I’ve been watching for some time, looking for Christians to speak out about Mr. Herman Cain. Why?
This man presents himself as a Minister of Christ’s Church, a leader of God’s people. He also has declared himself a prophet, one who has conversations with God. God told him, he claims, to run for president. Whether he takes the label of prophet is irrelevant. His claims identify him as such.
I regularly listen to American Evangelical leaders blast
European morality and the loose morals of their society. Admittedly Europe is
not as strict when it comes to sexual morality.
Of course loud obese Americans gobbling up slave produced
cheap plastic goods and dropping bombs all over the world, (in many cases
claiming God has all but directed them to do so)…don’t carry a lot of moral
authority in Europe either. I guess from their perspective a topless beach is
less of a big deal than blood-soaked babies.
The American Church is permeated with scandal and sin. While
I’m certainly not advocating Wesleyan Perfectionism, I’m suggesting there’s
something seriously wrong with the American Church.
Many Worldview teachers look with dismay at the statistics.
The American Church doesn’t really live or even think any differently than the
hordes of lost people that surround them. There is very little in the way of
conscious thought-through antithesis. You can pretty much take any sin and find
the Church is just as permeated with it as the rest of society.
It’s because they haven’t been taught….is what we frequently
hear. If we can just get these people to learn the Biblical Worldview
concerning, family, politics, economics and so forth…the Church will change.
I would suggest the majority of these people probably aren’t
Christians to begin with. The Gospel has been so perverted by various forms of
Consumerism and Easy Believism that there are very few who can even begin to
elaborate the basics. Words like Justification and Atonement are pretty foreign
to most Evangelicals.
And the concept of Authority is patently absent. We see it
with the flood of pagan ideas and syncretism entering the Church and we see it
in the loss of any concept of delineation or discipline. We know of many
Churches in our community tolerating open sin, in some cases spouses divorcing
and without missing a beat taking up with someone else in the congregation…and
in some cases before the actual divorce (whether right or wrong) is actually
completed. We have open adultery in the Church. And I’m not talking about the
Mainline United Methodist and Presbyterian (PCUSA) congregations. They’ve had
cohabitors and others openly attending for years.
Evangelicals seem quite eager to apply Old Testament Law to the
polity of the United States. So what about Herman Cain? Deuteronomy 18 is
pretty clear concerning the prophet who speaks in God’s name and is proven
false. I’m not advocating for Old Covenant law to be applied to our nation, but
many Evangelicals, even those who aren’t avowed Theonomists, make this appeal.
Why isn’t any one calling him out and denouncing him for what he is….A False
Prophet?
Regarding the adultery charges…well, they’re certainly not
proven but I don’t think too many people are impressed with a man who was
financially supporting ‘a female friend’ for years without telling his wife. I
guess what I’m saying at this point is…I don’t think there’s really anyone who
doesn’t think Cain is pretty shady and less than faithful to his wife.
Now in the Church we have forgiveness…of course there hasn’t
been a lot of honesty or repentance has there? We can forgive…but that hardly
means that we just forget and allow someone like this to press on with their
lies and agenda.
I must forgive an employee who steals from me. But am I
obligated to keep him in my employ? Is part of forgiveness allowing him to
continue working in my store or warehouse, or if I work in other people’s homes…do
I allow him to have other opportunities to steal from customers/clients?
When it comes to Cain, Gingrich or Bristol Palin, the Church
is very forgiving. Palin was lauded for her decision to ‘keep’ her
out-of-wedlock child. What a pro-life statement.
If Chelsea Clinton had turned up pregnant during the Clinton
years, we would have heard endless dronings by the Dobsonites about the lack of
moral character in the White House and the message this sends to the youth. But
with Bristol Palin, her sin and the utter disarray of her mother’s lifestyle
become…a message of life.
Gingrich the arch-hypocrite is forgiven, but Mitterrand of
France is lambasted because he simply had his mistress and didn’t care.
Of course in the United States our leaders have long been
notorious for their private misdeeds…notorious that is to those who are paying
attention and who bother to read.
Those who consume mass media usually have no idea, for in
our system the supposed ‘liberal’ media usually protects the establishment
figures unless they make a grievous public error or if it’s something that
cannot be hid, because other media outlets are reporting it. Thankfully our media
landscape is changing…there’s more chaos, but also more truth.
Europeans tend to be a little bit more mature about these
things. Don’t misunderstand me…I’m not saying it’s mature to accept sin. I’m
talking about their society in general. They’re less inclined to play these
games and try and maintain the façade that we do in America. The majority
non-Christian Europeans seem to have a better and more honest understanding of
human nature than the ‘Christian’ citizens of America. The United States has
this narrative about its moral standing and leadership in the world. Adulterous
leaders don’t look good raising the flag atop the Shining City on the Hill.
All of this works together to shape a consumerist media that
in the past (before Clinton) wouldn’t report on the adulterous affairs of American
Presidents. Candidates for office are not granted the same protection as those
who are actually wielding power.
