The Broken Coffee Cup – Part 3 – Politics, Idolatry, Pandemic, Second Great Commandment, Theology Mantras.

As I began to prepare to compose and write this last part of the Broken Coffee Cup series – now on the spiritually damaging and distorting effects upon the congregation of the deepening and overt integration of politics and support of the now ex-president into the preaching, messaging, and actions of the church – I first went into my notebook and processed all my pertinent penciled notes I wrote after I left the church.  Then I also went to my website to search my letters for the passage where I wrote of all the church’s frenzied political activities in support of the 2016 Republican candidate.  I found it in the letter I wrote in 2017.

Then as I began to peruse the length of the 2017 letter – probably the longest letter I wrote to our pastor – the Lord paused me, and I began to read whole sections of the letter.  And as I read, I was further stilled and saddened as I realized that portions of the letter carry substantially the same thoughts and concerns that are still valid, the very things that the pastor and church leaders continued to pursue from that point forward that eventually led to the diminishment of the church as it is today.

And further pondering the letter, I realized that the only major difference in my writing between 2017 and now, is that when I wrote the 2017 letter, I was writing to the pastor of the church with the energy and urgency of a needed call for repentance – the church, then a community I was part of, and struggling to still be vitally involved within.  But, now, the church for me is sadly just a place I habituated for many years when it was alive and nourishing, but which has since withered and dried into a ghost of a church.  A place where there is now for me no one to engage with, a place of just empty space, and, honestly, a place that for many years lacked for me a sense, and the reality, of refuge, peace, and rest.  It became a space for me without respite and shelter from the cacophony of the world, for the cacophony – the noise and chaos and turmoil of our political world – was long ago invited in, welcomed, and accommodated, and the noise and turmoil was, and is still, all around.  So strange, and sad, to actually write about and acknowledge, even if just to myself, that what I once knew as alive and beneficial, and what some of my friends now struggle to live and spiritually survive in, is a church that for me is gone, and a church that I think of, and relate to, only in the past tense.

And much of the letter of 2017 is so pertinent to this last posting of the broken coffee cup series, for it described – and warned of – all the processes of deadly spiritual contagion still in play, that have greatly dimmed and almost extinguished any true light of the gospel within the walls of the church.

So, I read most of the 2017 letter again with a deepening of the quiet sadness I have felt throughout the process of writing this series.  And here with Part 3, it also now became a sadness centered upon the fact – the understanding – that had there been anywhere along the way, a turning back to Christ and His gospel, and a public repentance from this repugnant and incomprehensible idolatry – the championing, the enamored praise and support, and the lifting high this godless man of deceit, lies, and veiled and open violence – none of what the church eventually did and became and still is would have happened.  None of the poisonous effects of the pervasive praise and public mimicry of the words, policies, resentments, and ways of the now ex-president, would have become the grievous overlay of this idolatry upon the life of the church and the hearts of God’s people.  Moreover, all of this, a blasphemous and still penetrating violation of the first great commandment, would not have occurred and permeated the church.  Nor would the church’s abandonment of the second great commandment of loving our neighbor during the pandemic have occurred, nor would it have ever stained and called into question the purity and integrity of the preaching and primacy of Christ and His gospel.  And all of these sins now, as back then, are basically treated – if thought about or dealt with at all – as PR issues, with repentance, a repugnant and far removed thought.

Below are some passages of the 2017 letter to our pastor that taken together are a good introduction to the remaining body of this posting.  And what then follows is the chronology of the final full revealing of the political goals and intent of the church for 2020, and the eclipsing of Christ and His gospel by the idolatrous adulation and support of a godless man, the culmination of everything I had been writing and warning and urging against in the eight years of writing our pastor and the church.

***

  Now, I had previously written to you in March 2015, urging you to put the preaching of the gospel above your growing involvement in political messages.  However, as the last presidential campaign unfolded, especially near its end, you used your pulpit at Grace, the seminary’s website, the facilities and umbrella of the Master’s University, and the audience reach of Grace to You (GTY), to in effect promote the Republican party and the Republican candidate for president.  You explained your actions as stemming from your duty as a pastor to warn and direct, with the emphasis and passion of the message based on your personal political ideology and worldview.

