GOD-DAMNED HYPOCRITES - PART 3
RECOGNISING
SIN
The first five Commandments are considered irrelevant in modern society because so few of us actually believe in God or the message of the Holy Bible. In recent times there has been a huge growth in the number of people in China who have adopted Christianity and the Protestant work ethic even as Western society moves away from the religion, and that Chinese society is improving both morally and economically while our society appears to be doing the opposite. Given the disobedience of the so-called Christian West it seems almost Biblical that we have lost God’s blessing by turning away from Him. You only need pay attention to what’s going on in our society to see we have become a Godless.
There are many different sins and some of them are quite obvious. The Ten Commandments (Exodus 20: 1-17) are a good start and indicate what God intended. They also demonstrate the difficulty of attempting to attain salvation without the intervention of Jesus Christ. However, there are also a number of other sins that are not so easy to notice, but which can be recognised if you use the Bible as a guide; one of these is the sin of human desire which blinds you to what God wants, a very difficult one to spot without others making you aware of its presence.
How many times have people fallen into the trap of rejecting, betraying, or otherwise harming and inflicting injustice upon those who simply deliver messages? It happened to Christ and His apostles when they tried to lead people back to God, and it still happens to Christians who try to do what is right today, using the Bible to prove their point in an attempt to help those who claim to be Christians avoid sinful behaviours. Even in the Catholic Church, the victims of corrupted Priests are persecuted and victimised over and over again by being branded as liars for speaking out, their very suffering denied even as the sins that brutalised them are escalated by the offender and their sycophants through a lack of repentance.
Why
do people continue to sin in this manner? Why do others, who should be helping
put an end to such sin, deny what is happening and, in so doing, enable the
perpetrators and even support their corruption? In some cases it is because
they do not want to admit what could be happening. Sometimes it is because they
do not want to get involved or be persecuted for speaking out. Sometimes it is
because they are happy with the way things are and prefer to surround themselves
with those who tell them what they want to hear. In any case, their response is
based on self-centred desire rather than what God wants.
It may seem odd to outsiders, but many people can
commit even the most disturbing of crimes and continue to believe themselves
Christians. Society itself is even designed to enable the worst excesses of
individuals because even from the moment Moses came down from the mountain with
the Ten Commandments, those in positions of authority began to create new laws
to circumvent them. Modern society has far too many of these laws, the kind made
to undermine the intent of the original ten, and these are used to satisfy the
very self-centred desires of those with money and the ability to influence
others to obtain the outcome they want, denying justice to their victims.
Sin can be recognised as vile and selfish human desires, the kind that are contrary to what God wants and, therefore, contrary to the duties of a Christian. It is not so easy, then, to be a Christian. The temptation of choosing self-centred human desires before the will of God is very difficult to overcome. Christ often referred to money and sin in such a manner that it could be considered, quite literally, that earthly wealth is the root of all evil, but told us to “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s” (Matthew 22: 21). It’s a means to an end where money provides access to all manner of bad behaviour, as if the simple temptations where excessive financial wealth isn’t required were not bad enough.
THE
FIRST HALF OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS
The
basic rules are very simple. The Ten Commandments were created as a means to
help people get along and avoid conflict. The Catholic Pope John Paul the
Second once urged the faithful to “go forth and preach the Good News of the Ten
Commandments”. It may have been a mistranslation or simply the confused speech
of an old man but the intention of his words was still valid. The Ten
Commandments were God’s words carved in stone.
Do not create other Gods. Many societies created all
manner of deities and made up rules from these so-called Gods to satisfy their
excesses. They did not like what God told them and so this was a means to
rebel. Some of us worship all manner of stupidity. But even the Christian faith
itself is divided, something Paul warned us about with great frustration (1
Corinthians 1: 10-17), and now people interpret the Holy Bible to suit their
own self-centred desires, sometimes even changing words or passages and
preaching this false message to the ignorant and rebellious.
