Saturday, January 21, 2017

Freedom of Religion and Speech




Saturday, January 7, 2017

Your Will Be Done on Earth as It Is in Heaven

Your Will Be Done on Earth as It Is in Heaven

Your will be done on earthQuite often I've heard people pray, "Your will be done!" And by saying this, they turn the matter over to God's predestinating everything, and wash their hands of it. Is this what Christ meant when He taught His followers to pray? I don't think so! When He said, "Our Father in heaven, may Your name be kept holy, may Your kingdom come, may Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven," He was bringing heaven down to earth!

Christ wants us to ask our Heavenly Father for three things to be brought about on earth, just as they already are in heaven. Today the majority of Eastern Orthodox Christians are celebrating Christmas, the Incarnation of our God, Jesus Christ, as a human being born on earth. And as we partake of His life, His Body and Blood, we also should become co-incarnations of God on this earth!

Let's look at it this way:

Our Father in heaven:
1. may Your name be kept holy,  \
2. may Your kingdom come,        > on earth as it is in heaven!
3. may Your will be done        /

How do we go about this task of 1) making God's name holy, 2) bringing His kingdom, and 3) carrying out His will... on this earth? When Christ ascended up into heaven, He left His Body on earth... that's us, the Church, the Body of Christ. I suppose that God could have instantly taken people up into heaven the moment they believed in Christ and were baptized. We are left here on earth, however, to incarnate Christ, to keep God's name holy, to bring about His kingdom, and to do His will - right here on earth.

In my Hosken-News blogs of 5 June 2016 and 18 June 2016 I wrote on "Seek the Welfare of the City", a phrase the prophet Jeremiah used when he told the Jews in Babylonian exile not to just sit there wishing they were "in heaven" - back in Israel, but rather to marry, have sons and daughters, and contribute to society right there in pagan Babylon: to "bloom where they were planted." In the same way, we Christians must not be "so heavenly we're of no earthly good" - not be so totally wrapped up in church activities that we have no time or energy left for anything else, but rather be involved as responsible citizens of the society where we live.

In the phrase "seek the welfare of the city" the word "city" in Greek is "polis" from which we get the word "politics" and "political" - so to seek the welfare of the city must necessarily mean to take an active part in the political process. But many Christians shy away from politics because it's corrupt, it's swarming with bribes, immorality, drunkenness, etc. Why? Precisely because so few Christians are involved in politics!

For the secularists and leftists, everything is political, including religion. Their worldview dictates that every aspect of life, every social institution including the church, should come under the control of a supposedly benevolent state. So this is why we as Christians must "seek the welfare of the city" - the polity we live in, because if we don't, we forfeit control over everything, including our religion.

When the Pharisees sent people to try trapping Christ with the trick question, "Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?" - that is, should we participate in the corrupt, oppressive Roman government? He answered - "Show me the tax money." They brought to him a denarius. He asked them, "Whose is this image and inscription?" They said to him, "Caesar's." Then he said to them, "Give therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's" (Matthew 22:17-21). There is a clear distinction between what belongs to government and what belongs to God. Many Christians stop with that, focusing only on what belongs to God. But there's a little word "and" in the middle! We are to both give attention to what belongs to government and give attention to what belongs to God.

Throughout history a struggle has been going on between civil authority and religious authority. The context of the above passage in Matthew ch. 22 is about marriage: first Christ gave the parable of the wedding feast, next He was asked about paying taxes, and then the Sadducees asked him about marrying and re-marrying. The issue of marriage is today a battleground area, a struggle between civil and religious authority. When Jesus Christ was on earth, rules about marriage were pretty much left up to the local customs.

