In June, 2006 I desperately needed a friend of mine to help me keep my mouth shut.

We’d just arrived in town for a major annual religious convention and were awaiting our turn at the hotel’s reception desk when I noticed the t-shirt of the pastor in front of me. It was a red, white and blue ichthus (fish symbol) with the words JesUSAves underneath. My friend saw my temperature rising and wasn’t sure whether to prod me to the point of explosion or stage an intervention and save this unsuspecting Patriotic Pastor from a torrent of “righteous indignation.” Fortunately he chose the latter, allowing the pastor to cluelessly bound on his jolly way while probably saving me from job termination.

The pastor’s transgression? His  (as well as many prominent people in my denomination and evangelicals across America) elevation of Jesus Christ to position as Chief  Patriot of the United States – a significant demotion from His position as “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.”

I’d forgotten about that encounter until last night when it was dragged from my subconscious while watching the movie Luther. There is a scene in the movie when a former professor and zealous supporter of Martin Luther’s, Andreas Karlstadt, is portrayed as a driving force behind the Peasant Wars of 1524-25* (see note at bottom). Supposedly Karlstadt launches a crusade to purge the church of icons and images of any kind, waging holy war against priests and any other formal church representative. In the movie he says, “Stand with the righteous or be cut down, with the others. There is no middle ground!”

The movie is fundamentally correct, despite some minor historical gymnastics. Luther, a former Catholic priest, came to see the church’s practice of indulgences as hypocrisy, he preached against salvation through the church and for salvation through faith in Christ alone. It sparked what we now call the Reformation.

The movie and the Patriotic Pastor intersect at the point where Christians seek to build Christ’s Kingdom in any manner other than the proclamation of the Gospel. Truth is we’ve been trying for centuries to establish God’s Kingdom through our misdirected theology. The crusades were an attempt to do God a favor and drive “infidel Turks” from Jerusalem, re-establishing the city as “the City of God.” The burning of witches at Salem was an attempt to purge the culture of godless influences and maintain a “Christian nation.”

Truth is, America has never been a Christian nation – and most certainly is not now. America was a nation shaped by biblical ideas and by men who were influenced by Scripture – several of whom were followers of Christ but many others who were deists. In fact, four of our most influential American “fathers” – Washington, Franklin, Jefferson and James Madison (“Father of the Constitution”) – believed in a Supreme Being proven by human reason with no need of faith. Our country has been a moral nation influenced by biblical precepts but there is a massive difference between morality and Christianity.

Too many high profile Christian leaders today (and many a good Patriotic Pastor) push and leverage  for change through imposing biblical principle on society through attempts to legislate morality. I find it laughable and an utter waste of effort/money. God Himself established the Ten Commandments – moral law – knowing in advance that the hearts of men are not changed through the keeping of law. At best the law keeps immorality in check and does NOTHING to establish the reign and rule of Christ’s Kingdom in the hearts of mankind, liberating sinners from the tyranny of morality through the external righteousness imputed to us through a sinless Savior.**

Moreover, our pastors and leaders too often stand in pulpits and pour out their moralistic tomes on sinners – as if pointing out their sins does anything more than drive the nails into dead men’s coffins. They seemingly say, “Stand with the righteous or be cut down, with the others. There is no middle ground!” How is that helpful? Dead men are dead already. Instead of preaching liberation through forgiveness found in the Good News that Jesus died in their place to pay the penalty for their sin if they will believe in Him, the objective too often appears to be reclaiming some fallacious idea of a Christian nation by shaping our nation’s laws to make sinner’s adhere to biblical law.

The evangelical church in America will never find its bearings if its pastors and leaders don’t revisit Scripture passages like John 18:33-38 and repent of trying to usher in Christ’s Kingdom through political, legislative or by any other means.

Jesus is NOT America’s Chief Patriot. He is the Savior of the World.

*This is an inaccuracy in the movie and Karlstadt was not the instigator in real life he is portrayed to be in the movie. His teachings were much more civil and in fact was given refuge by Luther during the Peasant Wars.

**I firmly acknowledge that Christians should fight evil in the world by every means possible but we spend more time using the courts rather than the tools described in Ephesians 6.

I listened with shock (but without surprise) to Pat Robertson’s latest proclamation of idiocy (viewed here) regarding the events in Haiti.”How can you be so matter-of-fact in speaking for God and declaring His judgment on the people of Haiti hours after an

earthquake destroyed its capital?” I asked as I watched the clip. (Fortunately there are high profile Christians like Michael Horton who put into perspective this type of prophetic pandering.

(NOTE: for a healthy biblical perspective on God and disasters listen to this NPR interview with John Piper on the heels of the 2005 Tsunami that devastated Indonesia and parts of Thailand).

