FEAR, PRIDE AND GREED
By
Coach Dave Daubenmire
February 19, 2009
NewsWithViews.com
I have just returned from a ten day speaking tour of the state of Missouri. For the past few years a group of us have been offering our services to churches around America who are willing to pull their head’s out of the sand and take a good, hard look at what is really going on in America.
I could tell you that we are speaking to overflow crowds and that America is being turned upside down by the truth that we are sharing, but that would be as phony as the “stimulus package.” We are faithful to go, but sometimes have a hard time finding a church willing to open the doors to us.
This “Shake The Nation” tour was no exception. I know that this may sound arrogant but the Gospel-Truth that our “traveling-road show” delivers is something that every Christian needs to hear. We present the Biblical perspective on the schools, our Constitution, the condition of the American Church, abortion, communism, the homosexual agenda, the 501 C 3 muzzle, and a general overview of a Christian Worldview.
Invariably, we will find a courageous pastor who is more committed to building his people than he is to building a church, who opens his doors and welcomes us in. God bless those faithful men of God, many who are un-paid pastors, who understand their charge to be “watchmen on the wall.”
During last week’s tour, as five of us squeezed into a van and traveled nearly 300 miles between Friday night in Branson and Saturday evening in St. Louis, I bemoaned the fact that none of the larger churches would have us in. But we fight the fact that most pastors more resemble gate-keepers than they do watchmen. They do all they can to shield themselves, and their congregations, from the reality of the world outside their stained-glassed fortresses, and their obligation to defend the faith.
“What is up with the pastors?” one of our group wondered out loud. “What is the reason that they won’t get involved?”
Dr. Gregory Thompson, the leader of our pack, never batted an eye as he turned from the front passenger seat and answered, “There are three reasons….fear, pride, and greed.”
I don’t know if anyone has so squarely hit the nail on the head.
Our group comes for free. All we ask is that the churches take an offering to try and meet our expenses. We sleep on couches, share beds, or on the floor in a sleeping bag, and we are fed by volunteer families in each location. It costs a church a heck of a lot less than a marriage seminar, a financial freedom conference, or a celebrity speaker that teaches ten ways to make ten-thousand dollars in ten weeks. Soft Christian-sounding programs are all the rage. The feel-good gospel always packs them in.
But our message is different. We inform the flock, present a challenge, and demand a response. In a church-community that thrives off of spiritual welfare, the idea that our Faith requires a Christian to do that with which he is uncomfortable is almost unthinkable. After all, Jesus came to serve us, don’t you know? Most Christians are more likely to be stricken by bed-sores from the padded pews than they are from the attacks of the enemy.
Our pastors are to blame. Dr. Thompson is right. They are paralyzed by the Devil’s trinity of fear, pride and greed. Professional Christians are selling out this nation.
Most pastors are cowards. At a time when the “faith of our Fathers” has never been under more of an attack, they are missing in action. When America is crying for bold, courageous leadership our pulpits are filled with meek men who preach weak in-offensive messages. They fear the flock, the government, bold men, and public opinion. They are content to allow their people to perish because of their fear of speaking the truth.
How else can you explain their silence in the face of the thievery taking place in Washington?
Or perhaps it is their pride. The idea that a hearty band of “Christian Activists” could teach Dr. Know It All something regarding “the Faith” is almost insulting. After all, he spent years in seminary, read thousands of commentaries on the Scriptures and has “built a church” attended by thousands of uninformed sheep. What could this group of “zealots” possibly teach him about herding sheep? And how would he explain it to the other CEO’s at the local “ministerial association?”
Meanwhile, the sheep are perishing as the shepherd slumbers.
But it is probably their greed that encumbers them the most.
Have you watched the Trinity Broadcasting Network lately? When was the last time you saw a Christian leader on that program speak out against the un-Godly actions of our “ministers of God” in the District of Criminals? When was the last time you heard them speak out about the slaughter of innocent pre-born children? Have you ever heard them encourage anyone to civic action to stop the injustice? Why rile-up the sheep? Just keep them happy and hoping.
No man can serve two masters and “butts and bucks” are what drives most ministries. Heaven forbid they would do anything to risk their tax-exemption or offend the fat-cat donor after whom the new “ministry center” will be built.
The Christian soldiers are in retreat because the Christian army is a headless-horseman. We are an infantry without generals, and those who should be leading resent those who want to. This has happened before.
“When Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, he scornfully dismissed the Church and her pastors as an irrelevant force which posed no threat to the Nazi agenda for that great nation.
‘I promise you,’ he boasted to his inner circle, ‘that if I wish to, I could destroy the Church in just a few years. It is hollow, it is rotten and false through and through. One push, and the whole structure would collapse. We should trap the preachers,’ he said, ‘by their notorious greed and self-indulgence. We shall thus be able to settle everything with them in perfect peace and harmony. I shall give them a few years’ reprieve. Why should we quarrel? They will swallow anything in order to keep their material advantage. The parsons will be made to dig their own graves; they will betray their God for us. They will betray anything for the sake of their miserable jobs and incomes.’”
It was only sixty years ago that Hitler rose to power in Germany. He did so with the blessings of the clergy. I, for one, do not want to wait for our leaders to lead. A brief study of history will show where we will end up.
In the winter of 1943, a group of university students in Munich, calling themselves The White Rose, began a desperate effort to awaken the young people of that nation to the malignant evil that had engulfed their country. Led by a 25-year old student named Hans Scholl, they distributed leaflets across the campus in a doomed effort to provoke resistance to the Hitler regime. Six leaflets were written. Number Four in the series included this desperate plea, a plea which could have been written today, and a plea which could have been addressed to us. Scholl wrote,
