The Last Days Of The Church XIX

 The only type of love the church doesn’t seem to be in short supply of is eros, and that’s not really love; it’s more akin to lust. As far as agape, philia, or storge, those are getting hard to find, and harder still to find them with any type of consistency. It’s easy enough to drone on about how we love everybody, even about how we love love, but words are meaningless when there is no action undergirding them and when, if there are any to be had, the actions themselves do not spring forth out of love.

We’ve all seen the busybodies handing out bracelets to starving homeless people, thinking themselves magnanimous, and telling anyone within earshot how good and noble they are even though the root of their largely pointless act is to highlight their own goodness. Likely, we’ve also all had similar reactions to it. You gave someone who needs a meal a piece of string, and it was for no other reason than to emphasize your own graciousness. Three bracelets and six thousand photos later, they can tell the world how good of a person they are for the next decade.

If someone is hungry, feed them. If someone is thirsty, give them a drink, even if they happen to be your enemy. Sending warm thoughts and positive vibes, as has become the nomenclature of our modern day, will not fill someone’s belly or keep them warm in the cold nights of winter.

When we first arrived in America, we didn’t have much. Truth be known, we didn’t have anything other than the green shag carpet that came with the apartment we were brought to, but even in those early days when my grandfather and I would go dumpster diving for aluminum cans so we could turn them in to buy a loaf of bread and some milk, no one left our home without being fed. Somehow, there was always enough, even though, on occasion, the soup was more water than broth, or the crepe filling as nothing more than a dollop of honey or a bit of strawberry jam from a jar that was so thoroughly scraped one wondered if there were glass shards somewhere in the mix.

You know you’re poor when other immigrant families show up at your door with blocks of government cheese. We were that kind of poor, yet every time, without fail, if someone visited, they’d sit down for a meal.

Given all the other things that will be vying for supremacy within the church during the last days, why is men being unloving one of the saddest and most tragic ones? Because of how the Word defines love and what the absence of love implies.

1 Corinthians 13:1-3, “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.”

At the core of all we do, there must be love. The motivation, the driving force, the impetus, and the purpose must be tethered in love. Otherwise, it is all for naught. You can speak with tongues of men and angels, prophesy, have faith, and bestow all your goods to feed the poor, but if love is not the spring from where it flows, it is pointless and profits nothing.

Because the men of the last days will be unloving, using, abusing, and exploiting their fellow man will be par for the course, something so often practiced as to become normal and expected.

Titus 1:10-11, “For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, especially they of the circumcision: whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre’s sake.”

The intent of the heart matters. Some men teach what they ought not for filthy lucre’s sake, thinking nothing of the souls they hurt, damage, or lead to perdition. All that matters is the bottom line, and they’re more than willing to use the notion of love as a foil in order to achieve their ends but never have a genuine and authentic love.

It’s not as though the early church didn’t have to deal with those who saw the household of faith as an opportunity for profit or the unloving in their midst, but what were once exceptions have now become commonplace and emblematic of the times we are living in. What Paul says regarding the unruly, vain talkers and deceivers isn’t that they should be ignored, placated, or otherwise allowed to continue in their deception but that they must be stopped.

On its face, Paul’s counsel doesn’t seem very loving. What do you mean they must be stopped? Can’t we all just get along, as Rodney King once famously queried? Can’t we just agree to disagree and leave it at that? The short answer is no. The answer is no because those who would teach something other than the truth of Scripture are not innocuous, harmless, or inoffensive. They subvert whole houses and teach things which they ought not for filthy lucre’s sake and so must be called out.

Since birds of a feather often flock together, these men whom Paul warns of have decided to capitalize on their shared penchant for fleecing the flock and use each other for what amounts to a peer review of their heretical teaching, getting two thumps up from their contemporaries and doing likewise for them. They preach each other’s pulpits, talking each other up to the heavens and beyond and telling the sheep of each respective church how blessed and lucky they are to have such a forward-thinking and visionary shepherd leading them. It’s all a big con, and the sheep are starting to notice.

It doesn’t matter if a thousand men approve of something if the Bible doesn’t. It doesn’t matter how many well-known names lend their support and validate something if the God of the universe stands against it.

We are living in an unprecedented time when many believers are suffering some sort of spiritual Stockholm syndrome, defending their abusers, and turning a blind eye to the inconsistency of their walk. As more stories come out of spiritual leaders who’ve been in sin and rebellion for decades yet somehow still retained their position within the body, one can’t help but wonder how many people turned a blind eye or aided and abated the practices because they deemed the individual more important than the truth.

It’s undeniable that celebrity culture is alive and well in the church, and those whose intent is not pure and who possess no love for the household of faith in their hearts have capitalized on the trend to the utmost.

But you don’t get it. He’s so special, so anointed, so mightily used of God that God Himself gave him a hall pass. Says who? Not God. God established the standard of what a servant who is called into leadership must live up to, and if today’s pastors, evangelists, and self-titled men of God were held to that standard, there would be many a church with empty pulpits. To say there would be a shortage of qualified pastors is an understatement. However, perhaps that’s what’s needed in order to salvage what remains of the modern-day church.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.