Many have become so lackadaisical, indifferent, and lazy in their personal growth and service because they have convinced themselves that they neither have adequate knowledge of the word nor the ability to speak in public. When church leaders are chosen from among those with that rationale, the professional hireling who has the speaking ability is brought in to fulfill the role. This same doubt and fear bleed over into the home. Fathers have relinquished their responsibility to train their children by giving it to the public schools, Churches, and Sunday Schools.
The result of accepting this conditioning by society’s norms has produced a generation of fathers who are so ill-equipped and ignorant that they are not prepared for the task. Consequently, we continue to promote this downward cycle that supports a neatly organized division of labor and time slots that require children to spend over seven hours a day to satisfy their educational needs. Parents are not raising their children. The state is raising their children, while they provide the financial support of food, clothing, and sleeping quarters. Even this is lacking in some homes because the extreme irresponsible continue to look for a handout, a government program, or church benevolent program that will pay their utilities or offer some free service. Most families have experienced or are experiencing this socialist agenda to some degree. The result is the creation of a system to which people have become as dependent as those with drug addiction. They can no longer think for themselves because they are so accustomed to having others provide conclusions for them. For example, the media does not report news, anymore. Instead, they flood their audiences with repetitive commentary that supports their conclusions and narrative. Instead of doing our own research, we would rather accept the conclusions that others have reached. This same scenario can be applied religiously. Few people do their own study. That choice would be too labor-intensive. They would rather have someone tell them what the Bible teaches. After all, we have accepted the notion that professional training qualifies the church leaders to know more than the layperson. The impression left on church members is that attendance on Sunday, even if it’s just once, is the true measure of faithfulness and personal accountability. It is that one dedicated time that is set aside to learn, worship, and give back to God. The majority of these church members are spiritually starved, deluded with the thought that rubbing shoulders with the spiritual giants and leaders of the church organization will give them the spiritual boost they need for each new week. This represents both Protestantism and Catholicism, the mother of institutionalism. In this system, not only does the amount of teaching resemble famine conditions, the diet is often shallow three-point sermons that excite the emotions but provide little teaching from God’s word. On the rare occasion that God’s word is taught in its true context, holding each other accountable is absent. We may even be touched by the impact a truth is having on the heart, but leave that place only to forget what needs changing in our lives.
We are experiencing a famine in the land and few seem to be able to discern truth from error. A passage that has significance to this point is Hebrews 5:11-14. It reads,
Concerning Him, we have much to say, and it is hard to explain since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil. (NASV)
The two elements necessary to produce maturity and discernment is “time” and “use.” The Hebrew writer attributes the failure to exercise their senses to having become “dull of hearing.” A word study will show that he is describing one who has become mentally lazy or listless. Together, the time and the exercise of our senses will produce the kind of maturity that can make the appropriate discernment.
Another condition exists that goes beyond the inability to discover the truth for themselves and teach it to others. This is the condition of the heart that neither loves the truth nor wants the truth. An example of this warning is offered by Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2:9-11, which reads,
…the one whose coming is in accord with the activity of Satan, with all power and signs and false wonders, and with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved. For this reason, God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false. (NASV)
The political and religious division in America and across other countries is motivated by power/control and money. When leaders are not honest with the data and evidence because it does not lead them to their own conclusions, they will distort the evidence or ignore an issue with diversion techniques that play on people’s emotions. If you are unaware of an issue, its history and context, you become the prey for those who wish to control and influence your thoughts to support their conclusions. If they can shout something long enough to as many people as possible, they can easily win the support from those who will parrot their lies and unknowingly promote their agendas. When you add the factors discussed, i.e., lack of personal accountability to investigate the truth and teach it, the blind acceptance of honest reporting of truth from leadership, and not loving truth, it is no wonder that we are witnessing a great famine bred by laziness, deception, delusion, and divisiveness.
The solution to this problem is not more government and church programs that rob individuals of their God-given responsibility to equip themselves for service. If we continue to follow this downward spiral of irresponsibility and ineptitude, we will reach a point when families will be forced to accept a socialist government to provide for them or a church that does our thinking for us. When we buy into the words of any preacher or politician that replaces fathers in the home for a village, a religious school, or organization, we have accepted the lies of the cultural norms that tell us that we can’t do as a good a job to train our children, interpret Scriptures accurately, or teach the will of Christ to others. To accept this lie is to abandon our post to others who desire to have the preeminence or who may pressure and coerce us in the ways of political correctness and religious tolerance.
I beg you to recapture the task assigned to us all to make time for God and His word, to exercise your senses to proper discernment, and to stand against the pressures of our time that attempt to conform you to the ideologies of our changing culture. Do not fear their insults, labels, and criticisms. Instead, take your stand and know that though all may forsake you, there is one who is greater than all the combined forces of evil who will never abandon you.