Walking Through Bleeding Kansas

Walking Through Bleeding Kansas

Just hung up from a phone conversation with Pastor Rusty Thomas who with Pastor Flip Benham and some brethren are walking across America . I had heard they were in the eye of one of those big Kansas Plains storms and called to see if and how they were still ticking. They were warned off the road by local weather-watching officers. A church offered them basement hospitality and they experienced the hail, lightning and thunder but thankfully escaped the devil's Tornado twisters.

He said that today in Hays Kansas they turned a corner and stumbled upon a Planned Parenthood [aka Banned Parenthood or Planned Barrenhood] and immediately went into Church-On-The-Street mode, preaching against the demons of child-sacrifice. Whereupon 8 police cars suddenly showed up to protect the child-killers.

Within my lifetime some years back the police would have showed up to arrest the child-killers. Ah, the consumer friendly Church having worship under the devil's bushel basket while they hack infants to death a block or two away. In Schenectady there's a Christian church right across the street and never the twain shall meet.

As I wrote yesterday in response to a piece in America Magazine where the author was welcoming the existence of greeters or hospitallers at the Church doors on Sunday morning. I said:

This well-intentioned but dysfunctional piece lacks Fr. Bernard Haring's 1974 "Butchers" Teruah. It's looking to make folks feel welcomed and accommodated into warm fuzzies of a community worship which God is not going to listen to.

Isaiah 1:15-17 When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you; even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood; wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight! Stop doing wrong, learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow .

Just like the Catholic and Protestant clergy I was friends with in [ Northern Ireland 's] six counties.... totally irrelevant to the local injustice and its concomitant shedding of blood. They lived in the world of Catholic or Presbyterian make-believe [there were exceptions and they were so few everyone on both sides of the divide knew their names]. Yet they all showed fine hospitality to any newcomer to their respective churches half-knowing another bomb blast after church might kill that worshipper.

One must shut off the flow of innocent blood FIRST, then come and offer worship to God. One must prioritize the saving of the next innocent life targeted for destruction even over the hospitable welcoming of the next worshipper. One must show the next worshipper to be welcomed that there is something higher and more important than welcoming him. When one accomplishes this, the stranger is not only more impressed, he knows that Christianity has very little to do with his comfort and much to do with Calvary .

Come to think of it, even if God hadn't spoken in Scripture, it makes common sense. The author raises up hospitality parallels in one's home. But would the head of the home be concerned with home hospitality at the same time a member of his family is being murdered or targeted for murder? If he did the whole community would see the obvious dysfunction. However when it's the stranger's child being butchered, few can see the dysfunction. He pretends hospitality is the priority when God using Isaiah clearly says otherwise. It's saving the life of the future worshipper that counts, saving the soul of its mom that takes priority.

That's what Jesus meant when He said "if you only love those who love you, what good is that? Even the pagans do that."* *Who needs to be welcomed into such a make-believe community in the first place? They'll only add another number to the world of make-believe.*

/frfr