From today’s reading...
…this is the Christ we are proclaiming, admonishing and instructing everyone in all wisdom, to make everyone perfect in Christ.” Colossians 1:28
In 1520, a Catholic priest by the name of Martin Luther didn’t like being admonished, so he started doing his own thing.
In 2015, Pew Research did a survey that found over 300 Christian denominations just in America. (Kinda reminds me of Mark 3:25, “And if a household is divided against itself, that household can never last.” But I digress.)
Luther’s refusal to be admonished and instructed kinda led to the Thirty Years’ War, where 25-40% of Germany’s entire population was killed.
His pride and arrogance also contributed to the anti-Semitic policies of Nazi Germany as well as the decline of faith overall precisely 500 years later, where only 47% of Americans said they belonged to a church, according to a Gallup poll. (There’s that pesky house-divided thingy.)
It’s no wonder.
People today are incapable of doing even rudimentary research.
Deductive reasoning is as rare as hen’s teeth, and the Dunning-Kruger effect is on full display all day, every day, and twice as much on Sunday.
(You know you’re dealing with one of those Dunning-Kruger types when they throw out “Judge not, lest ye be judged” (Matthew: 7:1) anytime anyone, anywhere attempts to admonish such nonsense as pedophiles in drag grooming kids at a library or adults placing money in a boy’s underwear when he twerks for them while also in drag. But I’m not judging...just pointing out what should be obvious.)
When you mention today’s reading from Colossians or Luke 17:3, “Keep watch on yourselves! ‘If your brother does something wrong, rebuke him and, if he is sorry, forgive him’” they look at you like you just farted in church.
I don’t want to rebuke or admonish anyone.
I want to raise my kids, shoot my guns, swim in my pool, train Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, nap, watch movies, and fool around with my wife.
But when you decide to get nekked and drive up on my lawn to howl at the moon at midnight, you and me gonna have a talk, and by talk, I mean I’m gonna admonish and rebuke, and you will get with the program, or you’ll rue the day you thought your actions were above reproach.
And I’ll do it without judging you at all, in much the same way I’d shoot a rabid dog that tried to attack my children, although it’s not the dog’s fault it got rabies, but it is your fault that you chose to fall prey to the pot, porn, and playoffs enticements of the world rather than form your conscience and your backbone.
So maybe I am judging you, but at least I know my faults, and I don’t try to convince the world that wrong is right or evil is good.
Now take your licks to gain wisdom, which is the only way to...
Stay the course.
Keep the faith.
Endure.
Now go sell something.
