the basic message #E217

12/2/03

We live in a strange time, it seems.  I suppose America's most famous professing Christian is George W. Bush, and maybe that's a statement in itself.  George might well be the poster boy for what Christianity really is in America today.  How so?  American Christianity seems to be all about talking the talk, but there's very little walking the walk.  Perhaps the war in Iraq typifies where Bush and the majority of Americans stand in terms of mercy towards our enemies- there is little, if any mercy.  Isn't it strange that in America, the police can't prosecute a person until they've committed a crime, yet when it comes to global politics, Americans feel justified to take action against other nations prior to a crime being committed against us.  Even though Bush admits that he has no evidence that Saddam Hussein was connected to 9/11, millions of Americans still believe that's why we're in Iraq right now.  But enough of this- I'm straying from this week's topic, "Picking and choosing".

Here in the deep south, there's a restaurant called "Piccadilly".  It's a cafeteria type restaurant, so I'm sure you've got something similar in your area, maybe a Luby's or Morrison's or something.  At Piccadilly, you simply walk down a row of foods and tell the server, "I'd like the roast beef, I'd like mashed potatoes without gravy, I'd like coffee with cream and sugar."  You all understand the concept, and apparently it's a concept we like since we use it extensively in our Christianity.  How so?  It's very simple- we flip through the Bible and pull Scripture we like and toss aside the rest. 

A few years ago, a fellow Christian and I were having lunch and I was railing about the typical things I talk about all of the time, and my friend said, "You're big on this repentance thing, aren't you?"  I was both amused and shocked simultaneously.  Amused that I've become known as the "repentance guy", and shocked that a man who is a good, practicing Christian would take such a lukewarm approach to repentance.  If there's one thing that's really bad about American Christians, it's that we love democracy and freedom so much that we easily apply that to our Christianity.  Make no mistake, friends, the Kingdom of Heaven isn't a democracy, it's a dictatorship.  God never has and never will ask our opinion about how he operates the Kingdom.  It's really quite simple- God says, "Take it, or leave it".  Even with this simple directive, what does the average Christian do?  They take it, and leave it.

Sadly, the majority of Christians want to take Grace and all the good stuff that goes along with it, yet leaves anything that restricts or binds them in any way.  That's why it's called "Cheap Grace", not because it was cheap, but because fake Christians have made it cheap.