The Clouds Upon our Land
There are times, especially when I feel under compulsion to write, when I am being led to think and feel and understand those things which trouble me deeply, and which to me, are wide and profound in their implications, that a certain degree of dread yet peace begins to reside within me, for moving over all these things of this post, like the dark turmoil of storm clouds, is the additional sorrow and troubling knowledge of coming judgment.
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About three weeks ago, I posted one of my “Ukrainian” posts, “Are There No Clouds in the Sky Above Russia?” And yet before that post, way before, I already knew that this post of the clouds above our land needed to be written, but I knew that I had to wait – and not wait with anxiety, avoidance, or doubt – but wait for the timing and obedience to just sit and think and pray before the Lord.
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I spoke to a dear friend about this upcoming piece that I was planning to write, explaining, or at least attempting to explain, the long road, the journey I had walked, to arrive finally at the place where I felt I could now write this post. He then asked basically if now with all the letters I had written to my church over eight years without a response, and also especially with what I had written in the “Broken Coffee Cup” series, did I think that the evil I had written of was now diminishing, or that the battle was almost over, or that now there would be victory. The evil he meant being the collusion of my church with the ex-president’s reelection campaign. A collusion to the extent that the centrality of Christ and His gospel and Kingdom were put aside and overladen with political messaging and culminating when the head pastor declared to the now ex-president that “all true and real believers will be on your side”.
I have always loved this friend for his questions, because many times, I do not have immediate answers to what he asks, and I have to think through my responses. And as I write this, I realize now that this is a quality most of my very close friends share. They ask questions just in our normal conversations about my thoughts or thinking or my life. And when I tell them I do not have an immediate answer, that I do not know, then, as friends, they patiently wait for my thoughts, which may be at times weeks away until the next time we talk.
But then, when he asked this question, after thinking about it for a moment, or what I understood of his question, I answered him that it wasn’t victory I was focused on – for victory, for me, is ultimately defined in terms of justice, kindness, and rightness. I then told him I was more focused on the fight, the struggle within me to continually use my words and thoughts and the voice that the Lord has given me to speak my concerns and thoughts on issues important to me, social and spiritual, of faith and history, on writing and art, and the interrelatedness of them all.
I told him that starting at an early age, I struggled to understand the disregard and meanness of attitude and words I heard expressed about and towards certain others – then blacks and Jews – only much later learning the word “prejudice. I spoke of how in eighth grade, I learned of the hypocrisy within the Pledge of Allegiance by reciting it in the morning at school, after an hour of news the evening before, watching college students and others being attacked with fire hoses and vicious dogs because they wanted to vote or eat at a stupid cafeteria counter. No, there was not liberty and justice for all. I saw that.
I explained how I knew of and considered deeply the history, plight and horrors, and current issues stemming from the cruelties and injustices the Native Americans and others of color had endured in our country. I expressed the “half” of my identity with Mexicans and other Hispanics – how through my father’s side of my family, I am of their blood, with that part of my identity residing deeply within the DNA of my heart and mind and soul. I told my friend that I think of those oppressed and potentially oppressed – women, the poor, those denied adequate education by either the “accidents” of their economic situation, or by deliberate racial policies, or those without voices, advocates, or protections as persons.
I ended by talking about my daughters and my grandchildren, my friends, and also now my readers, and how to ever give up or abandon my “fight” at any level, however small or insignificant that fight may seem, would be, I feel, a betrayal of all I had just spoken of and their struggles. A betrayal being something with God’s grace, that I never want to do. And I take great comfort in knowing, in believing, that the Lord would never lead me into betrayal, and that with His grace, I hope and pray that I would be able to stay the course for many more years. For by this, I believe, I will remain a true and real believer. Amen.
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Selah – a Hebrew word occurring in the Psalms which is thought to possibly denoting a pause, or a musical interlude, or change of musical accompaniment, such as a crescendo. I use Selah in this posting below in the sense of a musical interlude providing a pause in forward thought and offering a time to pause to meditate and think upon what has just been sung, or here, written.
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So how to begin to explore the clouds upon our land? Well, there are perhaps two simple truths we can consider to begin at least to understand the clouds over and upon our nation and churches. These two truths so intertwining the political and religious, that one cannot be separated from the other.
