“Does it make you a king to have more and more cedar? Did not your father have food and drink? He did what was right and just, so all went well with him. He defended the cause of the poor and the needy, and so all went well. Is that that not what it means to know me?” declares the Lord. “But your eyes and your heart are set only on dishonest gain, on shedding innocent blood and on oppression and extortion.” ….
“I warned you when you felt secure, but you said, “I will not listen!” This has been your way from your youth; you have not obeyed me. The wind will drive all your shepherds away, and your allies will go into exile …. How you will groan when pangs come upon you, pain like that of a woman in labor.” Jeremiah 22: 15-17, 21-23.
Jeremiah’s questions sting us still: Does it make us better parents if we build bigger houses for our children? Does it make us wiser to have more education? Does it make us secure to hoard our wealth in stocks and bonds? Are we happier for spending excessive amounts of money in leisure and recreation? Are we safer by living in gated communities and homes with security systems? Are we smarter by owning the latest high-tech gadgets?
Lessons from Jeremiah about Idolatry
While we may not bow down to idols of stone or wood today, it is clear that we dilute our allegiance to God as much as did the people of God in Jeremiah’s day. Anything that weakens our commitment to God and God’s agenda is idolatry, and Jeremiah makes several points about idolatrous lifestyles.
1st, abandoning Yahweh always leads to idolatry. We were born to worship something or someone, and when it is no longer Yahweh, it will be almost anything.
2nd, we become what we worship. If we worship God, we become like God – holy, righteous, compassionate, and more. When we worship anything else we take on its qualities and characteristics as well.
3rd, when we abandon God, we forsake the very source of our life. All our work and effort will gain us nothing without God. While digging for water we will find only dry wells.
4th, when we leave God, we will always create alliances that oppose God and that compromise our identity as God’s people.
5th, when we worship anything besides God, we inevitably abandon those on the margins of society. We begin to accumulate wealth, status, and power without concern for justice. Jeremiah, as did OT prophets before and after him, consistently connected obedience and faithfulness to Yahweh with justice and equity for people on the margins of society – those disregarded and discriminating against by others. Our willingness “to do justice and to love to mercy” is a barometer of the quality of our relationship with God. Failing to care for those on the margins is a sign that we no longer care for Yahweh.
In Jeremiah’s day, God’s people had abandoned God’s policy of jubilee, in which economic equity and justice were to regularly characterize relationships and commercial enterprise. While proclaiming “Peace, peace,” they denied their own wounds and sickness (Jeremiah 8:11). Jeremiah described it this way:
“Like cages full of birds, their houses are full of deceit; they have become rich and powerful and have grown fit and sleek… They do not defend the case of the fatherless to win it, they do not defend the rights of the poor.” (5:27-28)
Preoccupied with Homeland Security
In moving further from God, the people of Judah became increasingly concerned about their own safety, security, and comfort. In language that rings true of Americans since 911, they became increasingly focused on “homeland security.” American anxieties about security are strikingly similar to the concerns of God’s people in Jeremiah’s day.
The Home We Have Forgotten
Some have observed that Christians talk less about heaven today than in the past. While this may be true, 95% of Menno’s still believe that there “is life after death” and 90% that “there is a real heaven where some people are eternally rewarded.” Menno’s are less certain about hell, with 78% believing there is a “real hell where people are eternally punished.” But when asked about their views of Jesus, only 43% noted they were “eagerly anticipated Jesus return to earth.
Conclusion
A focus on homeland security is antithetical to all that Jesus taught his disciples about the cost of following him. When Jesus sent out the seventy-two disciples in Luke 10, he instructed them to carry neither purse nor bag nor sandals – nothing that they needed to do what Jesus had commanded. But giving up our purses, bags, sandals is going to a big problem for many Menno’s, if we are going to respond faithfully to Jesus’ call, because for many of us, there will be a lot to give up.
