There are three great institutions in the world that God has
put here for our good: The Family, the State and the Church. They each have their job in the world, and
when confined to their job, make the world less than the hellhole it ought to
be. But two of these, the family and the
state, can only restrain evil, they can’t overcome it. The family does this through discipline and
teaching and basically instilling Proverbs into their life together to form “good”
people. The state does this by
threatening the sword against those inside that step outside the law inside the
state and protecting against those outside the state.
That is over simplified, but it is generally true. What neither of these two institutions can do
is save you. They can’t overcome your
sin and remake you in the mold of Christ your Savior. The best they do is keep you from being as
bad as you can be.
The Church on the other hand can save you and remake you and
make you better than you are. The reason
it can is because Christ lives in Her.
She is His New Creation, His body and His Temple Building. This is the place where all His accomplished
work is applied to believers and the world.
He has promised to use His Church to bring His Compassion and Work to
the world. He has made no Promise like
that for the state.
The State isn’t built for compassion, because that isn’t how
God spreads it abroad in the world. It
can try, and, all things being equal, I would like to live in one that tries
than one that doesn’t, but it is bad at it.
I read one post today about how compassionate the government workers
were, but then said that the poster had heard that things had improved since
computers had been brought in to help.
How bad are you at compassioning, that a computer actually improves your
human compassion?
So many are confusing the job of Christians as voters with
Christians as soldiers of the Church.
One article even goes so far as to proclaim the failure of American
Christianity because they voted for Trump, and Trump isn’t a compassionate
guy. (It ignores, needless to say
because we have already forgotten it, was that the option given to Christians
was a guy that was apathetic towards the church against a person who had shown
every indication of being hostile to it.
I don’t say this to justify their vote, I voted for neither because both
were grossly unqualified to head a government, but to remind you of the
choice). The church hasn’t failed, there
are 100’s of millions of dollars spent by the Church in areas that have intense
human suffering. The lack of Christian
help in Syria, it should be remembered, is because a large portion of the
Christian populations, missionaries and indigenous, have been slaughtered. But there are still Christians that want to
and try to go there to help. That is
their job, and the Church is the only entity that can actually accomplish what
needs to be done.
The Government can only bring the sword into play; it is its
only tool. While it is great for certain
jobs, it isn’t suited cutting bread and saving souls. All of the compassion that governments can
bring to these people is to either bring them under its own sword here at home,
or destroy their enemies abroad. While
these can be good things, they aren’t compassion, and are poor counterfeits for
it.
If you think that we as Christians have failed is because the
government acts in basically the same way without nice words, you are
wrong. The Church is still at work. And for those that I know that are now criticizing
the Church for its votes, while not being part of the Church; if you criticize
Christians that promote biblical morality in their churches, for not forcing
others to recognize it through government action, while condemning those same
people for trying to do the on a different moral question, I don’t want to hear
your critiques, and you shouldn’t make them.
That goes doubly if you ignore clear teaching of the scriptures in your
own life while foisting your idea of what the Bible esoterically teaches (or
not) on the Church.