…You appeared to time your final efforts during the campaign, such as the symposium at Master’s University the week before the election, to reach an audience way beyond those under your pastoral care at Grace, in an attempt to influence especially the evangelical vote in key states as much as possible.  After the election, in church, you appeared with satisfaction to attribute the election of the Republican candidate at least partially to your efforts.

Through all of this, I was deeply grieved and stunned, because to me, your words, thinking, and actions did not appear Spirit-led.  After sitting under your teaching at Grace for over forty years, I just could not understand nor reconcile how your proclamations, responses, and use of all the considerable media resources available to you, aligned with taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, doing every word or deed in the name of the Lord Jesus, and not being taken captive by philosophies, empty deceptions, and the elementary principles of the world.  To me, these actions did not further Christ or the gospel nor were they in my mind in accordance with scripture – the scriptures you have so diligently and clearly exposited over all these years.  

In your political pronouncements, I did not hear God’s word preached, nor did the light of the gospel of salvation shine forth, and Christ was not lifted up or honored, but rather your words lifted up and installed upon your pulpit an ideology and a political party rather than the gospel and Christ as the focal centerpiece.  This created a huge stumbling block for me in continuing to sit with peace of heart and soul under the teaching ministry at Grace.

***

Now, of course, I rejoice in a sovereign God and I know that it was really the Lord who was exposing and bringing to light all of this for His good purposes, yes, but through your political words and actions, my trust, confidence and joy in the preaching of the word at Grace greatly diminished.  Over the years, as the political involvement at Grace deepened and increased, I also grieved and wrestled before the Lord with emotions of betrayal and disappointment, and confusions and questions concerning the gospel and scriptural integrity of these words and actions.  With this last election, because of everything that went on politically from the pulpit, I also began to suffer a great sense of loss – loss for the comfort and confidence I had known and felt within the teaching at Grace, and loss because of the growing separation I experienced from the community at Grace, from the family of believers of which I was once joyously part. …

***

Your words – the political pronouncements, urgings, and endorsements – by the strength of your teaching ministry – thus offered and provided just another bypass of critical thinking – scriptural, political, culturally, social – to those sitting under your teaching ministry, whether at Grace or in your larger media reach.  And it truly is “just another” bypass, as inducements to bypass critical thinking – actually mostly to bypass any and all thinking – are so pervasive and reflective – almost a hallmark – of the evil and enslaving non-thinking spirit of our times.  By your words – whether just a repeat of what others outside the church or in the conservative media have politically stated or written, or coming from a more home-grown Grace and Master’s University source – you have factually helped move at least some, perhaps many, evangelicals further into embracing basically a non-thinking political/social approach to significant national issues.  Additionally, this approach thus just adds further to a subtly infused yet numbing political acquiescence and a further repeating of just what you have said – from whatever source your words, ideologies, and pronouncements were originally inspired – by those who have come to trust in you for truth and direction.  Your urgent and urging words worked also to seem to practically imply that the political realm for the believer was an exception to taking everything to the Lord in prayer and seeking direction through a close walk with the Holy Spirit.  Individual prayer and thought and a dependence upon the Spirit was not a part, either central or peripheral, to these political pronouncements.  At least, I never heard it.

***

With the spread of the pandemic in 2020, and the issuance of state and local government regulations on social distancing and mask wearing, the politicization of the church’s messaging and actions picked up, with significant segments of the church embracing and echoing back and out the messages’ content and intent of supporting the president’s reelection. 

This support was strikingly demonstrated especially by the seemingly significant percentage of the congregation following the leading of the church, in opposing the state and local government pandemic guidelines concerning the wearing of masks, social distancing, and limits on the number of persons able to congregate indoors for public church services.  The church publically labeled these restrictions as overreaching political intrusions into the exercise of faith and/or the worship of the church.  Those complying in defying the government’s guidelines, at least based on my observations and understanding, seemed unaware or were not concerned about the church’s prideful and hypocritical motives behind this particular political church enterprise. 

