reflection from The City of God
Where can we readily find a man who holds in fit and just estimation those persons on account of whose revolting pride, luxury, and avarice, and cursed iniquities and impiety, God now smites the earth as His predictions threatened? Where is the man who lives with them in the style in which it becomes us to live with them? For often we wickedly blind ourselves to the occasions of teaching and admonishing them, sometimes even of reprimanding and chiding them, either because we shrink from the labour or are ashamed to offend them, or because we fear to lose good friendships, lest this should stand in the way of our advancement, or injure us in some worldly matter, which either our covetous disposition deasires to obtain, or our weakness shrinks from losing. So that, although the conduct of wicked men is distasteful to the good, and therefore they do not fall with them into that damnation which in the next life awaits such persons, yet, because they spare their damnable sins through fear, therefore, even though their own sins be slight and venial, they are justly scourged with the wicked in this world, though in eternity they quite escape punishment. Justly, when God afflicts them in common with the wicked, do they find this life bitter, through love of whose sweetness they declined to be bitter to these sinners.
...
They abstain from interference, because they fear that, if it fail of good effect, their own safety or reputation may be damaged or destroyed; not because they see that their preservation and good name are needful, that they may be able to influence those who need their instruction, but rather because they weakly relish the flattery and respect of men, and fear the judgments of the people, and the pain or death of the body; that is to say, their non-intervention is the result of selfishness and not of love.
Accordingly, this seems to me to be one priciple reason why the good are chastised along with the wicked, when God is pleased to visit with temporal punishments the profligate manners of a community. They are punished together, not because they have spent an equally corrupt life, but because the good as well as the wicked, though not equally with them, love this present life; while they ought to hold it cheap, that the wicked, being admonished and reformed by their example, might lay hold of life eternal.
St. Augustine. The City of God. Book I, Chapter 9.
The evangelical church is about as "UNevangelical" as any church in history, in terms of its members participating in personal evangelism amongst their neighbors, friends and family. Perhaps it is spoken of fondly, but most of us are just too busy to worry about lost people. Most of what does happen is by the providence of God alone, and not by any effort of obedience and love by the Christian community. Leaving the task to professionals precludes justifying the naming of a movement as "evangelical," and leaving the task to programmed events in which sinners are stupidly invited through a worldly advertizing campaign hardly counts for anything.
But not only do we fail to announce the Good News properly, we fail entirely when it comes to announcing the bad news. And why? Is it because the churches no longer believe in judgment or hell? Most are not confessionally heretical. No. It is because we love the world, and the things that are in the world, and we would rather escort the world to its hell as a friend than to stand in the way of hell and risk being knocked to the ground by the onrushing world.
Meanwhile, our nation fast approaches judgment. Never has a nation with so many believers permitted such wickedness to reign, as it does today in America. We have turned morality into a political stance, rather than the eternal law of God. We seek to legislate righteousness, to forbid acts of sin as in the days of Moses, rather than announcing the need of a clean heart. We admit not our own sins, nor the sins of our close friends, but lash out against those in authority over us, decrying those weaknesses which we would overlook in our own children. How rebellious we are! Apt for a nation born in rebellion and bloodshed.
How ought we respond then, to the wickedness around us? Are our leaders justly to blame, whom we have democratically elected from amongst ourselves? Ought we not look first to ourselves? To our own selfish ambition, and pride, and greed? And as we humble ourselves before our Creator, we ought to call to account those over whom we have any influence, whether friend, neighbor, family, or foe--but especially those who claim to be in the household of God. Our plea ought not to be to legislators to forbid sodomy and the murder of innocents, but to the sodomizers, the murderers of infants, and to those who openly approve of them. We are made as watchmen to our people, as representatives of God and His Messiah, and if we fail to warn them of the wrath to come, their blood will rightly be on our own heads. And God would be right to pour out his wrath on both the good and the wicked in America, for He desires to cleanse us who have for so long been silent before sinners. It is only right that God should do so, for he always has our best in mind, and will not let us lie forever in our worldliness and fear.
Do not think that God will spare us as He did Lot, if we fail to be like him of whom it is said, "That righteous man, living among them day by day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard" (2 Peter 2:8). But even though he was rescued from a temporal wrath for his faith, he yet failed to teach his own family, who all will suffer the wrath to come. For his wife, in love with the present world, looked back and became a pillar of salt. And his daughters, infected by the wickedness in which they were raised, got their father drunk and had relations with him. For our generation is more like Lot's wife and daughters than Lot himself, though an older generation may have been like Lot. Do we long after the world, even as angels are rescuing us from it? This world is perishing, and we are but strangers here. We are sent to rescue as many as we can before God's judgment comes, but we hardly flee that wrath ourselves! No wonder our children love the world, and fall prey to so many of its deceptions. We seek a comfortable life for ourselves, and "praise God" for the freedom to be lazy, fat, and living in excess. Rather, we ought to praise God for our labors, and hunger, and our lack, for it is these which teach us the freedom of Spirit found in obedience to and dependence on our Lord Jesus Christ.
