Blame the church

Yahoo! News showed an AP report on recent events in Gaza:

"Israeli forces cut water, power in Gaza Palestinians inspect a bridge destroyed by Israeli army warplanes on a main road in the northern Gaza Strip, near Gaza City Wednesday June 28, 2006. Israeli tanks and troops entered southern Gaza and planes attacked three bridges and a power station, knocking out electricity in most of the coastal strip early Wednesday and stepping up the pressure on Palestinian militants holding captive a 19-year-old Israeli soldier. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)"

In order to save a solider, the IDF will cause massive suffering to an entire community, including bombing bridges and destroying a power plant.

You have no where else to look for blame in this situation than the church.

Oh, I don't blame the actual eternal, invisible Church of Christ. Not the actual God who is revealed in the Bible, not the One who is revealed as Word or is faithfully described in the "papyrus" as some say-- the literal printing in front of us. Not the tradition of the church historic, the institution that holds the creeds and teaches it to new generations. Not the sacraments of Word and Water and Wine.

I'm talking about the church of the Gospel of Prosperity, the church of Social Darwinism, the church of Fearing your Enemies and Killing their Children. The church that was indifferent to slavery, indifferent to the civil rights crisis-- the one that griped when these temporal distractions were brought up when it was talking about Law (God's command of what is to be done) and Gospel (God's promise to forgive sins). The church that insisted on keeping the doctrine of original sin as an essential yet abstracted doctrine but then griped whenever the specific sins of civilization were mentioned. The one that will go to great extremes to cause offense in posting the Ten Commandments in all public places, but cannot remember three of them.

I believe Augustine was quoted as saying, "The Church is a whore, but she is my Mother." We see it for sure whoring across the streets of Gaza today. This is no time for a City of God apologetic on the positive sociological effect of church on society. The world will laugh.


Lutherans have spoken of the church as being invisible. That you cannot see it even when you drive by its buildings. Such a time as this we have believe in such a concept even more...