Daily Lesson for September 15, 2017

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Philippians chapter 3 verses 1 through 7:

If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more:5circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; 6as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. 7 Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.

And Matthew 3 verses 7 through 9:

7 But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8Bear fruit worthy of repentance. 9Do not presume to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our ancestor”; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.

Aside from the loss of an innocent life, the most depressing thing we saw in Charlottesville earlier this summer was the large number of white Millennial men who constituted the bulk of the white nationalists marching by torch-light on the campus of the University of Virginia.

Seeing the young faces in the photographs and videos, a friend commented on it being a reflection of the church's inability to connect with this younger generation.

I don't know whether or not those who were marching for a white culture were ever exposed to church, and if so what kind of things they heard preached there. They may have simply not connected with the church, or they may have had all their prejudices confirmed by the churches, or they may have rejected the church.  I don't know. 

What I do know is this: the church I believe in, the true church of Jesus Christ, is just as against white supremacy today as it was against Pharisaic  supremacy in the first century or Aryan supremacy in the last. The true church of Jesus Christ has to be morally clear in its teachings on this and active in its practice.  In Christ, "there is neither Jew nor Gentile," (Galatians 3:28).  As Paul says, all our other identities we have come to regard as "loss", or another translation says "rubbish", because of Christ. Period. 

That's about as straightforward as it gets. And we need to be straightforward about it, lest sympathy for the devil seduce us into tolerating the intolerable.