The Unintended Criminal

When fools and madmen criminalize rational thought, then every sane man becomes a criminal by default. Perhaps it was indifference or even outright apathy, but whatever caused the deafening silence to perpetuate itself in this nation, and rational people to go along just to get along, has done a masterful job thus far.

Even in the delusional faux utopia many convinced themselves they were living in, there were a handful of voices warning of the consequences of our silence, but they were quickly muzzled, marginalized, or branded some sort of extremist hater who refuses to come into the glorious light of progress and innovation, content with clinging to God and guns alike, believing they will somehow slow the tide.

Those who ought to have stood with the trumpeters of truth and trumpeted the truth themselves, instead found reasons and means by which to distance themselves, and make themselves seem more embracing and tolerant of the sin being warned against, not wanting to be mistaken for an ally or friend of someone who would dare speak such divisive words as repentance or holiness.

I realize that to the casual Christian, my words might sound bitter, but I assure you I am not. There’s no energy for bitterness anymore, I fear, just a sadness that blooms ever wider like a bloodstain from a gunshot wound.

We did our best. We tried our hardest. We preached until our throats were raw, and warned until we were speaking to empty pews, and left wives and sons and daughters behind for the sake of the Gospel and in the hopes of awakening a slumbering nation, and all we have to show for it are achy joints, bad backs, and a gnawing question in the back of our minds if any of it was really worth it.

Not only was love mistaken for intolerance and truth mistaken for divisiveness by most, soon, it seems, those still clinging to truth will be branded criminals because they refuse to put on the muzzle.

Even now I’m still getting the ‘what if’ e-mails from well-meaning individuals who just don’t want to see how hard the hearts of most have become, and how unwilling to repent they are.

In their quest to sin guilt free, even a most beautiful truth such as grace has been perverted and bastardized by supposed Christians to mean that because of it, because of grace, we can do as we will, when we will, with no consequence or repercussion.

We keep bulldozing the path and making it ever wider, without a thought to what God has to say, without an ounce of remorse or introspection, because we love our sin more than we love Him and that is the defining characteristic of the modern day church.

There it is, simple and clean. We love sin more than we love God, and we make concessions for our sins to the detriment of God’s holy Word time and again, because the self is our idol, and the pleasing of the self is of paramount importance.

If only a heart broken and stripped of pride can truly understand what God counts as important and necessary, then before we can place a single foot on the right path, God must break us asunder and strip us of our pride and hedonism. If this does not occur, then He has left us to the desire of our own hearts, and this above all ought to be ample reason to humble ourselves into the dust of the earth and heap ash upon ourselves.

The church isn’t ready for what is coming, not by a longshot, and when being a follower of Christ becomes a criminal act, far fewer individuals will claim to be followers of Christ. At least then we will know the true believer from the pretend.

Whether in this life, or the life beyond, those who have perpetrated the chaos we are seeing from within the church itself will be held to account, for nothing done in open or in secret goes unseen, and the God we serve is a meticulous record keeper.

With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.