced our patriotism and the active crusade against our nation’s sins. We have held out the Blessed Hope of the return of our Lord Jesus. Nevertheless, I have much against us.
We have forgotten that our citizenship is not in America but is in the present and eternal Kingdom of God. In our obsession with the return of Jesus over the presence of Jesus now, our hope has become earthly and future rather than transcendent and present. Instead of honoring the Kingdom of God as central to the Father’s plan, we have made ourselves central to His plan.
Christian Theocracy:
We have degenerated into politically restructuring secular America into a Christian theocracy, believing that our nation can be redeemed by outlawing sin. Thus, we have confused sin as behavior rather than an inherent human condition demanding reconciliation. As a result, we have dumbed-down the person and work of the Christ we profess to worship.
In a nutshell, we have become too busy doing for God what He is patiently waiting to do through us. The Church – the Bride of Christ – has been rendered a mere instrument of the two secular nation-states we have chosen ultimately to destroy – America and Israel.
What Sins Are We Attempting to Avoid?
Dear friends, our sin is that we have tired of waiting for God and have taken matters into our own hands. The Church of Jesus Christ has surrendered to the American political system because we deem politics to be more powerful and more immediate than the uncertainty of faith. As a result, we are in danger of being left to our own devices, bereft of the power and glory of God – “left behind,” one might say.
We no longer believe in the principles of the Sermon on the Mount. Those who mourn, the meek, the poor in spirit, those who hunger and thirst after righteousness and peacemakers are considered weak and unfaithful in our worship of the American Dream of prosperity and success.
We have gathered to ourselves corrupt political and spiritual leaders. They lie; they steal; they play god in peoples’ lives; they accumulate heaps of money; they pass on financial empires to their children. We “Focus on the Family” instead of the God of the family. We hire these people and flock to their ecclesiastical addictive systems. Yet, we feign surprise and outrage when they fall off their perches.
Our divorce rate is the same as or higher than that of the rest of America. The homosexuality that we condemn in others is no stranger to the Church. Abortion is common, albeit driven underground due to shame. Adultery in thought and in deed is widespread. Pornography now reigns in many a Christian home.
In our theology, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob prefers the sizzle over the steak – works over faith and church growth over discipleship.
Biblioatry:
We claim to believe in the authority of the Bible. Yet, we pick and choose verses out of context, cafeteria-style, and reconstruct them to support our preconceived ideas of what God is doing or is about to do. We have abandoned the Word of God for the words of God and the freedom of truth for the bondage of legalism.
Our eschatology, or study of last things, is mere political activism, as though our money and the power of the American government can force God’s hand to bring about the cataclysmic Rapture which we insist is long overdue. Is our god so weak that he cannot protect his “chosen people?”
We act out of fear rather than faith. A common expression of our people is, “We have to kill them before they come over here and kill us!” Who are the “them” that we advocate killing? Are those on the West Bank who claim Jesus Christ as Lord mere collateral damage? Where in the teachings of Jesus do we divide the human race into “them” and “us?” Is the Christ we pretend to honor not worth trusting for our destiny? If not, why call ourselves Christian? You may as well “eat, drink and be merry.”
Violence in the Name of Jesus:
In his book, Bethlehem Besieged, Mitri Raheb, Palestinian Christian, Lutheran pastor in Bethlehem, husband and father, tells a story of oppression and confiscation of Palestine by the nation-state of Israel under the complicit encouragement of the Christian Right in America:
Many American Jews have their own guilt feelings. They feel guilty that they continue to live in the Diaspora and not in the “Jewish homeland.” So, they compensate for these guilt feelings by sending donations to Israel and by lobbying for extreme Israeli policies. Backing Israel even in its wrongdoings, subsidizing Israel’s continuous occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and pressuring the US Congress to support a one-sided pro-Israeli position harms not only the Palestinians but in the long run the Israeli people themselves. And as Palestinians, we have to carry on our shoulders the sins of the Jewish American lobby as well.
Then we have the Christian Right in the United States. I do not find much in them that is Christian or right. They are anxious for Armageddon, no more and no less. They do not even care for Israel itself, but for the final “big bang.” Deep down, they are anti-Semitic, hating Israel and the Jewish people. But in the meantime, they don’t mind sharing a bed with the Jewish lobby, as long as it fulfills their intimate desire for power. They not only support Israel blindly; they try to back its far-right parties which call for the expansion of the Israeli settlements in the occupied territories and even ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians…They think we (Palestinians) aren’t “kosher” enough for them. As Palestinians, we have to carry on our shoulders the burdens of the so-called Christian Right. The further right they move, the heavier our burdens get.[1]
Shame on America:
We have equated prosperity and success with righteousness; and power with blessing. The “Ugly American” has been replaced by the “Ugly Born-again American.” We have exported cheap grace to places where oppressed people are hanging on by their fingernails and where faith is a daily battle. We have elevated the “Sinner’s Prayer of Repentance” over the committed Christian life – the talk over the faithful walk.
Our cross is only as large as our checking accounts. Our crown is worldly power and success.
May God have mercy!
[1] Mitri Raheb, Bethlehem Besieged, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 2004, pp. 89, 90.
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