Swing The Bat!

This election season is a spectacle like no other, except maybe a 1972 Demolition Derby where the fans roared louder than the engines straining to survive the onslaught.  The reason this Presidential race has been so profoundly divisive, fiercely manipulated, and explosively polarizing is not a Red Team / Blue Team thing; it’s a power thing. The thought-shaping, lie-diffusing, soul-sucking power of the media has become a colossal screen burn-in on the minds of We The People. 

Deception is similar to hypnotism: The subject is the last to know what happened.

When I was growing up in the ‘60s and ‘70s, we had the Six O’clock News and the News at Eleven.  I remember watching the News at Eleven on our rabbit-eared black and white while brokering deals with my parents to stay up for Johnny’s monologue. I didn’t understand all the jokes, but there was something mesmerizing about a lone man standing on a stage, talking, making a nation happy.

There were the few who listened to talk radio on the AM dial, but this much was true: News was the least exciting part of our lives.

And though we’ve heard the stories that Huntley, Brinkley, and Cronkite were ideologically driven, there was something valuable about a lone man sitting at a desk, reporting, making a nation informed.

Today, news is broadcast 25 hours a day / 367 days a year.  Viewers are treated like programable toy bots, the anchors and pundits are fluffed and buffed, and a hidden cabal is distributing scripts like a cartel pushes their product. These scripts are as addictive as drugs and just as lethal to the mind.  

There is something inhuman about a well-lit gaggle of mouth-flappers perched around a futuristic table, squawking, making a nation stupid.

The cunning subversion of the media machinery convinces us that what we saw with our eyes has not really been seen, and what we heard with our ears has not really been heard.

Lahaina, Springfield, and Asheville.  Charlotte, Minneapolis, and Afghanistan. Covid, Covington, and the Capitol.  Twitter files, laptops, and Pfizer files. Borders, balloons, and Kiev. Gender, hormones, and scalpels.  Occupy, BLM, and Antifa. The NIH, WHO, and WEF.

And the most recent?  You did not hear the President say, “The only garbage I see floatin’ out there are his supporters.”

The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.  It was their final, most essential command.

~ George Orwell

Christians are fitted with a superiorly sacred aptitude that can readily dismiss the stranger’s voice and employ the Gifts of the Spirit to acquire wisdom, ascertain knowledge, and distinguish between the spirits that are masterfully deceiving souls in the cultural milieu.  What grieves me immensely is when Christians are influenced more by the simulation than the Kingdom.  And it’s easy to spot because they parrot party propaganda more than releasing vibrant revelations from the King and His Kingdom.

By now, many have seen the latest Barna Poll, which estimates that over 32 million self-identified Christians will not cast a ballot on November 5th. Less than 100,000 votes decided the 2020 election. If the poll’s prediction becomes history, the health of our country and many parts of the world will be irreparably damaged for a generation or more.

Assuming most Christians agree that this is a crucial and pivotal election, as evidenced by the vitriolic rhetoric and endless assassination attempts, both of character and of life, why are so many church-goers content to abstain?

It’s a Pastoral Issue

Many pastor's preaching today does not serve the Kingdom or the country well. While scoring high marks on evangelism, encouragement, and behavior modification, there is little to no mention of the raging cultural battles and destructive spiritual warfare the sheep face every day.  The result? The fluffed and buffed sheep are getting picked off as soon as they leave their Sunday morning pen.  

It is confounding that so many preachers refuse to speak about this monumentally significant election from their pulpits or social media accounts. Some checked off the box by urging congregants to vote while coyly withholding good teaching about how they should vote.  

Many will wince at that statement, but I am not advocating for a political directive. I am pleading that our preachers would rise boldly and clearly to realize they are not mere story illustrators and behavioral motivators—they are thought shapers. And thought shapers are culture makers.

If there is a decay of conscience, the pulpit is responsible for it.  If satan rules in our halls of legislation, the pulpit is responsible for it. If our politics become so corrupt that the very foundations of our government are ready to fall away, the pulpit is responsible for it.

~ Charles Finney, 19th Century Preacher

I was a church planter and pastor for many years, so I am familiar with the pitfalls and trappings. First, many pastors are discouraged, dried up, and burned out. They are not only running on fumes, but they have initiated total separation from their solid rocket booster—the Holy Spirit—and are making minimal forward progress on propulsion from years gone by. So, the possibility of creating a maelstrom in their already fragile mission is too exhausting to consider.

Others pride themselves on “maintaining unity” in the sanctuary despite their congregation being deeply divided in the parking lot. All that brand of unity means is that the pastor has played pew politics so well that no one knows what he believes, so there is a guise of uniformity. At least the heretical progressive preachers are bold enough to state their unorthodox, untethered doctrines loud and proud and let the cow chips fall where they may.

Another contingent of pulpiteers can not freely speak publicly because of unresolved or unspoken disagreements among their senior leadership. The topic of this Presidential election stirs up the same secular sediment as abortion, gender and pride ideology, white guilt, and sexual ethics. The result?  The most debilitating topics families are combating as their children are being groomed in the classroom are never addressed on Sunday morning.

In The Absence of Sound Teaching, Seek First The Kingdom

When I hear fellow believers dismiss the election with confident exclamations like, “My citizenship is in heaven,” or, “Jesus said His kingdom is not of this world,” my head tilts like a skittish sparrow.  All too often, when using plucked passages like this, heavenward believers write themselves a prescription to abdicate their earthly authority to fulfill their version of Jesus’ proclamation, “You are the salt of heaven” and “You are the light of paradise.”  

Another camp is a bit more fatalistic. These followers believe there is little sense in resisting evil and carrying the Kingdom on earth because the world “will be destroyed by fire.” With this malformed biblical worldview, we can jettison the Genesis mandate to subdue our garden plot, cultivate it well, and be robustly fruitful because it’s far easier to put down the shovel and wait to be evacuated out of here.

Jesus taught a great deal about the Kingdom.  A quick read of the Gospel passages that begin with, “The Kingdom of God is like,” do not describe the heavenly bits like realms of glory, radiant thrones, heavenly beings, and endless worship.  No, He leans in, stoops low, and shows us the earthly bits we are in all day.  Dirt, fields, pearls, seeds and trees, and my favorite; the Kingdom of God is like yeast that spreads through the entire lump of dough.

I heard a pastor say this week, “The Kingdom of God is above politics,” which is true.  But Jesus also said, “The Kingdom of God is in you.  It’s in your midst.”  So, we release that yeast into every arena of life, including politics. The dough that needs rising is down here, not up there.

Swing The Bat

The preacher is the coach, the congregants are the players on the field, and we live in a world of balls and strikes. God designed the players to get base hits, drive in runs, and win the game. 

We get plenty of sermons that describe the swing and plenty more to improve the swing. We need sermons right now that tell us when to swing. 

Teach us to discern a fastball from a curve and a slider from a change-up. When you avoid mentioning the pitches we face every day, you are essentially telling your players to stand at the plate, take every pitch, and hope for a walk. It may work occasionally, but this is the World Series, and many of our players are striking out looking. 

It’s not wrong to train your players to be hitters, especially when the other team is swinging at every pitch.

The sons of Issachar were men who understood the times and knew what Israel should do. 

I Chronicles 12:32

There is something transcendent about a lone man standing behind a pulpit, preaching, making a nation strong again.