Years ago my friend Paul, a manager at a waste treatment plant, held up two glass laboratory beakers. The one in his right hand contained a clear liquid, the one in his left a thick, black liquid.
“This,” he said, jiggling his right hand, “is lab-certified 100 percent pure water.” Then he jiggled his left hand. “And this, well, this is the raw product I deal with all day long. Here’s the question: How much of this could I put in the water, and you still drink it?”
Looks of horror on every face in the audience. It was clear that none of us would drink the water if he added even a drop from the beaker in his left hand.
This week 83 year old nun Megan Rice was convicted, along with two other protesters, of breaking into a secure facility used for disposing of highly enriched uranium and spraying the place with baby bottles loaded with human blood.
Several scriptural principles spring to mind but, if your brain works like mine, among your first might be Christ’s instruction that his followers be ‘no part of the world,’ or his advice to ‘let the dead bury the dead, just come be my follower.’
Back in 1976 Argentina was involved in an internal ‘dirty war.’ People were arrested, detained, and sometimes ‘disappeared’ without any respect for their legal rights. Two of those arrested were Catholic priests named Yorio and Jalics. They were Jesuits. Their boss at the time was Jesuit Provincial Superior Jorge Bergoglio, now better known as Pope Francis.
Some of the torturers from that time are now on trial for war crimes. One side claims the Jesuits were activists, and that the future pope didn’t do enough to protect them. There are even claims that he ratted them out to the bad guys to make points for himself. The pope, of course, claims he did all in his very limited power to work ‘behind the scenes’ with the Junta to secure the release of the two accused priests.
The same two scriptural principles apply. What Jesus commanded his followers to do was to follow his example, and preach the kingdom. He didn’t ask them to become activists, set up charities or hospitals, overthrow corrupt governments or break in to nuclear facilities.
Many will say to me on Judgment day, ‘Lord! We prophesied in your name… and performed many wonderful works in your name.' Then I will tell them publicly, 'I've never known you. Get away from me, you evil people.'(Matthew 7:22)
Look around at the religions available today. Do you see:
- Evidence of a three-headed god, with the son as the most prominent? Babylon started it.
- Doctrines that assume people have some sort of life that continues on after they die? Look to ancient Babylon.
- Extortion, teaching that people or their babies might be tortured in limbo, purgatory or hellfire, or in some other way using fear to separate people from their money? Babylon.
- A mindset of ‘my family, tribe, state, country, or skin color is better than yours’ or even 'my country right or wrong'? It came from Babylon.
Most importantly, do you see a church making excuses for mixing customs of pagan origin with Bible teachings?
The book The Paganism in Our Christianity states: “It was a definite Christian policy to take over the pagan festivals endeared to the people by tradition, and to give them a Christian significance.”
‘Well, sure, Halloween/Christmas/Easter/the cross/the robes/the candles/the clergy/celibacy/nuns/image worship/holy water/church steeples and such are pagan, we know that. But we like them, and they aren’t hurting anybody.’
A few weeks ago, when I quoted to a retired military lady Jesus’ warning to Peter that ‘all who take the sword will perish by the sword,’ (Matthew 26:52) her reply was, ‘But if everyone followed that teaching our country would have been overrun years ago.’
How much of this crap can they mix into your water and you still drink it?
Read a free sample of my novel based on the apostle Paul, The Minotaur Medallion, at Smashwords.com
Email me at bill.underwood@mail.com to let me know what you think.
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