It’s no surprise that those who are lovers of themselves, proud, blasphemers, unholy, unloving, and without self-control are likewise brutal and despisers of good. Few people in the world can be more savage and vicious than a believer whose preconceived notions you’ve challenged in some form or fashion. It’s not that they attempt to debate the topic in question or present their side and allow for an opposing view; they believe what they believe, and if you dare say otherwise, even if you have the Biblical foundation to do so and their opinion is antithetical to scripture, Ichabod to you.
While we’re Ichaboding each other over wearing a wedding band
is a salvific issue and the determining factor as to whether you will hear “well
done” or “depart from Me,” the enemy is hard at work dismantling the church brick
by brick from within.
I’ve always been a reader. Ever since I learned to read in English,
I was constantly on the hunt for a book I could get my hands on. The only
caveat is that it had to be cheap. There was a local run-down thrift store in
our neighborhood, and although the things they had on offer looked like the
contents of a homeless person’s garbage bag, they did have a bin of five-cent
books that I’d riffle through every couple of weeks. It was on such an occasion
that I picked up a book called The Manchurian Candidate for no other reason
than it was the cleanest book in the bin, and none of the pages stuck together.
If you’ve never read it, it’s a novel about the highborn son
of a political family who gets brainwashed by communists to be an unwitting
assassin. What’s happening in many places passing for seminaries today is on par.
The only difference is that it’s not Communists doing the brainwashing but
individuals whose singular function is to muddy the waters, detract from the supremacy
of Christ and use all manner of tertiary issues as wedges to divide and
separate the household of faith.
It’s easy to spot those who are among us but not of us. When
they can’t win the argument on the merits, when they can’t point to the Bible
and say I believe what I believe because it says so in the Word, they revert to
personal ad hominem attacks and pivot, shifting the discussion to something
other than the original topic. They can’t defend their position biblically, so
they resort to nitpicking the delivery or focusing on appearance, all to save
face and not have to admit that they might have been wrong.
When you refuse to see it their way or challenge their
perception of something, all the niceties evaporate, and the fake smiles disappear,
only to be replaced with sneers and eye rolls. If you doubt that believers can
be brutal, all one needs to do is look back on church history to see what some
supposed believers did to other believers because they disagreed on some
doctrinal point or another. If having someone burned at the stake isn’t
considered brutal, then I don’t know what is.
Yes, believers, brothers, and sisters with whom you broke
bread and had fellowship can become brutal to the point of calling for your
demise if the truth of the gospel is no longer their ideal but rather some
tertiary issue to which they’ve glommed on and are willing to defend at all
costs.
If you think being shunned by a community or your own family
is the pinnacle of brutality, you’re blessed because you’ve been spared the horror
of some of the things that go on in certain churches. Nothing is off-limits
when it comes to protecting the golden goose of a well-oiled money-generating
machine the likes of which some churches have become, whether it’s character
assassination, underhanded dealings, threats, lawsuits, smear campaigns, and
even less savory things that men will resort to in their zeal.
Although Jesus said that no one is good but One, and that is
God, and Paul echoed the statement by reminding the Romans that there is none
righteous, this does not mean that we cannot define good or cannot discern the
difference between good and evil.
Insisting that we cannot know what good is because no one is
good is a copout and a justification for accepting and tolerating things we
know to be demonstrably evil. Paul warns that those of the last days' church
will be despisers of good, and as though the signs weren’t already plentiful,
this would be another sign of the times.
The clearest example of this, and one that is objectively
undeniable, is the push by leaders and pastors of various denominations to
embrace the murder of the innocent via abortion and seeing nothing wrong or
evil in the practice thereof. This is the very definition of men being
despisers of good, and it’s not limited to this one thing either.
When men are unholy, they are predisposed to despise the
good, making allowances for it, practicing it, encouraging it, validating it,
and celebrating it. Their embracing of evil is always couched in some
delusional notion of love, and they are quick to lash out against anyone who
refuses to go along or agree with their ideology.
Ask anyone with a modicum of morals, ethics, values, or
empathy, regardless of religious leaning, if it’s okay to murder a baby, and
they will say no without delay or having to consider the question. The same
cannot be said of many currently sitting in pulpits pretending to be
ambassadors of Christ and teachers of the ways of God.
This isn’t some future event at some future time but
something the household of faith is currently contending with. Though few might
want to acknowledge it, the enemy is gaining ground, and more and more
spiritual leaders acquiesce to such evils because their purpose is not the
truth but rather their own material successes and earthly comforts.
Even though Jesus said we would be hated for His name’s sake,
many today are doing their best to avoid being hated. If being a despiser of
good is a prerequisite for being loved by the world, so be it. That countless
thousands continue to follow these men’s teachings is just as troubling as the
fact that such men have risen to such prominent positions within the church.
To make matters worse, these selfsame despisers of good
attack those defending it with all the vitriol they can muster, whether it’s
because they don’t want to be exposed for the vapid ghouls that they are or
because they want to silence any opposition to their narrative.
Being aware that such individuals exist within the church
prevents us from being surprised by their attacks or by what they say and do.
Disheartening as it might be to be attacked by those you assumed would be on
your side, it shouldn’t come as a surprise.
Jude 4, “For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long
ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of
our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ.”
How they were able to creep in unnoticed is yet another
vexing question we must ponder because this presupposes that those tasked with
watching for the wolves that would come to tear the sheep asunder weren’t doing
their duty and failed in their mission. By any metric, the modern-day church is
a mess, yet this selfsame church insists they will be the means by which great
revival will sweep the world from sea to shining sea. Make it make sense.
With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea, Jr.
Posted on 30 July 2024 | 11:25 am
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