Is Robertson’s declaration that this is God’s judgment on Haiti for having made a pact with the devil an appropriate response? It’s a question I’ve been wrestling with for the past few days as I’ve watched clips, read stories and followed photo essays coming out of Haiti. My response is no, it is not appropriate and here are a few things I’ve concluded about being a Christian at times like these.

NO ONE has a right to presume to know the mind of God, let alone speak with an air of authority regarding that presumption. I do know that NOTHING happens in this world without God’s approval and He has a purpose – His purpose – for all He allows (Isaiah 46:9-10). Only God sees all of history before Him at once and knows exactly how this quake fits into His eternal plan. To cherry pick a prophesy is to reveal theological shallowness.

I must feel compassion for the suffering of the people. The Christian who is not moved to compassion  – and worse yet allows the thought that this is somehow deserved – is a legalist at best and heartless at worst, and I’d seriously question that person’s claim of salvation.(“…Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.”)

My compassion must motivate me to do something. I may not be in a position to give or go, but I can certainly pray. Pray for the people, for workers trying to help, for suffering to be assuaged, for the Gospel to be preached and for God to save thousands.

My actions of compassion must NOT be devoid of the Gospel. There is no way to alleviate all the human suffering of this world and especially in a situation like this. Physical suffering in this world is a visual representation of a spiritual reality: Sin causes suffering; has from the beginning and will until the end. God has placed the earth under a curse (Romans 8:19-23). Nothing man does is going to change that reality but we are called by God to apply ourselves to good works while seeking to share a remedy (the Gospel) for man’s greatest need (forgiveness of sin to be reconciled to God). Failing to do this is not compassionate. In fact it is cruel. To be so close as to extend clean water to someone yet not share the Gospel is to alleviate a temporal need while withholding  hope that quenches his or her eternal need.

Every Christian should watch the news coming out of Haiti with a great deal of soul searching, a healthy amount of compassion and a deep desire to see Jesus become very real in the lives of the suffering masses.

Scan the world’s headlines this week and you’ll find news coming from the International Conference on Climate Change discussing melting ice caps, decaying ozones and rising global temperatures that will evaporate water and leave billions of people starving by 2025. Al Gore tried to warn us of the Inconvenient Truth three years ago, winning Oscars, Grammys and Nobel Prizes along the way. Al and friends have twisted information to convince us of what we should already know: Global warming is my fault. And its your fault.

Al laid the blame for global warming in the right place – on us – but got the cause all wrong. The real Inconvenient Truth is that the Apostle Paul outed us nearly 2,000 years ago. God created global warming because of our sin. Read it: “For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it” (Romans 8:20; italics mine). God subjected creation to decay nearly from the beginning when He doled out punishment to Adam and Eve in the garden in Genesis 3. God created global warming right there in verse 17,: “…cursed is the ground because of you.”

Now I don’t fault Al for missing the truth. The irony here is that humanism actually gets it right for a change. Humans are the problem, although one would be hard pressed to get Al and his liberal friends to agree to the reality communicated in Scripture. As easy as it would be I am not going to pontificate too harshly against people whose greatest need is to embrace the truth of the gospel.

Instead, I’ll lay verbal wood to those who ought to know better: Supposed Christians who are on “save the earth” missions. Let me say from the outset the fact that God has subjected the earth to a curse does not excuse us from our need to be better stewards. On the contrary. As Christians we ought to be exemplary stewards of God’s creation (I violated all kinds of cultural protocols last year while in Uganda by lecturing some Ugandan believers for consistently tossing their trash to the sides of roads). That said, the UK is dangerously close to being brought into subjection by environmentalists and they have heavy support from all kinds of churches, not just the Church of England (although I will say I’ve been in three C of E churches and it appears their prominent agenda is colored green).

For example, here are three prayer requests from the C of E church I was in this morning listed, for a special-called prayer meeting exclusively for this week’s conference:

• Pray for a new treaty in Copenhagen that protects God’s creation from climate change
• Give praise for positive changes in the US. Pray for Obama’s team as they try to influence public opinion
• Pray that richer countries will agree to deep cuts in emissions and financial support to developing countries.

What do these three have in common? Answer: They seek human solutions to a spiritual problem. It matters not a single measure of particulate matter how much human institutions change laws designed to protect God’s creation from climate change, or how influential a human leader is in swaying public opinion, or how much money wealthy countries throw at developing countries. Man CANNOT undo the curse.

Increasingly churches in the US are as guilty of misplaced priorities as churches in the UK. “Christians” who ought to know their Bibles better are partnering with the world, seeking to solve the world’s problems with the wisdom of man. Instead, Christians ought to pray for the changed hearts of men from a state of pure rebellion against their Creator (Romans 1:18-32) to one of repentance and humility before God. Upon praying, they should then invest their energy in sharing the Good News that through faith in Christ alone God forgives sin, lifts the curse and adopts us as sons and daughters.

The truth is the world is in rapid decay and its only hope is found in the One who created all things. That hope is not found in the wisdom of man but in the folly of the cross.