But today the state's administrative agencies promulgate rules to the citizenry - including religious authorities and believers - that contradict their beliefs about abortion, marriage, birth control, who can use which public bathrooms, etc. These rule-making agencies are unelected, in effect they are legislating without the consent of the governed. Ever since FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society (he called it "the New Deal on steroids"), the administrative state has mushroomed into a huge, unaccountable fourth branch of government. While he was a senator, LBJ also had the "Johnson Amendment" passed that threatens churches with the loss of their tax-exempt status if their pastors preach about political candidates, which has caused most Christians to be afraid to speak up about their Christian convictions. Here's what Fr. Hans Jacobse writes in "The Administrative State Has Changed Our Culture." about the administrative state (read the whole article!):

But more insidious than the obvious and old-fashioned corruption of the system is the way that it corrupts our culture and our national character. The post-election hysteria shows how a large segment of American society has become infantile, addicted to entitlements and identity politics, utterly dependent on the state, and incapable of imagining how to arrange their lives without it.

This infantilization is exactly what critics of the administrative state have long warned would result. Well over a century and a half ago, Alexis de Tocqueville envisioned how such a state might come to America, which, as other European observers noted, still lacked a state along European lines.

As a sympathetic critic of American democracy, Tocqueville also noted that our democratic passion for equality might produce a new kind of despotism. He prophesied that it would be “more extensive and milder and it would degrade men without tormenting them.” Modern democracy would produce “not tyrants, but rather tutors … I will call it administrative despotism for lack of a better name.” Many today call it “the nanny state.”

The government would provide the vulgar, material pleasures that democratic men seek. It would be “absolute, detailed, regular, far-sighted, and mild,” like a parent who wanted to keep his children from growing up, to “remove entirely from them the trouble to think and the difficulty of living.”

Here's another excellent article on the same topic: LBJ vs. the Nuclear Family. Today the majority of us are kept sedated and docile by our daily doses of sugary drinks and snacks, deep-fat-fried chips and fries, sex and violence on TV and cable, profanity and anarchy in the pop songs and videos, and the droning on and on of the state-approved "news" that is curated and massaged to mold our brains into accepting more and more government "benefits," actually thought- and behavior-control, forming us into compliant, dependent drones, and forcing the breakdown of the traditional nuclear family. And most of us are happy to keep it that way, happily clicking away on our TV remotes and smartphones, buying into this new virtual reality.

This is not the way to keep God's name holy, to bring His kingdom on earth, and to do His will on earth!

What shall we do about it? We must not continue sitting on our couches, chirping like twits on Twitter, and clicking away "Like, Like, Like" in FakeBook's fake reality! We must first of all repent of wasting our time and indulging ourselves in the sweet and savory delicacies proffered us by the administrative "nanny state" and its technological wizards that are taking over every area of our lives, including that which belongs to God. Then we must reorient our lives around Christ's teachings to love our neighbors, not just in words but in deeds - to offer our time and efforts to care for the needy, the sick, the elderly, the orphans and widows.

Thousands of people have seen my notices in these newsletters and my posts on social media about our free courses for training how to do this. Do you know how many people have enrolled in my latest course? None! Null! Zero! Zip! Zilch! Why? Is it too boring, not sexy or thrilling, to read lessons, chat with other students and answer questions? No, it can't be that: FakeBook, TV and videos are even more mind-numbingly boring! Or is it that we are so addicted to the sweet treats and salty snacks of the world that we simply can't break loose from its captivating power? Here's one last call: Learn To Serve The Poor, Sick And Elderly - I'll stretch the enrollment deadline to Sunday midnight, January 8, 2017.

We really need to repent - to fall down on our knees before God and cry out - "Forgive me, Lord, for filling my belly with the husks that the pigs eat! Father in heaven, I'm sorry that I haven't been helping Your kingdom come and Your will be done on earth, just like it is in heaven!" Then we must get up off our knees, get up off our couches, and get moving! We "should repent and turn to God, doing works worthy of repentance" (Acts 26:20b). Start DOING the works, the actions that Christ commanded, not just thinking nice thoughts about them or saying, "Nice sermon, preacher!" Will you do this?

YOU CAN ALSO READ THIS at my Hosken-News Blog, and write your COMMENTS there!