There is ample discussion among Menno’s today about Anabaptist identity. While I affirm the discussion, I think the chatter has less to do with our failure to understand what Jesus requires than our failure to be obedient what Jesus requires of us as Christ- Followers. I suspect if we were more obedient in going forth into the world, the problem of our personal and corporate identity in Christ would take care of itself. You think it possible we Menno’s could ever become known as those with no purse, no bag, and no shoes and those who willingly embraced the alien and the orphan? While it did not take long for the European ancestors to develop an identity as pilgrims and strangers, it has been harder for their descendants in North America to live back into that identity.
Mennonites need once more to embrace a theology that we are strangers and foreigners and that accepts our alien status, not by being the “quiet in the land” but by boldly and willingly being sent into a dying world in the name of our Lord. As we pitch our tents along side other strangers and aliens, we will eliminate the boundaries that exist between liberals and conservatives, evangelicals and Anabaptists, as well as those in or out of MCUSA, and others. Such boundaries are artificial and have little to do with being the church of Christ. These boundaries have been established by those of us with too much time on our hands – too much time at home trying to keep things neat and secure, guarding the gates of our homeland.
I fear as parents and grandparents we have burdened our children with our homeland/homestead worries rather than encouraging them to hear the voice of God sending them into the world, especially so if they’ve not seen us step out in faith. While encouraging them to be respectable, professional, honorable, and wise, we have given them the same message and its perimeters that the world gives about success. What about all of us being the obedient, forgiven, transformed, empowered discipling Bond Servants of Jesus Christ until death permits retirement? Too rarely do we challenge them or ourselves to consider the rewards of being sent into the world for the sake of His kingdom.
Many of us want our children at home, especially since we’re having fewer of them. While we look at disgust at the way people of Israel sometimes sacrificed their own children to idols, (if we’re even aware of it) I wonder if we’ve not done the same at times. We may not sacrifice our children to Molech, but what about to academia, Main Street, or Wall Street? We may not send our young men and women to war in Iraq but would we allow them to go to similar areas such as Sudan or Turkey or Somalia in the name of Christ? Would we bless them in going and celebrate their answer to God’s call? Or if they began a Bible study in your community, using your home? Or if they began to develop new ideas for evangelism and social action in our congregations? Would we support them? Would we allow them to try? Could the adults get out of the way long enough to see if they could pull it off?
The following paragraphs are my response and interpretation of the above:
If we are ever going o be obedient to God’s missional call, first in our personal lives, congregations, and communities, we must come to terms with our insecurities, and frankly, the grip of our idols, in order to give everything and everyone we hold dear. Total absolute surrender! But that shouldn’t surprise us, given Jesus’ words about gaining the whole world and losing our souls? It is only in relationship with God being obedient, forgiven, transformed, empowered discipling Bond Servants of Jesus Christ until death permits retirement, that God’s people ever reach out to the marginalized in and beyond our spheres of influence; first casting out the plank in own eye before we attempt to the irritating speck in another’s eye.
Can Mennonites find unity in Christ’s simple mandates, always invitational, never forced, attracting us all, first and foremost, into an intimate personal transformation with Jesus Christ aided by His truth tellers in community fueled by divine relationships, both vertically with the Trinity, and horizontally, with all of humanity present, first ourselves, then family, congregation, community, nation and the entire world in our midst. Will we then offer Christ’s love and healing while we mature gaining the fruits of the spirit exhibited ultimately by offering his peace and healing to everyone we meet?
Will homeland security become a vestige of the past? Notice the above words italicized are mine as I’m taking license to update the book in the nearly 16 years since it was printed in 2007. A landmark book based on the Church Member Profile 2006, was composed of three denominations – MCUSA, the Church of the Brethren, and the Brethren in Christ. Now in 2023, I find it difficult to envision the member profile ever being repeated as I frankly fear the eminent breakdown or restructuring of western civilization will preempt such an occurrence.
The book’s last three chapters are titled; 587 BC – the Fall, Exiled in Babylon, and Journeying Toward God’s Reign. All three chapters are historical reads but I feel are not now as practically pertinent as when printed. I predict if one could lump’s all the statistician’s indicators and benchmarks into one tank for just America, I believe their experts would agree the America has changed more since 2020 than in the previous 100 years. I only offer that because I believe too many of the readers that read Road Signs for the Journey as I, whom were so enthralled with its honesty in 2007, today would value the undergirding perspective of sharing truths now for the survival of humanity from the globalists genocide agenda increasingly publicized playbook.
