A Most Inoffensive god

A god who does not condemn one’s sinful nature is not the God of Scripture. A god who does not insist upon a standard, some plumb line to which he must hold those who purport to serve and worship him is not the God of the Bible.

The god of many today is a most inoffensive god, a god who is permissive of any and all things, a god that eerily resembles the self, because there is no more permissive a god than the god of self.

The one true God is offensive to man’s sinful nature. Man’s sinful nature bristles, rebels, and rejects the one true God because He demands a mortification of said sinful nature, a doing away and parting of ways with what the flesh once enjoyed and reveled in.

The modern day church jumped the rails when it stopped preaching repentance, and it has been hurtling towards a shattering impact ever since. Because we now preach self rather than Christ, because we now preach personal growth rather than spiritual growth, because our focus is squarely set upon the things of this earth, we are as toothless lions, something for strangers to look at and try to imagine in their prime. We pose no real threat to the enemy, we pose no real danger to the darkness, but we’re fun to look at and make light of once in a while.

Righteousness has ceased being our banner, obedience has stopped being our goal, and as such we have become the devil’s footstool and a punchline for perverts and pederasts. The lunacy of our self-destructiveness will be a tale told for as long as the world turns, because no generation has wasted more potential, and been altogether more ineffective as pertains to the kingdom of God than this present generation.

We have ways and means to reach the world in a heartbeat, we have ways and means of getting the message of the cross to billions of souls, and instead we elevate men who can barely string two words together because one of those words happens to be prosperity.

Instead of charging the gates of hell, we’re peaking over the wall hoping to see something memorable, enamored with the idea that someone from the other side may throw us a glance.

We’re climbing all over ourselves to call any has been musician or never was actor an honorary Christian simply for speaking the name Jesus in passing, as though their mention of Him validates Him in any way.

What wonderful news: the lead singer of the Idiot Savants said Jesus was a cool cat! Now I can die happy.

We’ve bought into the cultural relevance lie, and though it has proven itself ineffectual time and again we’re still trying to find people to validate the King of Kings, thereby hoping that some will be drawn to Him and begin to worship Him.

It’s not the power and the gifts of the Holy Spirit the church needs, it’s someone with enough star power, someone truly famous to give Jesus the thumbs up. Once that happens, boy, look out, you’ll have them stampeding the altars, and fighting over who gets dunked first in the baptismal.

If it were not so tragic it would be comical to an extent.

We have betrayed our principles, abandoned our dignity, and sold out our Savior all for the hope that some ignoramus on some reality show will give Jesus the nod, even though he doesn’t subscribe to all that morality stuff, but just thinks it would have been cool to have a beer with Him.

The ‘sin no more part’ has been conveniently left out of ‘go and sin no more’ because it might offend the sensibilities of some hedonist or another, and we don’t want to exclude anyone from our big tent approach to God.

All that stuff about the way being narrow and those who find it being few must have been a mistranslation, and so we’re filling heaven to the rafters with men and women whose garments are soiled and muddied, waiting for the wedding feast, not bothering to acknowledge the reality that once the King arrives and finds them without the proper wedding attire they will be bound and cast into the darkness where there is but weeping and gnashing of teeth.

With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.

Whe Did You Know?

I’ve known the world was on the brink for some time, but this became crystal clear when I saw a girl with a selfie stick in a village in Romania, a village which coincidentally had no running water or connection to the power grid.

Something about that seemed so vulgar and out of place to me, that I realized it isn’t just one geographical location that is sick. The world is sick and getting sicker by the day.

A generation of vapid hedonists is soon to enter adulthood, and the repercussions of their inability to deal with the real world, the world where people do go hungry, and people do get fired, and people do get evicted, and updating your Facebook wall isn’t considered work, will be something to behold indeed.

When you raise an entire generation on a consistent diet of stupid for eighteen years, it’s no surprise that stupid is what they will end up being as they photobomb their way into adulthood.

In this upside down world we’ve created for ourselves, the cure for what ails us as a species is seen as a hindrance to said species’ utopian dream, and so even those who claim to serve Him distance themselves from His teachings, His precepts, and His words.

Set adrift on an ocean of our own self-importance we will no longer bend the knee, we will no longer plead for mercy, we will no longer follow, we will no longer obey. As such the likelihood of a positive outcome is less than zero, as is the likelihood of a redress, or return to the straight path.