Some
‘Christians’ even believe they can have more than one wife and some even
practice sexual relations with minors under the claim that it is sanctified
through marriage. Some refuse to use blood transfusions and are willing to
sacrifice the lives of their children simply to prove their own faith, ignoring
the message God gave to Abraham (Genesis 22: 1-18). God sent His only son to
die in Isaac’s place and now we prove our faith by sacrificing our self-centred
desires instead of our children. In many cases, these ‘Christians’ will point
out the passages in their version of the Holy Bible to prove their
‘righteousness’ but how is that any different to a religion that demands
‘infidels’ be murdered so they can prove their own ‘faith’?
It
is very easy to create your own god to give you what you want, much harder to
listen to God and do what He asks when it conflicts with your own desires. The
second law regarding the creation of false idols demonstrates the extension of
this point. The golden calf is as much a metaphor as anything else. We idolise
many things in the modern world and not a lot has changed. Crime is based on
three things: money, sex, and revenge. Revenge itself is usually tied to the
other two, and insanity is sometimes a factor, but criminal acts themselves require
some degree of mental instability.
The love of money and inability to control sexual
urges are a key factor in sin. Money buys power and affluence, while sex can be
used to obtain all three. Money can be used to circumvent justice as much as
purchase material possessions. During the reformation, and even today,
paintings and statues of Christ and other religious things were torn down and
destroyed because they were considered idolisation. Now, in too many
‘Christian’ churches, there are no pictures or symbols of Christ at all to
remind us of what is important. Too many of those people who claim to be
‘Christians’ follow false prophets who mislead and manipulate their
congregations to satisfy their own personal self-centred desires for power and
affluence.
False idols are often hard to spot because we are so busy looking for the obvious. Consumerism is a false idol and teaches us that materialism is the ultimate goal. To obtain possessions we need money. It is all too common in modern society for elderly people to be targeted by their own children and grandchildren, their homes, savings and possessions stolen even before they pass with complete disregard to their wishes for how their estates should be inherited. It is easy to shake our heads at the greed of non-Christians, but many of those who commit these vile behaviours continue to claim they are Christians! “I did not do anything wrong,” they claim, “my relatives are at fault and I was doing what my parents wanted!”
They
choose to behave corruptly and claim loyalty to relatives over God in order to
get what they want. “I know my brother is doing the wrong thing, but he’s my
brother and, even though I know he is doing the wrong thing and do not agree
with his behaviour, I have to support him because he is my brother”. That was a
comment from a young man whose brother Drew Poser has since gone on to become a
Minister, like his father before him, and his behaviour only got worse, like
his father before him.
Many of these false Christians even claim that what
they do is for God. Catholic priests are an obvious target for our anger when
some of them commit all manner of sexual atrocities against children but again
it is very easy to miss the more subtle offenders. False prophets rely upon
ignorance and indifference to manipulate people, but so many elders and other
members of Churches happily enable the misuse of God’s name by refusing to
believe reports of false prophets or are conflicted by personal interests.
A
church that includes a leadership connected by marriages and personal
relationships is less likely to address issues of injustice where relatives are
at fault. Instead, they will conceal the corruption and commit all manner of
sin to ensure that the victims remain silent. When the leadership of a ‘church’
is tainted by such behaviour, the corruption at the top influences every member
of that ‘church’. The leaders of a church set the example and other leaders are
supposed to perform the task of maintaining righteousness because what they do,
what others see, is those who do the work of the Lord.
If the most adversely affected member of any society is silenced because their leaders are insulated from reality by misused bureaucracy then there is a problem. If someone claims they are doing something in the name of God and yet their behaviour is corrupt then there is a problem. If someone follows all the directions to correct an injustice (Matthew 18: 15-20) but is then frustrated by corruption within the leadership then there is a problem. It is not up to elders to refuse to believe something simply because they don’t want to, but to do as God instructs according to the rules laid out in the Holy Bible, not some twisted version of their own interpretations; to do otherwise is to misuse their position.
