Deception and complacency have certainly left America in a huge financial mess—and with currently too few community resources to aid those who are ailing and in need now that cutting social services in government at both the state and national levels have taken many local governments to the brink of bankruptcy.
Meanwhile, thirty-plus years of promoting privatization of government and social assistance to the poor and needy have led people to the church quite often, but the political-economic-and social deceptions have hallowed out the social infrastructure and the American economy as a whole since the 1970s.
This reliance on faith based services, private water companies, and private home schooling have also contributed to the hallowing out of other national- and state-infrastructures in recent decades.
I ask, “What has gotten us the churches and America, into this pickle whereby everyone is pointing fingers and doing nothing to change the individuals who make up the better part of our planet?”
Tozer asks, “I wonder if we are not fooling ourselves. I wonder if a lot of it is simply self-deception.” In his introduction to the topic of “The Christian’s Greatest Enemy”, Tozer looks at how God dealt with complacency for the Israelites of Moses day.
In Deuteronomy, two of the people under Moses were told that they had become too complacent and need to move on to the Holy Land. In short, it was time to change. How did the people of Moses proceed? They were told not to attack anyone and to treat everyone fairly along their journey. They did just that.
Are American Christians—and even American non-Christians—ready to move on from their complacency of decades?
Tozer ends his message in the first chapter of RUT, ROT, or REVIVAL, by using trees as metaphor. [I find Tozer’s usage of trees as a metaphor in times of global warming and great rain forest destruction to be fairly appropriate.] Tozer notes, “The tree that stands alive has lush, green leaves. Take a knife, scar the bark deeply and the tree will bleed. It is alive. The old dead tree just stands there, a watchtower for old sentinel crows. Take your knife and did in as far as you want to, and nothing will happen because the tree is dead.”
Dear globalists, Christians, Americans, Iraqis, Indians, Afghanis, Muslims, agnostics, and whomever or however you identify yourselves,
What kind of tree are you?—dead or alive?
Can we take real self-criticism and change?
Can we all identify the real enemies in complacency, bad judgment, and self-righteousness?
Or, like a dead oak tree, will we continue to point in all directions and not notice the dead wood within?
NOTES
Tozer, Aiden Wilson forum.
Tozer, Aiden Wilson, RUT, ROT, or REVIVAL, Camp Hill, PA (USA): Christian Publications, 1993.