One truth, the one that overarches all, is that we are not a “Christian” nation, and perhaps never were, especially after the first assault upon Native Americans and the introduction of slavery into the colonies. For our actions, behaviors, and professed goals, politically, ideologically, and religiously – our history – have been, and still are, filled with oppression, violations of rights, and promoted distrust, disdain, and division. Moreover, even now politically, there are many who actively pound an even louder drumbeat of further, more aggressive, and enhanced suppression of rights and oppression, all for selfish political advantage that is by definition, evil. Within many churches there was, and continues to be, an active, proclaimed support for the now ex-president, an unrighteous and godless person, in whom they had placed, or been lead to place, their hope for a political messiah to bring about a more “Christian” nation and society by enacting the church’s own Christ-less political and social agenda. A wicked and adulterous union. A union that continues within the hearts of many pastors, elders, and whole churches, as a hope and prayer, still alive and encouraged, allowed to simmer on the front burner of their lips and pulpits, which, is by definition, sin, unrepented sin. Selah
January 6 came, with the ex-president’s speech to his carefully assembled followers, and then the attempted violent insurrection and overthrow of our Constitution and government that descended upon the Capitol, upon our nation, right before our very eyes! Yet from the pastor, sadly and devastatingly incomprehensible to me, there was no retraction of his support for this man, but only to my knowledge, one aside from the pulpit to the effect that the right man had been elected but fraudulently denied office. When Good Friday and Easter came a few months later, there was still no condemnation of the man or of the insurrection he planned and begat. Selah
But what was truly even more incomprehensible to me was that the pastor and the elders seemingly did not see or understand the connection between themselves and those at the trial of Jesus declaring that they had no other king but Caesar, and demanding that Barabbas, an insurrectionist – just like the man, the pastor, had praised and bragged about – should be released. Did they not realize that like those crying out for Jesus to be done away with, they had already done away with Jesus and His gospel from their pulpits and their lips when they embraced and supported from the beginning, the now ex-president who had no regard for God, nor Christ, nor even the politically frenzied church men the pastors and elders had become. This the greatest evil, stupidity, and idolatry of that time in the church. And now…there is still no public repentance, no acknowledgment before God or man – the congregation they were given to shepherd as God’s people – of this sin. No acknowledgment of sin, no repentance, still. Selah
And the second truth – when you support an unrighteous and godless man by lip or silence, openly or secretly, by rioting and building an insurrection in support, or within the privacy of the voting booth, you share in his evil. And if you support an evil and godless man who speaks and boasts and sweetly campaigns with promises and plans of further oppression and hate, and if this man and his ilk say and propose what you truly and really believe, then you share in their condemnation. And if your support is vocal, or hidden in silence within a quietly cultured and enjoyed smugness of a deeply godless heart, then regardless of whoever and wherever you are – in Congress, or pulpits, or securely righteous in the church in which you attend and sit, or just within the space of your own heart and home – then you also share in their judgment, in the judgment upon their words, beliefs and actions. Does no one understand this? Is there no fear of the Lord our land or within the churches? Selah
Moreover, for some, in elected office or the pulpit, there is, to me, the ever deepening frightening fact that the judgment upon evil is multiplied against them by the corruption and sin of enticing and ushering others into the same evil of praising, following, and applauding an unrighteous godless man. An ensuing evil that is further compounded for those in the pulpit who in their idolatrous embrace of evil and unrighteousness, and with hearts no longer filled or motivated with love of God or neighbor, lead and shepherd others away from the centrality of Christ and diminish the light and grace of His gospel of peace. This is judgment-worthy. Judgement will come. This is judgement – the blindness, the giving over to sin. Selah
Woe – a word, tinged with compassion and sorrow, used by Jesus to describe the inevitability, finality, and the doom of the coming judgement – for those animated by ideologies, political and social, pride, and self-promotion, and by other spirits in their praise and support of evil men. Woe to them whose clouded minds do not take every thought captive to Christ, who do not truly and really love God and their neighbor, and who are not animated or directed by the Holy Spirit. Woe to those churchmen who do not teach and work to bring others to Jesus, the Great Shepherd, but who work to elevate the present day would-be Caesars and their attempted and clutched at empires, and who entice and encourage other believers to do the same. There is nothing of God, of justice, or love and kindness in any of this, only darkness and sin. Selah
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Thus, the clouds over our land are dark swirling clouds of judgement, but as always with everything the Lord moves to accomplish on Earth, they are dark clouds of judgement tinged with compassion and sorrow for those who woe is upon. Selah, Amen.
Thank your Chris: this is a true account of the anguish we are all feeling as to what is to become of our nation. There will never be true justice until the selfish and the greedy disappear from the planet. That will not happen any time soon. … I Look to Jesus. We are living in the last days. I have never put my faith on humans as we are fallible. King David sinned before the Lord. So have the rest of us. The abortion issue polarized many. I myself very conflicted about it. It is best for preachers not to talk politics from the pulpit. It is very divisive and breaks up churches.