The Path
Difficult decisions face all those setting out to seek hard after the invisible immortal God. This is particularly true for seasoned believers who over years, if not decades, have “learned to discern good and evil.” Prophetic Christians inevitably discover that the status quo of Churchianity is too worldly and confining for such a journey. Rather than lapping Sinai by settling for a single year’s worth of experience over and over, they choose the road less traveled. Often forced to go it alone, leaving the crowds behind they look for “an unseen city with real, eternal foundations—the City designed and built by God.” Yet finding the trail, much less keeping it while attempting an ascension the Mountain of God can prove as challenging as it costly.
Modern life is a blessing and curse. Billions today enjoy the pleasure and ease technological advances afford. Nearly innumerable, our blessings so abound it’s as if we’ve inherited the answers to the prayers of all past generations.
Ironically, such overwhelming gifts have produced the most entitled and self absorbed society in human history. As if keeping pace with the technological revolution, Me-ism’s global meteoric rise is redefining, if not replacing millennia of ethics and morality. Incrementally relentless, the changes are as sweeping as they are subtle.
Modern Christianity is far from immune to the growing list of distractions and deceptions, temptations and sins plaguing mankind. A virus passing undetected through the firewall of faith, unprecedented levels of worldliness and presumption are quickly becoming the norm. Morality having been inverted in a single generation, previously unthinkable sins such as abortion have become inalienable rights.
Mistakes like aborting over a billion and thus turning the womb into the world’s most deadly place on earth have taken a far greater toll than generally, recognized. Offensive to God beyond measure, they deeply impact such spiritual lifelines as prayer and worship, the Church and salvation itself. Yet in many ways this devastation pales in comparison to the nearly wholesale and fundamental altering of the mindset of the average believer. As if on a spiritually genetic level, the cross Christ commands we bear has been replaced with apathy and worse. This subtle change is nevertheless so persuasive and prevalent it seems to have all but broken Biblical Christianity…
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Note to Reader: By firm and fair, factual and friendly reasoning GodBlog’s hundreds of articles and thousands of modern proverbs and psalms are designed to educate and entice a wide array of readers into serious consideration of life’s ultimate questions. Featuring the Biblical commentary Quantum Christianity, topics ranging from “Is Faith Reasonable” and “Issues with God” to “Renewal, Revival or Reformation” and “Eternity…the Wager” are carefully and concisely offered in hope of moving both the skeptic and devoted towards greater understanding and experience of our awesome and awful Creator and Savior who thankfully is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to the knowledge of the truth, repentance and salvation.
This being said, before proceeding it should be clarified that the following article is not for the average or even above average modern Christian. It is for those who, while deeply troubled over societal sin and Churchianity’s lack luster response, are even more so over their own ineffectiveness and resistance to the rigors of radical discipleship. It is not for those who consider wearing a costume cross the same as carrying one. It is for those acknowledging our nearly universal refusal to do so. It is not for the Biblically illiterate confusing presumption with faith. It is for those locked in hand to hand skirmishes for sanctification. It is not for those merely fixated on Biblical promises. It is for those comprehending the conditionality of Scripture. It is not for those confusing prayer with wishful thinking. It is for those honestly interceding and wrestling with God for real time answers. It is not for those finding solace in inappropriate worship. It is for those refusing to sing “peace peace where this is no peace.” It is not for those believers content to “wing it.” It is for those committed to the practice of spiritual sensitivity. It is not for those dedicated to the American Dream. It is for those fearful of Christ’s story of the rich man and lazarus. It is not for those who live as if ignorance were bliss. It is for those who pursue the facts at any price. It is not for those begging “please don’t wake me up.” It is for those cognizant of the fact that “the night is far spent” and “it’s high time to wake out of sleep.” It is not for those seeking to save their lives as Laodiceans. It is for those learning to lay down their lives as Philadelphians.
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The reasons for such an article as this are many, yet one in particular is rarely if ever addressed. Without question Christianity originated in the first century. Developed in the New Testament era, it's tenants and theology were largely perfected over the next 1,500 years. Few appreciate the relevant reality that for nearly two millennia Christianity, and the world in which it lived, possessed little of the boon and burden of modern technology. In point of fact, the gulf between modern life and that lived by the vast preponderance of Christians throughout the ages, not to mention citizens of third world countries today, represents so great a divide that few among those of us more fortunate can even imagine such conditions.
Thus, though most in the modern world hardly feel rich, it's no stretch to say we are in fact fabulously wealthy. In comparison with more than half the Earth's current population and 99.99% of all human beings throughout history, we live lifestyles that in many ways exceed those of ancient kings and approach those of mythological gods.
