Justin Bieber is what's wrong with American Christianity

So last week, some mindless ninny who blogs about Christianity requested that a million Christians covenant to 'speak life over Justin Bieber." Because poor little Justin was busted for drag racing his Lambo in Miami and being drunk and high behind the wheel.
This well-meaning, but theologically embarrassing woman felt that it was all because it's just so hard being a child-star and having all that money and all those people pulling him in all those directions was too much for anyone to take. Poor Justin needs to have people speaking life over him. (This is a mildly Pentecostal practice where they believe you can change someone's life by just saying positive things about them to the magical air-genie who carries those words to God and then those things wonderfully happen. It's pretty much the same benign heresy that Joel Osteen teaches every Sunday) I'm sure the fact that JB's mommy, Pattie Mallette, is a rising star on the Evangelical speaking circuit, pumping her new book "Nowhere but Up: The Story of Justin Bieber's mom" plays into this desire to "love Beiber to Jesus." And who thought it was a great idea to give Ms. Mallette a book deal? Why Thomas Nelson, of course! The biggest Christian publisher in the world. And why? Because she is a theological wunderkind, who makes Beth Moore seem shallow? Because she has a track record of raising great kids and we all need her advice? Because she is a compelling character who defines the "Proverbs 31 woman? Heck no! It's because her despicable offspring is popular on a level that few will ever comprehend. He's on the news daily. He's Disney's biggest money maker. And he's a disgusting, shameful, mindless, moron who didn't even know who Anne Frank was, and who thinks it's funny to get wasted and race his supercar through the residential neighborhoods. He is a bacteria on the toilet seat of humanity and he needs some Lysol...not "life spoken over him."
Let me show you what careless driving can do:

That white truck...that's my work truck. I owned it for about a week when the driver of the Mustang was texting and driving and rammed into the back of it. It's likely totaled. If you know what I've been through, you know how hard it was just to get that truck. Now it's a loss. This guy wasn't drunk, or high, or driving an exotic supercar. Think about what that would have looked like. 

Bieber was doing this in a residential area. He'd been warned before. By Keyshawn Johnson. Look...if Keyshawn Johnson doesn't throw a scare into you, you are incorrigible. So what does this have to do with American Christianity? Plenty.

The well-meaning lady who wrote the blog asking for all of us to "speak life over Justin" she probably thought this was what Jesus wanted. She probably thinks this is what it will take. She probably thinks little kids should get participation trophies in Little League because failing hurts. She probably thinks all we need is love.

She's an idiot.

Justin Bieber needs a giant boot in his butt. He needs some Godly men to meet him and tell him "You are NOT saved kid. You are heading to Hell. Period. You betray the Faith you claim and you make a mockery of the Grace that would save this world." Thomas Nelson should pull his mom's book deal. Why should they be making money from the story of a how this woman raised a wretched, despicable, miscreant? 

Thomas Nelson should be forced to refund every dime they made from dishing out this bilge. 

A week after this miserable little troll got busted for drag racing under the influence, he does this: 

http://celebrity.yahoo.com/blogs/celeb-news/justin-bieber--extremely-abusive--to-flight-attendant--has-pot-party-at-10-000-ft-184625636.html 

I wish the pilot had the ability to open the cabin door and shove this little cretin out into the wild blue yonder. Him and his pose-a-thug friends. 

Pastor Abedini needs life spoken over him! Those thousand of little girls who were rounded up and sold into sex slavery at the Super Bowl...they need life spoken over them. If you really HAVE to pray earnestly for a rock star...pray for Bono. The guy is a REAL believer. He is living his Faith with every single breath. Pray for him and his family. Pray for me. I'm sick of living in my truck. Pray for my daughter who faces a harsh world every day. 

Stop wasting your breath on this turd. You embarrass me as a Christian. We're supposed to be the standard bearers of righteousness. Instead, we get so enamored with someone's fame that we seriously think our role is to intercede in earnest prayer for them, while neglecting the people with far more desperate needs who sit right next to us in our churches.

Does Jesus love Justin Bieber? Of course he does. But he loves him no more than he loves some kid picking through the Basurero in Mexico City, looking for a scrap of food. In fact, I'm sure Jesus is pretty angry with Bieber in a way he will never feel for the Mexican waif. 

Bieber is a fraud. It's time to admit it, Western Evangelicals. That is NOT salvation. Pray death over him instead. Death to his lies. Death to the deceit he believes in his heart. Death to the gladhanding Christians making money off him because he simply "names the name."

And Justin...if I am ever a pilot and you try that stuff on my flight...pack a chute. And seriously...meet Jesus for real dude, because you are heading for Hell. No kidding and no mincing words. It's not too late. If you lose EVERYTHING but find Jesus you will be better off by far.

