John 10:7-10 Jesus again said to
them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came
before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am
the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and
find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that
they may have life and have it abundantly.
Who are the thieves and robbers, and how do we identify
them? It is not as easy as you might think. They do not manifest themselves
with horns and long red tails. Instead, they are some of the warmest and most likeable
people, as Paul had explained:
·
"And what I am doing I will continue to do, in
order to undermine the claim of those who would like to claim that in their
boasted mission they work on the same terms as we do. For such men are false
apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And
no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no
surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of
righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds. (2 Corinthians
11:12-15; ESV)
The
false prophets of Israel had been the most popular. How could this happen? They
were masters at presenting an appealing and marketable message. They knew how
to tell people what they wanted to hear. This had been God’s complaint:
· “They dress the wound of my people as though it
were not serious. "Peace, peace," they say, when there is no peace.
Are they ashamed of their loathsome conduct? No, they have no shame at all;
they do not even know how to blush. So they will fall among the fallen; they
will be brought down when they are punished,” says the Lord. (Jeremiah
8:11-12)
The people wanted a message of peace, and that is
exactly what they were given. They wanted to hear that their lives were
perfectly acceptable before God, and this is what they were told:
· “They continually say to those who despise Me, 'The
LORD has said, "You shall have peace" '; And to everyone who walks
according to the dictates of his own heart, they say, 'No evil shall come upon
you.' I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran. I have not spoken to them,
yet they prophesied. But if they had stood in My counsel, and had caused My
people to hear My words, then they would have turned them from their evil way
and from the evil of their doings.” (Jeremiah 23:17-22)
Many had regarded the false prophets as their friends. After
all, they made the people feel good and secure. However, they weren’t their
friends at all. If they had been their friends, ‘they would have turned them from their evil way and from the evil
of their doings.” They would have told them the truth in hope of restoring them
to their God. Instead, they were the “thieves and robbers who only come to kill
and destroy.”
During my forty-five years as a servant of our Lord, I have observed that the false
teachers were those who were the most likeable and charismatic, and often even
the most talented. How then do we know them? Jesus gave us one test:
·
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in
sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by
their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So,
every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A
healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every
tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus
you will recognize them by their fruits.” (Matthew 7:15-20)
What are the fruits that we should observe in the true prophet? Jesus was the true Prophet and Shepherd. He sought the peace and unity of the Church, as His prayer indicates:
·
“I do not ask for these only, but also for those
who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as
you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the
world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I
have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you
in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you
sent me and loved them even as you loved me. (John 17:20-23)
I want us to be one as our Lord had prayed. However, I have
seen the racial divisions growing with leaps and bounds, and I am terribly
grieved about it. I also see the race-baiters, who have come to kill and
destroy, always crying “systemic racism” and “white privilege,” things I have
not seen in my 35 years in this city.
What is dividing us? False prophets, advocates of Critical Race Theory (CRT), who claim that racism is part of white DNA and that all of the problems are the result of a sinister and unseen attempt to maintain "white privilege" and to keep the blacks on the plantation through webs of systemic racism.
If I were a POC and believed these allegations that the
white world was against me and was the cause of my failures, I too would be
looting and sucker-punching whites. Would my acting out help me or my people?
Certainly not! Inflamed with rage, I would be killing any chance I had for a
positive adjustment to any society.
Meanwhile, I would be inflamed by many so-called friends, affirming my feelings
and telling me that I am justified to feel rage and even to act out. Are these
really my friends? Are they sowing good seed into my life? Yes, they
temporarily make me feel good about myself, assuring me that I am not the
problem. Instead, it is the white society. It is all their fault. Meanwhile,
they are telling me what I want to hear, fueling my addictive and dysfunctional
rage.
As planned, this victimization narrative is sowing the fruit of hatred and division, the opposite of the fruits that Jesus had prayed for.
Georg] Lukacs of the Marxist Frankfort School wrote:
·
“Simply destroying the status quo, including the
destruction of a country’s historical institutions, beliefs and institutions,
especially the society’s reliance on Judeo-Christianity would bring about
Marxism.”
https://bluewaterhealthyliving.com/the-frankfort-school-and-the-history-of-political-correctness/;
and all subsequent quotations)
It’s about destruction of the existing system. Max
Horkheimer of the Frankfort School coined their attack as “Cultural Marxism” and argued:
·
“It is not economics that creates oppression but
rather the nuclear family, traditional institutions, traditional morality and
concepts of race, gender and sexual identity. These are the chains of tyranny
which must be broken by revolution.”