This is possible because in the past year there has been a proliferation of independent news outlets that herald the “truth be told at all costs.” Such truths being publicized broadly on these free speech platforms in turn attract other truth tellers from all professions, vocations, walks of life, interests, skill sets, life styles, faith walks, etc. Therefore, this phenomena of the meshing of minds, souls, and spirits in the commonality of zeal in face of the coming piercingly dark destructive forces as forecast in Scripture during the last days, is simply flourishing, for reasons, not unlike the growth the early church experienced as recorded in Acts of the Apostles, or today, as in the recent Asbury revival.
Earlier this evening I spent several hours going through my April issue of Sojourners magazine and virtually every article has a climate change under-girding its theme with interesting “tie-ins” to scripture. Reminded me instantly of Conrad’s fourth point that when we leave God, we always create alliances that oppose God and that compromise our identity as God’s people. Whence cometh then the obsession for redeeming/restoring the lost souls for His kingdom? Yes Indeed, man has created a mess for all the wrong reasons. But I humbly offer that the “assumed traumatizing planetary mess” that is being given us as the excuse for today’s current solutions, absolutely pales or for sure, is trifling, alongside the real tragedy in the institutional Church, which is far more serious for the future of humanity, than merely an aging planet that will be destroyed. Eternal destiny for persons we know is at stake.
I have no authority to address what has happened in the Mennonite Church. But I do know what happened in my 74 years of life, as well as for many of my friends, in that we allowed ourselves to be deceived much as Conrad Kanagy described above in his five points about idolatrous lifestyles. We lost His redeeming focus, deliberately allowed waffling and dissenting voices to drive our itchy ears into spiritual oblivion, not realizing how adept our children would be at both hearing and understanding Scripture as being read and preached, but their foundations were rendered useless to them when they watched us parents too often glibly ignore and disobey the same teaching, while offering some excuse in the car or around the table later, exempting us in our circumstances. Such actions by us parents destroyed any relational spiritual equity we had opportunity to deposit during their early years for future withdrawals later in times of crisis or guiding their maturing spiritually.
In summary, as I need to send this out because I believe in the urgency of this message reaching my readers so they have time to prepare for the yet unknown. I am not skilled in writing succinctly. Strange, I wonder if Guttenberg laid awake at night distressed at what he’d created. Today’s technology has proliferated beyond comprehension since John Lapp in October 1968 quoted to us in EMC’s Gen Ed 301 class Marshall McLuhan’s (1911-1980) quote that “the medium is the message.” Now, we’re all lying awake in the media’s wake that continually perilously rocks our boats.
I’ll simply remind you it doesn’t need to be that way. If Christ is sleeping on a pillow in the back of your boat, arise immediately and avail yourself of His resources. Communicate with Him continually, during crisis or complacency! Actually, especially during complacency, for often the good times end like David and Bathsheba.
Yes, I know Kanagy released “A Church Dismantled, A kingdom Restored: Why Is God Taking Apart the Church?” in 2021 and I’m in its second chapter, and as before, I like his candor, honesty, transparency, etc. Perhaps I’ll have more on that later.
I am adding a link below for you to listen to that is perhaps representative of the chatter on these free speech platforms, that may open some doors for you. Perhaps you’ve never heard such an interview, or perhaps you have been listening to one or two of these personalities for the past 5 or 10 years whom you’ve learned to trust, basically because their predictions came true, and perhaps, some may even claim to be a Christian, just not of your stripe but so what? I happen to believe there may be more truth on these free speech platforms than on the traditional conventional outlets, written or verbal. Scripture always rules, sometimes even in church. This clip is Dave Hodges of Common Sense being interviewed by Mike Adams.
Refute the evil. Live & Share the Joy…. merlin
https://www.brighteon.com/6658cc8d-ab08-493d-98db-bbc1818a75d1