“But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked: thou are waxen fat, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God which made him and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation” (Deuteronomy 32:15).
Prosperity has wrought great evil in the body of Christ, through slothfulness. There is a lesson from the children of Israel in this, after they had become secure in their promised land. God’s chosen people became heedless sluggards, comfortable and fat-necked, like us, who from the gluttony, robbery and whispered oppression of the “American Century” have been passively enriched by the rapacious greed of our representatives and their handlers, financial oligarchs. We took and still take the money. We boast in the freedom thatwe admit is not free, and we well know that the costs are the lives and freedoms of global others. We are all complicit.
Yes, even the church has been caught up in the post-WWII flood of mammon. And because credibility in the church and “blessedness” have become tied to monetary wealth and ostentatious displays of it, whether in person or architecture, and in the absence of any true demonstration of the Holy Spirit through obedience (without which no man will see the Lord), and the deception of technology and television programming that has elevated digital magic over the power of God, dulling the imaginations of men to the spiritual reality of God’s sovereignty and grace, the church began to judge the anointing of God by the accoutrements of the flesh, all bought with the wages of witchcraft. Capitalism breeds competition. Competition demands a winner. If a winner, then a loser. And so, both clergy and lay Christian have been lulled into a false sense of eternal security through their own ignorance of spiritual reality. This is what the Enlightenment hath wrought in us, a belief in only the empirical, in what can be sensed. It is by this slavery to what we can perceive that the church now defines blessedness by the acquisition of carnal fruit rather than by the spiritual fruit of faith and good works and souls won for the Kingdom of Heaven. Now, there are more funerals than marriages. Now, there are more backsliders than baptisms. Now, we spend every sermon rebottling and rewarming milk for us to drink. Now, the people of God are merchandised by the leaders of the church. T-shirts for sale. QR codes and registration fees. Conferences abound. But what of the gospel? What about prayer? Didn’t Jesus flip tables in the temple over this kinda stuff? But naw, I’m the crazy one. Okay.
Conversely, Christ’s advent was at the height of Roman power and prosperity. Yet, He lived as a homeless nomad, blessed above all. He was born in a manger and placed newborn into a feeding trough. At least, that’s how we depict it. He hailed from wretched Nazareth, says Nathaniel. Was raised in evil Egypt, the house of bondage and misery, says Arabic. He was in the world but not of it. We, the church, have forsaken His example. He said, “The servant is not greater than his master.” He said, “Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” Yet we have sought to become richer, more accepted, more connected, more entrenched, more loved than even Christ himself was. And we have called that perversion of His ministry “blessed.” What a mess.
theblackdostoyevsky 
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