I Can’t Think of a Good Title

Our nation is sick. It is decaying and close to death. It is not trump that is causing its death, he is a symptom more than anything. How do we heal a nation this sick? Our families, coworkers, neighbors and churches are filled with people who believe something radically different than we do. We cannot win them over by reason. We cannot go to war and kill them as they live among us. It’s not simply a red state vs blue state thing. You cannot kill an idea anyways…..no matter how many bodies you stack up. Israel has not learned this lesson. You can kill, bomb, starve and shoot a people into submission but you cannot kill what they believe with a bullet.

So, what then? Grabbing a gun, rushing out and shooting the opponent sounds so direct, so appealing. If it cannot work, what will?

There is only one weapon that will overcome an idea and that is love. I am not saying this as some pot smoking hippy hugging a tree and singing kum by ya with my fellow flower children. It’s not something simpleminded as that but it is fundamentally simple. God does change hearts. He has the power to move people away from wrong ideas. Jesus is the answer.

Yea, I know there are cynics out there that laugh at the idea. It’s ok I’m a cynic too. You might ask, how can God be the answer when big box Christianity is a big part of the problem? Christian nationalism is killing America you say.., I agree. Any number of atrocities can be committed if a person firmly believes it serves their God.

The church has been described as a body. When a body is severely sick what can be done? We cannot have different parts of the body attacking each other. We need all parts to heal…we need white blood cells….we need antibiotics to clear out the infection causing our fever.

We need God, we need love and we need discipleship. As much as I’d like to just start fighting, actively opposing and confronting -the reality is that those get limited results at best. We need more Christians to have the tough discussions with their friends. We need to show them love and patience. We need to show them God. We cannot war with an idea but we can help individuals find a real relationship with God. It’s a slow frustrating process but it is necessary.

In order to be successful we need to be right with God. We need to be in His word and have an active relationship with Him. We need to have the right mindset. We cannot seek to browbeat or demean our Christian nationalist brothers and sisters. We need to accept that they are children of God and take a patient, loving long view approach to showing them grace, love and modeling good Christian beliefs and behaviors.

There are as many of them and there are of us and that’s ok. Given a Biblical perspective, a 1 to 1 ratio is a cake walk….when God is at work, what odds would be too much for Him? If we prepare ourselves and if we each were able to reach even one person, then we can turn this nation around. We can secure Gods place in our society not through force, not through legislation but simply because people see what true Christian values mean, they see Gods love in action and they cannot help but to feel an attraction.

Can we build a disorganized army of disciples? Yes, God has plans within plans within plans. He would make any great general seem an imbecile by comparison. We can take our frustrations, our sadness, our anger and turn them over to God. Pray. Let Him lead us to strengthen our households, our places of employment, our church. Each home that is strengthened, each place that sees and embraces Gods love and leadership makes the evil we see in America less powerful.