What the Devil?
Ministerial Meandering
What the devil?
I could have entitled this, ‘What - the Devil?’ which would have given the topic a whole new meaning, and I rather think it would have been best if I had written it both ways, as I want to address its various implications.
Sheila read me an article this morning, over breakfast, from the US Guardian, reporting on a sickening meeting of TPUSA - Turning Point USA - whose executive director is the activist Charlie Kirk. He held a three-day political training session for pastors in a Dallas suburb, to urge them to persuade their congregations to go and knock on doors to get their flock to vote for Trump.
When faced with a measure of reluctance from some who said, ‘But Charlie, I don’t think Trump is a very good role model for our church’, he parodied them and said, ‘I have no patience for you any more, people. I am sick of this.’
In what must have been unconscious irony, he went on to castigate Kamala Harris for being ‘the most unlikeable’ person to run for president, and ‘super dumb.’ Given the level of his hero, Trump’s, overt level of intelligence, one has to wonder about his own.
Kirk is a young man who sees himself as a strong leader of the right-wing evangelicals, but in fact he is nothing more than an empty-headed bully, with all the usual attributes of the toadying sycophant. (I nearly spelled that - ‘psychophant’ - perhaps I should have left it at that!)
He parrots Trump, and thinks that if he speaks his vitriol often enough and loudly enough, it will make a difference.
Sadly, in some areas of America, this is probably true - where bragging and tactical brawn overcome the need to hear the truth and common sense; rather like the pastor we read about in our Book Club book this month, who asked the mass wedding guests at his church to bring along their AR-15 assault rifles, so he could bless them and their use. If there could be a worse sacrilegious abuse of a church (along with the Second Amendment - which now is being misquoted as claiming that the right to bear arms is ‘God-given’) it would be hard to find.
However, when I was in the Balkan war, a Roman Catholic priest, in the village I was deployed to, was handing out guns and rifles to his flock to go and murder their Muslim and Eastern Orthodox neighbours.
We should be in no doubt that we, as heart and spirit-changed Christians, must stand firm against the attacks that come upon our people and our world - particularly when it comes in the form of false religion. Stand up and denounce the Kirks and Trumps of the world; stand up and denounce the heresy of Progressive Christianity; stand up and denounce the subtle wheedling of division that is the devil’s foot in the door - there to destroy your peace of mind, make you question your faith, make you doubt your baptism. We will soon be reading Ephesians 6, and you will be reminded that it is a spiritual battle that we fight.
Jesus told us, ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me.’ (John 14:1).
But learn to recognize the devil when he puts in his oar. Remember, his greatest trick is to try and persuade people that he doesn’t exist.
Just as ‘the fool says in his heart, “There is no god”.’ (Psalm 14).
Philip+