Found Difficult

Michael Heath

Beloved, follow not that which is evil, but that which is good. He that doeth good is of God: but he that doeth evil hath not seen God. — 3 John 1:11

Christianity is about doing. It is an action religion. Yes, prayer is an important aspect of the ancient faith. Morality, however, is huge. It isn’t simply spiritual. It is fully embodied in our world … fully present. Christianity is very much a universal idea. It touches all of life, and death. It is a virtuous system. When practiced it creates virtue through righteous application of the imagination and will.

The great 20th century writer, G.K. Chesterton, observed, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”

I watched a #walkaway YouTube yesterday. The three minute video featured a thirty something female describing why she walked away from the Left. She ended the video saying, “God bless you.” Just before that she talked about the “conservative” man she met. She married him. She glowed as she mentioned becoming pregnant and starting a family.

How evil! Bruce Jenner would not be proud. She obviously needs a Mayor Pete lecture on who Jesus is really. The obviously evil conservative man that married and impregnated this social justice warrior must be destroyed. And the government is just the force needed to bring about the destruction of this wicked ideology called Christianity.

John, surrounded by pagan Romans and increasingly hostile Jews two thousand years ago wrote a lot about love. He knew Jesus as the God-man who embodied the Greek ideal of logos, or reason. In his third epistle he writes, “Beloved, follow not that which is evil, but that which is good. He that doeth good is of God: but he that doeth evil hath not seen God.”

Note that he doesn’t talk here about spiritual salvation or eternal life. John is interested in the conduct, the moral actions of his readers. He makes it real simple.

You know many people who “hath not seen God.” How do you know they haven’t seen God? They do evil. You know many people who know God. How do you know? They follow the good and they do good. That person who DOES good is of God, according to the Gospel writer John.

It isn’t good to lead children into sodomy and transgendering. That’s evil. It isn’t good to base your economy on debt. That’s evil. It isn’t good to live in a state of perpetual war. That’s not good.

It isn’t good to store the bodies of over 2,000 murdered babies in your house. That’s evil. It’s evil to murder them in the first place. That isn’t abortion. That’s baby murder. And it isn’t good. That murderer didn’t know God.

Lest we think we are off the hook if we don’t murder babies or practice sodomy realize that none of us are good enough to know God. That’s why God the Father sent Jesus Christ His son to the earth to die. He bled and died to make us good. He gave up his own life so that we could overcome our sins, and follow the good. He gives us the power every day to overcome evil and follow good.

The wickedness that is driving leaders from the church through open apostasy or suicide is the result of not following John’s simple formula. Christianity is about doing good. Men must stop feeding on pornography. They must turn away from the evil, stop following it. They must choose to love their wives and family. They must go to their wives and children and repent for not being the GOOD man that God made them to be. It never was good enough to simply earn the paycheck. The man has duties he MUST fulfill. He must do good, and not follow evil.

We all must reject the system of the world that Big Corporations and Big Pharma are creating. The pills are designed to make us dependent. We must not follow the evil. We must choose the good. We must become dependent on God, not synthetic, potentially dangerous substances. Legalizing pot isn’t good. This is another profound evil. Surrendering our privacy to social platforms also isn’t an option. That is evil. We must humanize the digital world that is emerging. We must do good.

Christianity is weak at the top right now because our leadership is too worldly. It spends far too much time being at peace with the world. The Church is a peculiar institution. It is a Holy Priesthood. It is set apart to God. The Church is incapable of being wedded to Freudian ideas about sex. Yet, Western Christianity has gone down this road for nearly a century now. We have departed from the ancient faith, and embraced modern and post-modern conceptions of the human person, family life and sexuality. This is ending, thank God.

A shout is rising from the throats of the people. We see the passionate rejection of this Leftist conception of the world in support for Donald Trump, Brexit and the rising disgust with all things “gay.” Look at Tommy Robinson. I don’t think he’s a Christian. If he is he’s a weak one. But he has a family. He has courage. He’s doing good in confronting the rape gangs in his homeland of England.

Check out men like Bill Whatcott up in Canada. Look what he’s achieved just being himself. Christianity’s definition of morality, family life and sexuality is getting traction. Early in the week I mentioned the promotion of graffiti here in Mayberry. Within hours of the appearance of sexually-charged political correctness on the Eagle Scout blackboard the eraser disappeared the offensive nonsense. More sensible ugliness (I hate graffiti) has slowly started taking it’s place.

The nation is barely holding on to her Christian conscience. It is rising though. I think we are scraping along the bottom and getting ready for a rise in goodness, and a turn away from evil.

We’ve had a good week in Jesus. Enjoy your weekend.

E-Mail Michael Heath: mike@michaelheath.org