THAT is speaking life!

Airbag Christianity: Cushioning the Blow of a Head-on Collision with Jesus Christ

There comes a point in every Christian's life -if you are serious about your Faith- that you'll be faced with a decision that will cost you. Mine came today.

Last year, a friend of mine I've known since childhood took his stand. He is a pastor back home, and when Delaware was voting on same-sex marriage, George decided he could not stand by and watch the state legislate this law into existence without speaking up. He did. It was his crossroads moment. Whether you agree with him or not, he made a conscious decision on principle and he stood.

I became a Christian at a fairly young age. I was eight or nine years old. So I didn't get saved from much as far as a personal history of sinful behavior. Nor was I simply bull-rushed to the altar after Sunday School and told to repeat a prayer. My first Sunday School teacher was a sweet man named Bill Bell, and he carefully explained to me that I was a sinner, just like everyone else. One sin or a million sins was not the issue. The issue was my nature. I prayed with him that Sunday, and I got saved. Saved from my nature. Saved from the same condemnation that awaits all mankind. I was born again. Because the first time only resulted in a lost soul entering this world. You don't hear these terms much anymore. You hear "engage" "interaction" and the ever popular "relationship."  Listen...I have a relationship with the mailman, because I need my mail. But I don't know a thing about him. We don't hear clear-cut messages about salvation anymore. We hear about "manifestations of the Spirit" "Prosperity" "God wants you to be super duper awesome" "God is love" "Speak the Kingdom into your life!" and "Go claim your destiny in Jesus name."  Around Williamson County, where I live we hear about well-drilling in lower Bungaloor, we hear 10 weeks about the Holy Spirit and His work, we hear about the latest Duck-call maker and how he is our new buddy, but we don't hear "Don't be so surprised that I have told you, you must be born again!"  (John 3:7)  We announce on Social Media when the Governor visits our church, or the grand opening of a brand new satellite campus where no teaching pastor actually exists and instead the main pastor drops down on a viewing screen like the jumbo-tron at Cowboy Stadium. "Heeeeeeere's Pastor!"

We have prayer lines where believers stand and get prayed for. That's wonderful. But then we close the service and send the masses home with a gesture of the hand and pronouncement of a benediction, but without the opportunity to avail themselves of the altar, and do their business with God.

We'll occasionally applaud the story of how brother so-and-so came to church, loved it, and then a few weeks later he prayed with his neighbor and accepted Jesus. Meanwhile, we ignore the fact that every single week hundreds of brother so-and-so's are in the seats in our mega building and we preach an awesome sermon about the Christian life without ever asking them, directly and forcefully, if they actually have that life within.

The Cross of Calvary is the defining moment of world history. It was the head-on-collision moment between mankind and God. One does not come to the cross and leave unphased. One does not meet the Christ of God in his torment and suffering on Calvary, and it deliver only a glancing blow. Calvary is a face-first, head-on collision. Your metal gets twisted and your frame is bent. The window through which you viewed this world gets shattered and the paint that made it seem so beautiful gets scarred. And when the impact is over and you grind to a halt on the path that lead you to this hill on the outskirts of Jerusalem...you do not continue on the same path. You awake from the fog of the way you have been living, and you shake your head to clear the cobwebs, and you check to see what it was that you hit. And then you see the fearsome menace of the cross and you see it has not moved.  The Cross of Jesus Christ is the immovable object and the irresistible force.

It draws you to itself and then it breaks you on impact. It is not a sideswipe. It is not a glancing blow. It is most definitely not a hit and run...Jesus doesn't just drop in, make a few corrections, and then leave you with his insurance card in hand. You slam face-first into the cruelty of Calvary. There is blood. There is damage to your old frame. There is noise and violence as the nature you were born with is demolished and destroyed and the new life of Christ Himself is put in it's place. There are no airbags to cushion the impact.

But the church today has tried to become just that...an airbag to soften the impact of the most impacting moment in human history.

I can't play that game anymore.

When I was 14, I sat beside a campfire at Summit Lake Camp in Emmitsburg MD. My church didn't have a Youth Pastor at the time and so we didn't go to summer camp.  I went with another church because some friends invited me. That Friday night I sat by that fire, and listened to the preacher, and heard God calling me. I said yes. From that day forward, He has had a plan in place. I spent my entire high school years thinking about that plan and hoping to see it happen. One day I read in Ezekiel this verse, and it radically changed my life. It's Ezekiel 22:30  “I looked for someone among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found no one."