We have this kind of mythic narrative about our country and
cultural Christianity (Sacralism) is wed to our politics. I’ve met so many
Baptists who just loved George Bush while there were numerous Mainline United
Methodists (like Bush) living in the same town (many of them Republican) that
they would have nothing to do with. In fact these same Baptists found them to
be spiritually repugnant and not Christian at all. They seemed to miss the fact
that if Bush was living in their town, that’s where he would go to Church, not
their Independent Fundamental Baptist congregation.
What is it? Blinded by celebrity? Majesty? Why do hard-line
fundamentalists give a blank check to theologically dubious and morally loose
characters like the Bush’s and Reagan…and in many recent cases Herman Cain?
Aside from all this…what if a Democrat in the style of Jim
Wallis or Tony Campolo stood up and said, “God told me to run for president. I
was like Moses, I didn’t want to lead, I didn’t want to speak, but He told me
to?”
There would be a loud and very rabid denunciation of this,
and rightly so.
But with Herman Cain, I heard very little. Because of his
politics this arch-heretic false prophet gets a free pass.
It’s very telling about the state of the church and where
people’s hearts are at. That is to say, what really matters to them, where
their true affections are directed.
Let’s say for a moment I was Charismatic in my concept of
Divine Authority and I accepted George Bush’s claim about God wanting him to
run for president. Seemingly it was vindicated because he won.
But what about Herman Cain? His prophecy was obviously
false! He’s obviously NOT supposed to be president. He just heard wrong? Well,
it’s a little more serious than that. What if people believed him and voted for
him because they thought…well, God told him so, so that’s what I’m SUPPOSED to
do?
There is great evil at work within the Church. The Church
does not know its right hand from its left and certainly knows very little
about the Lord it purports to serve. And we’ve reached a point that you can’t
talk about these things. If you raise them, all people hear is…you’re
pro-Obama. I couldn’t care less about Barack Obama. He’s just yet another
Caesar that lies, cheats, steals, bombs, and deceives.
But the Church isn’t clamouring after Obama. They are
clamouring after a bunch of people that are just as bad, in fact worse, because
they do it with Christ on their lips or claiming to be speaking for the God of
Holy Writ.
Here is our war. What’s happening today is like the United
States invading Madagascar instead of Normandy in 1944. Wrong war, wrong enemy,
wrong tactics and so forth. The enemy is in the camp, within the walls. The
watchmen…they’ve not only not done their job…they’re agents of the enemy. They’ve
opened the gates.
Some have undoubtedly dismissed him because he is part of
the ‘Black’ Church. American Evangelicals have proven quite schizophrenic in
this regard.
Up until the late 1990’s, white Evangelicals were pretty
universal in their denunciation of the ‘Black’ church. Martin Luther King was a
Marxist and an adulterer. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton were objects of scorn.
The Civil Rights era was tied in with the anti-American liberalism of Lyndon
Johnson and the anti-War movement.
But then suddenly Chuck Colson and others change the
narrative…and a decade later Christian leaders and people like Glenn Beck are
trying to ‘claim’ the Civil Rights movement as something Christian, something
akin to what they are about. Anything perceived as good or positive has to be claimed by the Dominionist narrative. Unbelievers can't do good things. So no matter what the truth is...they're Christian.
Martin Luther King is suddenly a hero and Jesse Jackson and Sharpton…they become some kind of deviationists who lost the pure vision. They act like Martin Luther King were he alive would be working for FOX news.
Martin Luther King is suddenly a hero and Jesse Jackson and Sharpton…they become some kind of deviationists who lost the pure vision. They act like Martin Luther King were he alive would be working for FOX news.
I’m a little confused. While I can socially admire someone
like Martin Luther King…the social values he stood for…I cannot stand with his
theology. Racism is incompatible with Christianity, but so is theological
liberalism that denies the Divine Authorship of the Bible. King was morally
loose. But since I’m not buying into the Sacralist narrative, I can look at
someone like King and say very good for society…but very bad for the Church.
I can look at someone like Gandhi and admire him and yet reject
his religious ideas. But his social ideas flowed from his Hinduism some might
say. Not exactly. Mainstream Hinduism’s caste system was hardly compatible with
his ideas. Although there are certainly non-Brahmanic strains within Hinduism
that support his ideas. Nevertheless what I find appealing is that a pagan
stood against a Christian Sacralist Empire and shamed it into acquiescence.
Sacralist White Anglo-Saxon Protestant American Christianity
was shamed by the people it had formerly enslaved.
But imagine Tories going to India and trying to claim they
stood with Gandhi? The same is happening today with Colson, Beck and the
African-American community.
But then when someone like Cain comes along and spews forth
such blatant quackery…well, that’s the ‘Black’ church and they’ve got some
theological problems. Indeed they do. It’s very sad. The African-American
Churches in the United States have largely lost the gospel. Politics, the
post-slave narrative, and self-help are their gospel in most cases.
We have a confused mess. Some perhaps wouldn’t want to call
out Cain as a false prophet out of fear of being labeled racist. Others as I’m
trying to say would at this point distance themselves from the theology of the
Black Church…except when it is politically convenient to do otherwise.
Forgive this meandering ramble, but maybe you see that
Biblical Truth has nothing do with how American Christians deal with these
issues. It’s all about politics and power. And because of it…we tolerate false
prophets in the camp.
My 9 year old son put it best… “He should go back to making
pizza!”