I don’t know why but I’ve become more introspective and reflective of late, and everything I see tells me this world is not long for itself. Something astounding and of a breadth and scale heretofore unseen is set to descend upon a largely unsuspecting world, and deservedly so.

Though we might not see it with the naked eye, there is a running ticker. Someone is keeping track, and eventually the bill will come due.

We know to the very marrow of us that judgment is a foregone conclusion, and some of the most loving, kindhearted, humble and merciful people I know have started to pray for it. Forgiveness without repentance will never be, and as such the only real reason to pray for an extension of grace and a putting off of judgment is that handful of souls we may reach if we continue to be diligent and be about our Father’s business.

The hearts of men are growing colder and harder day by day, and to reach a soul nowadays and truly see a life change which extends beyond the initial hand waving at a crusade is a miracle on par with seeing the lame walk or the blind see.

While the church is busy doing other things like building denominational brands, and making sure their leaders are cool enough to attract the youth they don’t seem to be attracting even with their coolness, the one reason God has for delaying judgment is not being carried out.

If you’ve ever wondered what happens when the salt loses its flavor, the current state of the world and where it is inevitably headed is pretty much it. The state of the world is a direct result of the failure of the church, and the failure to carry out its most sacred mission.

The household of faith should be the rudder, it should be the compass, it should be that one unshakeable presence that charts the course and follows through, and by its very nature be a living embodiment of what it means to be saved. Instead the church is what it is, its ambassadors are what they are, and all told it’s no wonder the godless are having a field day mocking and ridiculing and merrily pointing at our inconsistencies.

We have men in positions of power and authority discovered to have done such obscene things that the ‘no one is perfect’ cliché is no longer applicable. When individuals who identify themselves as ambassadors of the Kingdom and leaders of men are found to have been practicing sins much of those in the world don’t even practice, it’s time to call it what it is, and stop hiding under the ‘we’re all sinners’ mantra.

The point of being washed and made clean in the blood of Christ is to go and sin no more, not to go back and rut in the mud from which we were extracted, cleansed, and purified.

But who wants to hear of such things nowadays?

It would be much easier for me to tell you to love yourself, spout some drivel as to how your inward thought determines your outer journey, and tell you how God’s end game since before the beginning of creation was your prosperity, but I still have a conscience, I’m still accountable to God, and I still love you enough to tell you the truth.

With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.

Subtle Judgments

Some tend to believe God’s only means of judging His creation and doing so in righteousness is via bombastic events that cause the world to pause and take a breath, and makes man realize the utter insignificance of his existence here on earth.

When we think of God’s judgment we tend to gravitate more towards the earthquake which just devastated Nepal than we do about what is happening in America momentarily.

What many fail to realize is that not all of God’s judgments are the same. Yes, there are certain times wherein the judgment of God is like a thunderclap in the silence, but there are also subtler judgments, some we might not even consider or acknowledge as such.

One of the most devastating of God’s judgments and one I have witnessed time and again is that of leaving man to his own devices, machinations, and destructive tendencies. God doesn’t need to throw lightning bolts at most folks to visit judgment upon them; all He needs to do is leave them to do as they will, and that’s judgment enough.

With the removal of light, the mind becomes darkened. Once the mind becomes darkened the choices we make and actions we take become so antithetical to our own self-interests it would make a schizophrenic do a double take.

Reason packs its bags and goes off on a long vacation, common sense has long since left the building, and all we have left is blind rage, anger at anyone and everyone, all because it’s far easier finding someone else to blame for our bad choices and poor decisions than it is to own up to the fact that we are directly responsible for where we find ourselves at any given moment in life.

We look upon the whole of humanity today and realize a vast swath of it is much like the Nebuchadnezzar of old sans the grass eating and sleeping out in the woods. Madness has overtaken men and women of all ages, social standing, and aptitudes, so much so that their singular purpose in life is their gut and their groin.

Hedonism has become the religion of the day, and for the sake of convenience thousands of innocents are slaughtered upon its altars daily, while the gullible and easily culled swallow the ‘choice’ pill as though it has become acceptable in the eyes of both God and men to choose murder on a whim, or because bringing a life into the world would conflict with your plans for the summer.

We are witnessing the beginning of the end, and most of us don’t even know it. What is left but judgment when the whole of man has become but brute beasts who no longer know the meaning of dignity, humanity, or holiness, and whose only god is the reflection staring back at them in the mirror?

Even those who have for long and long cried ‘mercy’ are grudgingly beginning to acknowledge that God’s judgment is justified, deserved, and necessary.  

With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.