On the topic of politics again

Below is a post I made to a Wild at Heart yahoo group forum. I thought I'd post it here as well as it gives a good insight into Christianity and politics. I do want to add to it a link to an article by MorningStar ministries that says very similar things regarding revival.
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Well that is a certainly a great post to get things heated up on this forum. Good Job Brian.

I have so many comments to make from so many angles I don't quite know where to begin.

I'll begin with W. Brian Thorton's statement "...However, I believe that dependence on the government and the welfare
state we now live in is nothing short of a spiritual curse. God is no
longer our provider. Since government is our provider, we don't need
God anymore. So, for nearly 80 years He (God) has gradually been
removed from our public lives."

What a great insight, and undoubtedly true. God loves to tell me things, which--if I repeated them--people would think I'm crazy. He once explained to me that a spirit of brotherly strife once lived in Africa. Village conquered their neighbors and sold them as slaves. With these slaves came civil strife which lead to civil war here in America. The reason this spirits power didn't erode in the American south until Dr. King was that no one had ever fought it on both a political and spiritual front before.

Sounds kinda crazy to me but it also makes sense. At the same time I think it might be a stretch to blame the California fires on gay marriage. While we as humans can look at gay marriage and see an indicator of the moral temperature of a culture is that how God sees it? God knows every sin in every heart. Is he more upset that a person choses to have sex with a person of the same sex, or if that person tries to marry a person of the same sex? Aren't we committing adultery when we lust after a married woman? Does that anger God more or less than wanting to have sex with someone of the same sex? These are strictly rhetorical questions.

Reading the bible, I don't get the feeling God is happy about homosexuality, but aren't all sins equal? As Christians we get so caught up in disapproving of one sin over another. When Jesus interceded on behalf of the prostitute, he asked, "where are your accusers?" Only Jesus was without sin so only Jesus was in a place to accuse her, and he didn't. That's an example we need to study.

I'm always surprised by the way modern evangelicals (whom I often criticize though I count myself among them) discount and ignore the entire old testament unless the subject is homosexuality. Brian I know as an Adventist you probably don't count yourself an evangelical Christian or someone who ignores the old testament, but we'll come back to that.

I've written here before regarding Sodom and Gomorrah, (Genesis 18:16 on) but I'll go back to it for the new kids. I find it telling that God decides not to send the destroying Angels straight to work, but comes to earth with them and walks past Abraham's tent. So God chose to consult a human, or at least provide an opportunity for comment, before destroying the cities. God also let himself be talked down to 10 righteous people. We always blame Abraham for stopping there, but I think he is only guilty of having too much faith in his relative Lot. Surely Lot and his family had at least ten righteous among them. Even though Abraham stops at that point, God still makes a way of escape for the righteous who are there.

So if we look for just a moment beyond the whole gay thing we see a few more things that God was up to. It was an opportunity for relationship with Abraham. It was a way to move Lot out of a bad situation he'd become too comfortable with.

I also want to point out the footnote in the NIV version that says "spare them" is actually also interpretable as "forgive them." To my mind that could read, "26 The LORD said, "If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will forgive the whole place for their sake." That sounds crazy. Am I saying that if we were to intercede for the gays God would forgive them? The only thing God says about why He's telling Abraham is that he intends to make a great nation of him and bless all nations through it. So is God training Abraham to intercede? I think so. There is also a reference to Ez. 16:49 "Now this was the sin
of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and
unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy." So while God never tells Abraham the exact sin Sodom is guilty of we assume its homosexuality because that's what's up when the men check it out. But the only time anyone says what the "outcry" was its that they didn't share there blessings.

This all leads me to believe that the bible doesn't actually indicate that God has a special hatred of homosexuality, which causes Him to punish entire regions.

My point in all this is that we as men of God need to be standing in our place in the battle. We need to be men of God, whom God blesses the wicked through. I think that's the lesson of Sodom and Gomorrah. Those of us who are circumcised of the heart are spiritually the sons of Abraham and we are anointed to be conduit of blessing to the world. Not a conduit of judgment and condemnation.

This point dovetails into my next comment.

Politically speaking we Christians have invited much of the hatred that is thrown against us. When I think of men like L. Ron Hubburd, the founder of Scientology, his father was a minister. So was James Hetfeild of Metalica. What about all the young boys that were molested by priests and ministers? What about the people who are sitting down to family dinner and the doorbell rings--its another Christian trying to cram God down their throat like it was Amway. I don't have enough fingers and toes to count the number of times a Christian has told me, "you either believe X, or you are going to hell." Don't we realize that it sounds like, "you either believe what I believe or you can go to hell?"

But whether we engage in some horrible abuse toward non-Christians or not we are all guilty of misrepresenting Christ. This is the scary aspect of what John Eldredge is teaching. Christian nice guys have are not what the world needs. I'm not saying this from a place of self recrimination but from a place of hope. The marred image of masculinity in our nation is not the result of Christian men living in the image of Christ. Its not because we didn't give enough tracts out, or communicate our disapproval enough. It's because we haven't let love be our identifying banner. We haven't gone the extra mile when carrying our neighbors burden. We haven't gone the first mile in many instances. We have not shared our blessings, and in that we are more like the residents of Sodom than we would like to admit.

A. R. Bunch