·
For Horkheimer, critical theory was an infinite
and on-going criticism of the status quo. It was designed to be targeted at
youth and young adults, by having them learn that it was appropriate and
necessary to attack all of society’s rules and norms. (Grimski)
Herbert Marcuse of the Frankfort School described their
strategy:
·
“One can rightfully speak of a cultural revolution
since the protest is directed toward the whole of society and its cultural
establishment, including the morality of the existing society. What we must
undertake is a diffuse disintegration of the entire societal system.” (Dennis Grimski)
Perhaps you do not like what I am saying, but please do not
be tempted to think that I am your enemy and not your friend. A friend will
open your eyes to what is best for you in the long run and not bath them in
unjustified rage. The enemy only comes to kill and destroy.
Every bad tree bears bad fruit. What has been the fruit of the last
administration and all of its race baiting? Has it helped the Church? Has it
made this nation a safer, more just, and a more neighborly place? Has it healed
the racial tensions or improved the lives of the people they have claimed to
help, apart from increasing their marginalization and addiction to handouts?
Have they made this world a safer place to live?
Who are your friends? According to black economist Thomas
Sowell, it is not the Left:
·
When it comes to crime and violence, the
political Left, including much of the media, are having a great time demonizing
the police. Blacks are the biggest victims of the sharp upturn in murders that
has followed. But, yet again, hard evidence carries very little weight when the
Left is feeling good about themselves, while leaving havoc in their wake. The
absurdity to which this kind of media frenzy about the police can lead is shown
by the fact that a black policeman in Charlotte, North Carolina, shooting a
black suspect who had a gun, has been blown up into a racial issue across the
nation. Have we become so gullible that we are so easily manipulated and
stampeded?
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/441176/california-ballot-proposition-58-shows-left-taking-school-choices-away-parents
The Left has honed manipulation into a fine art among the
minorities by promoting the victimization theme. Instead of helping the
marginalized, the Left has inflamed them, making it harder for the marginalized
to stand together along with their white neighbors.
According to Sowell:
·
In later years, as the minimum wage was
repeatedly raised to keep up with inflation, black teenage unemployment from
1971 through 1994 was never less than 3 times what it was in 1948, and ranged
as high as more than 5 times the 1948 level. It also became far higher than the
unemployment rate of whites the same age.
Ironically, the Left continues to unfold their charges of
“systemic racism” and the alleged undercover attempts to maintain “white
privilege,” creating hatred, distrust, and polarization However, the Left’s
attempts to control the legal and economic systems might have done more to
un-privilege the black community than anything else:
Sowell charges:
·
The relations between the police and the black
community are another issue that has gotten a lot of attention, and produced
counterproductive results. After all the rhetoric and all the efforts towards
more tightly restraining the police, the net result has been that murder rates
have soared in cities where that policy has been followed — and most of the
people killed have been black.
Our culture of blame and shame refuses to compare the status
of blacks before and after the institution of their liberal policies. However,
Sowell wants us to see the larger picture:
·
In my own life, I was very fortunate when I left
home in 1948, at age 17 — a high school dropout with no skills or experience.
At that time, the unemployment rate of black 16- and 17-year-old males was 9.4
percent. For white males the same ages, it was 10.2 percent.
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell091316.php3#4KH2HlYyLYYSVZxU.99
Other black conservatives, including Frederick Douglass,
have called upon white society to leave them alone:
·
“Everybody has asked the question. . .’What
shall we do with the Negro?’ I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do
nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do
nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own
strength, if they are wormeaten at the core, if they are early ripe and
disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the
tree in any way, except by nature’s plan, and if they will not stay there, let them
fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I
ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!”
Why did Douglass call upon the prevailing society to “Let
him alone?” Today, it is easy to see why. The various entitlement programs have
served to disempower the blacks and to destroy their families and their
traditional values, banishing them to the oblivion of State dependency.
You might find these words very disturbing. I just ask you
to consider who is the true prophet and friend.
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