In February 2022, I wrote of these seminal politically based actions in the letter to a friend, which I included in Part 1 of this series:

3rd paragraph …And the idolatry at church…to me first epitomized by the pastor publicly announcing the church’s disregard of local government pandemic regulations by the authority of and in the name of the now ex-president – not based on scripture as later preached and published –  then by the pastor’s declaration to the ex-President before the 2020 election that “all true and real believers will be on your side”, followed by all the ensuing pronouncements of political/religious support and lack of condemnation or even mention of any of his evil and unlawful activities – all this is so overwhelmingly sad and still deeply incomprehensible to me. 

And the effects of this sin, this deliberate confusion of facts and motives, once introduced into the church, is best illustrated by a gross violation of the second great commandment, of which I wrote near the end of September 2020, in my letter withdrawing my membership:

Additionally, and also grievous, as a church, as pastors and elders, you have also seemingly abandoned the second great commandment of loving our neighbor as ourselves.  For the church, through an illogical and convoluted, but necessarily sanctified resistance to social distancing and the wearing of masks, a mandate designed to help lessen the reach of the pandemic within our city and county – and a resistance in shameful mimicry of the president’s own purely divisive and self-centered political reelection strategy – you have committed a graceless offense against the congregation at Grace by putting God’s people, the congregation whom you say you serve, at risk, and, without love or thought, you have also put aside and imperiled our outside neighbors’ health, good, and wellbeing, and damaged their receptivity to the saving and restoring gospel and the reign and rule of Jesus Christ and His Kingdom.  Instead of Christ, you have factually elevated – with acclamation – this prideful self-exalting man together with the image of Grace as a righteous and God-honoring church, in the sight of all, as far as your media-reach extends. 

So, then, at the height of the pandemic in Los Angeles, in May 2020, on the Memorial Day weekend, in a video sent out to the congregation, in order to help justify the then president’s illogical and disjointed approach to the pandemic in aid of his reelection, the pastor declared that the church, in the name and under the authority of the president, was going to reopen.  What follows is the chronology leading up to this statement. In the weeks leading up to this video on Friday, May 22, 2020, where the pastor declared the reopening the church in the president’s name, there seemed to be a close coordination between the White House and our pastor based upon his statements and actions.  Because for about two weeks before the declaration, our pastor, as I seem to remember, was giving hints during the online Sunday services and on the Wednesday weekly “pastoral” videos that the church sent out, that soon changes may be coming with hints of live services in the worship center which would include the congregation. 

On May 23, 2020, the Saturday of the Memorial Day Weekend, the L.A. Times reported front page that:

“Brushing aside warnings by public health officials about the ongoing risk of holding large gatherings, President Trump called on governors to reopen churches “right now, for this weekend” during a news briefing at the White House on Friday (May 22, 2020).

“Today I am identifying houses of worship, churches, synagogues and mosques as essential places that provide essential services,” Trump said.  “Some governors have deemed liquor stores and abortion clinics as essential but have left out churches and other houses of worship.  It’s not right.”

“These are places that hold our society together and keep our people united,” he said, while expressing confidence that religious leaders will work to ensure that their congregations will be safe.

He vowed to “override” any governor who refused to do so.  A White House spokeswoman later acknowledge the decision would be “up to the governors.”

And it was then on that same Friday, May 22, 2020, that the president called on governors to reopen churches, and the day before the L.A. Times article reported this, that a video link came out from the church via email with the passionate statement by the pastor that the president had declared that churches were essential and should reopen.  The pastor then declared that the church, in the name and under the authority of the president, was going to reopen and that when the church reopened the doors in just a few days on Sunday, that they were going to hold services in the huge worship center that holds more than 3,000 and that they were not going to social distance or wear masks and they were going to sing seven hymns loudly – all of which was in direct violation of the current state and local government COVID regulations.

