Wolves in Sheep's Clothing

Rev. Jeremiah Wright

"Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them"--Matthew 7:15-16

Travel down almost any major inner-city street in Chicago and you'll be confronted with this detestable contradiction; churches from simple storefronts to architectural wonders that share the same real estate with gangbangers, crackheads, drunks, prostitutes, drug dealers and shiftless zombies.

If this scenery doesn't strike you as being quite odd, then you might want to have your eyes examined. Because the contrast between the two isn't just overwhelming, it's tragic. Perhaps 50 years ago, it would be unthinkable to find such evil encroaching upon good because the good influence of the Gospel of Jesus Christ would've swallowed up the bad influence of evil.

Today however, with Christianity's influence waning throughout the world, evil not only shares the same turf with many churches, it has found a comfortable home inside many churches. To wit: the combustible Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago's Trinity United Church located on Chicago's South Side, directs his followers to seek sanctification not through faith in the Son of God Jesus Christ and His death on Calvary's Cross for their sins, but rather through the social justice of the Black Liberation gospel.

The Black Liberation gospel holds white America accountable for a litany of grievances against black America. It converts Christ from the ultimate gateway to heaven into just another excuse to ignore personal responsibility and blame moral failings on someone or something else. Certainly, hating someone else and creating straw men to vent your hatred against may make you feel good in the short run, but it does absolutely nothing to solve your problems in the long run.

It isn't white America's fault that blacks have high incarceration rates in jails; high dropout rates from schools and give birth to 79 percent of their children out of wedlock. It isn't white America's fault that black America is now far worse socially and economically under the disastrous big government policies of godless liberalism than it was under the oppression of Jim Crow and segregation. And certainly, no ever wants to see that kind of America again where black Americans lived under such tyranny and persecution.

But until more black Americans wake up and realize that their worst enemies are their own leaders such as Wright, Rev. Al Sharpton, Rev. Jesse Jackson and the contemptible Louis Farrakhan, then nothing's going to change. Real change begins by taking personal responsibility rather than blaming someone else for one's problems. Real change begins by trusting in the life-saving gospel of Jesus Christ and His ability to bring about real change from within. And real change is pursuing the holiness and moral purity that God demands in his people. The apostle Paul wrote: "Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." (Ephesians 5:1-2)

It's time for these inner-city churches to get back to the biblical gospel that demands true Christians imitate God rather than fallen men. If these churches would start doing that again, we'd see less crime, less moral depravity and a lot more success stories instead of the catastrophes that we've been witnessing all too frequently over the last 50 years.