by Randal Matheny

Okay, it's confession time. I can't keep up with everything there is to do. So here goes a renewed effort to keep Forthright alive.

If it weren't for Barry Newton, I'd have thrown in the towel. In the midst of an ill-fated fund-raising effort, he has still managed to faithfully send articles, not all of which I have gotten sent through the email list.

So we're going on-line.

Just in time, too. Topica is forcing ads on everybody.

Each author will be responsible for posting in his column on his day of publication.

We'll try to keep you informed by the Topica email list of new articles. But don't let that keep you from checking in regularly and adding your two bits here or on the Encouragement Forum.

The content is as good as ever. But now it's more dynamic, sharper, quicker. Like a two-edged sword.

For a straight path,

Randal

by Stan Mitchell

I ran across a survey recently that polled American leaders in business, politics, and the media. They were asked what groups constituted the “greatest danger to democracy” today. Fourteen percent fretted about the dangers posed by racist groups such as the Ku Klux Clan and neo Nazi’s. Interesting, you might say. But here’s the shocker. Twenty four percent said that they viewed Evangelical Christianity as a threat to democracy! Allow that to filter your thinking for a moment. Greater than power hungry politicians, greater than the attempts of the Politically Correct to dictate, greater than a one sided, eager to “educate” media, greater than those pathetic, hate filled skinheads. Bible believing, conservative churches are a greater threat to democracy than these! Don’t be afraid of media moguls who brainwash is with PC thinking, be afraid of a Gospel Preacher in a church Sunday morning; be afraid of churches that stand up for scripture. (The Williamsburg Charter Survey on Religion and Public Life, Washington DC, 1988). What are they saying? What does this tell us? To begin with, this sort of thing is as silly as Letterman after his bedtime. Conservative church groups are simply not a threat to democracy and free thinking. Curbing their right to enter public discussion, robbing their ability to express themselves, tearing the Ten Commandments off court walls, removing the very name God from our pledges and commitments – now that would be a threat to democracy! What it tells us is that the world is still, and relentlessly, the implacable foe of what is right, and godly. Why are we surprised? Did we forget? “Dear friends do not be surprised as the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you” (1 Peter 4:12). The threat they feel is not to their democracy, but to their deviance from God’s will. The world has always hated that!

"Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body" (1 Corinthians 6:19,20). Neil Anderson recently wrote, "you win a person with what you win him with" (Gospel Advocate, September 2003). When churches "bend over backwards to cater for their children," he explains, "the young are more often alienated than won by such tactics." If people are brought to a church through a certain music or activity, for instance, then they will leave the church on the same basis; their departure will coincide pretty much exactly with the arrival of a bigger show across town, a more dramatic version of that program in a rival church, or a ratcheted up version of what brought them to church in the first place. The pressure will always be to outdo last year's production, or lose the "loyal" customer! Instead of bribing them to church, maybe we should bring them to Christ. Of course Paul declares that we have been "bought at a price," not "bought for a price!" We don't (or shouldn't) make demands on churches and on Jesus; he makes demands on us! We don't negotiate our terms of entrance into the church; he dictates them! The Lord doesn't have responsibilities to us. Everything he did - everything - was a gift he was not obliged to give! We have responsibilities to him!