The Last Days Of The Church XXXIV

 Few things surprise me anymore. Some make me sad, others disappointed, frustrated, and disillusioned, but as far as surprise is concerned, that left town a while back, never to return. Whenever I get an e-mail or a text from a friend that starts out, “Can you believe this just happened?” My first reaction is yes, yes, I can.

The only thing that consistently surprises me is that Christians are still surprised at how far evil has been allowed to proceed and how vile man has become. Did we expect the world to be righteous when those who ought to be righteous want nothing to do with it? Did we expect the godless to exhibit godliness when fewer and fewer churches are doing it with each passing day?

The law of cause and effect will have its say whether we want it to or not, and when the church abandoned godliness in lieu of popularity and no longer held to the standard of righteousness, the world’s descent into the abyss became all the more accelerated. Even the more rationally minded among the godless have grudgingly admitted that Christianity is a force for good and a buoy for practical morality. While they have not embraced the uniquely salvific nature of faith in Christ, they admit that a Christian nation is, by default, a more moral nation than one in which agnosticism or outright atheism reigns.

When the household of faith ceases to be the buffer and resistance to darkness and sin, there is nothing to keep it in check or slow its velocity. It grows and spreads unbidden, and the level of perverse and hedonistic practices escalates at breakneck speed. The church is not without fault for the condition the world finds itself in because rather than pull those of the world out of the darkness, the church itself has been pulled down into it. One compromise begat another, one omission gave birth to a dozen, and each new act of rebellion, disobedience, or rejection of the truth brought us ever closer to the edge of the precipice.

The only way to retain the peace of the Lord throughout this dark time of mockery and hedonism, the only way to remain joyful and unaffected by the goings-on of the godless, is to draw ever closer to Christ. When the world is falling apart, a believer’s reaction should be to cling ever tighter to Jesus.

Learning is not a purpose in and of itself. We’re starting to learn that the hard way as a society with the advent of permanent students well into their forties who go from one degree to another, amassing them like trading cards but never applying what they learn or taking the things they’ve learned and being able to earn a living with them.

They’ll be the first to tell you that they’re college graduates, have a master’s or a bachelor’s in this or that pointless major, whether political science, women’s studies, or the more abstract and absurd diplomas being offered by money-generating, and indoctrinating enterprises masquerading as higher education. I’m sure spending the last decade in classrooms was a boon for your ego, but can you snake a drain?

While one might not set out to deflate their exuberance at having obtained a worthless piece of paper at the cost of a lifetime’s worth of debt, if anyone dares to ask what kind of job they could get with their degree in the real world, you see their pallor change, and their eyes lose their spark. Our society has even gone so far as to create meaningless jobs just to cater to people with no marketable skills. You’re an influencer? You don’t say. Whom exactly are you influencing, and for what purpose? Trying to sell mascara and lipstick to impressionable teenagers doesn’t make you an entrepreneur. It makes you a modern-day snake oil salesman, and not even that, because at least the snake oil salesmen of old made their own product.

If you’re always learning but your spiritual man never grows, if you’re ever learning but what you’ve learned doesn’t fuel your desire to draw ever closer to Jesus, whatever it is that you’ve learned, however revelatory or fanciful, it has not brought you to the knowledge of the truth.

We can try to be cagey and pretend as though we’re an iteration of Pilate asking what truth is, but Jesus already told us He was the truth, along with the way and the life. Christ is truth; therefore, whatever teaching, doctrine, or theological bend does not lead you to Jesus, it is not leading you to truth. This realization should inspire us to seek the knowledge of truth, as it is the key to transformation.

Someone who’s always learning but never comes to the knowledge of the truth is akin to someone who goes on a journey without ever reaching their destination. In order to reach a destination you must first have a destination in mind. We learn in order to grow in God, not to amass knowledge. We learn to better understand the dynamics of our relationship with God and be ever more in fellowship with Him.

Coming to the knowledge of truth goes beyond knowing who Jesus is and translates into living for Him, in Him, through Him, and by Him. There are a myriad of people walking around with so much information that they could fill an encyclopedia but who have never taken the necessary steps to actively serve Jesus.

Theory and practice are, by definition, different. You can know the theory without putting it into practice, and all you’ll have is the knowledge of how to accomplish something without ever accomplishing it.

Every husky person in the world knows how to lose weight. It’s not rocket science or something so ethereal that you need a guru to tell you to eat less and exercise more, but for the most part, the knowledge doesn’t translate into practice, and so nothing ever changes.

Once we come to the knowledge of truth, it is incumbent upon us to live it. Otherwise, it’s a fruitless exercise that will do nothing to keep us and offer us hope when we need it most. Our Christian walk cannot be a passive endeavor. Our encounter with Jesus must not be merely informative; it must be transformative. We can’t just come to the knowledge of Jesus being the only begotten Son of God who lived and died and rose again that we might be reconciled to the Father; we must humble ourselves, repent, and be washed clean by His blood, renewed in mind, heart, action, and intent, picking up our crosses daily and following after Him.

Hollow, empty godliness, or a form thereof, places no restrictions or demands on the individual. There is no stirring of the heart toward repentance and no desire to grow more thoroughly in Jesus. It amounts to nothing more than mimicry, pretending to be something we’re not for those few hours per week we congregate, come together, and fellowship. There is no substantive change in the life of the individual who has but a form of godliness, nor is there a constant yearning for more of God in their lives.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.