A Weekly Meditation of Pastor Chang (January 10, 2010)

<Futurology, Soothsaying, Fortunetelling, and Biblical prophecy> (5)

In the past two Sundays when I mentioned that the national foundation of the USA is shaking, my purpose is for us to pray. We cannot stand by the side as outsiders apathetically watch the condition getting worse. Three areas of the national foundation now are shaking: the biblical principle and Christian value system – it has been devalued; the government system – democracy and republic – which is not observed well; and the biblical capitalism – which is abused.

Now let me mention another two problems that I have observed in this country and please move ourselves into prayer for this country. First of all, spiritually speaking, the people in USA their hearts are getting hardened. It is strange now that more and more people dare not to talk and share about their Christian faith publicly. Especially at public schools to mention about Christianity becomes a kind of taboo. At the beginning, people said that for the sake of “tolerance,” we need to accept other people’s religions. But now it becomes: if anyone who mentions “Jesus Christ” immediately will be rejected and rebuked as “offending” someone. The public schools are not allowed students to bring any Bible, but Koran or Buddhist books or other religious books are O.K. One can imagine: the devils really work very hard in order to poison the USA the entire nation.

Now the situation is getting worse. In the past, such kind of situation only could find in the atheist or Moslem countries. But now, even in the USA, a nation was officially formed by Christians, now publicly renounced Christian faith. The worse part is: even at some Christian churches, some liberals echo to this kind of evil sound. For example, I remember about 30 some years ago when the society were debating whether the public schools should allow to pray or not, the General Assembly of the PCUSA approved and announced: they agreed that the public schools should not allow to pray because teaching the Bible and prayers are the jobs of churches. But unfortunately, now many churches do not even practice prayers or teach the Bible.

Furthermore, the second point is the problem of “greediness.” To be greedy is not the trade mark of the poor. Some poor people live with dignity; they refuse to be dirty even they are poor. But the rich sometimes are more greedy then anyone else. Especially we live in a very materialistic society, our children in schools already learned what is the best fashionable clothes, shoes, sneakers, cars, and houses, because most of the parents allow their children to pursue for the materials. Many parents teach their children study hard. The reason is to go to good colleges, then, get good jobs, earn more money, then to have a better life. This is a kind of mentality which remains in many immigrant parents heart, and they teach their children this way.

Now the entire society is playing more money games. And the worse part is people play unfairly and unjustly.  For example, in Wall Street, New York City, everyone works for 8 hours; but somehow, the top leaders, their salaries per day are $10,000. It is ridiculous. They play money games, in case they lose; it is O.K. the government uses tax payers’ money to fix it.

More, now most of the companies and organizations have unions. In the past, the purpose of Union was to protect the workers’ benefit. But now, they become rascals keep requesting benefits but never check up the working quality or ethics of the workers. And because of that, many companies cannot produce good products and lose the power of competition. The cars producing companies are the typical examples. When we drive cars on the streets of New York, one can see 98% of them are foreign cars.  

Recently, I feel that probably the church is the only “holy ground” which is not polluted. But not long ago, one elder from another church called me and complained that “the Classis” or “the Presbytery” is just like “unions” – keep asking the local church to upgrade pastors’ salaries, but does not supervise the local pastors to be good shepherd. When I heard of it, I was suddenly alarmed. It seems true, unfortunately.

 What should we do? If this society is contaminated by harden heart and greediness, then what are we going to do? May the Lord have mercy upon us! The only way we can do is to pray and let us be the light and salt of the world. (To be continued…)