Value

 It has become a Western tradition that the day after we all sit down and share what we are thankful for, we wake up early in the morning and go bludgeon strangers for the privilege of accumulating more stuff we don’t need for an imagined discount.

No, I will not be joining in the ruckus. I can live without an elbow to the face or a fist to the back of my head. When I was younger, I watched the local news for the highlights at the end of the night, but with each passing year, it became sadder rather than funnier. At some point, I stopped.

Unless something gruesome happens, like an elderly man in a mobility scooter getting trampled because people needed their worthless made-in-china plastics, it’s just another day. Even that wouldn’t shock us anymore; I don’t think. We’ve become callous to these things, and what’s worse, the next generation will be more callous still.

What a society values says a lot about where it’s headed. What it fails to value is also very telling, and try as we might to think ourselves noble and wholesome, a nation at peak morality and virtue, the fact that prominent people were giddy about sharing that on Thanksgiving they were thankful for abortions yesterday says otherwise.

Who are you to judge? That’s the last defense of an addled mind that has no argument for the position they’ve superglued themselves to. You confuse the difference between observing and judging, but that’s not surprising. It’s hard to have a debate with individuals whose only purpose is to win at all costs. It doesn’t matter that they have to make up statistics, lie, obfuscate, and pretend as though a human being is just a clump of cells with fingers and toes and a face. Winning is paramount. Winning is all that matters.

What doesn’t help the situation is that, for the most part, the modern-day church is thin-skinned and craves the world’s acceptance. We care what they think, and time and again, men of renown and gravitas whom the church looked up to betray Christ so that they could rub elbows with the godless.

How many so-called pastors betrayed the foundational tenets of the faith so that they could sit across from Oprah and push their latest sub-par book?   

It’s pointless putting together a list because it grows daily and would become a constant reminder of how so many people pay God lip service and nothing more. A child of God knows how to assign value. A child of God likewise knows what to value. If what you value is askew and not commensurate with being a son or daughter of the Almighty, then somewhere along the way, the world had its way, and you now love what God hates and hate what God loves.

That you can separate your worship of God and your values is a lie hoisted upon the church to great success. Simply put, if you say you love God and can still support the murder of innocents with a straight face, you’re lying to yourself. Not about supporting the murder of innocents but about being a child of God.

Our journey with God is transformative. It must be. By its very definition, to be born again is to be made new, to receive a new mind, heart, desires, and purpose. If the only thing that has changed in your life is that you now kick ten percent to the church, all you’ve done is commit to kicking ten percent to the church.

I’m sure certain shepherds are more than happy with the arrangement, sort of like people who buy gym memberships and never go. As long as the check clears, my dear, they could care less if you’ve put on fifty pounds and developed a heart murmur since joining their gym.

If this is the case, one wonders whether they love money more than they love souls. If, indeed, money is preferred over souls, what lengths will such men go to in order to protect their income stream? What lies will they be willing to tell, and how far afield would they be willing to lead the unassuming? All worthwhile questions, to be sure.  

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.