And added on to the pastor’s announcement in the video, was the curious statement that the president was the highest authority in the land and therefore had the authority to have the churches reopen – which, of course, by law, the president factually had no authority to do so – no authority to change or abrogate on his own any state or local government law or regulation – which as reported in the L.A. Times article, the White House media spokesperson had already acknowledged.

It appeared that truth did not seem important in the matter of the president’s declaration, nor the church’s pronouncement – though arranged in sanctified tandem – but only that these actions would be, at least in the media reach of the church, attributed to the power and action of the president as champion of the church as “essential”, to the political glory and honor of the president’s name and reelection. 

However, this declaration of reopening – for the church had originally complied with the state and local government pandemic restrictions – soon ran into issues with unfavorable court decisions and other legal issues – restrictions which banned large indoor gatherings, including church services, also singing within services, and which required masks.  The church officially but superficially complied again with the restrictions

In mid-July, the church led by the pastor, decided to officially defy these restrictions – though by not locking the doors to the worship center and allowing anyone to just walk in without masks when the pastor delivered his Sunday sermons to an “empty” church, the church was already effectively not in compliance with the government’s COVID regulations.  

On Sunday, July 26, 2020, this happened.  The doors to the worship center were opened, ushers greeted all those rushing in, the church was soon packed, masks were not worn, hymns were loudly sung, the pastor when he stepped up to the pulpit was loudly applauded and cheered, and he preached a sermon entitled, “We Must Obey God Rather Than Men.”

And with the ensuing “grand reopening” of the church, no provision was made for COVID protection for the children at church – or any other group – and I don’t believe there ever was.  Then also, there was no discourse with or regard for the concerns of the families in the houses around the church – literally the church’s neighbors – even when several publicly protested the crowds of unmasked congregants passing their homes, voicing their concerns to those passing-by and the media.  It cannot be convincingly held, nor do I believe, that any of the church’s declarations and actions were taken captive to the mind of Christ, or that they were led by the Holy Spirit. 

Then in mid-August 2020, the pastor, boasted to the congregation in a Sunday message, that the president had phoned him to thank him for taking the stand he had against the state and local government COVID restrictions.  Also later in an interview with a conservative media host, our pastor again spoke of his call from the president and expanded his remarks to also state that he had said to the president, “any real true believer is going to be on your side in this election”.

Selah

It was these and similar actions and statements that truly destroyed the basis of true fellowship for me at church, and I believe truly and factually within the church as a whole.  Moreover, all of this was politically motivated and idolatrous, for it supplanted the centrality of Christ and His gospel at the church, with political support for a godless man, who only used the church – through willing flattered church leaders and the captive churches they led – for his own sinful and selfish political purposes.

I withdrew my church membership near the end of September 2020.  September 24, 2020, to be exact.

After I withdrew my membership, the politicization of the church seemed to pick up as the election neared and seemingly even more after.  In conversations with church friends, some during the conversations where I informed my friends I had left the church, losing some as friends in the process, and some with other face-to-face contact, and by what I heard, or was told about the situation at church, I learned about the even greater pressure to conform in thought at church.  

Eventually I realized that many in the congregation were led or pressured, if not to actually believe the words and preaching of the pastors and elders concerning the issues of wearing masks and vaccination certificates, then pressured enough to at least begin to repeat, on whatever cue worked on them, the simple, sinful mantras brought forth by and within the church and which I, myself, began to hear, such as:

1. “If a Christian wears a mask, that means they are afraid of dying and that is not trusting in the Lord and that is sin”,
2. “If you become sick with COVID and die that is God’s will as He is a sovereign God.”
3. “The fact that we have eternal life, why fear of dying here.”
4. “It is natural that we are all going to die.  God can use the pandemic to have people die if it is their time.”
5. “God is in control of the pandemic.  For believers, every circumstance that a person goes through, personally or publicly, God is still seated on His throne and in control.  God’s will cannot be changed.  When things happen in our lives, it is not that God is not there.  He has His hand in it to accomplish His purpose.”
6. “The church is only making the religious vaccination exemption certificates (initially requested by a police officer and designed originally for those in law enforcement) available to those who want them, and then it is up to them to make it out and submit it to the city and county.  Then if the city and county follows the will of God, and accepts the certificate that is good, but if they don’t accept the certificate, then they are just part of the satanic attack upon Christ and the church.”
7. And, to me the worst, most stupefying, most criminally sinful, and one almost beyond belief, “Even though the church takes no precautions to keep the children safe from COVID by requiring anyone at church to wear masks, the church is doing the more important work among them, by giving them the gospel and leading them to Christ, so that even if they are infected and sickened and die, they will go to heaven to be with Jesus and that is much better than living in this world.  God is a sovereign God, and all of this is according to His will.” 

