My Only Comfort

I’ve spent a lot of tears and a lot of meditation on how we got here.

How did a morally bankrupt criminal and his billionaire cronies manage to pull the wool over so many eyes?

I feel so alone. The church I used to love and cherish has gone maga, shouting “The voice of a god, and not a man” at an idol, while shouting for the blood of the outcast, the orphan, the widow and all who eat and drink with publicans and sinners.

I think we may have been here before.

I know I feel helpless. There is no atrocity, no corruption, no act of terror or outrage or betrayal that will convince them. Right now, as we speak, the most horrendous betrayals are happening. Brown and black people are rounded up without trial and shipped of to notorious torture dungeons, and the church shrugs, much like the evangelicals of old shrugged when slaves were publicly horsewhipped or burned, or “heretics” publicly burned at the stake.

How did we get here?

I am not a historian. I can only speak of what I have seen and what I know.

Having been brought up in evangelical and reformed circles, there was an honor reserved for the rich man that was not given to the poor man.

In fact, the most trouble I ever caused as a pastor was preaching on James 2.

2 My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. 2 Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. 3 If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” 4 have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?
5 Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? 6 But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? 7 Are they not the ones who are blaspheming the noble name of him to whom you belong?  (Jas 2:1–7).

Was the church sleeping when this was read? Are we not living in the same day with the same beliefs?

We have let a billionaire foreigner have access to the most secure databases, and the defense I have heard from the church is “He’s a genius. He knows how money works.”

The idea is that because he is so rich, he must be moral, just, capable of making wise business decisions, and running the lives of billions of people.

But the Bible has a different view. Isn’t it the rich who are exploiting you?

Aren’t they they ones dragging the poor into court? Aren’t they the ones blaspheming the name of Christ?

But we excuse it because they are rich. They must know what they are doing.

“He’s a businessman. He makes sound decisions.” How do we know? Because he is rich.

Therefore he must be wise.

This has a long history in America. The rich landowners were the members of the churches. They bought the pews. If you couldn’t afford the family pew, you could sit in back. If you were black, you could just leave and go somewhere else.

In fact, as I think about it, I believe this was the main reason why there were dress codes in evangelical churches. Even in my lifetime, there were many who wouldn’t dare show up without a suit and tie. I still feel a little guilty when I go to church in flannel.

And the excuse was “Doesn’t an audience with God deserve your best? You wouldn’t go to lunch with the president dressed in flannel…”

Again, there is the motif of wealth=worth. The real reason that men wore suits and women wore dresses was to separate the rich from the poor. The black slaves wore rough cloth, the poor sharecropper only had one set of pants and no water. A poor man isn’t welcome.

A homeless man isn’t welcome. Only those who can dress the part will be welcomed to the church.

And as kids we all watched our parents gush over how much money someone made. How nice their car was. How big their house was.

Full bank accounts was called “good stewardship”.

And woe be to the poor woman using a few pennies to buy a treat for her kids, or using SNAP for a bit of Ice Cream after a hard week.

“Look at her” they’d say. “Using my hard-earned money on junk food. Total waste. Millions down the drain. We better take away her money and give it to someone who knows how to use it.”

Examine your hearts, please. Do we not automatically think of a well-dressed, wealthy man as morally superior to the poor man who can’t catch a break?

Don’t we do exactly what James warns us of?

How often have you heard sermons on how to be good stewards.

How to increase wealth in Jesus’ name.

You don’t even have to be as blatant as Kenneth Copeland about it. It pervades everything.

We gawk at “The lifestyles of the rich and famous” and mock the poor man. It is bred into us.

It is time to break the cycle.

What can we do?

We can’t give our balls to Mike Johnson. We can’t donate our spine to Mitch McConnell. We can’t follow footsteps on the sea. And you can’t talk sense to a person who professes love for Christ and worships a rapist. A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.

But here is what you CAN do. You can repent of covetousness.

You can quit praising a man as a good steward because he is rich. Rich doesn’t mean he is either good or bad. It simply means that God has given him that which he doesn’t deserve.

None of us do, by the way. And we need that perspective to put off covetousness.

God gives to each exactly what he wishes to give to each. To some he gives great wealth and calls them to use that wealth to love their neighbor, the poor, the orphan, the widow.

To build hospitals and places of beauty and libraries and never, ever exploit or crush or extort. And never take the poor to the courts in order to take the little they have.

And the poor – be rich in faith. Be kind and courageous. Speak words of truth and honor. Don’t honor the rich man because he is rich, and don’t dishonor him because he is rich. He is a human like you are, and ought to be judged by character, not his bank account, just as we would like others to do for us.

Teach your kids not to look at a person’s car or clothes, but at their kindness and dignity. How to they talk to the custodian and server? How do they treat their spouses and kids? How do they honor those whose sins are different than their sins?

Is the trans community safe with them? Will gay children find a resting place in their home when they have been driven out everywhere else?

There is a quiet dignity in godliness with contentment, and Paul says that means everything.

How different the church would be if we didn’t spend millions on building programs and weird universities with weird theologies and weird statues, selling our souls to the industrialists and conmen and instead honored the poor man who had wisdom.

Or the widow with character. Or the outcast with kindness and dignity.

What can we do? Break the cycle. Quit worshiping money and those who pretend to have it.

Start honoring character, and the cycle will break.

It might be too late for our society. The wolves have already been given the keys to the henhouse and the shepherds have run off. They loved the money, and their purse was threatened.

You can only be courageous in times like these if you are not afraid of their curses and threats. And you can only do that if you lay aside the worship of money.

God makes our idols ridiculous. But we still bow down, even when they are killing us.

May God have mercy.