The fourth commandment seems relatively tame by comparison to the others, and even Christ broke that one (Matthew 12: 1-14) to prove a point. The lawmakers had created rules to interpret this commandment and prove themselves righteous but Christ showed them that the point was to remember God and take the time to enjoy what He had given them. The question He asked was very simple and demonstrated how they had missed the point and how their rules were in opposition to the intention of the Lord: remember God and do His will; give thanks for what the Lord has given you; be grateful and share your fortune.
If the most adversely affected member of any society is silenced because their leaders are insulated from reality by misused bureaucracy then there is a problem. If someone claims they are doing something in the name of God and yet their behaviour is corrupt then there is a problem. If someone follows all the directions to correct an injustice (Matthew 18: 15-20) but is then frustrated by corruption within the leadership then there is a problem. It is not up to elders to refuse to believe something simply because they don’t want to, but to do as God instructs according to the rules laid out in the Holy Bible, not some twisted version of their own interpretations; to do otherwise is to misuse their position.
The fourth commandment seems relatively tame by comparison to the others, and even Christ broke that one (Matthew 12: 1-14) to prove a point. The lawmakers had created rules to interpret this commandment and prove themselves righteous but Christ showed them that the point was to remember God and take the time to enjoy what He had given them. The question He asked was very simple and demonstrated how they had missed the point and how their rules were in opposition to the intention of the Lord: remember God and do His will; give thanks for what the Lord has given you; be grateful and share your fortune.
Instead,
at the time, the Pharisees claimed to be righteousness by public demonstrations
of obedience but inflicted misery on those they should have helped, and
punished on those that questioned them or did not follow the rules they created
to ensure they retained power over others. They were motivated by unhealthy and
evil desires to discredit, slander and even kill Jesus because He was
undermining their authority. The attitudes of the Pharisees were in conflict
with the Lord’s Commandments and yet the same behaviours continue unabated even
today amongst some Christians, particularly those in positions of
leadership.
The fifth commandment instructs us to honour our mother and father. This would have to be one of the most misused of all the rules. We condemn people who disobey their parents or who are estranged from them as people to be avoided (Mark 7:9-13). In some cases it is warranted because such people are corrupt in nature, but in others we are at fault because we refuse to address issues of moral corruption in abusive parents. All the worst elements of a Church do is drive victims away from God.
The Bible instructs us to honour our parents by our faith in, and obedience to, God. If our parent’s demand that we behave in a manner that is contrary to what God has instructed then should we place their demands over the instructions of God? This places the victims of corrupt parents in a situation where they are only able to sin against God and demonstrates how human desire has corrupted the intention of God’s message. Perhaps the words of Christ himself can help us understand what God intended when He indicated the role of parents, siblings and honour (Matthew 12: 46-50, Mark 7: 6-8, and Luke 8: 19-21).
The fifth commandment instructs us to honour our mother and father. This would have to be one of the most misused of all the rules. We condemn people who disobey their parents or who are estranged from them as people to be avoided (Mark 7:9-13). In some cases it is warranted because such people are corrupt in nature, but in others we are at fault because we refuse to address issues of moral corruption in abusive parents. All the worst elements of a Church do is drive victims away from God.
The Bible instructs us to honour our parents by our faith in, and obedience to, God. If our parent’s demand that we behave in a manner that is contrary to what God has instructed then should we place their demands over the instructions of God? This places the victims of corrupt parents in a situation where they are only able to sin against God and demonstrates how human desire has corrupted the intention of God’s message. Perhaps the words of Christ himself can help us understand what God intended when He indicated the role of parents, siblings and honour (Matthew 12: 46-50, Mark 7: 6-8, and Luke 8: 19-21).
The first five Commandments are considered irrelevant in modern society because so few of us actually believe in God or the message of the Holy Bible. In recent times there has been a huge growth in the number of people in China who have adopted Christianity and the Protestant work ethic even as Western society moves away from the religion, and that Chinese society is improving both morally and economically while our society appears to be doing the opposite. Given the disobedience of the so-called Christian West it seems almost Biblical that we have lost God’s blessing by turning away from Him. You only need pay attention to what’s going on in our society to see we have become a Godless.
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