Sleeping Watchmen

Sleeping Watchmen

May I start by wishing you all the joy and peace which is in Christ Jesus this Christmas

I was sad and angry when I read the Christmas messages of church leaders in the newspapers this Christmas.

During the year in my home state of Victoria (Australia) the anti-Christian lobby has felt strong enough to come out of the woodwork. Two examples churches could not fail to notice were these:

One, Christian education in schools. The State schools had allowed half an hour per week for children whose parents did not object to receive Christian Education on a government approved syllabus using volunteer teachers from the various churches. During my ministry the content of this syllabus has been progressively watered down for fear of offending anyone or appearing to proselytize. eventually it had been so emptied of any Christian content that it had become just a social studies course dressed up in a few Bible verses, teaching the secular sentiments of the day.

Towards the end of 2015 even that was banned from state schools by the government.

Then as Christmas neared, the government issued a decree that from next year the singing of Christmas carols, and indeed any songs which mentioned God would be banned from State Schools. There would of course be no nativity plays or nativity scenes in classrooms.

“Blind Freddy” as the saying goes, should have concluded that there was a powerful lobby strongly opposed the Christianity, who wanted the message of Christ swept from the national consciousness.

Then came the newspaper clips of the church leaders' Christmas messages. All on the theme “make room in the inn of your hearts for strangers” - especially Syrian refugees.

These leaders might have though they were being topical – they were actually a couple of centuries in the past. A past where the whole nation was at least nominally Christian, a past where they were maybe the official religion of the land, a past where the Gospel was (in theory if not in practice!) so well known that it could be taken for granted and a homily about attitudes was acceptable.

These people, called to be shepherds and watchmen, had failed to see the change that had crept up on Christian nations over the past few centuries. They have been sleeping on watch!

The message they should have been giving to a nation well on the way to forgetting about God was this: “Christmas: celebrating the saving love and power of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit: God the Son enters the world he created as one of us, as a human baby. His purpose to be the greatest revelation of who God is: to show God's love, and to be God's love in dying for our sins, to show and be the power of God in rising from the dead, breaking the power of sin and death.”

Separation of Church and State

Separation of Church and State

Now might be a good point in our exploration of “Saving the West” to think about the separation of church and state.

Jesus famously said “render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's.” Although he was at the time adroitly avoiding the trap his enemies had carefully set for him. To his disciples he stressed how differently those he gave spiritual authority to were to act compared to “rulers of the world”. Later when Pilate questioned him about the allegation that he was a rival king to Caesar he answered : “My kingdom is not of this world.”.

Given this it seems out of character that Christian “organised religion” rapidly became just like “the rulers of this world”. It is just a (very sad) fact of church history that so often prelates have seemed only interested in power and money. I won't labour the point, but the fact is that history is replete with power struggles between “the church” and the secular ruler. Conversely, secular rulers have at many times sought to control organised religion both to legitimate their rule and as a means of controlling the populace.

Out of this insalubrious past came emancipation in more recent times. Young countries like the United States where early settlers were fleeing persecution and the government telling them what they should believe enshrined the “separation of church and state”. Old countries like Great Britain who had an “established church” broke that connection.

This is all common knowledge, but it is often swept under the carpet when the term “separation of church and state” is used polemically – as it increasingly has been in the campaign by secularists to eradicate active Christianity.

Given the – to use an old concept – sinful nature of human beings, no human or human organisation is infallible. I have an extremely high view of that Church for which the Bible uses beautiful imagery such as “the temple of the Holy Spirit”, “the Body of Christ” and even “the Bride of Christ”. But that Church will only be revealed fully when Christ returns – that will be its first meeting! Those organisations of human beings which we call “churches” or even – of our own denomination naturally - “THE Church” are only human organisations. God may be gracious and work with and through them, he may care enough to prune and discipline them when they get too rotten, but they are still very human and frequently dominated by evil.

If anyone doubts this, consider the problem of paedophile priests and church workers, and the lengths bishops and church organisations went to to silence the victims, cover up rather than to confess terrible things which had been done, and even, horror of horrors, to protect paedophiles and allow them to continue! No, the thing we often call “the church” is still human, fallible and frequently sinful.

So to allow such an organisation to exert authority over the lawful government is indeed a bad idea. BUT to go one further and say that our laws should not exemplify Christian principles, or that avowedly Christian men and women should be disbarred from being in the government is a travesty!

Secularists have urged both these things, and Christians seem to have given way without a fight. Perhaps it was the mood of the times and fighting would have been to no avail, but now we must wake up!

The West is in peril of disintegrating: the freedoms, the laws, the attitudes, the prosperity that it has produced are in danger of fading away – or being brutally scrubbed out.

In the question of church and state we need to believe and proclaim that we disavow absolutely the bad “old” days of power struggles by “organised religion” and government and government mandated churches; and the bad “new” days exemplified by Islamic Sate. Then we must stand up for the achievements wrought by godly men and women who knew that the Bible was God's word and that God's aim was for people to have life and have it in all its abundance.

PS – no more posts for two weeks