At least four people repeated the last listed church mantra to me, one a pastor still at church.  However, honestly, I believe they were all just mindlessly repeating this mantra because somehow, it was expected of them, and none of my friends were mindless or sinful enough to come up with this mantra on their own.  And I do not think any of them, including the pastor, really believed this sanctified nonsense to begin with, as none really offered a defense of any merit, but instead basically fell silent when I just said to all of them that this was one of the most sinful and spiritually corrupt and Christ dishonoring things I have ever heard from within the church.

However…they, in fact, had repeated this godlessly cruel and death-cold mantra, and I could see…the uncomfortable deadness and flat embarrassment, yes, of their soul in the utterance of these words.  At the time these mantras were being chanted, I wondered if the pastors and elders had ever taken these words and thoughts to Christ in prayer.  Had they sought the direction and guidance of the Holy Spirit?  Where was the Holy Spirit in the church and in their lives?  I pondered who in the church first mentally articulated and spoke this soul-poison into the air, and why were so many already conditioned to just mindlessly repeating it?  What had occurred?  What brought this dark and sinful bewitchment upon the church?  Had my friends critically thought through what they were saying?  Had they taken these thoughts to Christ in prayer or sought the guidance of the Holy Spirit?  How could they have ever accepted and then repeated these truly awful sinful things?  I was fearful for the church.  I was fearful for my friends.  And all this, one of my chief motivating heart issues in writing this series – to help rescue my friends from such a powerful and dark inducement to sin.

And through these mantras and other verbal tags of “God is sovereign” or “God is in control” etc., etc., I came to hate this sin of how the church was using God’s name and the concept of God’s will, and teaching and preaching this sin to church members.  For after a while, through mimicry of what was being said, implied, or taught from the pulpit or in the Sunday fellowship groups, when anyone – be it a pastor, an elder, or a congregation member – uttered any version of the “God is sovereign and in control” mantra, it worked to eventually make these mantras an indispensable add-on to any and practically all prayers and statements.  

After a while, these mantras chiefly came to mean in a more focused way, that in effect there was no corporate or personal responsibility for any result or consequence stemming from anything that was said from the pulpit or from what anyone did or did not do in relation to the government requirements, or basically, anything – thus, there was no sin or guilt or anything from which to turn away from and repent.  These mantras became a sanctified all-purpose, self-validating and self-serving denial, covering, and excusing of all sin, responsibility, and guilt, a dishonoring of Christ, and an absolute abrogation and attack upon the two great commandments – love of God and love of neighbor.

As a side note, these mantras also came to be applied to all preaching or teaching that denied or minimized climate change, and when applied to climate change, the mantra was usually always followed by another mantra, “It’s all going to burn anyway” or any of this mantra’s multiple permutations.

Moreover, all of these mantras not only evaded personal responsibility and the issue of sin, but also shut off any need for critical thinking.  For all of these mantras also came to be used to either preclude or end any discussion or questions concerning the politicized subjects.  These mantras served as a Grace Church approved good theological seal of approval – a divine imprimatur seemingly licensed to the church by God – with the implication that nothing should or could be questioned or even thought about critically without potentially incurring sin and guilt before the Lord.

