Someone has said, “When the church does not disciple the world, the world disciples the church.”

For nearly two weeks now I’ve had a growing sadness and alarm in the depths of my spirit:  The news of the church shootings in Charleston was a well-placed punch in the gut for most of us.  And quickly on its heels came two Supreme Court decisions that severed America from Constitutional clarity and set it adrift in the tides of relativism, public opinion and political expediency.  Facebook and web forums predictably erupted into vicious denunciations and hostile invective.  And now we have entered a contentious new territory which – apart from a great turning – could explode into unimaginable destabilization and bloodshed.

Today I simply want to remind my friends of two things:

#1. People are never the problem.  I know it’s quite easy to feel that way, and in fact there is a large segment of America already practiced at maligning others as “evil”, “racist”, and “standing in the way of progress.”  Jesus followers must never allow themselves to descend into that mindless approach, for whenever a culture has demonized people, it inevitably falls into the blackness of genocide, gas chambers and “final solutions.”

The problem is not people, but the lies people believe.  Let me go a step further and say it’s the lies we believe, because whether we know it or not, there are always vestiges of deception lying around in our own thought processes, and that realization ought to keep each of us perpetually humble before God.  For this reason Kingdom-seekers ought to forever champion humility, understanding and Truth.

#2. There is still the great untried truth of the Kingdom.  Leftism has gained such staggering ground in America because the leftists have learned to articulate their story and sought out the places of cultural influence to tell it.  They preach from hollywood sound-studios, academic halls, and media outlets a story that offers a hope, (false as  it is), to the hungry masses.   Their story has been told well, it’s being tested at this moment, and it will ultimately usher us into a living hell on earth.

And meanwhile…  we stand before church congregations and preach a shriveled narrative of forgiveness and escape from this world of darkness – a story that cannot even be tested until we die!   This narrative of getting into heaven when we die has played itself out; It will NOT capture the minds and hearts of this confused generation.  But the story of the Kingdom will!  How do I know?  It’s the same story that has fueled our hearts from our earliest years, and it’s the very story the King himself told to invite the world into life and blessing.