I don't know why that verse would leap off the page at me at age 14. I don't know why in 1977 I was already so acutely aware of the path we were on as a nation and how big a role the Church was playing in where we were heading. In hindsight, this played a large part in my affinity with Liberty University, and with Dr. Falwell. I saw that verse as literal. And I saw "the land" as America. No, I do not believe this verse specifically applies to America. I believe this verse is typical of any nation that claims Christianity as it's base and it's founding doctrine. I believe this verse applies to any nation that is founded upon principles derived from Christian doctrine. I do not believe America was ever a "Christian Nation" in the classical sense. We are not a Theocracy. But when the founding Fathers decided to build this nation on principles, they chose the principles outlined in the Bible. They chose to build a nation based on Faith in God and they crafted laws that favored the practice of religion, particularly Christianity. 

I look at that verse today -36 years later- and it still feels as ominous and still moves my soul. There is a gap in the wall. The hedge has fallen down. God is seeking righteous men to stand in the gaps and make up the hedge so that He would not have to destroy the land, but He finds none.

He is not finding the voices of ones crying in the wilderness. He is not finding clarion calls to repentance and redemption in the Osteens, Paula White's and Rob Bell's of this world. He is not finding it in the mega churches of Williamson county where half the population starts their Sunday morning and leaves without a clear-cut presentation of the doctrine of salvation. How is it that Tennessee is the most churched state in America, and the most corrupt? ( list of corrupt states )

Because we have preached a grace that is a disgrace in the eyes of God.

I believe in grace. My life was changed by reading “The Ragamuffin Gospel” because I had become enslaved by legalism. But we have overreacted to the legalistic chains of the 60’s and 70’s and 80’s and bound ourselves with a chain just as insidious. The chain of deception that everything is permissable. We do not preach a Cross-of-Christ experience that bends our metal, and twists our frame, and scars our paint, and breaks the windows we see ourselves through. We've preached airbag theology. We've softened the impact of the very cross that Jesus died on. Jesus Himself made this bold self-pronouncement in Matthew 21: 40-44
Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures: ‘The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?  “Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit.  Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.”

Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.”

That’s not a fender-bender. That’s not a cheap-grace, imitation gospel. And that’s not universalism. You have two choices and those choices become your destiny. When you come to the Cross of Christ you will either fall on it in surrender, and be broken and rebuilt...or the Cross of Jesus will fall on you in Judgment, and you will be shattered and destroyed. There is no middle ground. There is no cheap repair, and discount paint job. Where is this message today?

I can’t escape this anymore. I can’t sit back and watch this country slip into the grasp of evil and not speak up. The church is to be the salt and the light and she is neither.

36 years ago, God burned this into my heart. He apparently wasn't kidding.

More on that tomorrow... 

"Why?" (Some thoughts about Grace and the tragic death of a friend)