This was all so ugly and sinful and – despairingly – all in aid of the reelection/“stolen election” of the now ex-president, a biblically wicked man who follows a perversity deep within his heart and mind, who even now after leaving the White House, has continued to devise evil ways to promote his own prideful and arrogant self-exaltation and grasp on power.  A man whose chief hallmarks are a lying tongue, a heavy traffic in lies and deceit, and who spreads self-serving strife among the various peoples and groups of our nation by promoting injustice, racism, and an incitement to violence with its attendant hatred and murderous intent.  And all this idolatry and support is still abiding within the church, without a whisper of public repentance to disturb its semi-dormant but spiritually deadly crouching wait.

In addition, I was stunned and deeply unknowing of how these things – the idolatry, the mantras, the denial of sin and lack of repentance – could possibly have overtaken the church – and my friends – and in effect replaced Christ with a sinful, godless man.  For these statements, these mantras were obviously being taught, spoken, and circulated at church.  And just as evident, these mantras, once out there, were listened to by members of the congregation, and spoken of and taken as somehow scripturally wrapped truth, and thus became mandates, to be believed, repeated, and acted upon.  They became part of and significantly strengthened the guardian wall around what the church was saying and doing.  This was a great sin foisted upon the members of the church.

And this all was such a concrete expression of the stunning realization of the prideful wall of the silence of the spiritually superior that I discovered in 2012 that I wrote about in Part 2 of this series:

I first became aware of this wall in September 2012, when I verbally brought to my own pastor an absolutely factually wrong political statement made one Sunday morning by the head pastor from the pulpit having to do with the assault on the US Embassy in Benghazi, Libya.  My own pastor did not dispute my statement or concern, but just coolly informed me that, “those spiritually mature would just overlook such statements” with an attitude that seemed dismissive of me, as if this was common knowledge at church and something I should have already known.  I was aghast at his answer and very troubled by this first clear glimpse of the ascending political mindset of the church leaders and the corresponding overall growing politically infused church environment and politically tinged gospel, quietly evolving within the church through the increasing political messaging. 

These were some of the most sinful aspects of this idolatry – the chants of praise and applause for the church and the pastor and leaders, the repeating of the excusing mantras on cue – and the church all this while pretending that no one saw, no one understood the evil, and proclaiming still all the while that Christ and His gospel were central to the life of the church and always honored, and that the church, now “The Church” was the apex of spiritual perfection and at the height of primacy.  But all this was really the most pathetic of all the tawdry political circus acts within the church, and such an equally pathetic sad display of the church’s now mindless idolatry and impotent spirituality – for as scripture says, you become like the idols you worship – Psalm 115:8 Those who make them will become like them, Everyone who trusts in them.  And my remaining heartfelt cry of anguish is, “How could you do this to God’s people, to my friends?”

I used to wonder why I never received any response to my letters, but now I know and understand why.  A response would have meant that my letters were read, and a response might mean there was some validity to my concerns.  But since there was not going to be any heart and soul searching, then better to leave everything alone, and by ignoring my letters, the I and the letters would hopefully go or fade away.  In addition, if my letters vanished from view, no one would have to say anything, privately or publically, which then prevented others in the church from hearing and perhaps question or even believe something different than what was already proclaimed.  For questions or doubts about the path the church was on, might have initiated or encouraged independent critical-thinking, and that would not be beneficial for the promotion of the church’s perpetual semi-hidden political agenda. 

So, I never received any response to my letters, which I now understand, which makes even greater in my eyes, the overwhelming blessing of the grace and compassion of Christ, and the work of the Holy Spirit in my life, guiding me to write the letters in obedience to the Spirit’s leading.  An understanding that does not make one happy, but one that does deepen within the peace of God that surpasses all understanding.

This ends the Broken Coffee Cup series, truly a twisted and at times torturous journey, not perfect in its thoughts or explanations, but hopefully the end a better place than my clumsy, ineffective, and misunderstood verbal attempt to illustrate by metaphor my rising thoughts inspired by the broken coffee cup.  Truly, a clumsy, counter-productive attempt that sadly did not go well at all, and one, that produced the need for this series.  I now keep the broken coffee cup as one of my little treasures in my study – fully retired from inspired use, hopefully!