Throughout this week on the ‘Christian blogosphere’, various reactions have been pouring in on the death of Rev. Jerry Falwell. I have seen everything from grief and sadness to people celebrating that he is no longer alive.

As I was reading a personal e-mail from Diane over at Crossroads where she stated that she had referenced this article on her post entitled In Memoriam: Jerry Falwell, she had referenced another article over at Resurgence entitled The Renewed question of Church and State where the next to the last paragraph really stood out where it states:

Christians should now decide if the clash we desire should be essentially political, an ugly, even violent struggle for earthly power, or ultimately and clearly religious and spiritual. To be sure, Christians may not give up on a deep commitment to the culture, but our Lord’s injunction to be salt and light is a different injunction than to be political sword and shield. Indeed, he warned quite specifically that “all who draw the sword will die by the sword.” The only sword we wield for the coming kingdom is the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God.

AMEN!!!!

As I read Peter Jones’ article and reflected on the overall legacy of Falwell after seeing that repetitive news clip on FoxNews of Falwell’s body in rest next to the picture of Falwell with some of Washington, D.C.’s buildings in the background, I thought about those oil paintings of third-world dictators in their military dress with their accomplishments in the background. It reminded me of those paintings. I also began to think this out a little deep with the help of this Rush song:

“Armor and Sword”

The snakes and arrows a child is heir to
Are enough to leave a thousand cuts
We build our defenses, a place of safety
And leave the darker places unexplored

Sometimes the fortress is too strong
Or the love is too weak
What should have been our armor
Becomes a sharp and angry sword

Our better natures seek elevation
A refuge for the coming night
No one gets to their heaven without a fight

We hold beliefs as a consolation
A way to take us out of ourselves
Meditation or medication
A comfort, or a promised reward

Sometimes the spirit is too strong
Or the flesh is too weak
Sometimes the need is just too great
For the solace we seek
The suit of shining armor
Becomes a keen and bloody sword

A refuge for the coming night
A future of eternal light
No one gets to their heaven without a fight

Confused alarms of struggle and flight
Blood is drained of color
By the flashes of artillery light
No one gets to their heaven without a fight
The battle flags are flown
At the feet of a god unknown
No one gets to their heaven without a fight

Sometimes the damage is too great
Or the will is too weak
What should have been our armor
Becomes a sharp and burning sword

We ended up turning the trinitarian tractor to till for the harvest into the armor and sword to kill those who disagreed in the name of creating a New Eden that we could never go back to based on what Adam and Eve did. What happened was that the original call of Christianity to fulfill the Great Commission turned into the Holy War. We wanted a Earth to name ‘New Eden’. We wanted a Nation to name ‘Christiamerica’. We wanted a church named ‘family worship center’. We wanted a home we called ‘the dream’.

Instead, we still see the consequence of original sin in action within the Earth. We see a nation that has not ‘improved’ after the votes were tallied ‘in God’s favor’ and the spiritual warfare people took credit for the ‘change’. We saw a church that still tells the outsiders to ‘back off, you secular humanist devils’. And we see a home that is a nightmare as peer pressure in the dark and untalked about places of our sanctity called ’school’ (both public and Christian) still came in no matter how much we bunkered the dream from temptation by trying to eliminate temptation.

Defenses, fortresses, castles, havens, refuges, armor, artillery, all was built from the trinitarian tractor that was designed to plow up fallow ground in order to plant seed to water to reap harvest (ref 1 Corinthians 3:6). The engine became the spin-doctored machine that powered the megachurch and it’s non-profit ‘information and analysis” organizations. The diesel fuel became the words that triggered the fight as the glow plug became the heat of anger that got hot enough to cause ignition of the war. The P.T.O. shaft became the provider of power to the public-relations firms the megachurch hired to squelch the dissenters because the war was on and the money was needed. The bodies became the shield. The plows became the sharpened sword.

We loved it because in our ‘Holy Hooterville’ where no crime exists, everyone gets along with each other, everyone sees life the same, etc., we despised the desire of Oliver Wendell Douglas of wanting to do ‘the chores’ and grabbed hold to a ‘mega prosperity’ doctrine and became like his wife Lisa wanting ‘the stores’ and don’t forget Park Avenue….

We built the place of safety and when people came, we treated them as the potential ‘grand infiltrator’ where the fortress was strong but love was weak. From the cold shoulder, to the ‘demon detectors’, we treated them wrong.

It was ‘us’ against ‘them’.
Belief became battlecries
Meditation became Missiles
Medication became Memorabilia
Ministry became Maneuvers
Refuge became Rocketry
Prophetics became Projectiles
Apostolics became Armies
Evangelism became Embankments
Shepherds became Shrapnel
Solace became Sword

Instead of fighting against principalities, we chose to fight against flesh and blood. Instead of following the words of Jesus, we patterned ourselves after one of his apostles Simon the Zealot and thought political overthrow was the answer. The Zealots never saw their dream because of their defeat at Masada. However, we fought in the ‘Spirit’ and in the ‘courts’ for our dream back in 2000 and the utopia promised never came about. We did it all to create heaven on earth when heaven could never be on earth. We fought all these ‘wars’ and have nothing to show for it but a sin-sick world still depraved.

All because we got desperate instead of loving. All wanting to reach their heaven by fighting. To rebuild their Babel to bring man closer to God when God had sent his Son Jesus down to die for our sins, rose from the grave, and give us victory over sin, death, hell, and the grave.

All dreaming of a heaven, a garden, a nirvana, or a vahalla. To be more postmodern we became emergent.

There is only one heaven and God the Father and his son Jesus Christ lives there. It is not on earth. PERIOD!!!

What happened if we Christians had won the culture war and eliminated the enemies? We would have gotten more stagnant and lazy because a government would do our job instead of a people fulfilling their calling. A bureaucracy would be worshiped instead of a Bible being read. Plus, all the fundraising would be down to nothing because there is no more war to fight but there is still the corporate overhead to pay off and the suits with the salaries to feed. So how would they raise the money.

Create another war.
The war against ourselves
The war against the ‘weakest’ Christian denomination who helped you and couldn’t have won the war without you but now is seen as being expendable or the most in disagreement with leadership.

Machine becomes Armor and sword.

Why machine? Because that is what we have became by fighting the ‘war’, a machine of no personality and no individualism. Just another two-dimensional mass-produced clone of someone’s selfish utopic interpretation of what ‘real Christians’ are supposed to vote, do, eat, sleep, wear, read, Internet, and drive. It never became the tractor again because the machine never had the power to and was never designed to till up fallow ground to sow and water to reap harvest. The machine was designed to strip the minerals and resources for the sole purpose of only keeping the machine going and growing and never to go out and fulfill a call to reap a harvest, rescue the perishing, bringing in the sheaves and fulfill a Great Commission.

Where the tractor (when hooked to a baler or other similar device via the PTO) could harvest the end product of all shapes and sizes, the machine produces the clone so consistent to where there is no difference and little tolerance for those of different sizes, shapes, and ripeness. I’m not talking about different religions here. I am talking about being within the sphere of Christianity because harvesting is usually done with the same plant/seed all together. All the machine can really do is to power the other machines of public relations, spin-doctoring, corporate churches, and loophole liturgies (using 501c3 for politics).

The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.
The ministry machines are many but the trinitarian tractors are fewer…….