On Obama, The Loss of Christian Witness, and the Reckoning to Come
He is a credit to his race: the human race.
Check this out:
Ever graceful. Ever in pursuit of “whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report.”
If that sounds familiar, it should — it’s from your Bible, dear African evangelical.
Here it is: https://biblehub.com/philippians/4-8.htm
Sadly, those who will DISAGREE with me most vociferously about Obama will be Africans, not African Americans, but Africans. African evangelicals, Pentecostals because sadly, they are not fully independent yet.
Many still operate under a kind of theological colonialism.
Their colonial masters? Take your pick from the high priests of the “Word of Faith,” - the so called “Name-it-and-Claim-it” movement.
This brotherhood led by the likes of Oral Roberts (I hear Kenneth Copeland was his driver) has deeply shaped, and in many ways distorted, African Christianity over the last five decades. Its influence runs wide and deep. To this day.
Whether knowingly or not, the effect has been a subtle substitution: Jesus, the Son of God, displaced by a different figure, an anti-Jesus; one who works hand in glove with Mammon, that ancient spirit of greed and insatiable appetite.
From that substitution flows a gospel that sanitizes avarice: the so-called Prosperity Gospel. But let us not digress.
Evangelicalism and the Reckoning to Come
Evangelicalism will answer to God for many things, one of which will be Barack Obama.
It will have to reckon with the ease with which it baptized suspicion, racial anxiety, and political hostility as discernment.
It will have to explain how outrage drowned out charity.
How it became comfortable with Trump.
How it could canonize a young man who arrogantly, at the top of his voice boasted, “I hate empathy. It's a made up word”
That his parents failed him, that's an inescapable conclusion.
Was There Ever Such a Time?
Was there really ever a time when Christian witness came first in the Word Of Faith Movement? A time when standing in truth, even when it cost you something, meant everything?
Or have we deluded ourselves into believing there really was such a time?
There is a Nigerian phrase you hear on every corner: the more you look, the less you see. It applies here.
The more you look for Christianity in much of what now passes for Evangelicalism, Word of Faith, Pentecostalism, the less you see.
I Was There
I am not speaking as an outsider. I was an evangelical.
T.D. Jakes was my pope and Joel Osteen my archbishop.
I have the receipts. Literally. They are a mouse click away. No, I will not post them. They are none of your business.
I was a member of T.D. Jakes’s BC. Find out what BC means.
I was there the very first time T.D. Jakes preached at Lakewood. “Look at me, I’m at Lakewood!” he declared. I have the video. I recorded it myself on my iPhone. It is still here.
I was at The Potter’s House the Sunday after Obama defeated John McCain, exhausted from driving all the way from Houston. We only made the second service. T.D. Jakes was not there in person. I assumed he had gone to be with the young president-elect.
There was a time when being right with Christ meant saying what was right whether or not it won applause. It meant accepting loss, marginalization, even persecution, rather than bending the knee to expedience.
Witness was moral clarity without calculation.
And this is where T.D. Jakes lost me.
He seemed powerless to say uncomfortable Truths...
(For all his stature and masculinity, he was a weak man)
I love TD Jakes we both are Ibos - but I'm not powerless to say uncomfortable Truths...
Did Something Shift?
Many like to believe something shifted.
No.
I do not think so.
We may have been deluded into believing something that simply was not there.
Why?
Because we were perishing. And this false gospel seemed like a lifeline. Perhaps, at first, it even felt like one.
But here we are now, standing at a fork in the road. Two gates before us.
One is wide and gilded. Behind it, an autobahn stretches into the distance, immaculately kept lawns on both sides, immaculately dressed gatekeepers beckoning us: come.
The other is narrow and wooden, barely hanging on its hinges. No attendants in sight. Through its cracks, we glimpse a steep, winding, jagged descent.
The words of Jesus replay loudly in our heads:
“Enter by the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction…”
The words are loud. They are clear.
But sadly, “many there be which go in thereat.”
Many reject the path that leads to life.
Someone once said that many acts of cowardice are based on sound information.
I would add: many acts of self-destruction are as well.
Only in this case, the ability to discern sound information has been lost.
Yes, we were perishing. Yes, the false gospel gave us something to hold on to. But when we choose the wide gate, we reject the truth that would have saved us.
2 Thessalonians 2:9–12 warns of deception against those who refused to love the truth and so be saved.
That is the true danger of the prosperity gospel.
Standing at the fork in the road, it makes all but the most sincere seekers of Christ choose the wide gate, every time.
Does this mean you can continue attending those churches if you are a sincere seeker?
No.
Scripture is blunt:
“Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners.”
1 Corinthians 15:33 (KJV)
In full:
“Be not deceived: evil communications [or company] corrupt good manners [or morals].”
Close association with negative influences, harmful conversations, or immoral patterns will gradually degrade one’s character, behavior, and values.
If Scripture says, “Be not deceived,” then do not kid yourself.
A Case Study: God's Generals
There is a book titled God’s Generals by Robert Liardon. It sold like wildfire in the Christian community in Nigeria. I still have a copy on my shelf. Perhaps it is time to let it go.
Why?
Because one man’s hero worship was presented as history.
Flawed men were told as if they were almost flawless. Their excesses were toned down. Their racism brushed aside. Even their abuses were dressed up and called “anointing.”
Yes, God uses broken people. That is not in dispute. Fire melts ice.
But there is a difference between acknowledging human frailty and canonizing it.
Meanwhile, ordinary believers travail, praying for purpose, asking God for something to do for the Kingdom. Yet we are told that God routinely bypasses the faithful and makes a beeline for the spectacularly compromised and “anoints” them.
Scripture gives sobering warnings.
2 Thessalonians 2:10 speaks of deception “against those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.”
2 Corinthians 6:14 asks, “What partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?”
And 2 Corinthians 4:3–4 says:
“And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”
Those verses should give every believer pause.
Have you crossed a line? Have you become unable to see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ?
Has God honored your choice to believe certain lies by allowing you to be carried further into them?
Yes, God uses sinners. That is not in dispute.
It was Jesus Himself who broke the seals in Revelation and set loose the four horsemen upon the earth, riders that brought conquest, conflict, famine, and death in their wake. Sovereignty is not the same thing as approval.
But when you can look at cruelty and call it strength, look at deceit and call it strategy, look at vulgarity and call it authenticity, something has shifted, not in heaven, but in you.
When you declare one man who strives, publicly at least, to embody the fruit of the Spirit as irredeemably evil, and another who openly mocks virtues honored by every major faith as a messenger of God, you must pause.
You must ask whether the gospel has become veiled to you.
You must ask, quietly and honestly:
Am I perishing?
The Real Problem
The problem is not that God can redeem the worst of us.
It is that power has become more urgent than witness.
Influence more urgent than integrity.
Access more urgent than truth.
Dear Evangelicals, history will remember what you chose. It will remember where you stood, and what you were willing to excuse.
May Jesus have mercy on us all.
Don Kenobi
#OldManInTheMolue | #MyFrancisEssays | MolueMonOLogUes
posted by #Dk @ 7:09 PM
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