Last weekend I found out that a high school friend of mine had died. She was several years younger than me but a friend none the less. I'm not going to post her name or information here, partly out of respect and partly because her death sparked some things in my soul and I am going to speak my mind and I don't want my thoughts directly attached to her passing.
My friend was a beautiful, sweet girl when I saw her last. She came from a very devout home. Her parents and siblings were good people. Very good people.
In no way would you ever look at her life and, knowing her background, think she was someone who was ever going to wind up drinking herself to death one day. But that's what happened.
I don't know how old she is, but she's a few years younger than me. I'm 49. She was probably 44 or 45. That's awfully young to die from something so awful. It's no way to die at all.
It's also no way to live. What follows here is not an indictment on anyone. It's conjecture, but I believe it's based in fact. I believe this because I have watched too many friends from that period in time, ruin their lives in some form or fashion. And the undercurrent to it all was a horrible, grinding adherence to a legalistic belief system and a miserable, unfathomable avoidance of Grace. Real Grace. The Grace of a loving God. Not the "grace" that makes you feel like a beggar every single day of your life. Not the pathetic, legalistic, Pharisaical, cruel, systematic grace that is never really yours. That you have to earn, but never quite can. That you have to work to keep but never really have confidence that you have kept it.
The kind of horrible excuse for "grace" that forces someone to hide their addictions  -whatever they might be- instead of  blurting them out to those who would call themselves your "Sisters and brothers in the Lord" and finding the help you need. The niggling, petty, diminutive grace that barely covers our "old sins" and holds no room for any sins in the future. The grace that teaches us that we can never lose our salvation because it was a gift. But then sends the signal that the God who sent us the gift regrets offering it every single day, because we never work hard enough to have "deserved" it or to be worthy of it. In the culture of graceless grace, my friend could never have opened up and asked for help. Because "saved people don't have addictions." Because, after all, "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. The old things pass away and all things become new"  (II Cor 5:17)  Here is the problem with quoting this verse and not understanding it properly...it's dangerous. The circle I ran in, and my friend ran in more so than I did, only adhere to the King James Version of the Bible. Now, I own the KJV and I use it when I am in churches who hold to this particular preference. It's a VERY good translation. It's very accurate. But it is not perfect. The problem with the KJV is that the English is about 600 years old. So verses can be excessively harsh if you don't understand their proper translation from Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic. This verse is a prime example.
"If any man be in Christ..."  "In Christ" means that a person has experienced the New Birth. They are Born Again. Pretty easy there. Then it says this person is a "new creature". This is where the legalists start getting in trouble. The "new creature" here means not a renewed version of what this person was before their head-on collision moment with Jesus. They aren't a "new" Craig Daliessio. They are a new creature. "New" here is  kainos. It's a Greek word that depicts not some new and different but new like a baby. You aren't just going into the shop for a tuneup...you are starting over from scratch. You are not starting as a spiritual adult. You are a newborn. A new creation. A kainos. The term "old things become new" is future perfect tense. Those old things are becoming new...a little at a time...day by day. We grow each day and God removes things as we go along and replaces things as we go along. It is a lifelong growing process. The circle I ran in, and that my friend ran in, never saw it like that. They saw the "new creature" as perfect from the beginning. No excuse for falling and failing. If you failed, there had to be an accompanying trip to the altar where you confessed your state of being "out of fellowship" and you made a tearful penance which had to be as emotional as your salvation was originally. There became a habit of constantly spending time at the altar every Sunday, "searching your heart" for "unrecognized sins" and confessing things that probably didn't need confession. It became a system that produced not strong sons and daughters of God, who walked in the unfathomable love of their Father, but a groveling colony of worms who never saw anything in themselves that God could love and so they spent their lives trying to manufacture something. It produced a hollow, feeble, empty, tenuous grace that we feared losing. Healthy Christians fear God the right way. The term for "Fearing God" is what you feel when you see the Ocean. Or when you stand in the distance as a powerful thunderstorm rolls by. Or when you watch a baby being born. Or when you stare into a starry field on a perfectly clear night and are in awe of the power that could create that. That is fearing God. The fear of God we learned was not reverent fear...it was dread. It was what people felt about Tony Soprano. It was frightful. He was a brut and a capricious taskmaster. He could never be counted on to let His face shine on us as He did on David. We were never told that He was wildly, passionately, ridiculously in love with us. We were never told that He didn't hate us. He wasn't angry at our sin. Read that again...He wasn't angry at our sin. He isn't angry at it now. His anger was vented at Calvary. The debt was paid. From that point on, it was a simple matter of justice, not vengeance. Not punishment. He punished Jesus for those sins. He doesn't ask for double payment. If you accept Jesus as Savior, your debt is paid, and a just God is satisfied. On that terrible day when judgement falls, it won't be a God who is laughing and wringing His hands as He watches the lost walking into an eternal Hell. It will be a broken-hearted God, who did all He could by paying the price. He will have tears in his eyes and no joy on his face as sin is expelled forever. But they never told us this. They never painted this picture.
They taught us about a God who was a tyrant and a fearful, vengeful, capricious score-keeper. We never knew exactly what would make him happy so we'd better be trying everything we could think of.
And God forbid you admit to secrets and sins. God forbid you have an addiction that you can't beat. They'll doubt your salvation. They'll question your faith. They'll shame your parents. They'll use you as an example in sermons. They cast you out and make you grovel and beg to come back. But they won't show you Grace. Not the grace of God. Not the love of God.
And so my friend wrestled with the bottle and the demons that made her drink. And she couldn't find grace and she couldn't find help and she couldn't reconcile her humanity and her frailty with the life we were all told we were supposed to be living. And so she died a horrible, miserable, tragic death.
She will end up in whispers and bywords. She'll be mentioned as the nameless example of how "sin when it is finished bringeth forth death". But they won't ever grasp how this happened. How the lies they told about the God who loved her contributed to her demise.
The graceless prophets of legalism will pick a few bones and crow under their breath. "This is what happens". They could have been Jesus to her when she was wrestling with the bottle in the middle of the night. When she probably tried to cry out to the God she was convinced could never love her or forgive her. They could have been there to explain that He will never, ever stop loving her and there was nothing to forgive that hadn't already been forgiven.
They should have told her how being human means wrestling with these things until the day we die. They should have told her that it was nothing, this alcoholism. It was nothing that God didn't already allow for. That it only became sin when she let it come between her and the love He has for her. They could have been open and honest and transparent and broken themselves over their own sins and failures, But they weren't and so she drank until her body gave out.
She is at peace now. Resting in the Grace she never tasted here. Because it was never offered.
Why?