Chriseaster

Chriseaster

           

            At least at Easter we do not have the commercialization which Christmas controls...mostly just chocolate rabbits laying colored eggs. A new twist at the little country church where I was raised, egg hunt at night using flashlights. God help us, what he did, what Christ did, "light from darkness" (John 1:4,5). But, like Evangelicals (particularly Baptist, Catholics, voting for the most anti-life Presidential regime in history-64% Baptists and Catholics voted for Obama even after four years of his failures when before in his first election they voted 54% for him) still fall into Satan's trap of cheapening the most important days in the history of the world, Christmas (celebrating Christ's birth), Easter (memorializing Jesus' resurrection from the dead).

            Even more "tacky," the pretenders, those who want people to believe that they believe in Jesus, fashionable to attend church on Christmas and Easter...Christeaster's... much like church people who like sermonettes: Christianettes.

            20th century Christianity brought a Las Vegas type belief system...a CHANCE-GAMBLE that I might need God sometime. As one black preacher, promoter of liberation theology said to me, "I keep on with my church work because there just may be something to it."

            We live in a world of just "going through the motions." Everything at the school house, court house, church house, a matter of routine, STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURES (SOP). God help you if you deviate from a form of worship, not understanding a legal statute, actually using some common sense.

            You go to your doctor, assembly line system, with all the technology, lucky if he touches you. Any botanist with a knowledge of plants, any farmer who has flu-cured green tobacco, any doctor who ever did an autopsy, knew that tobacco (smoking) was evil-deadly for you. Yet, we are perfectly content to put poisons in our drinking water (fluorides, chlorides), see an accumulation of radiation in your own house from so much electrical equipment-even wires in the walls (magnetic field and radiation field). When will we learn that (SIDS) sudden infant death, a direct relationship with radiation, the poisons of vaccinations? This writer has always been amazed to hear preachers of every stripe (Brush Arbor to seminary), talk of eternal life and then, particularly Baptists, trip over one another running to the voting precinct, to vote for liquor stores, lottery tickets and soon same sex marriage. (Every month poling shows warn more Evangelicals-religionists accepting the "premists"-fairness of same sex marriage. Much like second amendment weapons such great Baptists as Richard Land, Franklin Graham, now accepting gun controls.) 

            The profitist, high priestess of new age thinking, Oprah Winfrey excelling in her powers of salesmanship to convince believers as well as unbelievers that Christianity and spirituality are separate. She does not believe that the Christian is in daily warfare with the powers darkness in high places (Ephesians 6:12), that if you take the supernatural, spirituality out of Christianity, that if you do not constantly wear the whole armor of God (Ephesians 6:13), you do not have a chance against the world, flesh Devil. Too many think that Christianity is just a convenient veneer, that God really needs us, particularly at Christmas and Easter. We live in a world of unbelievable statistics, 49% of Americans on food stamps, 53% government entitlements, 50% divorce rate even among preachers of the gospel,  36% black children aborted, 72% black children in homes without fathers. Many mainline denominations have bowed to political correctness, Madison Avenue techniques, false idols-Gods of religiosity (acceptance of abortion, same sex marriage, homosexuals in pulpits).

            It is not brain surgery, surely you know when it started...the sewer into every living room, Satan putting images in your mind, the insanity of low level living. Dramatically, cautiously, the oxytocin hormone took over...go along to get along, "lets move on," don't be negative, or the mantra of The Beatles, "All you need is love," or Sinatra singing on his way to Hell, "I did it my way."

            From Washington to Raleigh to Wilmington, just going through the motions. Will someone please tell me what has happened to the world, INCOMPREHENSIBLE? This totally blind, 100% disabled, service connected medical officer veteran of the Korean war era, learned yesterday that he has never been on the roster of blind people in his county and state. Can you believe it? A man who has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes-county, city, federal, always with an exemption for blindness. I have had direct contact with the local, state, federal veterans affairs officials. The local department of aging checks with me about evacuation in time of weather emergency. The first people at my house, very next day, after veterans housing adaptation, tax department. Newspaper, magazine articles often full page about this blind veteran's travels throughout the world. Award as JC Young Man of the Year, one of areas five most fascinating men, philanthropy at churches and colleges (well publicized). One would think that those interested in veterans, those concerned with disability, particularly blindness, would cease on to such newsworthy activity. The state commission of the blind's social worker said to me, "We have never heard of you." I have a filing cabinet filled with letters, several computers filled with letters, activist for the disabled, activist for the disabled veteran.

            Does it worry God that those he created chose to ignore Him not believe in Him, many have never heard of Him?

            I so pity people without wonderful memories. Even more, I pity those who have no appreciation for anything.

            As poor as we were, my mother always found the money to go to town and buy her children a chocolate egg for Easter WITH THEIR NAME ON IT. Three of my mother's children were older, my sister and I ready for college when our baby brother was born. (She died two weeks after he graduated from college.) Earlier, my sister and I were home from college, baby George must have been in the first grade. Here comes mother and daddy from town, mother carrying a box in which their was a chocolate egg, on which was the name, "George." There are many great memories of Easter but none should overshadow the gift which God gave us in the crucifixion and resurrection of his only son.