Not of This World

It breaks my heart some of the biggest threats to life, safety and sanity in this world come from people who claim Christ as Lord.
Over the past couple of years I’ve been researching from time to time the Dominionist movement and related theologies. The problem is, Dominionists are more directly honest about their intentions than the rest of organized evangelical Christianity. That is, almost all of them make the major mistake of forgetting or ignoring that unmistakable statement Jesus made to Pilate at His trial: “My kingdom is not of this world.”
Jesus struggled with getting His disciples to see that prior to His death. That silly song from Jesus Christ Superstar captures it perfectly: “What’s the buzz… When do we ride into Jerusalem?” They had no argument with the false Messianic Expectations, but were simply on a different team than the establishment. For them, it was conquer or displace the current Jewish government — using all the miraculous powers of Jesus, of course, all peacefully — then fulfill that grand vision of Israel ruling the world. Bread aplenty, dazzling powers and world domination, the very things Jesus told Satan He would not do during the Wilderness Temptation. That was in part because those things were precisely what Jewish mythology demanded of the Messiah.
And they are the very things so very many evangelicals are determined to do.
It’s a false dichotomy to say we are either otherworldly completely, or deeply involved in this world’s needs. That’s a part of the Gnostic Heresy. The very reason for getting so involved in people’s lives is because we are supposed to be so otherworldly. It’s the paradoxical logic of Heaven. We embrace suffering for ourselves even as we engage relief of others’ suffering. It’s how we manifest the love, and expose the hatred, both of which put Jesus on the Cross.
Yet the vast majority of American Christians believe they have a mandate to actually rule the world.
The majority of evangelicals are lost in a rather gentle challenge to the current political system, seeking to impose their moral agenda (much of which perverts the morality of Scripture) through the system. They talk all day long of the holy Constitution, which was a muddled mess from the beginning, and we have never actually done what it seems to say from the day it was ratified (itself a questionable thing). That “sacred” piece of paper has no effect on tyrants and thugs raiding dairies and Gibson Guitars or every other effort to supply human needs and wants. And should the whole nation suddenly grow a spine and remove that evil government, the replacement would be no less evil, just a different flavor. Even if we obeyed the letter of the Constitution, we’d be wrong before God. It certainly doesn’t reflect His Laws. Thus, we have mainstream evangelical Christians seeking to take over through the broken system itself, while denying any hostile intent.
Then there are the marginal, but growing, groups who honestly promote a hostile takeover. If you chase down references to “Joel’s Army” you will find something downright scary. These people believe God plans to grant them miraculous powers to obtain all manner of creature comforts, cow everyone by glorious miracles, and crush the political system, slaughtering the sinners (or enslaving them). Sounds familiar, no? The same three items Satan offered Jesus in the Wilderness.
The problem is there exists no clean separation between these two. There is a huge overlap. It’s not just they have in common some perceived mandate to change the world politically, but they share the actual planning and funding of these takeover efforts. They cooperate outside their theological differences, via various purely power-seeking groups who will use both kinds of religion. Not every contributing member of CUFI agrees with Hagee’s theology, just his politics. At the high plutocrat level, this is all the same bunch who have been secretly tainted by the cover-ups which make Ted Haggard look tame — The Franklin Scandal, among others. Do you think Rulon Jeffs has a corner on that market? It’s less than six degrees of separation between your average Neo-Pentecostal, Dick Cheney and his Neo-Conservative friends, and all the marginal cults.
It’s just a matter of offering enough flavors to please every palate. The aim is to find some leverage to subject humanity to yet one more hideous means of tyranny and oppression. You can march it right along side the reds, humanists, fascists, and what have you.
I’m literally weeping as I type this, considering how many people are so deceived, so committed to their own sorrow. They cling to a perverted literalism in reading Scripture, even while they ignore the most blunt statements from Jesus Himself about such things. It’s so much more fun and entertaining for them to dredge up fanciful interpretations of something too obviously meant to be non-literal.