A Democratically Fashioned Church Or A Biblically Transformed People

By Lawrence Robinson

Right now, in America, we are living through a time of uncertainty, apprehension, and consternation like never before in our history. America has faced economic hardships and social unrest in previous years but unlike today.  What makes today so different than previous times is that coupled with the economic hardships, we’re also suffering from a severe, a severe, a severe upheaval in morality, the family structure, diverse views on rights, politics, racial issues, and violence.  What makes today different than in times past, is that we’re experiencing what this writer believes is the “bumper fruit” or the “bumper lack of witness fruit” which should come from the church, the people who belongs to Jesus Christ.  The witness of the church has become so democratically fashioned that it’s lost its theological bearing.  Allow me to explain.  Usually, whenever a farmer has a “bumper crop,” that means that the crops did exceptionally well and are very.  A “bumper lack of witness fruit” is an abundance of “nothing” from the church.  The church isn’t producing in its godly witness based on its theological stand, what God expects from it based on His great investment of Jesus Christ His only son.  One primary  reason that God’s crop isn’t doing as well as it should is because the church has allowed worldly weeds to grow in it.  If you allow weeds to grow in your garden and you’re not constantly weeding them, eventually they will overtake your garden.  Today, the ways and thinking of this world have come into the church and taken over.  During the time of slavery, discrimination, and the Jim Crow era, the church, the people who belongs to Jesus allowed this practice to exist among them and affirmed by its silence and or participation, that practice of society.  The church did not stand on God’s word with regards to how we should treat our fellow man.  The church allowed this sinful practice and attitude to exist in it and among its people.  It did not speak up or stand up by faith on God’s word with regards to these practices.  Therefore, like weeds being allowed to grow in a garden, the grievous atrocities perpetrated on African Americans became the fruit of silence from God’s people.  While my focus here is not the issue of racism, I’m merely pointing out that the sin of racism was allowed to reign to the degree that it did in part, in part because the church went along with the culture instead of God’s word.  The prophet Ezekiel said this in Ezekiel 3:18-19.  "When I say unto the wicked, 'Thou shalt surely die', and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way to save his life, the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood will I require at thine hand. Yet if thou warn the wicked, and he turn not from his wickedness, nor from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity, but thou hast delivered thy soul." Ezek.  The point that Ezekiel made was that it is the duty and responsibility of God’s people to say to our world exactly what God says about any issue.  It is also the responsibility of God’s people to stand totally on the authority of God’s word without regard to the push or sway of society.  On all the issues we face, God’s word must be our guide and the only, only cry of the church.  In America we live in a democracy, meaning people rule.  In America the people get to decide on what laws we’ll obey or the things that are acceptable.  In our democracy, the people get to decide what is good and morally acceptable.  The church, the people of Jesus, however, does not operate under a democracy. It operates under a theocracy, meaning God ruled.  In a theocracy the people do not get to vote or decide on what is right, what is moral, or even what is good.  God sets the standard for those things.  Just as America has a constitution, so do Christians, the bible.  Unlike America’s Constitution which can be amended and has been twenty-seven times, the bible cannot be amended. Therefore, the standard for what is right, good, and morally acceptable is non-negotiable.  So what is my point?  On the issues we face today, God has already spoken.  Our churches have been so fashioned in democracy as opposed to being transformed biblically, that the practice of democracy is now the manner that many Christians and our churches function.  Some churches are trying to amend God’s word as if the bible can be amended like our constitution.  Some Christians voice their feelings and even follow them even though God’s word speaks differently.  Churches across America have affirmed what God denounces.  Christians are advocating for rights as we have in a democratic nation but in doing so have thrown out righteousness.  America’s democracy has so fashioned Christians that we’ve forgotten that we are governed by a theocratic king.  The practice of democracy, what the majority wants, has become the method Christians are using to work through morality, racial issues, parenting, the family, and a host of other social ills.  What God said is fast becoming irrelevant because we have been so democratically fashioned that we missed being biblically transformed into the image of Jesus.  God gave this command to the people of Jesus.    Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect (Rom 12:2).  Our churches and Christian people are clearly violating this command.  We are not a democracy. We are under a theocracy and we are to live biblically in a democratic environment. We are kingdom people living under a divine King and transformed by God’s word. We are God ruled people.  Democracy in the church and in the decision making of Christians, is like weeds in a garden.  Left unchecked it will overtake the church and the spiritual life of Christians who live by it.  There is no place for people rule when God has already spoken. 

It is my goal in the next writings, to show how we’ve been so fashioned by democracy, that we lack being transformed into a biblically committed people.  It is my hope to call Christians and the church back to a biblical position to better help our people to influence those whom God places around us.  We absolutely must take a biblical approach to the issues we face today.  We “MUST” by faith, follow God’s word in every aspect of our living.  We cannot be so fashioned by democracy that we forget that we are people of a theocratic kingdom, ruled by a great king, Jesus Christ, who desires that we be transformed into His image. We have a constitution by which we live. Our constitution is the bible.  The question that we must answer is this.  Have we been so fashioned by our democracy that we’ve forgotten that we live by a different constitution that cannot be amended, God’s word?  How will you answer this question for your life?