Fighting the Wrong Battles

The Rev. Franklin Graham

Surely, the Rev. Franklin Graham is familiar with this scripture: "No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in civilian affairs, but rather tries to please his commanding officer." (2 Timothy 2:4)

That was the apostle Paul's caveat to the early church to avoid using worldly methods to advance the Gospel instead of the power of God's Holy Spirit. Paul used a soldier as a metaphor for a Christian and a commanding officer as a metaphor for Jesus Christ.

What did Paul have in mind when he issued that warning? He had politics in mind. Though the political process was much different in Paul's day, it was a human endeavor that influenced the people through legislative power.

Paul wanted the early church to stay out of the political arena because there's no spiritual power there. Meaning what? Meaning that legislative power forces people to act and behave--often against their will--while the spiritual power of God encourages people to act and behave according to God's will.

Simply explained, people behave badly when they either don't fear or believe in God. Bad behavior entails a litany of things from murder, rape, robbery, violence, sexual immorality, alcohol and drug addictions, gambling etc. Even though we have laws that criminalize such behavior, they don't prevent such behavior. If you don't believe that, then consider how well gun and drug laws work.

When people fear God, crime and moral decadence declines. But when people don't fear God--either because they don't believe in Him or they don't believe He's omniscient--then crime and decadence explode. When that happens, the easy solution is always to pass more laws to prohibit crime and decadence. That's not a bad thing.

But that's a solution for the secular world and not for the Christian church. Evil always increases in the absence of God's presence. In order for people to be morally strong, they have to believe in and fear God. And that comes by preaching the Gospel and keeping it relevant to the world.

That's where the Christian church began to fail in the 19th century--initially in Europe--when the church began to doubt the Bible as the inerrant word of God. When that happened, the church turned away from the biblical gospel to the powerless social gospel and attempted to do God's will via secular methods.

Needless to say, you can see the results. Violence and moral decadence prevail throughout the western world. Such abominations as abortion, and lifestyles such as homosexuality and transgenderism that were historically condemned, are now glorified while gay marriage has been codified.

And such behaviors as alcoholism, drug and gambling addictions that were historically defined as bad moral choices, have been redefined as "diseases." When a moral choice is reclassified as a disease, that removes moral accountability from the equation. And evil multiplies exponentially.

Surely, Rev. Graham knows that. And yet, like many of his fellow evangelicals, he chose to fight evil through the political process, promoting candidates that claimed to uphold conservative values.

But the Rev. Graham has finally thrown in the towel after his Republican Party sold out conservatives recently by helping to pass a spending bill that funds the mass baby murderer Planned Parenthood. Here's what he said on his Facebook page: This is an example of why I have resigned from the Republican Party and declared myself Independent. I have no hope in the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, or Tea Party to do what is best for America. 

Ironically, the Rev. Graham's father, the legendary Rev. Billy Graham, made the same mistake many years ago before he divorced himself from politics and got back to evangelism. He realized that you can't change the world through politics. And his son, who's a dynamic preacher, has finally realized that as well.

Other evangelicals need to follow Rev. Graham's example and stop trying to do God's will via the ballot box. American politics is a filthy industry that's long been corrupted by big money from special interest groups and wealthy elites who use the political process to further their agendas. And one of those agendas is the creation of a godless, secular state that glorifies evil and persecutes those who dare speak out against it.

Surely, the Rev. Graham is familiar with another scripture: "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter." (Isaiah 5:20) 

That's the world we live in. And a major part of that was made possible by the Christian church's abdication of the power of God in Christ for the futility of a civilian affair called politics.