Come on ERLC! Come on FRC! Come on SBC!

Come on ERLC! Come on FRC! Come on SBC!

Here’s the riddle for the day: What happens when Christian/Evangelical organizations act like those in the non-Christian world?

Answer: [I’ll provide one for you later.]

If you’re having difficulty, let me give you a few facts to clarify your thinking.

Every day I receive an e-mail from Baptist Press. It bills itself as “News with a Christian Perspective” and it’s a publication of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). One of the stories in the May 24^th edition concerned Richard Land receiving the “Watchman on the Wall” award from the Family Research Council (FRC) and its president Tony Perkins. Land is the outgoing president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), an organization of the SBC.

“How wonderful,” I thought. “I wonder exactly what the Watchman on the Wall award is.” So I pop up the ol’ Google and off we go. A simple search led me to a page with this headline “Family Research Council President Tony Perkins to Receive Distinguished Service Award from ERLC.” What? Did I misread the abbreviations?

Turns out this is a press release  - a press release announcing that Perkins was going to receive an award in February 2013 from the ERLC. A what’s worse is that the award Perkins was receiving was the Richard Land Distinguished Service Award from the ERLC.

Holy smokes, boys. This looks a lot like organizational incest. Couldn’t you have waited a year or two to hand the awards to each other instead of three months?!

ANSWER TO THE RIDDLE: It doesn’t necessarily tarnish your testimony with the non-believers of the world (they probably don’t give a hoot anyway), it destroys your credibility with the believers you are trying to minister to and influence.

CONSEQUENCES OF THE ANSWER TO THE RIDDLE: With these gentlemen parading around and patting each other on the back, why would any hard working Christian want to donate his/her hard-earned money to either organization?

Come on, gentlemen. Surely you must see how bad this looks! It smacks of Pharisaism.

If you want to follow the trail of the smelly fish, here are the links to the two stories.

BP News - http://www.bpnews.net/BPnews.asp?ID=40382

FRC Press Release - http://www.frc.org/newsroom/family-research-council-president-tony-perkins-to-receive-distinguished-service-award-from-erlc

A Shocking Poll from Gallup

Okay, get ready to put on your shock face.

Well, on second thought, maybe that wouldn’t be a shock if we, as a country, had any moral fiber remaining.

A recent Gallup Poll shows that “72% of Americans Think the Country’s Moral Values Are ‘Getting Worse.’”

Go here to read the sad numbers on the poll … http://cnsnews.com/news/article/gallup-72-americans-think-country-s-moral-values-are-getting-worse.  And you may just want to put this on your favorite list and refer back to it when the whole country goes down the tubes.

I won’t try to interpret the numbers for you because everyone seems to have their own moral compass by which they evaluate such a poll. I’ll just pass on my favorite determination and let you examine the rest.

The poll specifically showed that Americans who attend church weekly, are married, or are Republican, were the most negative about the country’s moral direction. But even Democrats, people who attend church infrequently, and the unmarried had high negative outlooks about the nation’s moral values.

And one final thought – I think it is not so important that these numbers exist, but rather how do we turn this ship around?  This question can be answered in two steps: (1) What caused the moral decline, and (2) what can be done to improve the morals of America?

A Day of Reason?

This will be just a short note for everyone to go to the two links provided.

There really is little to say about this mayor’s philosophy of life. It is typical of life today in the USA.

And for Christians this is the battle. For every day of prayer, some nitwit will offer a humanistic meditation solution. For every cause to worship some nitwit will entertain a day to celebrate human accomplishment. The goal, of course, is to squeeze God completely out of the society.

So take the time to read these two pieces. It will be an awakening.

First read this: http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2013/04/30/anthony-foxx-declares-thursday-a-day-of-reason-instead-of-prayer-in-charlotte

Then go here: http://www.churchandculture.org/blog.asp?id=4307