Bankruptcy of Church and State: When Clergy Is Blind and Justice Isn’t
America’s political and religious establishments are broken. Washington fails to provide the answers needed to solve the economic and political crises facing us at home and abroad. The church fails to exhibit the moral guidance necessary to hold a collapsing culture together. The nation is rapidly losing faith in both institutions, evidenced by declining approval ratings.
The political process in Washington is overheating in partisan gridlock while our churches are becoming increasingly ineffective and indifferently cold to the ongoing culture wars. Both institutions are insolvent to the fiscal and spiritual indebtedness they have incurred upon the nation. Neither can produce the economic capital or spiritual stimulus to jumpstart the economy or usher in revival.
Legislative issues are taking on greater moral ramifications. What were once considered moral issues discussed from the pulpit are now being politicized and aggressively commandeered by special interest groups with their radical social agendas. Civil rights are being sacrificed in the name of social justice upon the altar of special rights. Justice may be blind, but social justice has 20/20 vision. Equality before the law is becoming persecution under the law. The new persecution of the church will be in the form of prosecution of the church.
All the while, there seems to be little pushback from the clergy to preserve their institution’s voice as the spiritual leaders and moral guides for the nation. Complicity and compromise, on the other hand, seem to have replaced the spiritual backbone of America’s preachers. The clergy in America are, in most part, blind to the prophetic times in which we live and clueless to the spiritual solutions that will solve the troubles confronting a despondent nation. America’s sheep are being scattered due to the incompetence of hirelings who run at the first sign of political or cultural confrontation.
When government attempts to legislate morality apart from a spiritual relationship with God, moral rebellion will be the law of the land. When the church pontificates truth without exemplifying reality, her institutions will be rejected as charlatans. They both will soon be tossed aside, leaving the nation ripe for rebellion and anarchy. When the church loses its vision, where is the light to penetrate the moral and political abyss? When complicity robes the clergy, political leaders line their pockets in greed as the nation drifts aimlessly in a vacuum of ethical relativism.
This lesson is oft repeated but seldom learned. Unchecked principles by nature tend to run their own course. Thus history repeats itself. The first 11 chapters of 1 Samuel are but one of many such instances. Four hundred years out of Egyptian bondage, the nation of Israel faced a fundamental transformation in its government—from a godly theocracy overseen by holy priests to a humanistic monarchy dictated by a self-serving king, Saul.
Israel experienced redistribution of its wealth; there was a cry for globalism to become like all the other nations. A morally bankrupt but politically correct clergy produced a climate of judicial legislation. As the menorah slowly flickered out in the tabernacle, the Ark of God’s presence was whisked from the nation. The Ark of the Covenant that preceded the nation into the Promised Land—on the shoulders of holy anointed priests—was now suddenly snatched from her midst by the hands of uncircumcised Philistines. It was Israel’s darkest hour.
Inside the Ark were the Ten Commandments—the spiritual, civil and economic foundations of the nation. The Ten Commandments were no longer found in her schools, in her courthouses, in the town square or in her churches.
Sound familiar? How could the glory of God have departed the nation in this manner?
The glory of the Lord departed the nation because the priesthood was compromised. Eli, the high priest, became fat, lazy and blind. As he lost his vision, so went his usefulness to the nation. His uncircumcised (not in covenant) sons, Hophni (strong) and Phineas (mouth of a serpent), stole from the tabernacle offerings and committed adultery with the women who assembled at the outer gate. A complicit clergy cannot reproduce covenanted sons.
America has weak spiritual sons who cannot lead another awakening as our founding spiritual fathers once did because we’ve had a generation of complicity by the clergy with governmental intrusion into the church. Four hundred years ago, America’s forefathers left the political slavery and religious oppression of Europe for a new promised land—400 years ago! Now America, like Israel, has followed the same principled path to the same self-destructive destination. Will we make the same self-centered mistakes as they did or choose repentance over rebellion?
