Most people claiming to be enlightened or spiritual have little to show.  The connection to sanity that people claim in the natural realms is equally meagre.  That reality does not restrain people from confusing the endowments of the primary realms of life. A lot of talk has dominated the media and the back rooms of evangelical Christianity as well as the extreme and controversial corners about Christian government, or to be more precise, Christian nations and countries. In the countries that used to be majority Christian people have turned to pseudo science and outright fascist tyranny. The iconic Christian graces and powers such as compassion, forgiveness, and love are admittedly absent from civic life.

The sources and strongholds of racism and injustice

Away from the cameras and just out of reach of the probing questions of reporters many countries continue predatory practices against their populations by means of unequal housing policy, deliberate financial mazes, and specialized clubs. Typically, faith in God has become stereotypical craziness while self-help books, technology solutions and denial of known facts are king.

Who would have thought that in the 21st century people would be hooked on believing that telling yourself something over and over again actually causes it to happen. That kind of power is a caricature of the divine power to create, the kind of power indicated in God’s “Let there be”. If it is true that all humans have the power to create the conditions they want by thinking about them we must carefully distinguish between spontaneous outcomes such as wounds healing and bogus atonement for physical healing, such as we hear repeatedly in the uninformed mantra “by his stripes we are healed”.

Justice is mercy and grace

There is no government offering to forgive trespassers seventy times seven trespasses. Neither right wing irreligious nor extremist religious governments have risen to the cause of caring for all citizens without regard to rank, kindred or wealth. Not one! The so-called Christian morality of European nations is a thirteen dollar bill, and the Islamic republics can keep returning to the dried up well of Arab jurisprudence as often as they wish. The primary interests of God and kings diverge without ambiguity.

“It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, But the glory of kings is to search out a matter.”

Proverbs 25:2, NASB

Now that we have popularized the notion that civic governments carry a sword to punish wrongdoing there is no backtracking to protect people, both the innocent and the guilty from public exposure and from the highly probable miscarriages of justice. If people could only see the wheels of justice in the direction of government officials who misuse their powers and oppress citizens we might begin to see the first rays of the sunlight of grace. That, sadly, is not the priority of any government on the planet.

And the Lord said, “Who then is the faithful and sensible steward, whom his master will put in charge of his servants, to give them their rations at the proper time? “Blessed is that slave whom his master finds so doing when he comes.” (Luke 12:42-43, NASB)

People who do not believe that God has finished his atoning work and guarantees a safe arrival in glory will agitate for a host of things believers need to achieve in order to be ready when the Lord Christ comes in glory. This includes being sinless. Most Christians will tell you that they are trying to be without sin, and that they can achieve a sinless condition by avoiding sin, especially as sin is defined in the Sinai Covenant. They will never acknowledge five incontrovertible facts, and will never be happy and ready when the Lord comes.

Christ’s righteousness cannot be measured by check mark

• Sinless status is achieved by God’s gift of pardon
• The blood that makes sin remission possible was shed once for all
• The Helper – the Holy Spirit – does not fail to guide into all truth
• Since the Helper also seals the elect loss of eternal life is unconscionable
• SINLESS STATUS is the same as RIGHTEOUSNESS, and an irrevocable gift, like the predestination, the call, the justification, the glorification.

Who dares bring a charge?

“Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.”

Romans 8:33-34

No one is justified on the basis of how many laws they have complied with. People are not justified because they complied with any set of moral or ritual demands. Let us face the fact that believers pass from judgment to life, and they cannot be the subject of an indictment because of the force of the justification.

“Ready when he comes” focuses on the way people relate to those in their care: giving (their peers and charges) rations at the proper time. This is the basis of the BLESSEDNESS in which that slave will be found when his master comes.” (Luke 12:42-43)

There are reports that a convoy is heading to Queen’s Park, which brings to mind that despicable “Freedom Convoy” that disrupted life in Ottawa in recent memory, fueled and supported by conservative politicians, right-wing pundits and visionaries, and an alliance of churches. I think I have the nail for the vampire’s coffin. All those politicians who see people as nothing but workers are neo-slave masters, squeezing the blood from people to fuel the appetite of the rich and influential. Convoy solutions smell and sound bad; they cannot be mistaken for progressive and caring policies.

Say it isn’t so

4) Behold, the pay of the laborers who mowed your fields, and which has been withheld by you, cries out against you; and the outcry of those who did the harvesting has reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. 5) You have lived luxuriously on the earth and led a life of wanton pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.” (James 5:4-5, NASB)

People in the grip of the love of money will keep pretending that they are doing themselves and a society a favour. Wealthy people have never saved the world and never will, even though individuals like Bill Gates and more than a few other philanthropists have staked out a place in the history books. Governments and political parties who declare themselves on the side of the rich and influential will never be credited for raising all the people out of poverty. They do not have the conscience or common sense. All they can see is a con. Conservatives fail to win elections and all they do is deconstruct the sitting government into a den of thieves and and plot the end of parliament and fresh elections. Cons, convoys, and competition kill.

Whatever became of answers like, “Yes” to the question “Are you an incorrigible liar?” If you think that your obedience to a set of regulations and your observation of a festival or holy day put you above the class of sinners you will have no short answers, for the simple reason that you need to tell five or six stories to be transparent.

But let your statement be, ‘Yes, yes’ or ‘No, no’; anything beyond these is of evil. (Matthew 5:37, NASB)

One of the most absurd sayings that’s been circulating now for practically centuries is the idea of how much God loves people or how much Jesus loves the sinner, to be specific.  Have you recently asked a Christian to love a sinner and observed his or her response?  The primary tenet of Christianity the recognition that God is love.  How then can we repeatedly talk about how much God loves? Can God love a little or a lot?  Then there is the lunatic fringe insisting that love for God, already acknowledged as a smokescreen when people do not love their neighbours, is exemplified by unwavering obedience to elementary principles of biological life and by an obsession with holy things.  When all the religious people abandon everything but philanthropy we will be closer to recognizing that God’s love is immeasurable and accessible to few individuals.