I must admit that I am one of those Christians who, when I am focused, reads a lot of Christian-ese releases from internet sites and religious newspapers. Or used to.

I also listen to Christian radio—when I can avoid the news commentary.

I have noticed a tragic, unwritten commentary on the direction in which the church in America is headed.

Basically, there have been two types of articles—

About 15-20% (by counting them all) of the total are about Christians in foreign countries who are being persecuted and martyred for their faith in Jesus. Sounds to me a lot like the early church, and indeed, Jesus and his first followers. The result of this kind of faith is that there are many others who want to now more. This is the formula Jesus set forth. He always met peoples needs first, then spoke about spiritual things later to those who were willing to sit and listen. (Judging by the accounts in the Bible, if we were to consider the numbers of people who came to see him; what we know about our human nature; and the relevant brevity of his recorded individual discourses, one could reasonably conclude that he spent noticeably more time meeting needs than talking.)

The other 80-85% of articles are focused on happenings in the United States. They center on legal battles set forth by the church to demand and secure our rights; moralistic protests against abortion, homosexuality, and other “evils”; and internal battles to keep “those people” (I think they meant me and you) from running (or in some minds ruining) the church, ie: the recent United Methodist Conference.

It hit me quite hard the one night, this latter set of articles.

WHAT does any of this have to do with the real Jesus?

What gives us the right to force on people the very things GOD CHOSE TO GIVE US A CHOICE ABOUT?

Or what makes us think today, that we can write, implement and enforce laws and legal strategies to protect, at the socio-political level, something that can only exist at the individual, spiritual level—where human law will not, should not and can never reach?

NO laws or court decisions can mandate a single human being to make the decision God ASKS of them and then ALLOWS them to make of THEIR OWN FREE WILL

Jesus was, is, always will reign supreme as KING of the universe.

Jesus himself universally and summarily avoided ANY ASSOCIATION with the socio-political aspects of this world. He declined, on every occasion, to either support OR oppose the Roman government or the secular government of Palestine.

The ONLY leaders he DID focus his attention on were the spiritual leaders of the Jewish people who were, in effect, leading the people astray.

He could have, and still could if he chooses, spoken a word and any part (like national socio-political establishments) or the whole of creation would cease to exist.

But He DIDN’T do that.

Someday He will.

But he HASN’T done it yet.

He could have commanded his release instead of being crucified.

But he CHOSE not to.

He could have overthrown all of the earthly kingdoms, not just pushed the Romans out of Israel.

But He DIDN’T.

He HAS the POWER to make each of us do His will.

But He CHOOSES NOT TO.

Why not?

Because He wants us to RELATE to Him FROM OUR OWN CHOICE, where we are.

God will NEVER take away our freedom to make that choice. The Bible relates that Jesus cried when he looked at Jerusalem and saw so many people rejecting the choice God had given them.

For God to allow a completely free choice, He has chosen to allow us to make any number of other choices, constraining Himself from any intervention in personal actions, unless and until He is asked to do so by individuals involved.

He therefore allows the myriad of other choices our human creativity produces. The vast majority of these other choices ARE NOT what He hopes they would be.

They often involve persecuting Him and His church. Others involve allowing society to chose governments that do not worship Jesus. In fact, no government can worship Jesus as this can only be done from the individual heart.

SO what is my beef? The church in America has failed and is failing, in public, the very people it is supposed to reach.

We fight against the persecution and human nature in courts of law, legislative bodies and courts of public opinion. JUST like all Americans are allowed to do. Racing headlong through a worldly maze, looking for the cheese that only God can give to us.

But the true church stood in the face of persecution, let the worldly tsunamis wash over it and appear to wash it away.

Then, where there was once a single believer, the seeds of martyrdom germinated, and the one was replaced by many, whose faith was stronger because of the examples of those who went before.

We should welcome the persecution as a sign that we are making a difference. AND we should accept it so that fighting it does not take time and resources away from reaching out to those who need our help the most.

The church that Jesus planted is supposed to stand out, reach out, and speak out FROM the midst of the masses, while meeting their extensive needs.

Standing in the halls of power and preaching moralisms, fighting for protection from persecution, and allowing, even actively pushing, millions who do not follow specific rules to face eternal damnation is failure of cataclysmic proportions.

The relevance of the church is measured in individual lives and individual events. The power of the Gospel burns in individual lives and individual events. AND these individual lives and individual events spontaneously explode into a collective result that change an individual, a community, and a world.

The reverse can not happen. In fact, the reverse is the biblical description of the rise if Antichrist in apocalyptic scripture.

Thus, martyr by martyr, family by family, and village by village the church grows in Afghanistan, in China, in Namibia, in Pakistan, in India, in the Koreas, in Burma, in Nepal, in Iran, and in other lesser known corners of the world. Simultaneously, law suit by law suit, law by law, and condemnation by condemnation, the church in America slides into spiritual insignificance.