Today we visited the Auschwitz and Birkenau death camps and saw first hand the final solution of Hitler’s Nazi Experiment.   Well over a million men, women and children were exterminated in the gas chambers of these two camps.   One room contained two tons of human hair that was being processed into fabric for lining winter coats.  Another room contained over 20,000 shoes of all shapes and sizes.  Both were just a tiny fraction of what was collected from the corpses.   We stood in the gas chamber, looked into the furnaces and peered into the ash pits where countless human beings – created in the image of God – were snuffed out and erased from human history.  I have neither the words nor the emotional equipment to categorize my experience here.

Tonight we stay in Krakow.  Prior to the final solution Poland had a Jewish population of over three million.  Today there are fewer than a thousand.   May God have mercy on us.

“We know that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day’s work at Auschwitz in the morning.” -George Steiner

They’ve been called “Busters”, “Boomlets”, “Gen Xers”, and “Mosaics”, but I’ve officially dubbed this amazing demographic of young people “Generation K,” the “Kingdom Generation.”  The generation who introduced us to Attention Deficit Disorder hasn’t the ability toignore their unsatisfied heart-longings.

My Generation missed it.  We faithfully sowed a half-gospel of forgiveness and reaped a church prepared for heaven but hopelessly detached from the rest of life.  Forgiveness without the kingdom left behind a heritage of decaying inner cities, broken families, staggering debt, bulging prisons, and broken communities.

These “Gen K” students will no longer settle for a half gospel.  It requires both the cross and the kingdom to answer the longings in our hearts as well as the staggering challenges of our culture.  One young Scandinavian student came up after class and said “I want to thank you for showing me that European Socialism is not the answer.  The real answer is the Kingdom of God.”  When Generation K turns its Attention Deficit eyes upon Jesus and sets it’s hope on the Kingdom there’s no telling what beauty and hope might lie ahead.

The election fray has a great capacity to deaden our souls.  Yesterday I took deliberate time to pray for America and the American church because I believe we – the church – need to take responsibility for the alarming drift of our nation.

First off we need to repent of the silly idea that politics and elections can cure the cancer of our culture.  America’s disease is a spiritual malignancy, and not a political one.   And to go on believing the disease can be cured by politics is not only foolish and idolatrous, but it is diametrically opposed to the Kingdom of God.

If we honestly want to make an apologetic towards the Marxist / Socialist agenda knocking at our door, then its time we believers repented of our own love affair with comfort and ease and began living a truly Christian lifestyle of moderation, justice and compassionate involvement.

• It’s time we stopped seeing the enemy’s face in our Liberals friends, and began looking in the mirror at our own failings.  America’s rot began when we abandoned the gospel of the Kingdom for the gospel of Heaven; when we turned away from good news for the poor, recovery of sight for the blind, and freedom for the oppressed to the the Trojan horse of the Rapture.  (Yes… I do believe Jesus is coming back.  And I look forward to it with great anticipation.  I just believe He clearly intended us to focus on the Kingdom until his return just happens in His own good time).

• It’s time we said “Enough of the American dream!  Enough comfort and ease and three-car garages and TVs in every room.  Enough extravagant church-buildings and self-entertainment.”

• It’s time we repented of consumerism and extricated ourselves from an ungodly economy rooted in greed, covetousness, eternal growth, and the love of money.  The system that told us on 9-12 that “we must keep shopping” is deadly to the human soul, and we simply can’t live that way anymore lest God fulfills his own oath to us:  (“Woe to you rich…”  Luke 6:24)

• It’s time we learned to practice Biblical self-government with its generous, sacrificial love, and stopped pushing our civil servants to solve problems of poverty and immorality.  These problems are owned by the church.

• It’s time we – the church – surrendered our self-appointed role of judging the masses and began walking in our God-given prophetic role of pointing to a glorious Kingdom of compassion, justice, mercy and grace.

• It’s time we willingly shared our food with the hungry, our homes with the homeless, and a generous half of our wardrobes with the the world’s naked.  To continue in our ease while one billion of our worldwide neighbors have no clean water to drink is to forfeit our right to complain about the Marxists who at least have a plan to help.

I’ll be voting Republican on Tuesday primarily as a vote against the Marxist ideology of Barack Obama.  (I don’t say that lightly.  I’ve done the research).  But I don’t condemn Barack Obama.  He’s the product of a society and a church that is stump-dumb when it comes to understanding the Kingdom of God.  Unfortunately I don’t believe there’s any real hope in John McCain either.   The answers simply are not found in the political arena.  They’re found in the stunning good news of the Kingdom of God as revealed in the scriptures.

My friends, WE are the problem with America.  I am the problem with America.  Until we become the light of the world and the kingdom emerges in the practical ways of justice, simplicity and compassionate living,  the questions of Marxism and Socialism will NEVER go away.

Tomorrow after church a group of five of us are heading up the road to DC for a four day prayer outreach.  The guys, (high school students, Zak, Josh, and Kyle), along with Avie and I have been preparing for the past two months for this mission.  We’ve been asking the Lord about scriptures and prayer targets, and our intention is to pray at the Capital, the Supreme Court, the Pentagon, the Holocaust Museum, and National Cathedral.  It’s all very exciting.  I’m stoked about sharing this experience with these young spiritual warriors.  Stay tuned!