...
They abstain from interference, because they fear that, if it fail of good effect, their own safety or reputation may be damaged or destroyed; not because they see that their preservation and good name are needful, that they may be able to influence those who need their instruction, but rather because they weakly relish the flattery and respect of men, and fear the judgments of the people, and the pain or death of the body; that is to say, their non-intervention is the result of selfishness and not of love.
Accordingly, this seems to me to be one priciple reason why the good are chastised along with the wicked, when God is pleased to visit with temporal punishments the profligate manners of a community. They are punished together, not because they have spent an equally corrupt life, but because the good as well as the wicked, though not equally with them, love this present life; while they ought to hold it cheap, that the wicked, being admonished and reformed by their example, might lay hold of life eternal.
St. Augustine. The City of God. Book I, Chapter 9.
The evangelical church is about as "UNevangelical" as any church in history, in terms of its members participating in personal evangelism amongst their neighbors, friends and family. Perhaps it is spoken of fondly, but most of us are just too busy to worry about lost people. Most of what does happen is by the providence of God alone, and not by any effort of obedience and love by the Christian community. Leaving the task to professionals precludes justifying the naming of a movement as "evangelical," and leaving the task to programmed events in which sinners are stupidly invited through a worldly advertizing campaign hardly counts for anything.
But not only do we fail to announce the Good News properly, we fail entirely when it comes to announcing the bad news. And why? Is it because the churches no longer believe in judgment or hell? Most are not confessionally heretical. No. It is because we love the world, and the things that are in the world, and we would rather escort the world to its hell as a friend than to stand in the way of hell and risk being knocked to the ground by the onrushing world.
Meanwhile, our nation fast approaches judgment. Never has a nation with so many believers permitted such wickedness to reign, as it does today in America. We have turned morality into a political stance, rather than the eternal law of God. We seek to legislate righteousness, to forbid acts of sin as in the days of Moses, rather than announcing the need of a clean heart. We admit not our own sins, nor the sins of our close friends, but lash out against those in authority over us, decrying those weaknesses which we would overlook in our own children. How rebellious we are! Apt for a nation born in rebellion and bloodshed.
How ought we respond then, to the wickedness around us? Are our leaders justly to blame, whom we have democratically elected from amongst ourselves? Ought we not look first to ourselves? To our own selfish ambition, and pride, and greed? And as we humble ourselves before our Creator, we ought to call to account those over whom we have any influence, whether friend, neighbor, family, or foe--but especially those who claim to be in the household of God. Our plea ought not to be to legislators to forbid sodomy and the murder of innocents, but to the sodomizers, the murderers of infants, and to those who openly approve of them. We are made as watchmen to our people, as representatives of God and His Messiah, and if we fail to warn them of the wrath to come, their blood will rightly be on our own heads. And God would be right to pour out his wrath on both the good and the wicked in America, for He desires to cleanse us who have for so long been silent before sinners. It is only right that God should do so, for he always has our best in mind, and will not let us lie forever in our worldliness and fear.
Do not think that God will spare us as He did Lot, if we fail to be like him of whom it is said, "That righteous man, living among them day by day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard" (2 Peter 2:8). But even though he was rescued from a temporal wrath for his faith, he yet failed to teach his own family, who all will suffer the wrath to come. For his wife, in love with the present world, looked back and became a pillar of salt. And his daughters, infected by the wickedness in which they were raised, got their father drunk and had relations with him. For our generation is more like Lot's wife and daughters than Lot himself, though an older generation may have been like Lot. Do we long after the world, even as angels are rescuing us from it? This world is perishing, and we are but strangers here. We are sent to rescue as many as we can before God's judgment comes, but we hardly flee that wrath ourselves! No wonder our children love the world, and fall prey to so many of its deceptions. We seek a comfortable life for ourselves, and "praise God" for the freedom to be lazy, fat, and living in excess. Rather, we ought to praise God for our labors, and hunger, and our lack, for it is these which teach us the freedom of Spirit found in obedience to and dependence on our Lord Jesus Christ.
posted by Michael U at 1:14 PM
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