Christianity Has Been a Target

Christianity has been a target for the secular world's Crusade Against Christianity for some time. You have surely noticed the heat's been turned up lately since Bible-speaking people are characterized as the “villains” by those wishing to drag our nation & larger culture down into a self-destructive abyss of social experiments that are increasingly, anti-God & absurd because they fly in the face of reality. As long as we're shamed for thinking in absolutes (which the secular clearly do), having standards of behavior and reality (ditto again for the secular), Christians can be the only marginalized voice that the Left does NOT care about. Who's for intolerantly deplatforming those “intolerant” Christians on their way to the Gulag?
A ponderous, groping article from the Institute for “Christian” Socialism from the Vanderbilt “Divinity” School (quotation marks mine for what should be obvious reasons) states: “Amidst the deepening of crises bound up with the logics and operations of capitalism, including racist and hetero-misogynistic violence, climate chaos, gross economic inequality, and the re-emergence of overt fascism (they mean anyone they disagree with since Fascism had a very socialist slant), a growing number of Christians are embracing socialist alternatives.” Aside from being pompous and self-impressed as they make up phrases to impress us, It's interesting to see Socialists/Marxists honestly (for a change) showing that they're the preachers of these largely fabricated “problems”--for which Socialists have already started freedom-repressing & economy-crushing responses. They are linked, if not manufactured as problems by Socialists hoping to dupe the kind-hearted into compliance with their repression. Here's where we come to the kind-hearted Christian, who believes the fiction that some basis for Socialism reposes in a “correct” reading of Scripture. The “logic” is: “Christians are to take your “marching orders” from Scripture, we Socialists have the only correct interpretation of the Bible, so do as we say. And don't be bothered by the facts that Socialists are almost entirely atheists and that Socialism intends to replace a faith based on God with a faith based on extremist devotion to government.”
For the last few newsletter installments, we've looked at some Bible passages that the Socialists use to bully, shame, confuse or convince Christians that we should not resist their efforts to drastically alter faith, morals, history, government, the economy—and reality. We've corrected the mis-uses of Acts 2, 4, & 5, Romans 12, Mark 2 and Philippians 2.
L.W. Reed notes more points of Scripture of which we should be aware. Acts 4: 32 says: “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.” Reed notes that: “The 'communal' arrangement was voluntary. There is no compulsion and no mention of the one institution in society that can employ compulsion legally, namely, the state.” And that: “Christians see God as the creator of all things and, therefore, as the owner of all things. Humans are stewards of Creation, and we are called by Scripture to put it to good use....early Christians thought of their material wealth as not ultimately their own.” So “not their own” meant it was God's, not other people's, and certainly not the government's.
Reed sees that the only time Christ told anyone to sell all he had & donate it, it was to go to the poor, not government of any kind, including the Temple. Even more, Jesus knew the young man's heart and that example was clearly made to show what was most important to the young man. And it was his money, not his soul. “Jesus never suggested that everybody should sell everything, and he certainly never endorsed socialist, state-directed coercion to accomplish that.”
There are more examples and several that clearly point us away from Socialism. Looks like I'll have to continue this process of equipping the saints next month!