It occurs to me that the flesh never improves. The uprising in Kenya is case and point. An 80% Christian nation that has been praised as aGodly nation and therefore stable, has been on the brink of destruction.Seething just beneath the nods of agreement of the Sermon on the Mount lay a vicious force the scripture calls the “flesh.” How is it possible that normally nice people turn off CNN,close their bibles, take up a club, and go beat a neighbor to death? I admit it is a mystery, but something deeper than profession of faith grips them, it takes over, they wake up from the nightmare with blood on their hands. One reason is that we generally underestimate our potential for evil. Years of well-intentioned living, even when we build up a history of doing good, doesn’t mean we have actually become a good person. Because much of the church is superficial, its activities don’t really get at character transformation.
When I was in Rwanda a few years ago I asked pastors how in a Christian nation that nearly 900,000 people could have been slaughtered. In most cases it was done in a trance like frenzy?If you have seen The Hotel Rwanda or Sometime in April, both powerful films on the Genocide, the horror of unrestrained violence chills one’s spirit. The Pastor’s answers were remarkably in agreement, “ They couldn’t hear the Word of God because of tribal loyalty.” Because Christ was not fully formed in maturity in them, even the true Christians among them wereswept up in the killing fest that was the moment.
This begs the question, “ In American culture, what are some ways that we cannot hear the Word of God?” This was not hard to answer, consumerism. Consumerism is not primarily about the gathering of assets, it is an attitude. The American culture is as EugenePeterson says, “ stubbornly resistant to the way of Jesus.” Consumerism puts us at the center, the church exists to meet our needs, and all its goods and services become a commodity on the shelf for our consumption. It used to be said that a person died of consumption, so can the church.
